I know we're not supposed to start discussing this yet, but the authors pose a couple of questions in the introduction that we can talk about without reading. This is more or less the thesis of the book, I think.

We both have an interest in philosophy, debate, rigorous logic, and skepticism— classic characteristics of the atheist mind. We also both care deeply about compassionate ethics, personal integrity , society, and morals— our humanist hearts . Between the two, as our own stories show, lies a gap that still remains to be filled, not just for our own lives but also for the atheist and humanist community.

This book is the result of our combined efforts to fill the void of disbelief that remains after a rejection of God by answering the questions, “What should one believe after abandoning faith?” and “What are the positive principles of atheism?

One of my complaints about Richard Carrier was that he defined himself too much in terms of not religious. I think the authors here aren't so much concerned with the beliefs of others, but in merely coming up with a positive worldview free from supernatural belief. As such it's a much more positive tone.

I would suspect that many of the positive principles of atheism are actually very similar to the positive principles of theism, perhaps just framed a bit differently. Maybe Ant and Flann will reconsider reading this book. I think we will find we have a lot more in common than is usually accentuated in many of these threads.


So here are those two questions again:

What should one believe after abandoning faith?

What are the positive principles of atheism?

What should one believe after abandoning faith?

I'm not certain a person ever abandons faith, per se.

For instance, there is absolutely ZERO guarantee that the cosmos (ie "a well-ordered whole") is structured in a way that is decipherable by the evolutionary cognitive abilities of homo sapiens.


For instance:

Evolution has endowed the species with the ability to navigate his/her three dimensional environment, with the aid of his sensorial equipment.
There is no need (to my knowledge) for our species to have cognitive abilities allowing for the discernment of dimensions beyond our 3 dimensional world.

If the claim is that the logic of 3 dimensional creatures effectively transitions to higher dimensions (which science posits) then there must be evidence that our logic is valid in those regimes as well.
If not, advancement of hypotheses related to multiple dimensions is an article of faith.

Logic is a concept constructed in within a point in time.
Is it timeless and valid for tomorrow (say, a thousand years from tomorrow)?
There is no evidence that it is. That is an article of faith.


Have we explored the entirety of the cosmos and has it been determined that there is an order to it we EXPECT?
That claim is without evidence. It is an article of faith.

faith
fāTH/Submit
noun
1.
complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

call it what you want - it is still a faithful trust in our cognitive abilities, our extrapolations into unobservables we are experientially "blind" and out of sensorial reach.


if the claim is that we are justified inductively to believe we will find order throughout the cosmos, then that too has an element of uncertainty that can not be justified by air tight deductive reason.
We march on faithfully that today will be just as yesterday was.

ant wrote:

What should one believe after abandoning faith?

I'm not certain a person ever abandons faith, per se.

For instance, there is absolutely ZERO guarantee that the cosmos (ie "a well-ordered whole") is structured in a way that is decipherable by the evolutionary cognitive abilities of homo sapiens.


For instance:

Evolution has endowed the species with the ability to navigate his/her three dimensional environment, with the aid of his sensorial equipment.
There is no need (to my knowledge) for our species to have cognitive abilities allowing for the discernment of dimensions beyond our 3 dimensional world.

If the claim is that the logic of 3 dimensional creatures effectively transitions to higher dimensions (which science posits) then there must be evidence that our logic is valid in those regimes as well.
If not, advancement of hypotheses related to multiple dimensions is an article of faith.

Logic is a concept constructed in within a point in time.
Is it timeless and valid for tomorrow (say, a thousand years from tomorrow)?
There is no evidence that it is. That is an article of faith.


Have we explored the entirety of the cosmos and has it been determined that there is an order to it we EXPECT?
That claim is without evidence. It is an article of faith.

faith
fāTH/Submit
noun
1.
complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

call it what you want - it is still a faithful trust in our cognitive abilities, our extrapolations into unobservables we are experientially "blind" and out of sensorial reach.


if the claim is that we are justified inductively to believe we will find order throughout the cosmos, then that too has an element of uncertainty that can not be justified by air tight deductive reason.
We march on faithfully that today will be just as yesterday was.

Um, isn't all this talk of evolution and the cosmos stuff we have other forum topics for? I don't see where they have to do with this topic thread here.

geo wrote:One of my complaints about Richard Carrier was that he defined himself too much in terms of not religious. I think the authors here aren't so much concerned with the beliefs of others, but in merely coming up with a positive worldview free from supernatural belief. As such it's a much more positive tone.

I would suspect that many of the positive principles of atheism are actually very similar to the positive principles of theism, perhaps just framed a bit differently. Maybe Ant and Flann will reconsider reading this book. I think we will find we have a lot more in common than is usually accentuated in many of these threads.


So here are those two questions again:

What should one believe after abandoning faith?

What are the positive principles of atheism?

Firstly, I would think an atheist could be better suited, given certain precepts beforehand, in labeling themselves humanist. This essentially details the things they do believe in, as opposed to the things they do not, and therefore would bring forth more postive atheism. If I am reading right I think this was within what you're talking about.

Secondly, positive principles in atheism in relation to religion might have to be within the realm of positive thinking psychology, etc. I saw a clip from The Atheist Experience where a rude caller (who hung up after shouting at Matt Dillahunty for five minutes) posed a question that basically went like this: Suppose a person knows for a fact that their belief in religion (say Christianity) was wrong, and yet they still believed it anyway in order to achieve some personal benefit, then what's so wrong with that? After rebuking the caller for his rudeness, Matt when on to say that if the person is believing in something he knows to be false because of some personal benefit, then it is imperative to find what it is about that belief that is causing the benefit and figuring how to replicate it without the ties to the false belief.

Slavery and Genocide in the Ten Commandments

Slavery
A basic goal of the Ten Commandments as expressed in Exodus 20 is to validate a moral theory that only male owners of property are classed as persons. All other humans are defined by the Ten Commandments as property (chattels) belonging to male property owners. A key form of property is slaves. So the Ten Commandments make coveting of another man’s slaves a key prohibition at Exodus 20:17. My view is that this teaching is a key reason why white racists in the American South use the Ten Commandments as a sort of moral symbol, because they are dog whistling about their strong beliefs in racial inequality.

Genocide
One of the most bizarre things about the Ten Commandments is how they sit in context in Exodus. The traditional list at Chapter 20 is well known. What is less well understood is how the Commandments are clarified or updated at Exodus Chapter 34.

In Chapter 34 of the book of Exodus, God explains that Moses broke the first set of Ten Commandments so a new set is needed. This is a fairly standard commercial practice with faulty merchandise returned under guarantee, except that in this case at 32:19 Moses smashed the first set in a fit of pique, apparently mightily pissed at how the Israelites were stuck in the old Age of Taurus instead of the new Age of Aries. So I am surprised that God is okay with this, especially as there is no mention of Moses getting a receipt or invoice, or of any problem with the first set of tables.

The new updated set of Ten Commandments supplied by God to replace the broken ones has a few important changes, but God is a bit dishonest here. God starts off by telling Moses to hew two tables of stone like the ones that Moses smashed. And God promises to write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables. Moses has to climb Mount Sinai in secret. God again does the descending in a cloud trick and carries on again about abundant guff. And does God the keep his solemn guarantee and promise to deliver a like-for-like product replacement? No way.

Now, the first commandment, instead of ‘have no other gods’ has subtly shifted. Now, in Exodus 34:13, the first solemn instruction instead reads “destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves.” Did you notice the difference? It seems the passive instruction in the first broken set of tables was a bit woosy, just telling the Jews not to worship the heathen Gods. Now God goes on the attack against the old female religion of Asherah which had previously dominated Israel, and now makes the Wannsee-type genocidal proclamation explicit, instructing total destruction.

God keeps on extending his broken promise. This is absolutely not a like-for-like product replacement, and would easily be sued under consumer law. I always thought that Jews had a reputation for great precision in commercial dealings, so how Moses missed this shoddy business practice by God is a surprise.

God continues. Now there is nothing about killing, stealing or casting a covetous eye toward your neighbour’s slaves. Now the list includes keeping the feast of unleavened bread, giving to God ‘all that openeth the matrix’ (although you can buy back your first born son), keeping the Sabbath day, observing main feasts, and not seething a kid in his mother's milk.

The Bible says straight up at Exodus 34:28 that God “wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” So the Bible defines the real bait and switch final version as the one’s starting with this ‘smash their groves’ stuff. No wonder the hardy pioneers of the frontier liked the Bible so much in the days of the European invasion of the world. The Real Ten Commandments provide direct moral licence and obligation to implement full cultural genocide against all non-Judaeo-Christian traditions.

Movie Nerd wrote:After rebuking the caller for his rudeness, Matt when on to say that if the person is believing in something he knows to be false because of some personal benefit, then it is imperative to find what it is about that belief that is causing the benefit and figuring how to replicate it without the ties to the false belief.

I'm surprised Matt didn't simply say, "Impossible. One cannot believe in something he doesn't believe in. A person cannot believe in what he knows to be false. This is a contradiction in terms. A person can pretend to believe in anything they want, but if they know something is false they cannot actually believe in it."

It is not that a person overtly maintains the truth of mutually contradictory propositions, A and not A.

Rather, people state they believe traditional creeds as a form of poetic fantasy, a myth that has a strong social purchase. So it is possible for some one to say they believe in the virgin birth or the physical resurrection without maintaining that God broke the laws of physics.

Alice in Wonderland wrote:"I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day."
"I can't believe that!" said Alice.
"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Religious rituals also can have a "strong social purchase," a utility for the believer that may have to do with more than the truth-appeal of the belief itself. This was brought home to me recently by a scandal in the DC area, in which an eminent rabbi was caught with all sorts of recordings of women getting into the mikvah, a small swimming pool that orthodox Jewish women enter after their menstrual periods are over. The point is, of course, that they have become unclean and need a ritual cleansing under the supervision of a holy overseer--who is this case is something of a perv.

My first reaction: well, this is a main result of absurd religious beliefs and shows we should get rid of as many as possible. Then I read some discussion and had to admit there could be a valid function to this ritual and belief. Part of the picture is that for two weeks, men aren't allowed to have sex with their wives. Therefore, they have to talk with them more. Then, after the bath and the end of the prohibition, oh boy, the pent-up release makes the wait worthwhile for both partners.

The racist politics of the Ten Commandments are embedded in new textbooks approved by Texas, and therefore likely to be available for national US use. See http://www.examiner.com/article/texas-t ... -spotlight

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/231604/ ... stitution/ is another article showing the systematic inversion of facts promoted by powerful interests who claim to believe in the Ten Commandments, but apparently have no compunction regarding breaking Commandment Nine against lying by bearing false witness against America's Founding Fathers.

The USA was founded in the enlightenment values of the separation of church and state. But now the throwbacks in Texas are rewriting history, claiming instead that US democracy is based on religion, especially the Ten Commandments.

Some further religious debate on this is at http://christiannews.net/2014/11/20/tex ... g-fathers/

Robert Tulip wrote:The Bible says straight up at Exodus 34:28 that God “wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” So the Bible defines the real bait and switch final version as the one’s starting with this ‘smash their groves’ stuff. No wonder the hardy pioneers of the frontier liked the Bible so much in the days of the European invasion of the world. The Real Ten Commandments provide direct moral licence and obligation to implement full cultural genocide against all non-Judaeo-Christian traditions.

While I'm not involved with the book of this thread I really have to challenge Robert here.
This is absurd nonsense. The ten commandments are racist and genocidal!? Of course Robert doesn't believe any of this actually happened. It's all myth remember.
It's a bit tedious at stage to point out yet again that Christians like Peter J Williams have responded to these new atheist's characterisations of the texts of the old testament, but it seems some can't be bothered to hear the other side. So much for fairness.
If anyone cares to look, Williams talk is on youtube under; Moral objections to the old testament.
On the matter of the revised ten commandments thesis, a closer look might help.
http://www.christianity.stackexchange.c ... -different