Hello - need to make 5 posts

[Truths4yer]

Reply to PureX

Reply to PureX

This is a reply to PureX's post. Thanks for the reply. You really made me have to think and there is a good chance I misunderstood some of your points below so please feel free to correct me if so.

It seems to me that harmonious coexistence is an elemental necessity for the continued existence of any life form, and particularly for life forms that employ the tactic of cooperation as an existential strategy. Harmonious coexistence would be an apt definition of the fundamental boundaries of any 'biological niche', as well as of any effective form of cooperative interaction.

If you mean to suggest that all cooperation or continued survival of any magnitude entirely fulfils the objective of harmonious coexistence then I would disagree because, like all things, harmony is distributed along a spectrum. A nation with murder or theft is less harmonious according to those criteria than one without (or with less) for example. This is independent of how much cooperation occurs. Another way to put it might be that "there is always room for improvement".

If you're viewing cooperation as the antithesis of things such as theft/murder then the extent to which cooperation equates to harmonious coexistence depends upon how the cooperation is obtained. Slaves may cooperate with their master's demands under threat of torture yet a society which included such a heirachy could not reasonably be said to be harmonious.

Actually, it would appear that the most effective means of obtaining and maintaining harmonious coexistence both within species and among them is not conscious rationality, but biochemistry. Insect colonies display far more harmonious coexistence than human colonies do, for example. And genetically induced behavioral patterns are far more widespread and effective than any consciously rationalized behaviors.

We are stuck with the genes/ physiology which we have however and while attempting to alter them artificially could potential diminish apparent disruption within a society, doing so would itself violate the ethical framework I propose if, for instance, it involved making people more submissive against their will or without informed consent.

While you raise a good point about insect colonies, we are not insects. We are a separate species with our own attributes, each of which diverges how we, as opposed to insect colonies, can best coexist harmoniously. This is not really a disadvantage though, given the benefits of our species' cognitive abilities.

My ethical framework also can't really be superimposed on to an animal population because it requires that a transgressor is able to rationally consider the consequences of their actions. Biological processes (E.G. pheromone secretion) which preclude free will would also negate culpability. Your overall point here, unless I'm misunderstanding it, seems to allude to a potential conflict between my ethical framework and the maintenance of free will. I.E. harmonious coexistence could be achieved if we removed free will.

I think my earlier point about artificially removing free will addresses this but as my thoughts on this whole topic are continually evolving, I may be wrong about this so feel free to challenge me on it. A "lesser of two evils" response seems most likely to refute my point. However, when I take such an approach with perpetrators (such as murderers), it is they who instigated evil, not I, as the person who responds to it (such as with incarceration), which would seem to be a relevant distinction. Incarceration would, incidentally, be an example of restricting a person's ability to act upon their free will, though not their free will itself.

I'm just saying that I think you have seriously minimized the elemental importance of harmonious coexistence, and perhaps overlooked it's more "objective" expressions.

By "harmonious" I'm referring especially to conscious harmony, I.E. an ant colony may seem to work efficiently but as there is no real consciousness there, it isn't really harmonious in the sense that I am referring to. The earlier case of a society which incorporates slavery would be another example. The societal output may be efficient/ "harmonious" but the contentedness of the population underneath that output would not be (and wouldn't be equitable).

It's only "quasi-objective" from the abstract perspective of human self-consciousness. On the purely biological level, where it originates and rules, there's nothing quasi about it. Morality is not just an intellectual overview that we humans apply to our experience of reality, it's an intellectual reflection of the very biology that allows consciousness (and intellect) to happen. Morality is built into our consciousness just as sexual lust and hunger and thirst, are.
I agree with most of what your posting, but I think your vision is too narrow.

If we accept the guiding principal that a good system of morality is one which seeks to benefit everybody equally/ mutually then any system which can be demonstrated to do that is a good one, wrt (with regards to) that principal. Everything which we consider to be objective seems to be considered to be so wrt a previously established principle.

Morality is a subjective human construct, rather than something based around an observable phenomenon so it cannot draw (quasi)objectivity from an external source. If I'm interpreting your point correctly, you mean that we have an instinctive sense of morality, or at least a proclivity for condemnation or praise. This is almost certainly true, though my ethical framework describes what we should aim for, not what actually is or what we are predisposed towards. Our natural propensities can be used as tools to facilitate that and/or some may need to be suppressed to do so.

the ultimate ideal in terms of quality is a condition-specific balance between strength (integrity, consistency, etc.) and adaptability (reactivity, interactivity, etc.).

I would say that the consistency is achieved through following the principle of not infringing on others, while the adaptability is invented by whoever is applying the ethical framework in order to achieve the principle within the specific context involved. I.E. There is consistency in what is aimed for and adaptability in how this aim is achieved.

Yes, but again, this is condition-specific. If we include the quality of adaptability with the quality of consistency as part of the ideal, then killing, robbing and raping other human beings cannot ALWAYS be considered immoral. We must allow that there can be circumstances under which these become morality acceptable acts.

Killing a prospective murder would be legitimate if it were the only means of stopping them from killing. Robbing somebody of a nuclear bomb detonator could similarly be so. It is very difficult to see how rape could be the lesser of two evils though. However, adaptability doesn't necessitate that the adaptation can be so extreme as to violate the consistent overriding principle I.E. adaptability can occur within constraints.

I don't disagree with your observations, I'm just offering some comments that may help to broaden your views.

Thanks. I haven't done any kind of dissertation on this topic myself yet so my views aren't crystal clear in my own mind (at least not holistically), so it is helpful to have them challenged.

Also, I didn't mean to appear so myopic in responding to your previous comment with the YouTube video of Steve Earle. I'm an artist, and I really do believe that there are a great many ideas and experiences that cannot be fully or effectively conveyed by written text, and that are far better expressed by these other creative means.

Not at all, I was perfectly happy for you to comment and share the video. I wasn't offended by your response but it just highlighted to me that I'd potentially left myself open to being quoted later in a theological debate on religious experience and wanted to clarify what I meant. I think videos etc can greatly enhance uptake of information, though I don't think they can contain information which cannot be expressed in words.

Thanks for the reply. It was good to be challenged by somebody critiquing the "tenants" of my own ethics, rather than simply presenting theirs. Please feel free to address any and all points that I made, though hopefully you're better at concision than I am.

 

[CabinetMaker]

This is a reply to CabinetMaker's post.

I'm sorry if you felt belittled. I don't remember being especially rude and certainly could have been far more abrasive. Your answer wasn't very elaborative (so I sought clarification). I'll address faith here and personal experience later.

Faith is a fraudulent substitute for a good reason (to believe something). It is fraudulent in that is masquerades as a good reason when in fact, if you had a good reason, you simply wouldn't need faith in the first place (you'd just tell me the good reason instead). Faith is therefore the excuse given for believing things without any good reason (not a good reason in and of itself).

Faith is not a substitute for reason. I have good reason to believe that the universe is not fully described by science. Science is fine for answering questions about how things work but it does not answer questions about why.

I haven't seen any other atheists use such points tbh but they aren't atheistic arguments really but simply factual points/ observations about typical fallacious reasoning processes. They are exactly the kind of thing which scientific research aims to avoid/ eliminate and which consequently facilitates its accuracy, as apparent from its predictive reliability.

Stick around, you will see the arguments. I should point out that so far, none of your arguments are new.

I'm not intending to instantly dive in to a science vs religion approach btw but am simply pointing out that the aforementioned considerations (the 2 links) are key to forming an accurate understanding of reality. Confirmation bias and anecdotal evidence aren't direct arguments against a belief but more just draw attention to potential sources of inaccuracy that might have given rise to incorrect beliefs. Both become extremely relevant when you say that "personal experience" is your basis for belief - particularly within the context of religion. Their applicability is determined by the specifics of the "personal experience" however.

Given that they are my experiences, how can you conclude and proclaim that my experiences are not real?

The decision to raise a child in a church isn't one made by an impartial mind. This is amplified 1000 fold by your second sentence here. You claim to have set aside all religion taught you yet this is immediately contradicted not only by the fact that you asked a deity to reveal itself to you... but in that it just so happened to be the deity which predominates in the culture in which you happen to have been born. Do you truly believe you would likely have asked "God" to reveal itself to you had you been in a culture where another deity predominated or where "God" hadn't even been heard of? Would it be a bible you had opened or perhaps another holy book. Perhaps you would have peered in to the entrails of a dead animal, looking for signs.

Religion and fair are not the same thing. If long maintained that people are saved inspite do religion, not because of it. I also do not believe that I opened that bible purely by chance.

An impartial, rational mind does not ask a deity to reveal itself to it in the first place, any more than we ask Zeus, Odin or Anubis to reveal themselves to us or even the tooth fairy. This indicates that confirmation bias is quite likely to have played a significant role.

may e the impartial! rational mind should ask. I asked Zeus and got no answer. Odin was silent as was Anubis. God, however, was not silent.

As Muslims open the Quran and find it makes sense, likewise for Hindus and the Vedas etc etc. This isn't belittling but rather pointing out that there is no apparent rational distinction between your miraculous revelation and that of many proponents of any other religion. Only one religion can be correct (or none), which means that the vast majority of people who believe things on the basis of experiences such as yours are necessarily incorrect. This strongly indicates that it is a very poor/unreliable reason to believe anything.

Then it is a good thing I don't believe in God based on a book I read!

Many others have read the bible without gaining any specific information which makes Christianity undeniably correct. What critically relevant information did you obtain?

From reading the bible that morning? None. I do not even remember the specific book and verse I opened too. What I had was a personal revelation that forever changed my heart.

Apparently far more competently so than omnipotent, omniscient God, who wants us to know and love him, yet is unable or unwilling to make his presence known, given that the vast majority of people aren't Christian, let alone of your particular denomination. How do you know that it isn't the "Satan" equivalent of another religion which isn't deceiving you away from recognition of the true god instead?

To Islam, what you say is true. But then evil hates good. God has made Himself known. It is just that many refuse to believe that God may be more subtle than overt. Most of the atheists and I anti theists I talk to seem to think that in order for God to be real He needs to be a manic genie.

I don't ignore any gods. I actively debate with people who tell me that the god which they believe exists disapproves of homosexuality, according to them. I no more ignore what God says than a Christian person ignores what Allah says when they eat pork.

You ignore that as the sovergien creator god has the right to determine write and wrong. You think you have higher and better morals than the Being that defines right and wrong. You can debate all you want, but you don't get to decide.

I'm glad you realise that. What non-consenting individual is inherently victimised by sex before marriage? If the condemnation is independent of victimisation, is it not then arbitrary?

Any and every non-consisting adult.

To clarify, nothing is written on our hearts. It pumps blood and wouldn't even be known about (as an organ) were it not for rational, empirically-based investigation.

Really? A literal reply to what has long been acknowledged and understood as symbolic. Sad.

We share some common rules, as I described, because they are quite clearly prohibitions of intrinsically detrimental activities. To say that "we are free to add to those" does not negate the fact that morality differs from culture to culture, deviating substantially from the commands of the deity you worship, which refutes your original claim that:

We share common morals because God put it in our brains (better?) inherent notions of good and bad.

So you really think that human society plodded along for thousands of years (even taking a biblical chronology of our species) and until your deity made the ground-braking announcement that stealing was wrong, people would steal from each other all the time, with nobody ever claiming it was wrong to do so?

God has been with us since the moment He created us. There was never a time in human history where God has not been present.

We're well aware that slavery (owning people as property, especially for life) is wrong, yet the bible overtly sanctions it.


Thanks for the reply.

I do not wish to get into slavery at this time. Slave traders and owners, as seen in American history, is condemned by the bible. Other forms of slavery (bond servant) are not inherently immoral. Both slave and master have certain expectations they must meet. US slavery, most slavery, fails to meet the requirements and is, therefore, immoral. Any further discussion of this topic is for another thread.

 

[Truths4yer]

Reply To CabinetMaker

Reply To CabinetMaker

Reply To CabinetMaker's post. Thanks for the response.

Faith is not a substitute for reason. I have good reason to believe that the universe is not fully described by science. Science is fine for answering questions about how things work but it does not answer questions about why.

Having good reason to believe that one answer (or set of answers) fails in no way equates to having good reason to believe that your answer (or set of answers) succeed. So you don't seem to have any good reason for your belief, if the alleged weakness of science is it. If we have no answer, the answer is "we don't know", not "God did it".

The reason science doesn't answer questions about "why" something is a certain way is because they are silly questions. Such questions allude to "purpose", which seems to be a subjective human construct. This is why purpose;
- has no units of measurement (unlike mass or length for instance)
- why it cannot be isolated/pinpointed, such as by cracking open an object
- and why different people can perceive the same object as having a different purpose.

The only sense in which the "purpose" of an object is objective is as a historical fact about "why" it was made by somebody. For example the picture I paint might be made with the intention of creating a decoration. This is simply a historical fact about it, no part of which implies that it "should" be used in any particular way. Another person could also paint a picture with a different intent/purpose in mind E.G. to impress somebody. To claim that science cannot answer what intent the universe was made with for instance would be to presuppose that a conscious being made the universe (with intent), therefore making any such argument for a god circular.

I should point out that so far, none of your arguments are new.

That isn't especially surprising as the same irrationality will tend to repeatedly be apparent to rational minds when it comes to any given flawed argument/conclusion.

Given that they are my experiences, how can you conclude and proclaim that my experiences are not real?

I don't. I conclude that you were anything but impartial and that proponents of mutually exclusive ideologies support their beliefs on directly comparable bases, such that the probability of you being correct in your interpretation of your experiences therefore seems extremely low.

Religion and fair are not the same thing. If long maintained that people are saved inspite do religion, not because of it. I also do not believe that I opened that bible purely by chance.

There were some confusing typos in there but I agree that you didn't open the bible by chance. You were looking for (desiring to find) the deity which predominates in your culture and unsurprisingly therefore found him. There would be no bibles available for you to open in some parts of the world, though they're likely highly prevalent in your geographical region, so again, I wouldn't call it chance either.

may e the impartial! rational mind should ask. I asked Zeus and got no answer. Odin was silent as was Anubis. God, however, was not silent.

Have you tried Loki, Thor, Thoth, Ra, Ganesh, Krishna, Apollo, Athena, Aphrodite, Kali, any of the other gods or perhaps even any of the Titans? I suspect you were in reality focused on the deity which you've been exposed to for your whole life, rather than one from another culture. I have actually asked the biblical deity in response to exactly the same challenge before... like Odin and Anubis, it was silent.

Now you likely tell me I didn't ask sincerely enough then I have to point out that only somebody who basically already believed and/or was desperate to do so would be capable of doing so. I have however asked with as much sincerity as I can muster anyhow, despite the fact that in no other area of intelligently-directed discovery do we pursue such an approach. Theists of other religions do get a response from their deities btw... like you no doubt, their deities make themselves known in their lives... they pick up their holy books and it all makes sense etc.

From reading the bible that morning? None. I do not even remember the specific book and verse I opened too. What I had was a personal revelation that forever changed my heart.

Which to me means you had an emotional experience which is unsurprising as you were earnestly seeking it. Don't know if you'll be able to see this (can't in my country but I've seen it before). In this video Derren Brown, a psychological illusionist gives an atheist a powerful religious experience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7ubasw7drI
Sorry I can't tell you at what point in it is.

If you watch this video for a few mins (which should skip 11mins in automatically) it also details how a spiritual experience can be induced in some people: Dan Barker - Former Evangelical Pastor, Can still speak in tongues/ "feel the holy spirit":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-91oN4Km5U#t=11m05s

The spiritual experiences of the proponents of every other religion would also count heavily against the reliability of such things.

But then evil hates good. God has made Himself known. It is just that many refuse to believe that God may be more subtle than overt. Most of the atheists and I anti theists I talk to seem to think that in order for God to be real He needs to be a manic genie.

Really the deity just needs to do what it says on the packet and actually want to be known. Your response here was a reassertion of your view and didn't seem to address my point: that you have no way of knowing that your belief isn't simply a product of the "satan"-equivalent of some other religion.

You ignore that as the sovergien creator god has the right to determine write and wrong. You think you have higher and better morals than the Being that defines right and wrong. You can debate all you want, but you don't get to decide.

You missed the point there... you believe that a god exists and you believe that it has the nature which you ascribe to it. No god is involved in this debate or any other one that I've ever had. It's always been me and theists... not gods, humans who claim that they know of gods. I don't therefore ignore your god or you for that matter. I debate you in order to establish whether or not there is any good reason to believe in your god, though I've debated enough theists that it is now usually a case of confirming my suspicions (no good reason to believe).

ME: I'm glad you realise that. What non-consenting individual is inherently victimised by sex before marriage? If the condemnation is independent of victimisation, is it not then arbitrary?
YOU: Any and every non-consisting adult.

How are they victimised? Just to clarify by "non-consenting" I meant who (other than those consenting to the premarital sex) is victimised by it.

Really? A literal reply to what has long been acknowledged and understood as symbolic. Sad.

Unfortunately to many theists I debate with, the cognitive abilities of the heart are not mere symbolism. Absurd I know and my apologies if I mischaracterised you as one of them.

We share common morals because God put it in our brains (better?) inherent notions of good and bad.

Yet they vary from culture to culture and the "common" ones (E.G. murder) would be totally destructive to a society if nobody had instincts against them... meaning that such societies wouldn't be around today and only those with such instincts would have survived.

Your claim that "God did it" is entirely unsubstantiated, while my explanation is intuitively obvious. If you disagree, please explain how so.

ME: So you really think that human society plodded along for thousands of years (even taking a biblical chronology of our species) and until your deity made the ground-braking announcement that stealing was wrong, people would steal from each other all the time, with nobody ever claiming it was wrong to do so?
YOU: God has been with us since the moment He created us. There was never a time in human history where God has not been present.

Unsubstantiated, though I see now that I misinterpreted your original point (thought you were referring to it being written in the bible rather than in our hearts). Anyhow, I should have simply stated originally that your claim is unsubstantiated. Please substantiate or discard it.

I do not wish to get into slavery at this time. Slave traders and owners, as seen in American history, is condemned by the bible. Other forms of slavery (bond servant) are not inherently immoral. Both slave and master have certain expectations they must meet. US slavery, most slavery, fails to meet the requirements and is, therefore, immoral. Any further discussion of this topic is for another thread.

Np, I can understand not wanting to open up a whole other topic, though as you've said a few words on it I'll share a quick paragraph. I know and don't care that biblical slavery was distinct from the Atlantic slave trade. The biblical prohibition of kidnapping people which is then directly contradicted in Numbers 31:17-18 clearly doesn't help your case though (despite it likely being your only source of counter-argument). I object to owning people as property (Leviticus 25:46), for life and all that that entails (Exodus 21:20-21).

Thanks for reading.

 

[Lion IRC]

opcorn:

 

[CabinetMaker]

Reply To CabinetMaker's post. Thanks for the response.

Having good reason to believe that one answer (or set of answers) fails in no way equates to having good reason to believe that your answer (or set of answers) succeed. So you don't seem to have any good reason for your belief, if the alleged weakness of science is it. If we have no answer, the answer is "we don't know", not "God did it".

I never said science was week, I said science is ill equipped to answer certain questions. Science answers what it can, but I believe there is more to creation than what science can quantify.

The reason science doesn't answer questions about "why" something is a certain way is because they are silly questions.

Why is not a silly questions at all. Science can tell us how a person was murdered, but it can't tell us why. It is very difficult to have a murder trial with out answering the question of why. Why is motive.

Such questions allude to "purpose", which seems to be a subjective human construct. This is why purpose;
- has no units of measurement (unlike mass or length for instance)
- why it cannot be isolated/pinpointed, such as by cracking open an object
- and why different people can perceive the same object as having a different purpose.

As I said, there are things that science cannot quantify. That does not mean that they are invalid at all. You can't quantify love. Do you deny it exists and directly influences you daily? Emotions cannot be measured yet they influence every aspect of our lives.

The only sense in which the "purpose" of an object is objective is as a historical fact about "why" it was made by somebody. For example the picture I paint might be made with the intention of creating a decoration. This is simply a historical fact about it, no part of which implies that it "should" be used in any particular way. Another person could also paint a picture with a different intent/purpose in mind E.G. to impress somebody. To claim that science cannot answer what intent the universe was made with for instance would be to presuppose that a conscious being made the universe (with intent), therefore making any such argument for a god circular.

Science cannot address the question of why the universe was made at all. It can only address the question of how it works and, at this point in history, can only speculate about the origins of the universe. What existed at t=0 minus is completely unknown and probably unknowable. I see design and order to the universe that is not fully accounted for in a purely random process.

That isn't especially surprising as the same irrationality will tend to repeatedly be apparent to rational minds when it comes to any given flawed argument/conclusion.

Maybe you would like to explain how you were able to prove that God does not exist.

I don't. I conclude that you were anything but impartial and that proponents of mutually exclusive ideologies support their beliefs on directly comparable bases, such that the probability of you being correct in your interpretation of your experiences therefore seems extremely low.

None the less, they are my experiences. I felt God's presence in my heart that morning and it is a feeling that has never left me. I stand by my testimony.

There were some confusing typos in there

Yea. I hate the iPad keyboard and and autocorrect.

but I agree that you didn't open the bible by chance. You were looking for (desiring to find) the deity which predominates in your culture and unsurprisingly therefore found him. There would be no bibles available for you to open in some parts of the world, though they're likely highly prevalent in your geographical region, so again, I wouldn't call it chance either.

God does not leave things up to chance. Those who seek find. I sought.

Have you tried Loki, Thor, Thoth, Ra, Ganesh, Krishna, Apollo, Athena, Aphrodite, Kali, any of the other gods or perhaps even any of the Titans? I suspect you were in reality focused on the deity which you've been exposed to for your whole life, rather than one from another culture. I have actually asked the biblical deity in response to exactly the same challenge before... like Odin and Anubis, it was silent.

Now you likely tell me I didn't ask sincerely enough then I have to point out that only somebody who basically already believed and/or was desperate to do so would be capable of doing so. I have however asked with as much sincerity as I can muster anyhow, despite the fact that in no other area of intelligently-directed discovery do we pursue such an approach. Theists of other religions do get a response from their deities btw... like you no doubt, their deities make themselves known in their lives... they pick up their holy books and it all makes sense etc..

I suspect their might indeed be in a difference in the motives between you asking and me asking. God knows our hearts and knows why we are asking. God is not to be tested. I only speculate and apologize if my speculation is wrong.

Which to me means you had an emotional experience which is unsurprising as you were earnestly seeking it. Don't know if you'll be able to see this (can't in my country but I've seen it before). In this video Derren Brown, a psychological illusionist gives an atheist a powerful religious experience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7ubasw7drI
Sorry I can't tell you at what point in it is.

Faith requires trust. Since that morning I have seen the world differently and respond to it differently. What I felt that morning is more than an illusion.

If you watch this video for a few mins (which should skip 11mins in automatically) it also details how a spiritual experience can be induced in some people: Dan Barker - Former Evangelical Pastor, Can still speak in tongues/ "feel the holy spirit":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-91oN4Km5U#t=11m05s

The spiritual experiences of the proponents of every other religion would also count heavily against the reliability of such things.

I do not believe that each and every person will experience God the same way. I do not tend to be ruled by my emotions, I am far to analytical in my approach to the world. A person who is much more emotional will experience and express God differently than I will. I am not Pentecostal so I am not given to speaking in tongues. From what I have heard of the practice in many churches, I find the practice highly suspect.

Really the deity just needs to do what it says on the packet and actually want to be known. Your response here was a reassertion of your view and didn't seem to address my point: that you have no way of knowing that your belief isn't simply a product of the "satan"-equivalent of some other religion.

The path laid out by God is both harder and easier than what any other deity lays out. I have faith that my trust is placed correctly. It is not a faith that anybody argued me into. If that was the case, then you should be able to argue me out of believing. Many have tried but since my faith is not born of myself, the wisdom of men is left wanting.

You missed the point there... you believe that a god exists and you believe that it has the nature which you ascribe to it. No god is involved in this debate or any other one that I've ever had. It's always been me and theists... not gods, humans who claim that they know of gods. I don't therefore ignore your god or you for that matter. I debate you in order to establish whether or not there is any good reason to believe in your god, though I've debated enough theists that it is now usually a case of confirming my suspicions (no good reason to believe).

I didn't miss the point at all. I made a statement of faith. I fully believe that God sent Jesus and that the Bible is an accurate account of God's interaction with mankind and that Jesus fully described what one must do to find salvation. I will do my best to describe the hope I have in my heart thanks to my salvation but ultimately what you decide to do with the gift of salvation God offers you is between you and God.

How are they victimised? Just to clarify by "non-consenting" I meant who (other than those consenting to the premarital sex) is victimised by it.

That does rather change things. The simplest example I can think of is adultery. If I were to have sex with another woman it would victimize both my wife and my daughters. It would lead to a messy divorce where my daughters lose.

Unfortunately to many theists I debate with, the cognitive abilities of the heart are not mere symbolism. Absurd I know and my apologies if I mischaracterised you as one of them.

Yet they vary from culture to culture and the "common" ones (E.G. murder) would be totally destructive to a society if nobody had instincts against them... meaning that such societies wouldn't be around today and only those with such instincts would have survived.

Your claim that "God did it" is entirely unsubstantiated, while my explanation is intuitively obvious. If you disagree, please explain how so.

The bible says that God wrote His laws on the hearts of Gentiles (non-believers). It has been my observation that the basic morals against things like murder and theft support that God did in fact write His lows on the harts of men. I am not saying God did it as an unsubstantiated claim, I am observing the world operates in a way that is consistent with what God said. See the difference?

Unsubstantiated, though I see now that I misinterpreted your original point (thought you were referring to it being written in the bible rather than in our hearts). Anyhow, I should have simply stated originally that your claim is unsubstantiated. Please substantiate or discard it.

Genesis 1:1. That pretty well sums it up: in the beginning God created. It goes back to what existed at t=0-minus, that instant before the big bang went boom. Tell us what science existed before everything sprang into existence at the big bang.

Np, I can understand not wanting to open up a whole other topic, though as you've said a few words on it I'll share a quick paragraph. I know and don't care that biblical slavery was distinct from the Atlantic slave trade. The biblical prohibition of kidnapping people which is then directly contradicted in Numbers 31:17-18 clearly doesn't help your case though (despite it likely being your only source of counter-argument). I object to owning people as property (Leviticus 25:46), for life and all that that entails (Exodus 21:20-21).

Thanks for reading.

You need to spend morte time in the New Testament.

 

[Truths4yer]

Reply to CabinetMaker

Reply to CabinetMaker

Sorry for the slow response.

I never said science was week, I said science is ill equipped to answer certain questions.

I know but this is itself a weakness. My key point is simply that even if you were somehow to refute science as a methodology in its entirety, nothing about that would necessarily evidence any other claim you make.

Science answers what it can, but I believe there is more to creation than what science can quantify.

Sure but the important thing is whether or not you have good reason for such a belief. Sorry if I'm labouring the points too much but I'm keen to avoid ambiguity etc.

Why is not a silly questions at all. Science can tell us how a person was murdered, but it can't tell us why. It is very difficult to have a murder trial with out answering the question of why. Why is motive.

A fair point in that I assumed by the "why" you referring to deeper questions than human motivations. Science can however tell us the "why" in such cases, as is encompassed by the social sciences, particularly in this case, criminology. Motive can be and is identified in criminal trials too, often via the assistance of forensic science, such as the investigation of a person's internet activity/ posts. The absence of omniscience does not disallow the attainment of any knowledge whatsoever.

As I said, there are things that science cannot quantify. That does not mean that they are invalid at all. You can't quantify love. Do you deny it exists and directly influences you daily? Emotions cannot be measured yet they influence every aspect of our lives.

Love is an emotion, which doesn't exist outside of my head. If you want to claim that your deity doesn't exist outside of your head then as you might suspect, you're unlikely to encounter much resistance from me ^^. Your appeal to the purely conceptual as one of the last recesses which science cannot yet fully scrutinise suggests that your god is likewise purely conceptual. To put it more colloquially, and hopefully not too offensively, "a figment of your imagination".

Furthermore, MRI scans etc can actually be used to identify neurological activity which corresponds to psychological dispositions. Doctors can also make accurate predictions about probable handicaps a person will have when they present with brain damage, based upon the specific region of the brain which is damaged.

Brain Surgery (Patient is awake), where at 11m50s you can see "speech arrest" I.E. they use electrical stimulation of part of the brain stops the patient being able to speak (count) temporarily:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD8ckoy9NVU

Of even greater relevance however would be this study which identified the neurological basis of fear (an emotion):

"The findings support the conclusion that the human amygdala plays a pivotal role in triggering a state of fear and that the absence of such a state precludes the experience of fear itself."
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(10)01508-3
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.042

Science cannot address the question of why the universe was made at all.

This is a silly question, which as I tried to explain previously, implies that you are using circular reasoning, as follows.
1) Why was the universe made? = With what intent was the universe made?
2) To ask With what intent assumes an "intender" I.E. a conscious being which intended to make the universe.
3) Your question therefore assumes your own conclusion (that a conscious entity, namely a god, chose to make the universe). Ergo, your question implies circular reasoning. Your question effectively identifies the deficiency in science as being that it does not assume the existence of a (your) god. This is not a deficiency.

What existed at t=0 minus is completely unknown and probably unknowable. I see design and order to the universe that is not fully accounted for in a purely random process.

If it is unknowable then your belief about a god having created it seems unknowable (so why would you believe in the first place). Natural selection is a non-random process btw. Failure of one explanation to account for something also does not = "therefore God".

The central point of this entire section is that the current inability of one methodology to provide us with omniscience does not support the accuracy of baseless speculation in any way. If we don't know something then we do not know it.

Maybe you would like to explain how you were able to prove that God does not exist.

That is not a claim that I make. I, like most atheists an am agnostic atheist, meaning that I lack belief in any gods but do not claim to know that none exist. I think that the existence of the gods of the Abrahamic religions seems extremely improbable but I won't get in to why here because it would be a huge topic in itself.

My position is therefore effectively the absence of a belief/claim, the default position. If you were to assign any claim to me it could perhaps be that "I currently see no good reason to believe that any gods exist". This is simply a claim about my perception of reality however, rather than reality itself.

ME: I conclude that you were anything but impartial and that proponents of mutually exclusive ideologies support their beliefs on directly comparable bases, such that the probability of you being correct in your interpretation of your experiences therefore seems extremely low.
YOU: None the less, they are my experiences. I felt God's presence in my heart that morning and it is a feeling that has never left me. I stand by my testimony.

You are welcome to do so but of course for the previously mentioned reasons (including some of the specifics of your own experience), I don't think you are using reliable evidence. The comparable religious experiences of proponents of all the other religions only serves to reinforce this. The vast majority of people who have such experiences are necessarily incorrect in their interpretations of them.

God does not leave things up to chance. Those who seek find. I sought.

They virtually always seem to find the deity which is most prevalent within their culture however... and some find nothing, though of course they don't tend to have a (noteworthy) religious experience to talk about so we don't hear about them so much.

Then of course there are even those who sought, found and then... "unfound" a god... like Dan Barker, who I think I showed you in a previous video link. You can say "they never truly found" but their experiences seem indistinguishable from any other theists, just as those of other religions do so it seems to be a baseless assertion.

Faith requires trust. Since that morning I have seen the world differently and respond to it differently. What I felt that morning is more than an illusion.

Trust never earned is credulity. Faith simply seems to be the excuse for belief without any good reason. It has the psychological implication that we are "going out on a limb" for a deity... but if the deity's existence has never been established in the first place then really it is just credulity. Its unclear why this should be considered virtuous or worthy of reward.

The nature of a good illusion is such that it cannot be identified as one. I don't deny that you had a powerful emotional experience but emotions do not describe or reveal external reality... they are simply our reactions to it... and a reaction alone (to nothing) does not justify that the nothing is something.

The path laid out by God is both harder and easier than what any other deity lays out. I have faith that my trust is placed correctly.

First sentence is a contradiction, second is rationally indistinguishable from the reasons any other theist has to believe (irrational).

It is not a faith that anybody argued me into. If that was the case, then you should be able to argue me out of believing.

I don't think anybody argued you in to it... I think the culture you live in, coupled with the natural psychological appeal of the Abrahamic religions lured you in emotionally, not rationally. Your experience was an emotional/ psychological one, not a rationally reached conclusion.

The psychological appeal of the A.Religions is almost a certainty due to their success - psychologically appealing ideologies will have a selective advantage over competing ones(religions). Likewise for ideologies which encourage procreation and childhood indoctrination and which therefore have inbuilt mechanisms of propagation. I include that simply for completion, rather than to snipe and I know that there is considerable variation in degrees of indoctrination among theists.

That does rather change things. The simplest example I can think of is adultery. If I were to have sex with another woman it would victimize both my wife and my daughters. It would lead to a messy divorce where my daughters lose.

Unless I am mistaken, we were discussing the alleged immorality of premarital sex. I asked who was victimised by it (the establishment of which would be the only sound means of assigning culpability in my view - minor oversimplification by me there fyi). Adultery is therefore entirely irrelevant to this. The biblical deity considers premarital sex to be justly punishable by the brutal murder, at least of women, who perpetrate it (Deuteronomy 22:20-21).

The bible says that God wrote His laws on the hearts of Gentiles (non-believers). It has been my observation that the basic morals against things like murder and theft support that God did in fact write His lows on the harts of men. I am not saying God did it as an unsubstantiated claim, I am observing the world operates in a way that is consistent with what God said. See the difference?

No . I mean I see your point but you are using an illusory correlation. If I have a book which states that my god "humpty dumpty" made mountains on Earth and I see mountains on Earth, do I then have a justified argument for the existence of humpty dumpty as the supreme god, who created mountains? Here is what it looks like if I insert this in to your own sentence:
I am not saying Humpty did it as an unsubstantiated claim, I am observing the world operates in a way that is consistent with what Humpty said.
A related rhetorical question to ponder: Do you think that the authors of the bible were entirely ignorant of how the world operates?

Tell us what science existed before everything sprang into existence at the big bang.

100% irrelevant to the accuracy of your claims, as outlined in red earlier in this post. Please also note that you, not I, have raised the topic of the big bang. I don't think I ever have, nor have I ever claimed to know how the universe formed.

Process of elimination only works when you know all of the possibilities btw. "God" or "Big Bang" therefore isn't a justifiable application of this rationale. The question to be answered is of a magnitude well beyond our ability to comprehend all of the possibilities, at least at this time.

You need to spend morte time in the New Testament.

Perhaps, though I often think Christians need to spend more time in the old. Thanks for reading.

 

[CabinetMaker]

Sorry for the slow response.

I know but this is itself a weakness. My key point is simply that even if you were somehow to refute science as a methodology in its entirety, nothing about that would necessarily evidence any other claim you make.

My point is that science cannot falsify faith. I also happen to believe that science and religion are opposite sides of the same coin. They are not mutually exclusive, they are complementary.

Sure but the important thing is whether or not you have good reason for such a belief. Sorry if I'm labouring the points too much but I'm keen to avoid ambiguity etc.

I do have good reason fro believing. My reasons are not evidence to you but that does not mean they are any less reasonable to me.

A fair point in that I assumed by the "why" you referring to deeper questions than human motivations. Science can however tell us the "why" in such cases, as is encompassed by the social sciences, particularly in this case, criminology. Motive can be and is identified in criminal trials too, often via the assistance of forensic science, such as the investigation of a person's internet activity/ posts. The absence of omniscience does not disallow the attainment of any knowledge whatsoever.

Now that you understand that why is a valid question then it is an easy to see that people do ask much deeper questions of why. Why am I here? The answer to that question tends to divide into two major camps: you are an cosmic accident or you were created. I believe we were created, that we have purpose beyond mere existence.

Love is an emotion, which doesn't exist outside of my head. If you want to claim that your deity doesn't exist outside of your head then as you might suspect, you're unlikely to encounter much resistance from me ^^. Your appeal to the purely conceptual as one of the last recesses which science cannot yet fully scrutinise suggests that your god is likewise purely conceptual. To put it more colloquially, and hopefully not too offensively, "a figment of your imagination".

Furthermore, MRI scans etc can actually be used to identify neurological activity which corresponds to psychological dispositions. Doctors can also make accurate predictions about probable handicaps a person will have when they present with brain damage, based upon the specific region of the brain which is damaged.

Brain Surgery (Patient is awake), where at 11m50s you can see "speech arrest" I.E. they use electrical stimulation of part of the brain stops the patient being able to speak (count) temporarily:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD8ckoy9NVU

Of even greater relevance however would be this study which identified the neurological basis of fear (an emotion):

None of this really addresses my point. Love does not exist in any way that we can measure with any instrument. We can see its effects on the brain just as we can see the effects of prayer on the brain. But it cannot be quantified. Is it your contention that because science cannot quantify love that love exists only as a figment of your imagination?

This is a silly question, which as I tried to explain previously, implies that you are using circular reasoning, as follows.
1) Why was the universe made? = With what intent was the universe made?
2) To ask With what intent assumes an "intender" I.E. a conscious being which intended to make the universe.
3) Your question therefore assumes your own conclusion (that a conscious entity, namely a god, chose to make the universe). Ergo, your question implies circular reasoning. Your question effectively identifies the deficiency in science as being that it does not assume the existence of a (your) god. This is not a deficiency.

I don't think it is a silly question at all, I think it is a very important question.

I also find you reason fundamentally flawed. A great many questions in science are asked with a conclusion in mind. And experiment is then set up to test the question to determine if the conclusion is valid. To start with the question How was the universe made does not automatically imply that a creator is required. Nor does it automatically preclude a creator. Why was the universe made is a philosophical pondering rather than an exercise in scientific deduction.

I would also point out that it is equally possible to begin from a preconceived conclusion that God is not needed and that any all evidence is interpreted through that particular world view.

If it is unknowable then your belief about a god having created it seems unknowable (so why would you believe in the first place).

Its called faith, belief in that which cannot be proven.

Natural selection is a non-random process btw. Failure of one explanation to account for something also does not = "therefore God".

Natural selection is random. It requires genetic mutations which are random and it requires that mutations survive long enough to reproduce. Predation and drought can profoundly effect natural selection.

The central point of this entire section is that the current inability of one methodology to provide us with omniscience does not support the accuracy of baseless speculation in any way. If we don't know something then we do not know it.

Oddly enough, nothing you have said automatically precludes an omniscience Being. We understand how genes work. We have no way to determine if they work is by accident or by design. Honestly, do you have a way to definitively prove one way or the other?

That is not a claim that I make. I, like most atheists an am agnostic atheist, meaning that I lack belief in any gods but do not claim to know that none exist. I think that the existence of the gods of the Abrahamic religions seems extremely improbable but I won't get in to why here because it would be a huge topic in itself.

My position is therefore effectively the absence of a belief/claim, the default position. If you were to assign any claim to me it could perhaps be that "I currently see no good reason to believe that any gods exist". This is simply a claim about my perception of reality however, rather than reality itself.

Your bias is obvious and you interpret the world through that bias. When you look at evidence you look at through the bias that God is not needed to explain this. I can look at the same evidence and see God's finger upon it. You do not look for God while I look for, and find, Him everywhere.

You are welcome to do so but of course for the previously mentioned reasons (including some of the specifics of your own experience), I don't think you are using reliable evidence. The comparable religious experiences of proponents of all the other religions only serves to reinforce this. The vast majority of people who have such experiences are necessarily incorrect in their interpretations of them.

You: My opinion of your experiences are that they are invalid.
Why should I care what your opinions of my experiences are? I believe that God is real and active in our lives. I believe that our souls are designed to know and experience God. My life has been better for knowing God. Why should your opinion be persuasive to me?

They virtually always seem to find the deity which is most prevalent within their culture however... and some find nothing, though of course they don't tend to have a (noteworthy) religious experience to talk about so we don't hear about them so much.

Then of course there are even those who sought, found and then... "unfound" a god... like Dan Barker, who I think I showed you in a previous video link. You can say "they never truly found" but their experiences seem indistinguishable from any other theists, just as those of other religions do so it seems to be a baseless assertion.

Satan is the prince of this world and he desires nothing more than to lure people away from God. That is why in Islamic countries Christian missionaries are frequently killed because when people hear the Gospel of Life, they abandon Islam and embrace Jesus. But then there are others who prefer the illusion that they are masters of their lives. While it is true that we are masters of our own destinies, we are not the ones who set the rules by which our destiny is determined.

Trust never earned is credulity. Faith simply seems to be the excuse for belief without any good reason. It has the psychological implication that we are "going out on a limb" for a deity... but if the deity's existence has never been established in the first place then really it is just credulity. Its unclear why this should be considered virtuous or worthy of reward.

Because the Creator has determined that it is worthy of reward. Not any more complicated than that.

The nature of a good illusion is such that it cannot be identified as one. I don't deny that you had a powerful emotional experience but emotions do not describe or reveal external reality... they are simply our reactions to it... and a reaction alone (to nothing) does not justify that the nothing is something.

I am not ruled by by emotions, I am VERY analytical. It is handy in my career as an engineer to look into why things do what they do. I have looked at the world through science and I have found that science and faith are complementary. The level of detail God put into His design is humbling. I believe that we were designed to know God and that we can if we so choose. You are free to choose not to. You are free to demand proof but it is proof that you will never have till the day you die.

First sentence is a contradiction, second is rationally indistinguishable from the reasons any other theist has to believe (irrational).

You are welcome to your opinion. None the less, I stand by what I said as I have found it to be true.

I don't think anybody argued you in to it... I think the culture you live in, coupled with the natural psychological appeal of the Abrahamic religions lured you in emotionally, not rationally. Your experience was an emotional/ psychological one, not a rationally reached conclusion.

Why don't you think it was not rational? Does your only definition of rational mean that everything must be vetted by science? If so, how will you determine if your are rationally in love with the correct person?

The psychological appeal of the A.Religions is almost a certainty due to their success - psychologically appealing ideologies will have a selective advantage over competing ones(religions). Likewise for ideologies which encourage procreation and childhood indoctrination and which therefore have inbuilt mechanisms of propagation. I include that simply for completion, rather than to snipe and I know that there is considerable variation in degrees of indoctrination among theists.

The appeal could also be that God is who He says He is and that people's souls respond to His calling.

Unless I am mistaken, we were discussing the alleged immorality of premarital sex. I asked who was victimised by it (the establishment of which would be the only sound means of assigning culpability in my view - minor oversimplification by me there fyi). Adultery is therefore entirely irrelevant to this. The biblical deity considers premarital sex to be justly punishable by the brutal murder, at least of women, who perpetrate it (Deuteronomy 22:20-21).

You really, REALLY, need to spend more time in the New Testament and learn about the New Covenant.

In any case, Deuteronomy was God's law for Israel and fornication and adultery were not allowed. They are still not allowed today but under the New Covenant they are not punishable by death. At least by our fellow humans. People who partake of these acts will be excluded from God's Kingdom.

God sets a high moral standard. Humans use morals to justify their baser lusts as your post plainly indicates. You: Sex is fun and it really doesn't hurt anybody so we should be free to do it. You position is short sighted, it does hurt people. It hurts the kids who are born out of wedlock. It hurts the young women who are lied to by men to get them into bed. GOd sets a higher standard, not because He is mean, but because He knows that sex is intended to bond a couple together. That is why the emotions of sex are so powerful. That is why there are TV shows that focus on the murder of one spouse by the other when caught in an affair. Sex is not a game.

No . I mean I see your point but you are using an illusory correlation. If I have a book which states that my god "humpty dumpty" made mountains on Earth and I see mountains on Earth, do I then have a justified argument for the existence of humpty dumpty as the supreme god, who created mountains? Here is what it looks like if I insert this in to your own sentence:
I am not saying Humpty did it as an unsubstantiated claim, I am observing the world operates in a way that is consistent with what Humpty said.
A related rhetorical question to ponder: Do you think that the authors of the bible were entirely ignorant of how the world operates?

Yes. At the time the various books of the bible were written I do not think that people understood human nature the way we do today. I believe that the people who wrote the various books of the bible were recording their experiences with God.

We are also not dealing with humpty, we are dealing with something entirely different. The Bible is 66 books written by more than 40 different people over 1500 years. God has revealed Himself to those people and preserved His word in what we today call the Bible. You will make claims that humpty or the flying spaghetti monster are equally valid because, like God, they can be neither proved nor disproved. The problem for you is, nobody but atheists ever claim anything about the FSM yet for thousands of years, peoples lives continue to be changed by faith in God. Definitive proof? Of course not. But then faith does not rest in a scientific or logic proof. Which is a big challenge for you if you wish to reason somebody out of faith. You have to convince me that my experience with God was not real.

100% irrelevant to the accuracy of your claims, as outlined in red earlier in this post. Please also note that you, not I, have raised the topic of the big bang. I don't think I ever have, nor have I ever claimed to know how the universe formed.

Process of elimination only works when you know all of the possibilities btw. "God" or "Big Bang" therefore isn't a justifiable application of this rationale. The question to be answered is of a magnitude well beyond our ability to comprehend all of the possibilities, at least at this time.

A while back a biology professor from CU Boulder came to our church and did a teaching on creation. It is remarkable how the science of the Big Bang theory perfectly tracks the account of creation in Genesis. Note: I am and old Earth Creationist so I do not believe in six literal days of creation.

Perhaps, though I often think Christians need to spend more time in the old. Thanks for reading.

Why? We are no longer the Old Covenant. We are not judged by those laws as we now live, and die, under the New Covenant, the Covenant of Grace. The Old Testament is a wonderful history but nothing more.

 

[Truths4yer]

Thanks for the reply and sorry for another slow response. I may respond infrequently at the moment.

My point is that science cannot falsify faith.

It doesn't need to as faith isn't a viable means of discerning fact from fiction in the first place. You can have faith in literally anything... and the beliefs which you have faith in will literally be no more or less likely to be true/accurate.

I also happen to believe that science and religion are opposite sides of the same coin. They are not mutually exclusive, they are complementary.

What verifiable information does religion contribute to our understanding of reality?

I do have good reason fro believing. My reasons are not evidence to you but that does not mean they are any less reasonable to me.

Sure, I don't remember what your reasons are now, though if you have reasons to believe which extend beyond the confines of your imagination then surely you should be able to demonstrate them to others. I think you may be an "just ask God and he will reveal himself" person, in which case the numerous examples of people who have;
1) asked and haven't gotten a reply,
2) received a reply then later realised that it was not as they interpreted it to be,
3) have received a reply from a deity which is mutually inconsistent with your own,
should all serve to demonstrate the unreliability of your form of evidence and therefore the implausibility of your belief's accuracy.

Here is a good example of 2, which I discovered recently and found interesting but don't feel obligated to watch as it is longer than anything I'd usually share to support a point.

Now that you understand that why is a valid question then it is an easy to see that people do ask much deeper questions of why. Why am I here?

Yes, (fallacious) anthropomorphism.

The answer to that question tends to divide into two major camps: you are an cosmic accident or you were created. I believe we were created, that we have purpose beyond mere existence.

The third, accurate answer is the best answer, that being, "I don't know". Religion always seems to seek sanctuary in the unknowns and in so doing makes itself unfalsifiable. This, coupled with the unfortunate propensity of our species, at least where religion is concerned, to irrationally develop beliefs without evidence is a hallmark of the Abrahamic religions. Rational beliefs are formed in congruence with the evidence, not arbitrarily formed and then rejected only when directly contrary evidence presents itself. This faulty reasoning is at the heart of theism.

None of this really addresses my point. Love does not exist in any way that we can measure with any instrument. We can see its effects on the brain just as we can see the effects of prayer on the brain. But it cannot be quantified. Is it your contention that because science cannot quantify love that love exists only as a figment of your imagination?

No, my contention is that we don't fully understand love yet beyond psychology. This unknown doesn't lend credence to any other rationale for distinguishing fact from fiction however. It merely highlights our lack of omniscience.

I also find you reason fundamentally flawed. A great many questions in science are asked with a conclusion in mind. And experiment is then set up to test the question to determine if the conclusion is valid.

Questions are asked with a hypothesis and perhaps a null hypothesis in mind I agree, though the answer is never presupposed within a correctly conducted investigation.

To start with the question How was the universe made does not automatically imply that a creator is required. Nor does it automatically preclude a creator. Why was the universe made is a philosophical pondering rather than an exercise in scientific deduction.

"How" doesn't, "why" (your original phrasing as far as I remember) does tend to, though I suppose it doesn't always. If you don't mean to imply a creator by it then it is np anyway. The "I don't know" answer would again usually be the correct one when debating typical questions about reality which religion claims to provide an answer for.

I would also point out that it is equally possible to begin from a preconceived conclusion that God is not needed and that any all evidence is interpreted through that particular world view.

Sure, though the default position is a lack of belief in your deity, just as much as it is in any other and this of course doesn't equate to actively believing that no gods exist.

ME: If it is unknowable then your belief about a god having created it seems unknowable (so why would you believe in the first place).
YOU: Its called faith, belief in that which cannot be proven.

Faith more often seems to be belief in spite of the evidence, a total lack of it or very bad (non sequitur) evidence. Why do you not have faith in all of the other gods which mankind has conceived of throughout the ages?

Natural selection is random. It requires genetic mutations which are random and it requires that mutations survive long enough to reproduce. Predation and drought can profoundly effect natural selection.

Mutations are random, while natural selection isn't. Predation and drought are examples of natural selective forces, which (non-randomly) select in favour of organisms which, through random mutation happen to be better adapted to survive such stressors than their (less well adapted) competitors. Over successive generations (not long at all for monocellular organisms in particular) this leads to the conservation of traits which best suit survival.

ME: The central point of this entire section is that the current inability of one methodology to provide us with omniscience does not support the accuracy of baseless speculation in any way. If we don't know something then we do not know it.
YOU: Oddly enough, nothing you have said automatically precludes an omniscience Being. We understand how genes work. We have no way to determine if they work is by accident or by design. Honestly, do you have a way to definitively prove one way or the other?

I'm not sure if you followed my point, which was that: the current inability of the methodology I propose to explain everything does not in any way strengthen whatever methodology you might propose (E.G. Faith) or the reliability of any beliefs derived from that methodology.

I do not attempt to preclude the existence of an omniscient being, merely to highlight that there is no apparent good reason to believe in such a thing. The answer to your question depends upon what you mean by genes "working", so please clarify if your question isn't rhetorical.

Your bias is obvious and you interpret the world through that bias. When you look at evidence you look at through the bias that God is not needed to explain this. I can look at the same evidence and see God's finger upon it. You do not look for God while I look for, and find, Him everywhere.

That is not a bias... it is simply part of what it is to be rational. The default position is to make no assumptions/ preconceptions beyond those necessary to reason in the first place. I'll try to demonstrate that with an analogy, using your own words:

When you look at evidence you look at through the bias that Zeus is not needed to explain this. I can look at the same evidence and see Zeus's finger upon it. You do not look for Zeus while I look for, and find, Him everywhere.
Are you biased against Zeus and all of the other gods which you never consider and/or don't even know about?

You: My opinion of your experiences are that they are invalid.
Why should I care what your opinions of my experiences are?

Not invalid but rather, highly unlikely to be correct. You should not care so much about my opinion but the stated reasons I hold it. If you cannot find a good reason why your beliefs are likely to be accurate in spite of them then this should cause you to reconsider your beliefs.

I believe that God is real and active in our lives. I believe that our souls are designed to know and experience God. My life has been better for knowing God. Why should your opinion be persuasive to me?

See above. That somebody holds a belief is irrelevant to it's truthfulness, which is determined by whether or not it is modelled upon reliable evidence. Many people's lives are better due to their religions, yet this doesn't make the associated beliefs true. The video I shared earlier provides a good analogy for this. A "soul" is something which is never defined by those who believe such a thing exists and therefore always practically meaningless to me.

Satan is the prince of this world and he desires nothing more than to lure people away from God. That is why in Islamic countries Christian missionaries are frequently killed because when people hear the Gospel of Life, they abandon Islam and embrace Jesus.

As Christians did for centuries during the inquisition? I think I previously asked but perhaps didn't get an answer, how do you know that the Satan of Islam or the boogy man of any other religion hasn't lured you away from the true deity?

The "Satan is tricking them" claim always seems to be a last-ditch defence against insurmountable evidence... which seeks to discredit it all without ever establishing the existence or will of this "Satan" character. It is another example of believing things until they are definitively falsified, rather than believing things based upon the evidence... if I can make up a mythological being and claim that it is tricking whoever disagrees with me then I can maintain any belief.

I can fly, I just never choose to do so and anybody that tries to prove otherwise using physics is simply being deceived by the invisible gummy bare. This is not the way we establish truth.

ME: it is just credulity. Its unclear why this should be considered virtuous or worthy of reward.
YOU: Because the Creator has determined that it is worthy of reward. Not any more complicated than that.

Then the creator's approval is arbitrary and isn't worth having. The invisible gummy bare says all who hop around on one leg for their entire lives will meet his approval.

I am not ruled by by emotions, I am VERY analytical. It is handy in my career as an engineer to look into why things do what they do. I have looked at the world through science and I have found that science and faith are complementary.

The only contribution of faith seems to be to fill in the holes where the good scientific reason for your belief should reside. What complementarity do you perceive?

You are free to demand proof but it is proof that you will never have till the day you die.

Evidence would be a good start and if it is unavailable then there is no good reason to believe in your deity.

ME: I don't think anybody argued you in to it... I think the culture you live in, coupled with the natural psychological appeal of the Abrahamic religions lured you in emotionally, not rationally. Your experience was an emotional/ psychological one, not a rationally reached conclusion.
YOU: Why don't you think it was not rational? Does your only definition of rational mean that everything must be vetted by science? If so, how will you determine if your are rationally in love with the correct person?

Love isn't rational. It is an emotion, not a claim about reality. There is no correct person, though if you subjectively state a particular goal you wish to achieve with a person, then you can attempt to evaluate the relative probability of achieving that goal with them, relative to others.

I don't think your belief is rational because you've been given ample opportunity to present a rational explanation but haven't done so. All theists I've encountered so far seem to believe for irrational reasons too. Irrational for the reasons I've described.

The appeal could also be that God is who He says He is and that people's souls respond to His calling.

Yet they almost always respond to the god which just so happens to predominate in their culture.

You really, REALLY, need to spend more time in the New Testament and learn about the New Covenant.

I've heard it mentioned, though Earth is still here, which suggests that not a jot nor tiddle of the law has changed. I'd be interested to hear if any biblical verses deal with this other than by directly contradicting it. The immorality of the OT is obviously as relevant to God's culpability as the immorality of crimes committed a few months ago are to a criminals. "But that was last week" is not a workable legal defence.

People who partake of these acts will be excluded from God's Kingdom.

So the punishment is now eternal torture, rather than death.

God sets a high moral standard. Humans use morals to justify their baser lusts as your post plainly indicates.

Nothing requires moral justification by default, because the default position is no position, which within morality, equates to treating all things as amoral, until somebody justifies that they are either morally good or bad. This is simply the same rational principle that to get from the neutral position, evidence/reason is required.

If I say all with your username are immoral and must be killed, it is for me to justify, not for you to endure punishment until you can prove your innocence.

You: Sex is fun and it really doesn't hurt anybody so we should be free to do it. You position is short sighted, it does hurt people. It hurts the kids who are born out of wedlock.

The enjoyability of sex is irrelevant to its moral legitimacy. I don't usually argue for sex specifically against the classification of homosexuality as immoral, on the basis that it, like heterosexuality, is victimless and involuntary. This is a rebuttal to a criticism btw, where, as previously detailed, the criticiser has the burden of proof and I merely have the option of demonstrating the fallaciousness of their arguments.

Contraception invalidates your criticism, which obviously wouldn't apply to homosexual interactions or non-procreative ones in the first place. Marriage seems irrelevant to it.

It hurts the young women who are lied to by men to get them into bed.

Lies and deceit hurt young women in such an instance... not sex.

GOd sets a higher standard, not because He is mean, but because He knows that sex is intended to bond a couple together.

Sex, like masturbation, practised by ~95% of men and ~65% of women can have multiple possible functions.

That is why the emotions of sex are so powerful. That is why there are TV shows that focus on the murder of one spouse by the other when caught in an affair. Sex is not a game.

Adultery is again a separate moral issue from sex. How is the potency of emotions concerned with sex (which may or may not be present) relevant to the morality of it?

Yes. At the time the various books of the bible were written I do not think that people understood human nature the way we do today.

Were they not human themselves? If anything, they'd have far less distractions and so far more time to ponder it.

We are also not dealing with humpty, we are dealing with something entirely different. The Bible is 66 books written by more than 40 different people over 1500 years.

The problem is that we don't seem to be. Many other religions have long histories involving multiple participants... this is not a strength and if anything simply reinforces the probability that such a persistent ideology may be adopted due to cultural bias.

The problem for you is, nobody but atheists ever claim anything about the FSM yet for thousands of years, peoples lives continue to be changed by faith in God.

Yes, others make claims about their own deities... and how they've changed their lives.

But then faith does not rest in a scientific or logic proof. Which is a big challenge for you if you wish to reason somebody out of faith. You have to convince me that my experience with God was not real.

You, like many theists are likely too psychologically committed to your belief to be convinced of anything contrary to it. An irrationally held belief cannot be corrected through rational means. I'd just suggest you watch the video I linked as it is of somebody who "found God" perhaps even more profoundly than you did.

A while back a biology professor from CU Boulder came to our church and did a teaching on creation. It is remarkable how the science of the Big Bang theory perfectly tracks the account of creation in Genesis. Note: I am and old Earth Creationist so I do not believe in six literal days of creation.

Does the bible mention the subatomic events involved? I've heard there are apparently two different creation myths in genesis too, incidentally.

Why? We are no longer the Old Covenant. We are not judged by those laws as we now live, and die, under the New Covenant, the Covenant of Grace. The Old Testament is a wonderful history but nothing more.

Your wording suggests that you use the "it's just a historical account of events" explanation for the divinely commanded atrocities within it. If so, what is your consistently applicable rationale for distinguishing mere historical accounts from divine commands?

You should want to look at your deity's past actions, just as a criminal court analyses the past actions of the defendant, irrespective of their alleged new-found benevolence. Thanks for reading.

 

[CabinetMaker]

Thanks for the reply and sorry for another slow response. I may respond infrequently at the moment.

It doesn't need to as faith isn't a viable means of discerning fact from fiction in the first place. You can have faith in literally anything... and the beliefs which you have faith in will literally be no more or less likely to be true/accurate.

Simply put, science cannot definitivly prove that God does not exist.

What verifiable information does religion contribute to our understanding of reality

Faith contributes the why to reality. It provides an answer to "why am I here?" It is a question that might not matter to you, but id does matter to a great many people. It provides meaning.

Sure, I don't remember what your reasons are now, though if you have reasons to believe which extend beyond the confines of your imagination then surely you should be able to demonstrate them to others. I think you may be an "just ask God and he will reveal himself" person, in which case the numerous examples of people who have;
1) asked and haven't gotten a reply,

2)

received a reply then later realised that it was not as they interpreted it to be,
3) have received a reply from a deity which is mutually inconsistent with your own,
should all serve to demonstrate the unreliability of your form of evidence and therefore the implausibility of your belief's accuracy.

THey don't. All they demonstrate is fear or contempt. People frequently want, even insist, on accepting God on their terms and demand that He be what they want Him to be. They are putting the cart before the horse.

Yes, (fallacious) anthropomorphism.

Not for a great many people. It is a question that cuts to the very heart of many people. You may not care but that does not mean that others who do care are somehow flawed.

The third, accurate answer is the best answer, that being, "I don't know". Religion always seems to seek sanctuary in the unknowns and in so doing makes itself unfalsifiable. This, coupled with the unfortunate propensity of our species, at least where religion is concerned, to irrationally develop beliefs without evidence is a hallmark of the Abrahamic religions. Rational beliefs are formed in congruence with the evidence, not arbitrarily formed and then rejected only when directly contrary evidence presents itself. This faulty reasoning is at the heart of theism.

"I don't know" is very different than "there is no God". Science is fine for explaining how things work but it is not real good at providing meaning to life. Science gives us great toys to play with and it provides understanding of the universe around us and gets us to the moon. Science creats medical miracles that allow us to save people who would normally die but provides no answer as to why we should save them in the first place. Natural selection would dictate that if a kid has asthma we should let them die so that that defect is removed from the gene pool resulting in a stronger, better adapted human. Yet we so not allow them to die and science cannot explain that.

No, my contention is that we don't fully understand love yet beyond psychology. This unknown doesn't lend credence to any other rationale for distinguishing fact from fiction however. It merely highlights our lack of omniscience.

Which in no way address the point that I made. does not exist in any way that we can measure with any instrument. We can see its effects on the brain just as we can see the effects of prayer on the brain. But it cannot be quantified. Your answer does not address sciences lack of ability to study and quantify such a basic human emotion.

Questions are asked with a hypothesis and perhaps a null hypothesis in mind I agree, though the answer is never presupposed within a correctly conducted investigation.

"How" doesn't, "why" (your original phrasing as far as I remember) does tend to, though I suppose it doesn't always. If you don't mean to imply a creator by it then it is np anyway. The "I don't know" answer would again usually be the correct one when debating typical questions about reality which religion claims to provide an answer for.

I wouldn't agree with you. How and why are two very different questions. Why was the universe made? If it was purely chance event then there is no why. If it was not a chance event then something else is at work. As an engineer, when I look at the workings of the universe I see design and order, not chance.

Sure, though the default position is a lack of belief in your deity, just as much as it is in any other and this of course doesn't equate to actively believing that no gods exist.

I don't think that is the default position, I think that is a position that we work to arrive at. I think the default position for humans is to believe in God.

Faith more often seems to be belief in spite of the evidence, a total lack of it or very bad (non sequitur) evidence. Why do you not have faith in all of the other gods which mankind has conceived of throughout the ages?

Some people believe things, such as a young earth, in spite of evidence. That is not my position. I believe that we were created in God's image and, as such, can understand His act of creation. I have faith in God because I have experienced God.

Mutations are random, while natural selection isn't. Predation and drought are examples of natural selective forces, which (non-randomly) select in favour of organisms which, through random mutation happen to be better adapted to survive such stressors than their (less well adapted) competitors. Over successive generations (not long at all for monocellular organisms in particular) this leads to the conservation of traits which best suit survival.

This link puts the lie to the statement that natural selection is non-random. Why doesn't natural selection non-randomly select against these traits?

I'm not sure if you followed my point, which was that: the current inability of the methodology I propose to explain everything does not in any way strengthen whatever methodology you might propose (E.G. Faith) or the reliability of any beliefs derived from that methodology.

I do not attempt to preclude the existence of an omniscient being, merely to highlight that there is no apparent good reason to believe in such a thing. The answer to your question depends upon what you mean by genes "working", so please clarify if your question isn't rhetorical.

By the same token, there is not apparent or good reason not to believe in God.

That is not a bias... it is simply part of what it is to be rational. The default position is to make no assumptions/ preconceptions beyond those necessary to reason in the first place. I'll try to demonstrate that with an analogy, using your own words:

When you look at evidence you look at through the bias that Zeus is not needed to explain this. I can look at the same evidence and see Zeus's finger upon it. You do not look for Zeus while I look for, and find, Him everywhere.
Are you biased against Zeus and all of the other gods which you never consider and/or don't even know about?

I am biased against Zeus because I have met God. I have experienced Him in my life and I have found absolute truth in His word.

Not invalid but rather, highly unlikely to be correct. You should not care so much about my opinion but the stated reasons I hold it. If you cannot find a good reason why your beliefs are likely to be accurate in spite of them then this should cause you to reconsider your beliefs.

I know why you hold your opinions and I find those reasons unconvincing in the face of God. Nothing you have said nor the reasoning behind what you have said is new to me or compelling enough to cause me to doubt.

See above. That somebody holds a belief is irrelevant to it's truthfulness, which is determined by whether or not it is modelled upon reliable evidence. Many people's lives are better due to their religions, yet this doesn't make the associated beliefs true. The video I shared earlier provides a good analogy for this. A "soul" is something which is never defined by those who believe such a thing exists and therefore always practically meaningless to me.

I have always thought of our soul as that which makes us us. It is the spark of the divine that lives within each of us. It is that which survives death and goes to face God.

As Christians did for centuries during the inquisition? I think I previously asked but perhaps didn't get an answer, how do you know that the Satan of Islam or the boogy man of any other religion hasn't lured you away from the true deity?

Because God would never endorse the Inquisition. You blame God for the failings of men. So when I look at other religions that treat women as property and endorse killing those that do not agree with them, I know that that is men doing things in spite of God.

Then the creator's approval is arbitrary and isn't worth having. The invisible gummy bare says all who hop around on one leg for their entire lives will meet his approval.

Okay. You cannot say you did not know that there were potential consequences to your chosen beliefs.

The only contribution of faith seems to be to fill in the holes where the good scientific reason for your belief should reside. What complementarity do you perceive?

Faith contributes morality and a basic sense of justice. It gave us compassion and sparks artistic master pieces in all sorts of mediums. Faith has brought richness to our lives. It has also brought war and death but that is because men often exploit and pervert religion to their own ends, not God's.

Evidence would be a good start and if it is unavailable then there is no good reason to believe in your deity.

Problem for you is is that knowledge does not save, faith saves.

Love isn't rational. It is an emotion, not a claim about reality. There is no correct person, though if you subjectively state a particular goal you wish to achieve with a person, then you can attempt to evaluate the relative probability of achieving that goal with them, relative to others.

I don't think your belief is rational because you've been given ample opportunity to present a rational explanation but haven't done so. All theists I've encountered so far seem to believe for irrational reasons too. Irrational for the reasons I've described.

I have told you repeatedly that my experience with God is rational. I have told you repeatedly that you will not accept that explanation. That you do not accept my experience as rational or evidential, in now way invalidates that which I have experienced. That is the nature of faith granted by God.

Yet they almost always respond to the god which just so happens to predominate in their culture.

And why do you think that is the case? I'll give you hint, it goes to the essence of human nature.

I've heard it mentioned, though Earth is still here, which suggests that not a jot nor tiddle of the law has changed. I'd be interested to hear if any biblical verses deal with this other than by directly contradicting it. The immorality of the OT is obviously as relevant to God's culpability as the immorality of crimes committed a few months ago are to a criminals. "But that was last week" is not a workable legal defence.

What immorality in the OT? You should also do a little research regarding Covenants.

So the punishment is now eternal torture, rather than death.

You can be with God or not. If you choose not to be with God, there is only one place that you can go. It is not pleasant.

Nothing requires moral justification by default, because the default position is no position, which within morality, equates to treating all things as amoral, until somebody justifies that they are either morally good or bad. This is simply the same rational principle that to get from the neutral position, evidence/reason is required.

If I say all with your username are immoral and must be killed, it is for me to justify, not for you to endure punishment until you can prove your innocence.

You are not the sovereign creator of the universe. If you declare that so and so should all be killed you are no different than Hitler. God, on the other hand, has the authority to judge His creation. Remember, death is only the end of our existence here on earth, the soul goes on. So the child that dies here on earth for whatever reason find itself in Heaven with God.

The enjoyability of sex is irrelevant to its moral legitimacy. I don't usually argue for sex specifically against the classification of homosexuality as immoral, on the basis that it, like heterosexuality, is victimless and involuntary. This is a rebuttal to a criticism btw, where, as previously detailed, the criticiser has the burden of proof and I merely have the option of demonstrating the fallaciousness of their arguments.

Contraception invalidates your criticism, which obviously wouldn't apply to homosexual interactions or non-procreative ones in the first place. Marriage seems irrelevant to it.

Nothing you have said here changes the morality of sex from God's point of view. It is just you justifying slaking your baser lusts because its fun and doesn't really hurt anybody. Which is false as recreational sex does hurt people in ways they may not be aware of for years. God had a plan for sex. People like you pervert that plan to serve your own desires.

Lies and deceit hurt young women in such an instance... not sex.

With out the lust for sex, no lies and deceit would be necessary. Your lust hurt the girl.

Adultery is again a separate moral issue from sex. How is the potency of emotions concerned with sex (which may or may not be present) relevant to the morality of it?

Lust for sex is at the core of adultery. All the hurt that comes from adultery arises out of your inability to control yourself.

You, like many theists are likely too psychologically committed to your belief to be convinced of anything contrary to it. An irrationally held belief cannot be corrected through rational means. I'd just suggest you watch the video I linked as it is of somebody who "found God" perhaps even more profoundly than you did.

Why, thank you. I appreciate your acknowledgement of my commitment to God.

Does the bible mention the subatomic events involved? I've heard there are apparently two different creation myths in genesis too, incidentally.

Why should it? The Bible is not a science text book.

Your wording suggests that you use the "it's just a historical account of events" explanation for the divinely commanded atrocities within it. If so, what is your consistently applicable rationale for distinguishing mere historical accounts from divine commands?

What you call atrocities I see as righteous judgment by the one Entity entitled to judge that which He created.

You should want to look at your deity's past actions, just as a criminal court analyses the past actions of the defendant, irrespective of their alleged new-found benevolence. Thanks for reading.

I do look at God but one must be careful to look at God's actions as a Sovereign Creator and never the incomplete and foolish moral standards of somebody who rejects God and sets themselves up as the moral authority.

 

[PaganSunday]

Apparently I need to make 5 posts to share links. Here is 1

Thanks buddy...

 

[PaganSunday]

here is 2
I understand why the feature is in place, so it is tolerable.

Likewise..

 

[PaganSunday]

I'll make another post....

 

[PaganSunday]

so I can start posting links as well.

 

[Truths4yer]

Thanks for the reply.

Simply put, science cannot definitivly prove that God does not exist.

It doesn't need to as rational beliefs are formed on the basis of what can be evidenced, not on the basis of which outlandish claims can't be definitively contradicted/ disproven.
Science cannot definitively prove that Odin does not exist.
Science cannot definitively prove that Ra does not exist.
Science cannot definitively prove that Harry Potter does not exist.
etc etc.

The existence of the God Hatira, who created all things, disproves the existence of your God as the one and only "true" God. So now I've rationally disproved your deity using your own mode of faulty reasoning. To disprove what I've said you need to prove that Hatira doesn't exist. Hatira is incorporeal, inaudible, invisible and transcendent btw. Please disprove Hatira or admit that I've disproven your God.

Theists have the burden of proof. It is no more sensible to believe in a deity without evidence than it is to believe that every fiction you've ever read is literally true, until proven otherwise.



ME: "What verifiable information does religion contribute to our understanding of reality".

Faith contributes the why to reality. It provides an answer to "why am I here?"

It inserts grammatically correct words in to a grammatically correct, though meaningless question. Faith is not a mechanism of understanding but instead merely a code-word for assuming your own conclusion.

What do you mean by "why am I here?" other than "In accordance with what intention of a conscious entity do I exist"?

I can provide you with millions of answers to "why" you are here. JuJu the magic fairy brought you in to existence on a whim, though I guess I'll stick with Hatira. There is an answer that has equal weight and therefore equal relevance to any answer you would provide in the context of your theology. The ability to answer a question is neither impressive, nor helpful, if that answer is never evidenced.
How is your answer verified?

It is a question that might not matter to you, but id does matter to a great many people.

Emotional attachment to questions is not relevant to whether or not they actually make sense. It isn't that it doesn't matter to me... so much as that it is a malformed question... it is nonsensical and its answer is unevidenced. Why is a rock here?

It provides meaning.

Meaning is a human psychological construct, useful to provide motivation but not as a description of external reality. If you think that "meaning" exists outside the confines of our own minds/imaginations then please demonstrate how this inherently conceptual concept does so.

ME: all serve to demonstrate the unreliability of your form of evidence and therefore the implausibility of your belief's accuracy.
YOU: THey don't. All they demonstrate is fear or contempt. People frequently want, even insist, on accepting God on their terms and demand that He be what they want Him to be. They are putting the cart before the horse.

Theists of other religions are indistinguishable from you in terms of the reasons they believe. To many Muslims or Hindus for instance, the idea of "fear or contempt" of your deity as irrelevant as the idea of "fear or contempt" of Allah or Krishna is to you... you just don't think they exist, just as they do with regards to your deity.

Ex-Christians either find an overwhelming number of contradictions within their own religion, or simply identify the total lack of evidence for it. This is nothing to do with "fear or contempt" or "what they want him to be".

As a non-believer I don't do either of the above either. I simply don't believe that your deity exists any more than I do any other fictional character.

"I don't know" is very different than "there is no God".

I don't claim "there is no God" in the strict sense... though the question of a causal origin of reality is not identical to the question of the existence or non-existence of a deity. I'm an agnostic atheist, who therefore lacks a belief in any gods but does not claim to know that none exist. "I don't know" is the default position for any question. In order to get to "X is the answer", evidence is required (I.E. there is a burden of proof on anybody making a claim). If "X is the answer" is a claim made without evidence then there seems to be no other source from which this information can be derived... meaning it is something somebody has simply made up.

Science creats medical miracles that allow us to save people who would normally die but provides no answer as to why we should save them in the first place.

Here you seem to appeal to objective morality. It, like "purpose/meaning" is merely a facet of human psychology. Please note that when I make sentences like the preceding one, what I really mean is "there is no apparent good reason to believe anything other than....".

If you claim that morality isn't a subjective human psychological construct then you make an extra claim compared to a subjective moralist such as myself. I'll lay out the premises so you can see what you need to justify (rationally).
1) People have a sense of morality.
2) This sense of morality varies from person to person.
We (both subjective and objective moralists) agree on claims 1 and 2. The objective moralist additionally makes claim 3 and therefore has a burden of proof (they need to demonstrate that they have a good reason to believe it).
3) One view of morality is objectively true/correct. Please justify this or admit that you have no basis whatsoever to hold the belief.

Natural selection would dictate that if a kid has asthma we should let them die so that that defect is removed from the gene pool resulting in a stronger, better adapted human. Yet we so not allow them to die and science cannot explain that.

Evolutionary psychology/ sociology explains it, though that's an entirely separate topic. The mistake you make here is to regard natural selection as a moral philosophy which prescribes what we should do. It isn't. Natural selection describes how reality is, not how it should be.

ME: No, my contention is that we don't fully understand love yet beyond psychology. This unknown doesn't lend credence to any other rationale for distinguishing fact from fiction however. It merely highlights our lack of omniscience.
YOU: Which in no way address the point that I made. does not exist in any way that we can measure with any instrument. We can see its effects on the brain just as we can see the effects of prayer on the brain. But it cannot be quantified. Your answer does not address sciences lack of ability to study and quantify such a basic human emotion.

You're operating under the flawed assumption that science has to explain everything in order to be a useful (or the only useful) means of distinguishing fact from fiction. It doesn't. As I noted earlier, "I don't know" is the correct answer in instances where we don't know something. The fact that you can't tell me what is in my left trouser pocket right now doesn't disprove your claim that you can tell me what is in yours. You don't have to know everything in order to know something. You do however have to have good reason/evidence for anything that you do claim to know.

How and why are two very different questions. Why was the universe made? If it was purely chance event then there is no why. If it was not a chance event then something else is at work. As an engineer, when I look at the workings of the universe I see design and order, not chance.

Chance isn't necessary for non-randomness, as demonstrated via natural selection, which is an intuitively obvious mechanism, entirely independently of whether or not it gave rise to speciation/evolution.

I don't think that is the default position, I think that is a position that we work to arrive at. I think the default position for humans is to believe in God.

Which one? The default belief is always no belief on any issue. This is simply how rationality works. Anything else would simply involve assuming your own conclusion.

I have faith in God because I have experienced God.

Then you don't believe in God by default... you believe because of your experience of it... so I don't see why you'd deny that the default position is a lack of belief. If you have experienced God then you don't need faith either as you have evidence. The only issue is that your belief runs in to all of the problems listed by me earlier and the only way you seem to fob these off is to exhibit a very strong favouritism towards your own deity... just as theists of any other religion would and do do. I don't claim to know that you're wrong, simply that it's enormously unlikely that you're right.

link puts the lie to the statement that natural selection is non-random. Why doesn't natural selection non-randomly select against these traits?

It does... yet you do realise that cattle have been artificially selected by humans for millennia I assume...
Natural selection selects in favour of genes which enhance their own survival and subsequent proliferation. A diseased animal that is able to survive & procreate isn't an issue.

By the same token, there is not apparent or good reason not to believe in God.

Which one?

I am biased against Zeus because I have met God. I have experienced Him in my life and I have found absolute truth in His word.

Just as theists of other religions have experienced their deities in their lives and found absolute truth in their deities' words. You've experienced what you've interpreted as the deity which happens to be most prevalent within your culture, just as they have with the one in theirs. Why is it culture/geographic region which experiences which deity is experienced?

I have always thought of our soul as that which makes us us. It is the spark of the divine that lives within each of us. It is that which survives death and goes to face God.

It seems a soul is a multitude of assumptions about divinity and immortality, loosely associated with the concept of a mind. How have you identified the immortality and divine nature of this object?

IBecause God would never endorse the Inquisition. You blame God for the failings of men.

The theists of the time seemed to disagree. I don't blame God as I don't believe in it's existence.

So when I look at other religions that treat women as property and endorse killing those that do not agree with them, I know that that is men doing things in spite of God.

Your deity commands and endorses these things repeatedly in the bible.
Leviticus 25:46, 1 Samuel 15:3 and Numbers 31:17-18 for instance.

there were potential consequences to your chosen beliefs.

I do not choose beliefs about reality. All I can control is how thoroughly I scrutinise the evidence. Rational minds do not decide what they want to believe about reality. They look at reality and see how it is, then form beliefs based upon that.

Faith contributes morality and a basic sense of justice.

Faith = belief without any good reason. It isn't related to morality. Religions corrupt morality by making it about the arbitrary whims of (apparently non-existent) supernatural beings, rather than about concerns over the well-being of other humans, who we actually know do exist. I have no faith yet I am very morally principled, more so than many theists I've encountered.

It has also brought war and death but that is because men often exploit and pervert religion to their own ends, not God's.

Their "interpretations" are indistinguishable from your own in terms of how well evidenced they are.

Problem for you is is that knowledge does not save, faith saves.

Pascal's wager.

That you do not accept my experience as rational or evidential, in now way invalidates that which I have experienced. That is the nature of faith granted by God.

It is nothing to do with "faith" unless you're by your "experience" you are simply saying that you have "faith" that God is real, in which case you have no experiential evidence in the first place. I don't deny that you've had experiences or that you've interpreted them as being your deity... my point is simply that your interpretation is almost certainly flawed, based upon other people's mutually incompatible personal experiences of their deities etc. I don't expect we will agree, which is unfortunate but obviously to me you seem to have an extremely low threshold of evidence required to believe in your culture's deity.

ME: Yet they almost always respond to the god which just so happens to predominate in their culture.
YOU: And why do you think that is the case? I'll give you hint, it goes to the essence of human nature.

Obviously because people like to invent supernatural explanations for things which they don't understand, rather than simply admit that they don't know... and because religious experiences are a product of the psychological suggestion within a specific culture, rather than any objective divine entity which is external to that culture (and present globally and eternally).

What immorality in the OT? You should also do a little research regarding Covenants.

See earlier examples. I'm vaguely aware of the covenants response... which contradicts the "not a jot nor a tiddle until earth disappears" verses unless they explicitly address them. An immorality perpetrated in the past does not cease to be an immorality now.

God, on the other hand, has the authority to judge His creation.

Self-appointed authority, rather like all the brutal dictators of history which you decry. Had Satan only been the one to create humans and the Universe, would you then instead worship Satan?

So the child that dies here on earth for whatever reason find itself in Heaven with God.

Then it is a child for all of eternity? How have you established that babies go to heaven? Do we forget about the sword that God ordered plunged through their chest once they're in heaven?

Nothing you have said here changes the morality of sex from God's point of view.

Of course it doesn't because your version of a god's view is arbitrary and whimsical, rather than being based around any consistently applicable rationale.

It is just you justifying slaking your baser lusts because its fun and doesn't really hurt anybody.

No action requires justification by default. Innocent until proven guilty, as I've already explained, nor is premarital copulation in any way limited to the satisfaction of "baser lusts". There is no magical change after marriage.

Which is false as recreational sex does hurt people in ways they may not be aware of for years.

Feel free to demonstrate that recreational sex inherently hurts people.

YOU: It hurts the young women who are lied to by men to get them into bed.
ME: Lies and deceit hurt young women in such an instance... not sex.
YOU: With out the lust for sex, no lies and deceit would be necessary. Your lust hurt the girl.

The hurt is caused by the lies and deceit, which are both necessary and sufficient to cause hurt, while lust is neither necessary, nor sufficient to cause hurt.

Lust for sex is at the core of adultery.

Lust and love can be at the core of adultery as well as at the core of happy, monogamous relationships. They are neither necessary, nor sufficient for adultery (E.G. Gold-diggers/ Sugar-daddys), while infidelity to a monogamous partner (betrayal) is what actually defines adultery and makes it wrong... the harm it causes. Notice the consistently applicable rationale employed by me. I am oversimplifying however.

All the hurt that comes from adultery arises out of your inability to control yourself.

Adultery is a volitional act, not something enacted by those who are out of control. The hurt arises from the betrayal and the hurt is what is relevant, not lust, not love, not lack of control.

Why should it? The Bible is not a science text book.

Because some theists like to claim that it makes scientific claims.

What you call atrocities I see as righteous judgment by the one Entity entitled to judge that which He created.

Therein lies a key danger of religion and supernatural thinking/ superstition.

I do look at God but one must be careful to look at God's actions as a Sovereign Creator and never the incomplete and foolish moral standards of somebody who rejects God and sets themselves up as the moral authority.

You must be able to judge God's badness in order to judge his goodness. If any negative moral judgement is automatically precluded by the being having created our species then again, you would worship the devil and any moral commandments it provided, had it only been the one to create us, correct?

Thanks for reading.

 

[Town Heretic]

One more for luck. Btw, if anybody thinks they have a rational argument against the moral legitimacy of homosexuality, please feel free to challenge me with it (my pet topic).

All moral questions have foundations that you are as free to reject as adopt so it's an empty sleeve, isn't it?

If anybody has a good reason to believe that any gods exist (should really be expressible within a paragraph or two), feel free to share. I've never encountered one.

Lots of people do, but then you write:

Things that won't work:
- Bible quotes.

Okay. I'm not for circular arguments either. A thing is true because the thing says so isn't an argument. Fine.

- Anecdotal experiences (if you don't have an explanation for them, the explanation is "I don't know", not "God did it").

Unless you had a road to Damascus experience, in which case the explanation isn't that one doesn't know, but runs aground on a contextual difference. You might say, "Sure, you met God. Get a cat scan. Got one? No organic problem? Then you probably need therapy. Not demonstrably delusional or warped except on the point where I assume you are then there it is."

Or, there's no end or bottom to that sort of approach.

- Likewise for "How did the universe form?" etc etc I don't know or care and my inability to answer a question which somebody else pretends to be able to is in no way relevant to me identifying that their belief is unsubstantiated.

Actually that reduces all comers to the same starting point, with the current edge going to the contingent being/argument from causality crowd given the faithless are left with something from nothing or an infinite regress that is no more or less than magical.

- Likewise for "how is morality objective if there is no God" or anything like that.

Not a proof for God anyway. It's only really good for showing the cracks in the clay of a moral relativist.

Undesirable consequences of accepting that reality is the way it is in no way alter how reality actually is. I.E. Your approval of reality has no baring upon how reality is. There are certainly aspects of it which I disapprove of, yet they remain.
Anyway, you get the gist.

I see a lot of attempts at excluding, but no approach. For instance, if you eliminate the subjective then you need to have an Empirical approach that's possible. By that I mean what standard, if met, would objectively demonstrate the existence of God, let alone His nature?

Because if you can't answer that then you have the form of a question (Can you give me proof/reasons that God exists?) that's mostly punctuation, a door painted on a rock, so to speak.

:e4e:

 

[Truths4yer]

Thanks for the reply.

All moral questions have foundations that you are as free to reject as adopt so it's an empty sleeve, isn't it?

Sure but some are consistently applicable in that they follow an intelligible and beneficial rationale, while others are relatively arbitrary. Some can be designed to be intrinsically beneficial to mankind and honest about their limitations, while others can be innately corrupted away from benefiting mankind and incorporate pretences of objectivity etc.

ME: If anybody has a good reason to believe that any gods exist (should really be expressible within a paragraph or two), feel free to share. I've never encountered one.
YOU: Lots of people do, but then you write:
ME: Anecdotal experiences (if you don't have an explanation for them, the explanation is "I don't know", not "God did it").
YOU: Unless you had a road to Damascus experience, in which case the explanation isn't that one doesn't know, but runs aground on a contextual difference. You might say, "Sure, you met God. Get a cat scan. Got one? No organic problem? Then you probably need therapy. Not demonstrably delusional or warped except on the point where I assume you are then there it is."

Indeed, a religious experience doesn't have to be the result of some overriding/persistent neurological disorder, psychopathy or God. Specific situations can induce unusual psychological reactions, which is the basis for techniques such as hypnosis for instance I believe. Here would be an example of subconscious suggestion (everything he says from the first few seconds is relevant):


We don't hear about the uninteresting manifestations of this (outside of routine scientific investigation) because they aren't talking points... we do hear about the interesting, unexpected correlations etc because they are good talking points, often used to affirm beliefs which people want to be true. I'm only going to skirt over that for now anyway but that is the type of thing I am typically alluding to when referring to basing conclusions on anecdotal evidence.



CabinetMaker, who I have been debating with here, suggests that his primary reason for believing is his religious experience (of God). He asked God to reveal himself and God did. My response to him has taken a different approach from the above in that I point to all the people who's beliefs and experiences don't match his. These include:

1. Those who've asked God to reveal himself to them and received no response,
2. Those who've been dedicated theists and considered themselves to "know God" but have later realised that their interpretation of their experiences was flawed, despite desiring the contrary.
3. Proponents of every other religion who believe in their own deities on the basis of their own religious experiences.

Point 1 simply indicates that his approach to discovering the truth doesn't appear to work consistently and that "ask and he will answer" doesn't seem to be correct.
Point 3 above in particular demonstrates that theistic belief on the basis of personal religious experience is a very bad reason to believe because the vast majority of people who believe on such a basis are necessarily wrong. This is further exacerbated by the fact that the deity which theists experience or feel in their lives is almost invariably the one which predominates in their (sub)culture.

An excellent example of 2) is described in this video (though it's longer than what I'd usually share to support a point so don't feel obligated to watch - interesting though):


Among those, I'd say point 3 is the most significant and of course it doesn't disprove that he had the experience which he believes he did, it simply indicates that his interpretation of it is very unlikely to be accurate. So in summary, his interpretation seems highly implausible.

ME: Likewise for "How did the universe form?" etc etc I don't know or care and my inability to answer a question which somebody else pretends to be able to is in no way relevant to me identifying that their belief is unsubstantiated.
YOU: Actually that reduces all comers to the same starting point,

The starting point is always "I don't know", which can only be progressed away from by following the chain of evidence/reason wherever it leads. I.E. knowledge of reality is based upon the (evidence of) reality.

with the current edge going to the contingent being/argument from causality crowd given the faithless are left with something from nothing or an infinite regress that is no more or less than magical.

The faithless start with "I don't know" (as all rational people have to) and can speculate based upon the evidence which they're aware of. The faithless do not have to claim to know, which is what the bit I've coloured red, 2 quotes above, was addressing. I don't have to claim an infinite regress or something from nothing if I say "I don't know".

The idea that we can a priori use the process of elimination (as you seem to), which requires that we're able to delineate every possibility, doesn't seem that realistic to me when it comes to a question as huge as the origin of the universe.

To help demonstrate this, consider the fact that time cannot be caused. This is because causation refers to the inferences we make about the relatedness of consistently chronologically consecutive events. The notion that we can explain the origin of the universe (which presumably entails the cause of time itself) in terms of causation therefore falls apart. However its approached, God cannot cause time (nothing can) and if it preceded him then that causes other theological issues for theists.

Anyway, just to reiterate, if I claim I don't know what caused the universe, I have no burden of proof because I'm not making a claim (about external reality). A creationist still does however and I've never seen one meet it.

ME: Likewise for "how is morality objective if there is no God" or anything like that.
YOU: Not a proof for God anyway. It's only really good for showing the cracks in the clay of a moral relativist.

Refraining from professing more than I can demonstrate is not a deficiency. Neither do the appealing but false claims of another person elevate the veracity of their claims above that of my own.

I see a lot of attempts at excluding, but no approach. For instance, if you eliminate the subjective then you need to have an Empirical approach that's possible. By that I mean what standard, if met, would objectively demonstrate the existence of God, let alone His nature?

God would need to be defined first, which would specify parameters via which its existence or non-existence could be assessed.

Experiences of the physical manifestation of their God, observable by everybody would also be a good starting point. It's supernatural nature might be somewhat evidenced via repeated, conspicuous miracles and its overall nature would be determined as we determine that of other people's, though experiencing its actions (and inactions). The problem of evil could feature there.

It is up to theists anyhow to meet their burden of proof by sharing the good reason which they have to believe, rather than me to guide them in how to do so. In order to believe in the first place, they should have good reason(s).

Thanks for reading.

 

[Silent Hunter]

Been banned . . . yet?

 

[Town Heretic]

Thanks for the reply.

De nada.

Sure but some are consistently applicable in that they follow an intelligible and beneficial rationale, while others are relatively arbitrary. Some can be designed to be intrinsically beneficial to mankind and honest about their limitations, while others can be innately corrupted away from benefiting mankind and incorporate pretences of objectivity etc.

Sounds good from a distance, until, I suspect, we get to the valuations and who determines them and by what standard. In the absence of the absolute we're ultimately talking about subjective preference no matter how we wrap and justify them, though I agree that in the utilitarian sense of the word we could argue for an objectively superior model toward a stated end, like the general cohesiveness of a social compact.

Indeed, a religious experience doesn't have to be the result of some overriding/persistent neurological disorder, psychopathy or God. Specific situations can induce unusual psychological reactions, which is the basis for techniques such as hypnosis for instance I believe.

And you can stimulate the brain to reproduce sense memory that is indistinguishable from the real experience by the subject. Of course it doesn't follow that there's no such animal as the original sensations or their source in terms of stimuli.

So if you were a relatively well adjusted atheist, reasonably settled on the question to the extent you believed possible and found yourself confronted by and thereafter relating to that which you are compelled to acknowledge as God you might be in the grip of a delusion, or a rather singular and repeating mistake, etc., or you might be experiencing what the same faculties that provide you with the basis of any appreciation of reality precisely what you believe yourself to be. You might be as right about it as you are about the sun on your face or the name of your postman.

I point to all the people who's beliefs and experiences don't match his.

These include:Those who've asked God to reveal himself to them and received no response,

Which could be answerable in any number of ways, one of which I'll note when we come back to this in a moment.

Those who've been dedicated theists and considered themselves to "know God" but have later realised that their interpretation of their experiences was flawed, despite desiring the contrary.

Problematic. When do we believe them? When do they believe themselves? Is it that they were mistaken and constructed around that mistake what they needed to sustain it for a time or that they were correct but now surround that with what they need to reject it?

Proponents of every other religion who believe in their own deities on the basis of their own religious experiences.

In the absence of the whole truth an echo of it will compel you. But the best answer for that one is found in Tolkien and Lewis on the true Christian myth, at least so far as the Christian answer is concerned.

Point 1 simply indicates that his approach to discovering the truth doesn't appear to work consistently and that "ask and he will answer" doesn't seem to be correct.

Or, if you're going to humble yourself before God, not waiting on Him isn't the best evidence of a sincere desire.

Point 3 above in particular demonstrates that theistic belief on the basis of personal religious experience is a very bad reason to believe because the vast majority of people who believe on such a basis are necessarily wrong.

Or, they're all right in premise, but foul up in filtering for pariculars, though the broad strokes of most religious thought, from the treatment of those in need, to how we should proceed with our neighbors aren't really that divergent.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that the deity which theists experience or feel in their lives is almost invariably the one which predominates in their (sub)culture.

And yet, keeping with my own articles of faith, Christianity wasn't the predominant belief in its own area then came to supplant established religious belief as it spread across cultures.

I don't have time to watch videos these days so I'm having to skip over points not made within the text and I'll understand if you're disinterested or unable to read Tolkien, to return the favor. Just a reference if you're interested and have the time at some point.

The starting point is always "I don't know", which can only be progressed away from by following the chain of evidence/reason wherever it leads. I.E. knowledge of reality is based upon the (evidence of) reality.

Agreed. We know, logically, that either there is or isn't a God and that knowledge transforms "I don't know" into "I don't know which" when then becomes a question of the more reasonable. That I've spoken to in terms of what is knowable at present about causality, etc. While we have no points sufficient to establish a probability, we can say the arguments for God are less reliant on a want of knowledge than the arguments against.

I don't have to claim an infinite regress or something from nothing if I say "I don't know".

But you do know the alternatives and you can reason which relies on reason and which, ironically, relies more on hope (in this case a hope that at some point science might find a plausible answer to contingency and causality).

The idea that we can a priori use the process of elimination (as you seem to), which requires that we're able to delineate every possibility, doesn't seem that realistic to me when it comes to a question as huge as the origin of the universe.

There isn't some vast unknowable here. It's an either/or, at least in regard to created or some other self causing and sustaining process that runs afoul of the aforementioned. There could be some as yet unfathomed question or means, I suppose, but if you create that genie, possible as it is, then you've only supplanted a more reasonable and reasoned faith with a possible one.

To help demonstrate this, consider the fact that time cannot be caused.

No one causes an inch either. It's a reflection of something else, a concept we use to note something that isn't actually a thing. When we say that time slows we don't mean there is something moving slower but that the confluence of process leads to the appearance of a thing.

This is because causation refers to the inferences we make about the relatedness of consistently chronologically consecutive events. The notion that we can explain the origin of the universe (which presumably entails the cause of time itself) in terms of causation therefore falls apart.

I don't agree you've managed that. Causation is ultimately reducible to a simple statement, however intricately derived, that will express itself in a singularity. I mean that in relation to the universe. No matter how complicated and interwoven a process, it begins with a push of a rather singular nature. Else you're just refashioning that infinite regress.

And that singularity will not yield itself, but reflects, as time reflects, something else. Something necessarily outside the chain of being and event, an uncaused immaterial prime. Ultimately, that something else is God, the necessary.

However its approached, God cannot cause time (nothing can) and if it preceded him then that causes other theological issues for theists.

Nothing causes time. Time exists as a meaningful concept the moment you have two points of reference. A Christian would say time is an aspect of God's nature, as Father, Son and Holy Ghost and that we are added into that as we come into being as are any unnecessary objects/creations.

Anyway, just to reiterate, if I claim I don't know what caused the universe, I have no burden of proof because I'm not making a claim (about external reality). A creationist still does however and I've never seen one meet it.

You've never seen anyone on either side of the equation meet it.

Refraining from professing more than I can demonstrate is not a deficiency.

I agree completely. I've never intended to suggest otherwise, but I would say that demonstration leads us back to the Empirical which can't be meaningfully satisfied.

Neither do the appealing but false claims of another person elevate the veracity of their claims above that of my own.

I'm not for false claims either. But who determines that and how again?

God would need to be defined first, which would specify parameters via which its existence or non-existence could be assessed.

I agree that before anyone asks someone for proof of a thing they should know what they're talking about. Then, hopefully, what they're asking for will follow.

Experiences of the physical manifestation of their God, observable by everybody would also be a good starting point. It's supernatural nature might be somewhat evidenced via repeated, conspicuous miracles and its overall nature would be determined as we determine that of other people's, though experiencing its actions (and inactions). The problem of evil could feature there.

I don't know that any of that would prove much more than something is happening or appears to be. Seems awfully subjective for an Empirical standard.

It is up to theists anyhow to meet their burden of proof by sharing the good reason which they have to believe, rather than me to guide them in how to do so.

Not if you challenge on the point. If you ask me for a thing it is reasonable for me to ask, a) what you understand yourself to be asking about and b) what would suffice, at least as a means of exposing the problem of the inquiry and the assumption embedded in that.

In order to believe in the first place, they should have good reason(s).

I should hope so, but then you aren't really asking why they believe but why you or anyone else should, reasonably. And so my inquiry into standard with the aim at exposing the insufficiency of the Empirical as a means to the end.

Thanks for reading.

Likewise. :cheers:

 

[CabinetMaker]

Thanks for the reply.
It doesn't need to as rational beliefs are formed on the basis of what can be evidenced, not on the basis of which outlandish claims can't be definitively contradicted/ disproven.
Science cannot definitively prove that Odin does not exist.
Science cannot definitively prove that Ra does not exist.
Science cannot definitively prove that Harry Potter does not exist.
etc etc.

The existence of the God Hatira, who created all things, disproves the existence of your God as the one and only "true" God. So now I've rationally disproved your deity using your own mode of faulty reasoning. To disprove what I've said you need to prove that Hatira doesn't exist. Hatira is incorporeal, inaudible, invisible and transcendent btw. Please disprove Hatira or admit that I've disproven your God.

Theists have the burden of proof. It is no more sensible to believe in a deity without evidence than it is to believe that every fiction you've ever read is literally true, until proven otherwise.

You have neither proven nor disproved anything. All you have done is take language people use to describe God and do a word replacement. If you go back and look carefully at this thread you will see that I have never attempted to prove God's existence, I have simply stated why I believe.

ME:

"What verifiable information does religion contribute to our understanding of reality".

It inserts grammatically correct words in to a grammatically correct, though meaningless question. Faith is not a mechanism of understanding but instead merely a code-word for assuming your own conclusion.

I think that religion was the foundation for legal codes and morals that have had a measurable impact on societies through out time.

What do you mean by "why am I here?" other than "In accordance with what intention of a conscious entity do I exist"?

That is you begging the question. Simply asking why I am here does not inherently carry and implied starting point. The first answer to that question can easily be I don't know at which point a person begins to search for an answer.

I can provide you with millions of answers to "why" you are here. JuJu the magic fairy brought you in to existence on a whim, though I guess I'll stick with Hatira. There is an answer that has equal weight and therefore equal relevance to any answer you would provide in the context of your theology. The ability to answer a question is neither impressive, nor helpful, if that answer is never evidenced.
How is your answer verified?

While in this life, it is never verified. There is no logical proof and any sort of evidence that one can present that God exists and that the Bible is His word. You accept it on faith. I do not bother with the "prove God exists" games anymore. I can tell you why I believe, why I have hope because of that belief and from then on, its up to you and God. It is not my job to make you believe.

Emotional attachment to questions is not relevant to whether or not they actually make sense. It isn't that it doesn't matter to me... so much as that it is a malformed question... it is nonsensical and its answer is unevidenced. Why is a rock here?

Why are you assuming that it is an emotional attachment.

Why is that rock here is an interesting question. You see a major boulder in the middle of a grassy field. Why is it there? How did it get there. And then you learn something about glaciers. And it all started because somebody wanted to know why a particular rock was so out of place.

Meaning is a human psychological construct, useful to provide motivation but not as a description of external reality. If you think that "meaning" exists outside the confines of our own minds/imaginations then please demonstrate how this inherently conceptual concept does so.

Isn't all meaning internal? Does that make it any less meaningful? Maybe I am misunderstanding you but faith brings meaning to people's lives.

Theists of other religions are indistinguishable from you in terms of the reasons they believe. To many Muslims or Hindus for instance, the idea of "fear or contempt" of your deity as irrelevant as the idea of "fear or contempt" of Allah or Krishna is to you... you just don't think they exist, just as they do with regards to your deity.

No, I don't think exist in some cases and in other cases I think they are Satan.

Ex-Christians either find an overwhelming number of contradictions within their own religion, or simply identify the total lack of evidence for it. This is nothing to do with "fear or contempt" or "what they want him to be".

As a non-believer I don't do either of the above either. I simply don't believe that your deity exists any more than I do any other fictional character.

So you are not an a agnostic atheist as you claim, you are actually an anti-theist.

I have known people who have walked away from Jesus because they claim there are to many contradictions to deal with. Such is the wisdom of man.

I don't claim "there is no God" in the strict sense... though the question of a causal origin of reality is not identical to the question of the existence or non-existence of a deity. I'm an agnostic atheist, who therefore lacks a belief in any gods but does not claim to know that none exist. "I don't know" is the default position for any question. In order to get to "X is the answer", evidence is required (I.E. there is a burden of proof on anybody making a claim). If "X is the answer" is a claim made without evidence then there seems to be no other source from which this information can be derived... meaning it is something somebody has simply made up.

You are an anti-theist in action regardless of what you claim to be. Your mind is far more made up than you are attempting to get me to believe.

Here you seem to appeal to objective morality. It, like "purpose/meaning" is merely a facet of human psychology. Please note that when I make sentences like the preceding one, what I really mean is "there is no apparent good reason to believe anything other than....".

If you claim that morality isn't a subjective human psychological construct then you make an extra claim compared to a subjective moralist such as myself. I'll lay out the premises so you can see what you need to justify (rationally).
1) People have a sense of morality.
2) This sense of morality varies from person to person.
We (both subjective and objective moralists) agree on claims 1 and 2. The objective moralist additionally makes claim 3 and therefore has a burden of proof (they need to demonstrate that they have a good reason to believe it).
3) One view of morality is objectively true/correct. Please justify this or admit that you have no basis whatsoever to hold the belief.

You are welcome to make any claim you want. I observe that there is remarkable consistency in legal and moral codes around the world. I observe that Scripture says that God wrote His law on the hearts of gentiles. I have good reason to believe that there is more to a moral code than your simple claims above.

Evolutionary psychology/ sociology explains it, though that's an entirely separate topic. The mistake you make here is to regard natural selection as a moral philosophy which prescribes what we should do. It isn't. Natural selection describes how reality is, not how it should be.

The existence of God also explains morals. Again, science neither proves nor disproves God.

You're operating under the flawed assumption that science has to explain everything in order to be a useful (or the only useful) means of distinguishing fact from fiction. It doesn't. As I noted earlier, "I don't know" is the correct answer in instances where we don't know something. The fact that you can't tell me what is in my left trouser pocket right now doesn't disprove your claim that you can tell me what is in yours. You don't have to know everything in order to know something. You do however have to have good reason/evidence for anything that you do claim to know.

In matters of faith, "I don't know" is not the correct answer. For many, the correct answer is God, "God did it", if you prefer. People find comfort and conviction in that position that science cannot offer. Because of that faith and conviction they find purpose and meaning in life beyond what science can explorer.

Chance isn't necessary for non-randomness, as demonstrated via natural selection, which is an intuitively obvious mechanism, entirely independently of whether or not it gave rise to speciation/evolution.

Natural selection cannot operate on a phenotype that is not present in a genome. What gives rise to the gene for a particular phenotype?

Which one? The default belief is always no belief on any issue. This is simply how rationality works. Anything else would simply involve assuming your own conclusion.

Ah, the rational mind, rational to the point of closed to the possibilities of things beyond that which is quantifiable. A rational mind need not exclude God and act of creation. You assume that it must.

Then you don't believe in God by default... you believe because of your experience of it... so I don't see why you'd deny that the default position is a lack of belief. If you have experienced God then you don't need faith either as you have evidence. The only issue is that your belief runs in to all of the problems listed by me earlier and the only way you seem to fob these off is to exhibit a very strong favouritism towards your own deity... just as theists of any other religion would and do do. I don't claim to know that you're wrong, simply that it's enormously unlikely that you're right.

It may be more accurate to say that the default human condition is predisposed to believe in God. In any case, that which convinced me to believe cannot be quantified or proven in any way that you would be likely to accept thus it is accurately described as faith.

If I am wrong, what harm is done?

It does... yet you do realise that cattle have been artificially selected by humans for millennia I assume...
Natural selection selects in favour of genes which enhance their own survival and subsequent proliferation. A diseased animal that is able to survive & procreate isn't an issue.

Its not the diseases that they can survive, it is the unexpressed recessive traits that are immune to natural selection. Thus the randomness in natural selection.

Just as theists of other religions have experienced their deities in their lives and found absolute truth in their deities' words. You've experienced what you've interpreted as the deity which happens to be most prevalent within your culture, just as they have with the one in theirs. Why is it culture/geographic region which experiences which deity is experienced?

Because that is the way they are raised. But, why do Islamic countries frequently execute Christian missionaries? Why do they fear the Gospel?

It seems a soul is a multitude of assumptions about divinity and immortality, loosely associated with the concept of a mind. How have you identified the immortality and divine nature of this object?

Speculation.

The theists of the time seemed to disagree. I don't blame God as I don't believe in it's existence.

Throughout history men have used the guise of religion to justify all manor evil. THat they have done so does not mean that they have acted with God's blessing or authority.

Your deity commands and endorses these things repeatedly in the bible.
Leviticus 25:46, 1 Samuel 15:3 and Numbers 31:17-18 for instance.

Yes, He did. God set Israel apart and above all other nations and He proved to the world that Israel was His chosen people. If you are against God, He will be against you and the consequences are severe.

I do not choose beliefs about reality. All I can control is how thoroughly I scrutinise the evidence. Rational minds do not decide what they want to believe about reality. They look at reality and see how it is, then form beliefs based upon that.

Which is exactly what I have done. But where you think the evidence points to random and chance I see design and order.

Faith = belief without any good reason. It isn't related to morality. Religions corrupt morality by making it about the arbitrary whims of (apparently non-existent) supernatural beings, rather than about concerns over the well-being of other humans, who we actually know do exist. I have no faith yet I am very morally principled, more so than many theists I've encountered.

You made up a new definition of faith to marginalize people who have faith. Tacky.
Faith is confidence or trust in a person (as in their ability), thing, deity, in the doctrines or teachings of a religion, or view (e.g. having strong political faith) even without empirical evidence. It can also be belief that is not based on proof,[1] or as confidence based upon varying degrees of evidential warrant.
Faith is related to morality. People of faith tend towards a higher level morality than people without faith. For instance, you see nothing wrong with sex as a recreational activity. This is an attitude that hurts people and is actually runs contrary to what people actually hold true about sex. Why do you think so many people feel an inherent sense of betrayal when their significant other cheats on them? God does not set such a high standard of sexual purity to be mean, He knows that keeping sex within a committed relationship is better for everybody, especially children.

Pascal's wager.

Which is itself a fallacy. It assumes that one can muster the necessary faith from within themselves. Saving faith is a gift from God.

It is nothing to do with "faith" unless you're by your "experience" you are simply saying that you have "faith" that God is real, in which case you have no experiential evidence in the first place. I don't deny that you've had experiences or that you've interpreted them as being your deity... my point is simply that your interpretation is almost certainly flawed, based upon other people's mutually incompatible personal experiences of their deities etc. I don't expect we will agree, which is unfortunate but obviously to me you seem to have an extremely low threshold of evidence required to believe in your culture's deity.

I find your analysis of my experience spectacularly unconvincing. Its like experiencing love that convinces a man that he wants to spend the rest of his life with one women. You cannot point to any evidence as to why one man finds a particular woman to be so much more compelling than another yet even in the face of this stunning lack of evidence for love, people commit the rest of their lives to each other on a daily basis. Experiencing God is much the same. You either have the experience or you do not. And if you do, explaining it, quantifying it, is nearly impossible yet the fact remains, your life is forever changed by it.

Obviously because people like to invent supernatural explanations for things which they don't understand, rather than simply admit that they don't know... and because religious experiences are a product of the psychological suggestion within a specific culture, rather than any objective divine entity which is external to that culture (and present globally and eternally).

Yes, come people do this. As an engineer, I am not predisposed to creating super natural explanations. I am rather sure that many of the wonders Moses worked can actually be explained by natural processes. What cannot be explained is how Moses knew these things were going to happen exactly when they happened. Of course, one must first believe that the story of Moses is true. I do.

See earlier examples. I'm vaguely aware of the covenants response... which contradicts the "not a jot nor a tiddle until earth disappears" verses unless they explicitly address them. An immorality perpetrated in the past does not cease to be an immorality now.

No immorality was perpetrated by God ever. Your incomplete and biased understanding of morals does not put you a position to judge God.

Now, you incompletely quoted a verse thus taking it out of context. Here is the entire verse;
Matthew 5:18

New International Version (NIV)

18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

The question people of faith examine is did Jesus accomplish everything? What does the verse mean? My understanding is that Jesus accomplished everything required by the Law of the Profits with His death and resurrection and competed the Old Covenant. With His resurrection we are under the New Covenant and are no longer subject to judgment under the Law of the Profits.

Self-appointed authority, rather like all the brutal dictators of history which you decry. Had Satan only been the one to create humans and the Universe, would you then instead worship Satan?

Given that Satan is a created being himself, your question has no merit. But the gist of your question explorers an interesting concept. In short, if GOd was other than He is, we would never know the difference. The law written on our hearts would be the basis of a moral code that embraces evil as good. And we would never know otherwise.

Then it is a child for all of eternity? How have you established that babies go to heaven? Do we forget about the sword that God ordered plunged through their chest once they're in heaven?

Faith in God justice. The bible is silent about such things so all I can do is trust that God's justice is pure. I do so trust.

Of course it doesn't because your version of a god's view is arbitrary and whimsical, rather than being based around any consistently applicable rationale.

As you have yet to establish what you would accept as a consistently applicable rational in matters of faith, your statement is a simple assertion devoid of any real meaning.

No action requires justification by default. Innocent until proven guilty, as I've already explained, nor is premarital copulation in any way limited to the satisfaction of "baser lusts". There is no magical change after marriage.

Before marriage, sex is fornication and is sexual immorality that can keep one out of God's kingdom. After marriage, sex is a gift from God to be enjoyed by the married couple.

Feel free to demonstrate that recreational sex inherently hurts people.

It leaves some women used for one night stands and then abandoned in the morning. It gives birth to children out of wedlock who struggle more in life because they don't have two parents. It turns women into prostitutes who frequently die young because of drug use that they use to numb the hopelessness they feel. It destroys the very institution of marriage that has traditionally been the basis of family and values. It is what I teach my daughters.

The hurt is caused by the lies and deceit, which are both necessary and sufficient to cause hurt, while lust is neither necessary, nor sufficient to cause hurt.

The lies and deceit are driven by the man's lust to get a women into bed. For one who claims to be so rational you are incredibly ignorant.

Lust and love can be at the core of adultery as well as at the core of happy, monogamous relationships. They are neither necessary, nor sufficient for adultery (E.G. Gold-diggers/ Sugar-daddys), while infidelity to a monogamous partner (betrayal) is what actually defines adultery and makes it wrong... the harm it causes. Notice the consistently applicable rationale employed by me. I am oversimplifying however.

Again, your ignorance is showing. You continue to neglect that which drives people to betray their spouse. While it can be a great many things, lust is certainly a contributing factor. I agree that healthy amount of lust in a marriage is a good thing, to much can lead to all sorts of problems.

Adultery is a volitional act, not something enacted by those who are out of control. The hurt arises from the betrayal and the hurt is what is relevant, not lust, not love, not lack of control.

If one can control themselves then the lust that drives them to the bed of another is mastered and no adultery occurs. You are working might hard to shore up this notion that sex doesn't drive people. I wonder why that is? It sounds an awful lot like attempted justification on your part.

Therein lies a key danger of religion and supernatural thinking/ superstition.

Ah, but you fail to spot the crucial factor - I am not the Creator. No man is so we cannot presume to judge. God, on the other hand, is the Sovereign Creator, He and He alone is fit to judge His creation. The problem here is that you assume, rationally of course, that this brief existence we have here on Earth is all there is and all there will ever by. So you must conclude that anything that shortens our time on Earth is a bad thing. To God, there more, there is existence after we pass from this life. So while my mother may die and no longer be here for me to talk to, she is not gone to God. Thus, when God judges creation and people pass from this existence, they pass into a new existence with God.

You must be able to judge God's badness in order to judge his goodness. If any negative moral judgement is automatically precluded by the being having created our species then again, you would worship the devil and any moral commandments it provided, had it only been the one to create us, correct?

The flaw in your reasoning is that you cannot God judge by human standards. You must judge Him by His standards and we are not capable of fully understanding those standards.

 

[Truths4yer]

Sounds good from a distance, until, I suspect, we get to the valuations and who determines them and by what standard.

An impartial third party (judge/jury), according to the standard that one person cannot be allowed to substantially harm others with impunity, especially not repeatedly. Why this standard? Because it protects us all and so should be universally appealing to anybody who wishes to exist within a fair, peaceful society.

What about those who don't wish to? We exclude them, through ostracisation initially and ideally via migration or exile after that but ultimately by incarceration if necessary to protect ourselves. This would be entirely in keeping with the ethical framework described above as incarceration would limit their ability to do harm in a way which exceeds any harm done to them and therefore minimise overall harm. Of course there may be miscarriages of justice because our judgement is not inerrant but as long as we genuinely attempt to operate according to these type of principles, we will be creating the closest approximation of a utopian society that we can.

In the absence of the absolute we're ultimately talking about subjective preference no matter how we wrap and justify them

Sure but until the absolute is actually demonstrated to be a viable option, we loose literally nothing by operating upon the basis of its apparent absence. To be maximally effective we must always do the best with what we actually have, not attempt to do the best with what we'd like to assume we have.

Plans based upon a false understanding of reality can only approximate the best plans possible by mere chance.
Plans based upon how reality actually appears to be are the only ones which can be fully intelligently formulated to approximate the best plans possible.

though I agree that in the utilitarian sense of the word we could argue for an objectively superior model toward a stated end, like the general cohesiveness of a social compact.

Exactly. Consistently applicable and mutually beneficial moral principles trump arbitrary ones. This ties in to the principle of treating everybody equally by default.

And you can stimulate the brain to reproduce sense memory that is indistinguishable from the real experience by the subject. Of course it doesn't follow that there's no such animal as the original sensations or their source in terms of stimuli.

I didn't know that. It's obviously hypothetically possible but I'm not aware of any actual examples of it being done. Sensory data can be rearranged by the imagination, to form pink elephants for instance, or Pegasus etc.

So if you were a relatively well adjusted atheist, reasonably settled on the question to the extent you believed possible and found yourself confronted by and thereafter relating to that which you are compelled to acknowledge as God you might be in the grip of a delusion, or a rather singular and repeating mistake, etc., or you might be experiencing what the same faculties that provide you with the basis of any appreciation of reality precisely what you believe yourself to be. You might be as right about it as you are about the sun on your face or the name of your postman.

That was a long sentence ^^. Not sure I understand what you mean. If you simply mean that an atheist could have a religious experience and discover a deity then of course, that is true, if one exists.

ME: Those who've been dedicated theists and considered themselves to "know God" but have later realised that their interpretation of their experiences was flawed, despite desiring the contrary.
YOU: Problematic. When do we believe them? When do they believe themselves? Is it that they were mistaken and constructed around that mistake what they needed to sustain it for a time or that they were correct but now surround that with what they need to reject it?

We believe them etc when their beliefs, claims and behaviours with regards to their religion are broadly indistinguishable from those who still maintain the theistic claims associated with their experience of their gods. We certainly believe them when they make videos like the one in my previous post for instance (one of a 6 part story). The key point being that such people seem indistinguishable from current theists and in many cases were more ardent than many current theists prior to their deconversion. I should also note that we no more disbelieve their honesty than we disbelieve the theists who maintain that they've had religious experiences.

ME: Proponents of every other religion who believe in their own deities on the basis of their own religious experiences.
YOU: In the absence of the whole truth an echo of it will compel you. But the best answer for that one is found in Tolkien and Lewis on the true Christian myth, at least so far as the Christian answer is concerned.

What is that answer?

ME: Point 1 simply indicates that his approach to discovering the truth doesn't appear to work consistently and that "ask and he will answer" doesn't seem to be correct.
YOU: Or, if you're going to humble yourself before God, not waiting on Him isn't the best evidence of a sincere desire.

What duration is required? I don't see how anybody can really wait very long for a being which they don't have any good reason to believe exists. The idea that a common mechanism of "discovering God" is itself contingent upon already really wanting to believe that it exists is very dubious in itself in that it would heavily predispose a person towards confirmation bias.

ME: Point 3 above in particular demonstrates that theistic belief on the basis of personal religious experience is a very bad reason to believe because the vast majority of people who believe on such a basis are necessarily wrong.
YOU: Or, they're all right in premise, but foul up in filtering for pariculars, though the broad strokes of most religious thought, from the treatment of those in need, to how we should proceed with our neighbors aren't really that divergent.

The principles of religions depend upon the interpretation and we would expect commonality if they all shared the common origin of being man-made. Again it comes down to the proponents of other religions (which are almost invariably mutually exclusive with each other) being broadly indistinguishable from Christians, in terms of the types of reasons they believe etc. Its also difficult to see how a direct personal experience of the "true" God could be misinterpreted too.

Even among the (closely related) Abrahamic religions for instance, Christianity holds that Jesus = God, Islam that Jesus is not God but a prophet of God and Judaism that Jesus is a false prophet.

ME: This is further exacerbated by the fact that the deity which theists experience or feel in their lives is almost invariably the one which predominates in their (sub)culture.
YOU: And yet, keeping with my own articles of faith, Christianity wasn't the predominant belief in its own area then came to supplant established religious belief as it spread across cultures.

True but the same is also true of all other (mutually inconsistent) successful religions and the fact remains that the vast majority of people's religion is dictated by the culture in which they are born.

I don't have time to watch videos these days... I'll understand if you're... unable to read Tolkien

Np.

ME: I don't have to claim an infinite regress or something from nothing if I say "I don't know".
YOU: But you do know the alternatives and you can reason which relies on reason and which, ironically, relies more on hope (in this case a hope that at some point science might find a plausible answer to contingency and causality).

I don't think any hope that science will find an answer is required. "I don't know" how the universe/reality arose is the answer at the moment. If the separate question: "Will we ever know?" is asked, I don't have to answer "I hope science will find the answer" and again my answer would be "I don't know". If I'm misunderstanding your point at all then please clarify.

ME: The idea that we can a priori use the process of elimination (as you seem to), which requires that we're able to delineate every possibility, doesn't seem that realistic to me when it comes to a question as huge as the origin of the universe.
YOU: There isn't some vast unknowable here.

Unknowable or unknown. I don't think that we know enough to say that there can't be when it comes to events as far removed from our day-to-day understanding of reality as the origin of reality itself. I'm barely familiar with quantum mechanics at all but some of the discoveries in that field for instance, such as what I believe is called the "double slit experiment" show that our intuition is a poor second best to empirical evidence and maths when it comes to understanding such events.

It's an either/or, at least in regard to created or some other self causing and sustaining process that runs afoul of the aforementioned.

How does something create itself?

could be some as yet unfathomed question or means, I suppose... you've only supplanted a more reasonable and reasoned faith with a possible one.

Again I'd say faith isn't needed to claim "I don't know".

No one causes an inch either. It's a reflection of something else, a concept we use to note something that isn't actually a thing. When we say that time slows we don't mean there is something moving slower but that the confluence of process leads to the appearance of a thing.

An inch is a unit of measurement, of length, while a second would be a unit of time. Are you suggesting that time and/or length are purely conceptual (and therefore don't exist in external reality and consequently never needed to be caused)?

I certainly don't have a thorough understanding of what time is, though I've never put a huge amount of thought in to it, likely because I'm not sure I'd get very far. I'm not familiar with the understanding of it within physics either.

No matter how complicated and interwoven a process, it begins with a push of a rather singular nature. Else you're just refashioning that infinite regress.

What then would push the creator?

an uncaused immaterial prime. Ultimately, that something else is God, the necessary.

Why would it need to be a god and what is immaterial except for the conceptual (figments of our imagination/ perceptions)?

ME: Anyway, just to reiterate, if I claim I don't know what caused the universe, I have no burden of proof because I'm not making a claim (about external reality). A creationist still does however and I've never seen one meet it.
YOU: You've never seen anyone on either side of the equation meet it.

The default position is a lack of belief however. Disproof is unnecessary.

ME: Refraining from professing more than I can demonstrate is not a deficiency.
YOU: I agree completely. I've never intended to suggest otherwise, but I would say that demonstration leads us back to the Empirical which can't be meaningfully satisfied.

Not 100% sure I understand you correctly but if the empirical (demonstration) can never be satisfied then why do people believe in the first place? Is it purely on the basis of personal revelation?

ME: Neither do the appealing but false claims of another person elevate the veracity of their claims above that of my own.
YOU: I'm not for false claims either. But who determines that and how again?

I should have said unsubstantiated claims, sorry.

ME: Experiences of the physical manifestation of their God, observable by everybody would also be a good starting point. It's supernatural nature might be somewhat evidenced via repeated, conspicuous miracles and its overall nature would be determined as we determine that of other people's, though experiencing its actions (and inactions). The problem of evil could feature there.
YOU: I don't know that any of that would prove much more than something is happening or appears to be. Seems awfully subjective for an Empirical standard.

Not proof, but evidence. Subjective in what way :s? I mean it is subject to the definition of "God" of course, whatever that may be.

ME: It is up to theists anyhow to meet their burden of proof by sharing the good reason which they have to believe, rather than me to guide them in how to do so.
YOU: Not if you challenge on the point. If you ask me for a thing it is reasonable for me to ask, a) what you understand yourself to be asking about and b) what would suffice, at least as a means of exposing the problem of the inquiry and the assumption embedded in that.

a) would be this thing which you're referring to as "God". I think you would need to define "God" before b) could really be answered. Unless I'm misunderstanding, you also seem to be framing this as me telling you that you are wrong but really all I do is ask what you know and how you know it. I sometimes phrase this as an affirmation that a theist is wrong purely for the sake of concision.

you aren't really asking why they believe but why you or anyone else should, reasonably.

A fair point, though I would say it is a combination of the two.

And so my inquiry into standard with the aim at exposing the insufficiency of the Empirical as a means to the end.

What insufficiency do you perceive there to be?

Thanks for the reply. You're within the top echelon of proficiency among those who I've debated with.