The Flat Earth Society
Other Discussion Boards => The Lounge => Topic started by: the-earth-is-roundLH on November 04, 2006, 04:54:17 PM
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If you look at it from the scientific perspective it's even stupider than the FE theory
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i did not evolve from an ape, God put me here.
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haa. I hope your kidding. Evolution happens. There is proof
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How does this pertain to the discussion of the Flat Earth?
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shut up. The earth is round. that has already been established
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Really? When?
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I think over 70% of people on this forum do not believe in God...
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Really? When?
1492. thats when....
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How was earth created? from the big bang? then what events led to this big bang that made it happen? and what happened before that.
This is following on from a discussion in another thread where i summised that something must always occur to trigger our exhistance, and something in turn must have triggered that... When you think about it in this light then "God" must have created us...however then u must also ask...well what created God?
There is no answer, i personally don't believe in "God" as religions would have us believe, a powerful sob of energy who shat us out one day? possibly...
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Really? When?
1492. thats when....
The year Columbus set sail to go around the Flat Earth? How does that prove it's round?
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1492. thats when....
Haha... amazing. Usually REers suggest that the ability to travel in a straight line all the way around the world is proof that the world is round. I used to think that nothing can be more wrong until I saw this post... not only did everybody already believe the world to be round in 1492, but Columbus didn't even sail all the way around!
Anyway, this topic is only incidentally FE-related, so it's moving.
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all people who think the earth is flat are just plain ignorant
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You can't prove something you hold to be true, yet we are ignorant?
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This is how it all started:
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If you look at it from the scientific perspective it's even stupider than the FE theory
God is omnipotent whereas science is only an exception away from being illogical.
How does that claim to say that God does not exist? Now, I'm sure you can believe that God does not exist, but that is a different matter entirely.
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If you look at it from the scientific perspective it's even stupider than the FE theory
Agreed.
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If you look at it from the scientific perspective it's even stupider than the FE theory
I wouldn't say that. The existence of a god in general isn't contradictory to any scientific evidence. There may have been a god that caused the Big Bang. There may not have been.
As stated before, there's the question of "what made God?", but there's also the question of "what caused the Big Bang?" Somewhere down the line, surely, there must have been some "first event".
The fact that anything exists at all is mind-boggling. Why isn't there just nothing?
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Really? When?
In the 50's and 60's.
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If you look at it from the scientific perspective it's even stupider than the FE theory
I wouldn't say that. The existence of a god in general isn't contradictory to any scientific evidence. There may have been a god that caused the Big Bang. There may not have been.
As stated before, there's the question of "what made God?", but there's also the question of "what caused the Big Bang?" Somewhere down the line, surely, there must have been some "first event".
The fact that anything exists at all is mind-boggling. Why isn't there just nothing?
But God can't be contradictory to any conceivable scientific evidence. Does that make it rational to believe in?
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No, it also doesnt make it irrational. It makes it a matter of faith.
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Usually REers suggest that the ability to travel in a straight line all the way around the world is proof that the world is round.
Hey ...
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haa. I hope your kidding. Evolution happens. There is proof
Proof is only a widely-accepted opinion, don't you know that?
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Unless said proof is mathematical, because then it would not be widely-accepted opinion, but rather mathematical fact.
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Unless said proof is mathematical, because then it would not be widely-accepted opinion, but rather mathematical fact.
You forget Kurt Godel.
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AND, in your given case, it's a widely-accepted opinion among living mathematicians.
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You forget Kurt Godel.
No sir; you forget him. He never said that proof isn't really proof.
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Sometimes when enormous coincidences happen (I get these quite a lot), it seems a little more likely that there's someone pulling the cosmic strings. Not an omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator of the universe though, there are too many glaring logical and philosophical holes there.
I think it possible that what we might have is more of a "local" god if that makes any sense. A fallible, physical manipulator of the planet, or of (some of) our lives, with questionable moral scruples and a penchant for sadistic pranks. In the words of Depeche Mode, "I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours, but I think that God's got a sick sense of humour".
This is pretty much idle conjecture though, I generally count myself an atheist, because deities on the level that most religious folk believe in are clearly pure myth.
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You forget Kurt Godel.
No sir; you forget him. He never said that proof isn't really proof.
Um, incompleteness theorems?
This argument reminds me of a cartoon I saw; two people are arguing over the shape of a pillar; one says it's round, the other says it's square. The pillar is Law. That's what we are doing here.
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Um, incompleteness theorems?
How do the incompleteness theorems render any proof invalid?
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Um, incompleteness theorems?
How do the incompleteness theorems render any proof invalid?
1) You seem to closed-minded.
2) You seem belligerent for belligerent's sake.
3) I love using numbered lists (when did this happen?).
Ok, wiki the incompleteness theorems, read them, think about what I said, read them again, and THEN if you are still lost, ask me again. I'm not going to do all of the thinking for you; sometimes you have to do it for yourself.
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Ok, wiki the incompleteness theorems, read them, think about what I said, read them again, and THEN if you are still lost, ask me again. I'm not going to do all of the thinking for you; sometimes you have to do it for yourself.
No. I've read about them before in some depth; thanks for your rather infurating presumption of my ignorance.
My understanding of those theorems is that they put limits on what can be proved. Rather, they guarantee that consistent systems that can be interpreted to model the natural numbers will contain true statements that cannot be proved.
Nowhere do they state that any proofs are invalid.
You brought up Godel seemingly, to me, to imply that mathematical proofs are not really proofs, but merely reflect the consensus of mathematicians. It's quite clear that that's not what Godel's theorems are about.
What is your interpretation of the theorems?
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thanks for your rather infurating presumption of my ignorance.
You are assuming that that was my presumption; it is wrong. I merely want you to re-examine them, perhaps in a different light/from a different viewpoint.
My understanding of those theorems is that they put limits on what can be proved.
Ok, you've got it, but I'd like to change one thing: the limits that the place are based on the introduction of new laws; good ol' Godel said that one branch of Mathematics, all by itself, cannot prove all the theorems in it; one must incorporate another branch if that is to be done, but that branch cannot prove all of it's theorems, and another branch must be brought in/made up to cover for the new uncertainty.
You brought up Godel seemingly, to me, to imply that mathematical proofs are not really proofs, but merely reflect the consensus of mathematicians. It's quite clear that that's not what Godel's theorems are about.
I brought up Godel because the basic, lay-man's definition for his theorems is that you cannot prove all the theorems in a branch of mathematics, no matter how hard you tried.
What is your interpretation of the theorems?
My presumption about this statement is that you are angrily awaiting my response. I feel uneasy.
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But God can't be contradictory to any conceivable scientific evidence. Does that make it rational to believe in?
I wasn't referencing the belief in some god. I was referencing the simple existence of a god; known to us or otherwise. My point was that a "scientific perspective" doesn't really say anything about the existence/nonexistence of a god.
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I brought up Godel because the basic, lay-man's definition for his theorems is that you cannot prove all the theorems in a branch of mathematics, no matter how hard you tried.
If you stay within that system, sure, but nothing requires you to stay within that system. Furthermore, this in no way denigrates the usefulness or truth of any existing theorems that have been proved.
At no point do mathematicians need to rely on anybody's opinion of the truth of any theorems.
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I brought up Godel because the basic, lay-man's definition for his theorems is that you cannot prove all the theorems in a branch of mathematics, no matter how hard you tried.
If you stay within that system, sure, but nothing requires you to stay within that system. Furthermore, this in no way denigrates the usefulness or truth of any existing theorems that have been proved.
At no point do mathematicians need to rely on anybody's opinion of the truth of any theorems.
You need to understand that, at one time, the "truth" of today was the opinion of one person.
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You need to understand that, at one time, the "truth" of today was the opinion of one person.
Including mathematical truth? I believe that the beginning of this tangent was somebody (possibly you) claiming something along those lines and somebody else (possibly me) pointing out that mathematical truths are an exception. We have thus run one full lap in this discussion.
Anyway I'm not really ready to accept the suggestion that at some point in history the number 2 did not satisfy the definition of an even number, or that any other nowadays-accepted mathematical truths were at some point a matter of opinion.
Can you give an example of a mathematical truth that at some point was merely opinion, and not actually true?
Or, can you clarify by saying something like, "I mean to contrast between 'true' and 'proven'. In the past, many true statements were believed true but were as yet unproven." Is that what you mean?
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You need to understand that, at one time, the "truth" of today was the opinion of one person.
Including mathematical truth? I believe that the beginning of this tangent was somebody (possibly you) claiming something along those lines and somebody else (possibly me) pointing out that mathematical truths are an exception. We have thus run one full lap in this discussion.
Anyway I'm not really ready to accept the suggestion that at some point in history the number 2 did not satisfy the definition of an even number, or that any other nowadays-accepted mathematical truths were at some point a matter of opinion.
Can you give an example of a mathematical truth that at some point was merely opinion, and not actually true?
Or, can you clarify by saying something like, "I mean to contrast between 'true' and 'proven'. In the past, many true statements were believed true but were as yet unproven." Is that what you mean?
The number zero is an excellent case.
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The number zero is an excellent case.
The number zero isn't a statement. I'll make a statement out of it for you, one which I suspect will touch on the issue you have in mind: "Zero is a number." Ah, but you see, now you are equivocating on "number". Given a consistent and definition of the concept "number" it should be quite straightforward to determine whether zero is a number, and thus the numberhood of zero is a mathematical truth or falsehood. If you are insisting on a definition of "number" that is not quite appropriately worked out, it is possible that the question of the numberhood of zero is undecidable, in which case it is not a matter of opinion; it is merely undecidable.
Do you have any other examples? Specifically, do you have some examples that do not boil down to nit-picking over definitions?
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show me pictures of soldiers gaurding the ice wall. Also show me an arial photo showing that the ice wall is circular. Show me evidence of a conspiracy, wait, there is no evidence because information never leaked, meaning the conspiracy is made up by flat earthers. They came up with a conspiracy to fit their FE theory. THEY came up with it. How about you guys get someone to on the inside? its called a mole. Very simple concept. How about you guys get some of your people in government instead of squabbling on online forums you old people. Youll die knowing that the only thing you accomplished was an online argument with a college kid who was probly high most of the time.
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How about making posts that are on topic?
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As stated before, there's the question of "what made God?", but there's also the question of "what caused the Big Bang?" Somewhere down the line, surely, there must have been some "first event".
Is it really necessary for there to be one? Can you create a proof that shows a first event is required?
The fact that anything exists at all is mind-boggling. Why isn't there just nothing?
That is an excellent question. I have asked it many times, as has Stephen Hawking:
"Why does the Universe go through all the trouble of existing?"
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No, it also doesnt make it irrational. It makes it a matter of insanity.
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Is it really necessary for there to be one?
We can't proove if there's a necessity for a god or not, since we can't (yet, if ever) fathom the workings of creation itself. Really, I'm just saying that since science has nothing to say about a god, then it can't be use as a grounds to say that the idea of a god is ridiculous.
Can you create a proof that shows a first event is required?
No. I was only using my limited human logic to deduce that there probably was some first event, since the idea of an infinite string of events extending indefinitely into the past makes no sense to me. Of course, things beyond human comprehension are possible.
That is an excellent question. I have asked it many times, as has Stephen Hawking:
"Why does the Universe go through all the trouble of existing?"
That's exactly the phrase I was thinking of when I typed that.
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No, it also doesnt make it irrational. It makes it a matter of insanity.
first of all, you need to write that you changed the quote, in order to not misrepresent me.
Second of all, how does believing in something larger than yourself that you can never have proof for or against make something insane. I'm pretty sure that is as close to the operative definition of faith as one could get.
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I was only using my limited human logic to deduce that there probably was some first event, since the idea of an infinite string of events extending indefinitely into the past makes no sense to me.
The idea of "creation out of nothing" seems equally as absurd. This is a question that can never be answered, in my opinion.
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Come on friends, lets end this arguement. God doesnt exist. But, Flying Spaghetti Monster does. He is all that is holy and italian. Do not doubt him
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No, it also doesnt make it irrational. It makes it a matter of insanity.
Can't you just drop it?
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Second of all, how does believing in something larger than yourself that you can never have proof for or against make something insane. I'm pretty sure that is as close to the operative definition of faith as one could get.
Why would you believe in something you have no proof for? No logical reasons exist so is it...
Fancy, stupidity, insanity?
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The number zero is an excellent case.
The number zero isn't a statement. I'll make a statement out of it for you, one which I suspect will touch on the issue you have in mind: "Zero is a number." Ah, but you see, now you are equivocating on "number". Given a consistent and definition of the concept "number" it should be quite straightforward to determine whether zero is a number, and thus the numberhood of zero is a mathematical truth or falsehood. If you are insisting on a definition of "number" that is not quite appropriately worked out, it is possible that the question of the numberhood of zero is undecidable, in which case it is not a matter of opinion; it is merely undecidable.
Do you have any other examples? Specifically, do you have some examples that do not boil down to nit-picking over definitions?
You are a fool for believing in absolutes.
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Why would you believe in something you have no proof for? No logical reasons exist so is it...
Fancy, stupidity, insanity?
Ubuntu, you have always seemed like a strict materialist to me. You believe that atoms exist in a completely mechanistic framework and that they have followed the rules of physics and have yielded everything we see today based on cause and effect relations. Let me ask you, do you believe that things (atoms) exist independent of our thinking about them? That is, do you believe we are conscious entities within the material universe that exists, or do you believe that the the material is dependent upon our consciousness?
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No, it also doesnt make it irrational. It makes it a matter of insanity.
Can't you just drop it?
If I trumpeted that Elvis would come back from the dead in the next 60 years and again revolutionize the world of rock and roll, or that the Earth is flat, how would you react, or rather, most people? But if you are a politician in America, and you don't believe Jesus will be incarnated -- even possibly in your own lifetime -- it could be a detriment to your getting elected.
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Ubuntu, you have always seemed like a strict materialist to me. You believe that atoms exist in a completely mechanistic framework and that they have followed the rules of physics and have yielded everything we see today based on cause and effect relations. Let me ask you, do you believe that things (atoms) exist independent of our thinking about them? That is, do you believe we are conscious entities within the material universe that exists, or do you believe that the the material is dependent upon our consciousness?
This may be a bad example, because I see no acceptable definition of what "existence" is. No definition is definitive (or even universally accepted). Whenever existence is discussed in length, it almost always boils down to "I can see it and touch it." What is it to exist? It doesn't even seem to make much sense.
I believe the brain gives rise to consciousness (or rather that this is the probability).
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You are a fool for believing in absolutes.
So, you're saying you don't have any other examples?
Look, I've been through the whole social-construction-of-reality thing and while I admit its usefulness on some level, metaphysically it's just nonsense. Either that, or solipsism is true.... no, still just nonsense.
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I can easily prove that God exists in two ways.
1. The Bible.
2. Your existence, my existence, etc.
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I can easily prove that God exists in two ways.
1. The Bible.
2. Your existence, my existence, etc.
1. Not proof - writing something does not make it true. Example:
This is the truth of the Creator of the Universe. It is inerrable. Monkies don't exist. This is the truth.
2. Non-sequitor.
You are a fool for believing in absolutes.
So, you're saying you don't have any other examples?
Erasmus, he has seen he is wrong and resorted to attacks. Or just trolling.
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Erasmus, he has seen he is wrong and resorted to attacks. Or just trolling.
Well you know, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt... if he needs more time to look up examples or whatever.
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Really? When?
1492. thats when....
hey dude, wrong answer, People have known the shape of the earth long before columbus's time.
And no I am not saying flat earth anything. Study your history. Only commoners thought that the earth was flat. Anyone with serious education knew otherwise.
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No, it also doesnt make it irrational. It makes it a matter of insanity.
Can't you just drop it?
If I trumpeted that Elvis would come back from the dead in the next 60 years and again revolutionize the world of rock and roll, or that the Earth is flat, how would you react, or rather, most people? But if you are a politician in America, and you don't believe Jesus will be incarnated -- even possibly in your own lifetime -- it could be a detriment to your getting elected.
Look, you know I agree with you, but you, CK, and I have hashed this out a dozen times already. Let it go.
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Second of all, how does believing in something larger than yourself that you can never have proof for or against make something insane. I'm pretty sure that is as close to the operative definition of faith as one could get.
Why would you believe in something you have no proof for? No logical reasons exist so is it...
Fancy, stupidity, insanity?
Why do you persist? Your religion bashing is bordering on irritating.
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You are a fool for believing in absolutes.
So, you're saying you don't have any other examples?
Erasmus, he has seen he is wrong and resorted to attacks. Or just trolling.
Wrong isn't absolute. Different people define what's "wrong" differently.
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This is a little off topic but I meet with mormons once a week to discuss religion :). It is very fun - I enjoy the debates a lot. Of course they've made no progress at all.
However I have agreed to pray every day and ask God if he exists and if the gospels (including the book of Mormon) are true.
It's a bit of a logical fallacy because they say that people have done this for up to 8 years every day before they got an answer. So the way I see it there are three possibilities.
1. God does not exist and I will never get an answer or I will end up convincing myself of a false answer.
2. God does exist and will answer me telling me this is true.
3. God does exist but the gospels are false and that's what he'll tell me.
I think we can discount the third. If we assume that I won't convince myself of something that is false then there are two options - either God exists and will answer my prayers or he doesn't exist and so obviously won't. The problem is that he may take years to answer my prayers and there is a good chance I won't keep praying every day if that's the case. If God actually exists and wants me to be a believer then he will be prompt. But anyway - it's a logical fallacy because there is really only one definite answer I can get which is that God exists. If he doesn't exist I'll never get an answer and if I give up they'll just say I needed to keep praying.
However I have nothing to lose so I'm going to give it a go anyway. I'll keep you informed as to my results :)
Of course it is very tempting to tell the mormons that I had an amazing vision and that God came down and spoke to me and told me that all the religions are wrong and then to make my own religion up - like Joseph Smith - the founder of the Mormon church did. :D But I don't think I'd be able to keep a straight face.
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I have my reason to believe in God, it just makes sense to me, if it doesn't to you... well ok, whatever. I don't attack atheism, I don't see the reason why you feel that attacking Christianity is so important, but whatever floats your boat.
Oh, and I agree with Dys, there is really no reason to redo this discussion. So this will be the last I write on the subject, unless something important comes out.
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So the way I see it there are three possibilities.
I'd like to propose an addendum:
4. God does exist, but isn't really into the whole answering-prayers thing, so you never get an answer.
4a. God does exist, but because your heart isn't "true" or because you don't have faith, you never get an answer.
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I don't attack atheism, I don't see the reason why you feel that attacking Christianity is so important, but whatever floats your boat.
Well, I think he can attack it for the sake of the attack... I don't believe anybody's viewpoints ought to be exempt from criticism, and I don't think people should ever "just agree to disagree".
That said, maybe he has a good reason for attacking Christianity. Maybe he thinks it's dangerous to somebody, such as society as a whole, or religious individuals, and that therefore it behooves right-thinking people to put a stop to it.
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So the way I see it there are three possibilities.
I'd like to propose an addendum:
4. God does exist, but isn't really into the whole answering-prayers thing, so you never get an answer.
4a. God does exist, but because your heart isn't "true" or because you don't have faith, you never get an answer.
Yes these are possible but it would mean that the book of Mormon is wrong about what it says about God and I can't accept that ;).
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5. God does exist but he can't really hear your prayers.
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5. God does exist but he can't really hear your prayers.
Interesting thought.
Do you mean, however, that it is beyond his capacity to do so?
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I don't attack atheism, I don't see the reason why you feel that attacking Christianity is so important, but whatever floats your boat.
Well, I think he can attack it for the sake of the attack... I don't believe anybody's viewpoints ought to be exempt from criticism, and I don't think people should ever "just agree to disagree".
That said, maybe he has a good reason for attacking Christianity. Maybe he thinks it's dangerous to somebody, such as society as a whole, or religious individuals, and that therefore it behooves right-thinking people to put a stop to it.
I completely agree, the only thing is, we've been over the same ideas at least four or five times now, without getting anywhere, so we know it's not going to go anywhere... so what is the point?
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Do you mean, however, that it is beyond his capacity to do so?
Well, one possibility is that God does not have the capacity to do so at all. Another is that He does not have the capacity to do so to some types of prayer (such as internal--inaudible prayers). Another possibility is that He has the capacity to hear all prayers--both inaudible and audible--but that he cannot concentrate on every person's prayers for lack of time. Yet another is that he has the ability to essentially "stop time" and focus on every prayer but he just decides not to. There are really several alternatives to the ones that were listed.
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I think anyone who has seriously been participating in this topic should read Mere Christianityby C.S. Lewis. I think it offers a lot of answers to some of the questions presented here regarding Christianity.
One of the problems with arguing something like this is that there is no real way to prove or disprove the existence of a God, be it a Christian God or other. There are no instruments we have by which we could measure anything that would suggest one way or the other, so for the time being it's more or less a philosophical debate, and from what I've been reading its been getting nowhere.
One more thing in response to a post on page 1 I won't quote; evolution has evidence (and quite strong evidence), not proof. And I do believe evolution is correct, for the record.
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I think anyone who has seriously been participating in this topic should read Mere Christianityby C.S. Lewis. I think it offers a lot of answers to some of the questions presented here regarding Christianity.
One of the problems with arguing something like this is that there is no real way to prove or disprove the existence of a God, be it a Christian God or other. There are no instruments we have by which we could measure anything that would suggest one way or the other, so for the time being it's more or less a philosophical debate, and from what I've been reading its been getting nowhere.
One more thing in response to a post on page 1 I won't quote; evolution has evidence (and quite strong evidence), not proof. And I do believe evolution is correct, for the record.
We can't disprove God in general- but we can bring rather strong evidence to bear that the Christian God does not exist in exactly the way the Bible claims he does.
And evolution may not be proven, but nothing can be. The supporting evidence is strong enough that we may act as though it were 100% proven, and pursue further lines of reasoning with evolution's validity as an a priori assumption.
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You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.
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I don't attack atheism, I don't see the reason why you feel that attacking Christianity is so important, but whatever floats your boat.
Well, I think he can attack it for the sake of the attack... I don't believe anybody's viewpoints ought to be exempt from criticism, and I don't think people should ever "just agree to disagree".
That said, maybe he has a good reason for attacking Christianity. Maybe he thinks it's dangerous to somebody, such as society as a whole, or religious individuals, and that therefore it behooves right-thinking people to put a stop to it.
We have already been over this several times. I don't like "agreeing to disagree", but the discussion has gotten nowhere.
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And evolution may not be proven, but nothing can be.
I can prove that if H and K are normal subgroups of a group G, then the intersect of H and K also forms a normal subgroup of G.
...but I guess mathematical proofs aren't quite the same...
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We can't disprove God in general- but we can bring rather strong evidence to bear that the Christian God does not exist in exactly the way the Bible claims he does.
This is the truth.
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You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.
In the context of the universe you can't achieve anything with your life, so stop trying.
Personally I feel that the quest for truth is something that teaches us a lot, even if we never actually get the answer.
I just wanted to reiterate again that my experiment with praying to God is based on the assumption that the book of Mormon (and both testaments) are true. They clearly say "ask and ye shall receive" and also that if have just enough faith to ask God if he exists he will tell you - but if you don't ask he wont. Thus presumably if those books are correct he will tell me. So far one prayer and no God.
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You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.
In the context of the universe you can't achieve anything with your life, so stop trying.
I assign my life a value.
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Why?
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Why?
Because I already know it's meaningless, anyway.
Past the point of no contradictions.
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You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.
I can prove that I exist.
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"ask and ye shall receive"
My way of disproving this absurd notion is by stipulating in your prayer that it not be answered with a "No"--(some people say "God will answer your prayer, but sometimes the answer is just no"). If "ye shall receive" then you should be able to make that stipulation. Also, stipulate that the prayer be answered within the next twenty four hours. No more of this "God sometimes waits for the right time to answer your prayer" stuff. I want my answer now, so I ask for it now. Finally, stipulate that you want convincing evidence in your prayer. That way we get around the "God proved himself to you, but you just didn't see it" claims.
I can prove that I exist
I doubt it.
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You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.
I can prove that I exist.
You can't prove that you think. You fail.
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I can prove that I exist.
I doubt it.
Cogito ergo sum.
QED
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Ultimately you can prove that thinking itself exists... but not that you exist.
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Unfortunately, I don't think things at this point would go very well in a metaphysical argument. You have to start defining things like "I" and what constitutes existance.
Which probably leads in to the mind-body problem.
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wow, by posting god doesnt exist someone isjust asking to be shot, this is like the most controversial issue of all time, if you look at it strictly from a scientific viewpoint, the issue is as trivial as the FE cause, but becuase so much people believe in it, like myself, the issue will probabaly never be solved
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wow, by posting god doesnt exist someone isjust asking to be shot, this is like the most controversial issue of all time, if you look at it strictly from a scientific viewpoint, the issue is as trivial as the FE cause, but becuase so much people believe in it, like myself, the issue will probabaly never be solved
We philosophers take pride in saying things that would probably get us shot.
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I can prove that I exist.
I doubt it.
Cogito ergo sum.
QED
Je pense, donc, je suis
I think he put de cartes before the horse. More accurately would be thinking occurs therefore something exists.
-How do you know what thinking is?
-How do you know what existing is?
-How do you know what "you" are?
-How do you know it is you who is doing the thinking?
It is possible your thoughts are being controlled, you are being deceived, or the logic of your mind is fundamentally flawed, and as a result, you are wrong, and don't exist (in any of these cases it would/could be a mistake to believe something must exist to function).
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it would be a mistake to believe something must exist to function
Give me an example of something that functions that does not exist.
I will simplify the previous statement:
I exist.
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Give me an example of something that functions that does not exist.
I meant, if logic is fundamentally flawed, existence may not be a necessary condition for a function.
I exist.
How do you know?
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Give me an example of something that functions that does not exist.
I meant, if logic is fundamentally flawed, existence may not be a necessary condition for a function.
Agreed.
I exist.
How do you know?
Let's suppose for a moment that I don't. Then this entire time you've been communicating with something that doesn't exist, and thus you're a looney.
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How does anyone know they aren't looney?
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Eh.
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You're arguing a moot point that can't be "truely" proven 100%.
Just like BOG not giving evidence and making one post trolls.
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Yet another stupid argument. God exists. How else could the universe have been created? The Big Bang is the stupidest theory I've ever heard of. I take it back, the second stupidest. ;)
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The point, once again, is that all you really know is that thinking itself exists.
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If god exists, where is he? I don't see him anywhere. I haven't seen any definative scientific proof of him either. All I get are tall tails about god or gods or spirits from old books and other people, but none of them ever met god either, they just believe, without ever thinking that maybe, just maybe, there is no god. But no, there HAS to be! Why? Because I simply cannot believe otherwise, that is why.
Morons.
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Yet another stupid argument. God exists. How else could the universe have been created? The Big Bang is the stupidest theory I've ever heard of. I take it back, the second stupidest. ;)
Trollage.
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The point, once again, is that all you really know is that thinking itself exists.
Does that not then lead to the fact that I exist? Yes, thinking exists, you agree. Developing and argument and making the claim that thinking exists requires thought, so I must think. I am thinking, and the thinking is me. Since thinking exists and I am thinking, I exist.
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If god exists, where is he? I don't see him anywhere. I haven't seen any definative scientific proof of him either. All I get are tall tails about god or gods or spirits from old books and other people, but none of them ever met god either, they just believe, without ever thinking that maybe, just maybe, there is no god. But no, there HAS to be! Why? Because I simply cannot believe otherwise, that is why.
Morons.
That's like saying that because you can't see your brain that it doesn't exist. But you just kind of know it's there, because somebody told you so, and when you think about it, it makes sense that way. It's the same way with God and the Christian religion.
Just because what people say here is very predictable, I will also point out that if you're still alive there's no way you can see your brain. You might see an x-ray or something, but I've also seen pictures of a round Earth, and most people here say they're fake, so your brain x-rays could be fake also.
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You could see your brain. I worked with neuroscientists over the summer two years ago dealing with epillepsy. They would open the top portion of the skull and place electrodes directly on the brain to try and detect where seizures were originating. With the proper anesthetics, all it would take is a mirror or two for you to look directly at your own brain. That's not to say you'd remember any of it, but that's a different story.
Then again, there are always lobotomies.
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...ok than, atoms. You cannot see them, but you are told they exist.
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...ok than, atoms. You cannot see them, but you are told they exist.
OH SNAP!!! kinda like a round earth hey! or a flat earth for that matter... :?
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...ok than, atoms. You cannot see them, but you are told they exist.
Atoms are interesting because they exist on such a different scale that the human notions of existance start to get cloudy. Nevertheless, the postulation that atoms do indeed exist -- and more importantly, the robust description of their properties -- enables us to explain observations that could not be otherwise explained.
This should not be taken lightly -- everytime you look at, say, your refrigerator, and conclude, "there's my refrigerator", you are skipping the step of "Maybe there's my refrigerator and maybe not, but believing that it's there enables me to explain why I can see it."
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...ok than, atoms. You cannot see them, but you are told they exist.
Atoms are interesting because they exist on such a different scale that the human notions of existance start to get cloudy. Nevertheless, the postulation that atoms do indeed exist -- and more importantly, the robust description of their properties -- enables us to explain observations that could not be otherwise explained.
This should not be taken lightly -- everytime you look at, say, your refrigerator, and conclude, "there's my refrigerator", you are skipping the step of "Maybe there's my refrigerator and maybe not, but believing that it's there enables me to explain why I can see it."
kinda like gravity hey :wink:
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why do people randomly bring FE into threads that have nothing to do with FE?
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kinda like gravity hey :wink:
Not exactly, since in that case there's an alternate explanation that works just as well. In the case of atoms, there are no alternate explanations that work just as well.
Interestingly, on the god issue, even when gods have explanatory power, there's always some alternate explanation that works just as well.
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perhaps looking at the name of this website could point u in the right direction? :)
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If god exists, where is he? I don't see him anywhere. I haven't seen any definative scientific proof of him either. All I get are tall tails about god or gods or spirits from old books and other people, but none of them ever met god either, they just believe, without ever thinking that maybe, just maybe, there is no god. But no, there HAS to be! Why? Because I simply cannot believe otherwise, that is why.
Morons.
Come now, don't you think perhaps that's a little ignorant? You assume that people choose to believe in a god or gods simply because they cannot accept the alternative; however, people have put forth a number of good reasons for believing so. Of course there's the usual "where did we come from?" question, which I hope you realize has not been fully answered. It is my personal belief that the big bang model provides an accurate account of the universe for the past 12-15 billion years or so, but it hardly answers all questions about creation.
There is also the fact that humans in general seem to be endowed with an inherent sense of right and wrong in the world which is non-existant in the wider animal kingdom. I am not speaking purely about laws and doing what is legal or illegal, but morally acceptable or unacceptable. There seem to be unwritten rules about what is allowed and what is forbidden, and guilt is a general consequence of performing actions that we perhaps should not. Many people believe that humans must then have been endowed with such sense by a higher being or creator. C.S. Lewis puts it better than I do for anyone who wishes to read this:
... Some of the letters I have had show that a good many people find it difficult to understand just what this Law of Human Nature, or Moral Law, or Rule of Decent Behavior is.
For example, some people wrote to me saying, 'Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?' Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct — by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires — one desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same. And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger than it naturally is? I mean, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd instinct, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so as to get up enough steam for doing the right thing. But clearly we are not acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it is. The thing that says to you, 'Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,' cannot itself be the herd instinct. The thing that tells you which note on the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note.
Here is a third way of seeing it. If the Moral Law was one of our instincts, we ought to be able to point to some one impulse inside us which was always what we call 'good,' always in agreement with the rule of right behaviors. But you cannot. There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage. It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses — say mother love or patriotism — are good, and others, like sex or the fighting instinct, are bad. All we mean is that the occasions on which the fighting instinct or the sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent than those for restraining mother love or patriotism. But there are situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual impulse and of a soldier to encourage the fighting instinct. There are also occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or a man's love for his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people's children or countries. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the 'right' notes and the 'wrong' ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.
By the way, the point is of great practical consequence. The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity', and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.
Other people wrote to me saying 'Isn't what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?' I think there is a misunderstanding here. The people who ask that question are usually taking it for granted that if we have learned a thing from parents and teachers, then that thing must be merely a human invention. But, of course, that is not so. We all learned the multiplication table at school. A child who grew up alone on a desert island would not know it. But surely it does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human convention, something human beings made up for themselves and might have made different if they had liked? I fully agree that we learn the Rule of Decent Behaviour from parents and teachers, and friends and books, as we learn everything else. But some of the things we learn are mere conventions which might have been different — we learn to keep to the left of the road, but it might just as well have been the rule to keep to the right — and others of them, like mathematics, are real truths. The questions is to which class the Law of Human Nature belongs.
There are two reasons for saying it belongs to the same class as mathematics. The first is, as I said in the first chapter, that though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great — not nearly so great as most people imagine — and you can recognize the same lay running through them all: whereas mere conventions, like the rule of the road of the kinds or clothes people wear, may differ to any extent. The other reason is this. When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others. We do believe that some of the people who tried to change the moral ideas of their own age were what we would call Reformers of Pioneers — people who understood morality better than their neighbors did. Very well then. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people thing, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something — some Real Morality — for them to be true about. The reason why your idea of New York can be truer of less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said 'New York' each means merely 'The town I am imagining in my own head', how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all. In the same way, if the Rule of Decent Behaviour meant simply 'whatever each nation happens to approve', there would be no sense in saying that any one nation had even been more correct in its approval than any other; no sense in saying that the world would ever grow morally better or morally worse.
I conclude then, that though the difference between people's ideas of Decent Behaviour often make you suspect that there is no real natural Law of Behaviour at all, yet the things we are bound to think about these differences really prove just the opposite. But one word before I end. I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between difference of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, 'Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?' But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did — if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbors or drive them mad or bring bad weather — surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did? There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simple about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believes there were no mice in the house. - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/ownwords/mere1.html
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Come now, don't you think perhaps that's a little ignorant? You assume that people choose to believe in a god or gods simply because they cannot accept the alternative
no, i find that people will believe things to make them feel safer, or understand, or give them a sense of control. Many diabetes patients don't take their meds, not because they're crazy, but because they simply believe if they don't take it, it might go away...if they believe in something hard enough it could happen. They prefer to do this rather than face the alternative that they will possibly be living on drugs for the rest of their lives.
believing in god gives us a sense of control, because we know that if we keep him happy we get heaps of goodies, or atleast not struck down by lightening. The ultimate example of this is ancient Greek Gods...people just created them wen the felt like it, and if someone stood against it they were seen as showing hubris, and putting themselves above the gods.
God's were created to help us understand earthquakes, floods, famine, everything, they gave us an answer...how is this any different from today's world?
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Ok, wiki the incompleteness theorems, read them, think about what I said, read them again, and THEN if you are still lost, ask me again. I'm not going to do all of the thinking for you; sometimes you have to do it for yourself.
No. I've read about them before in some depth; thanks for your rather infurating presumption of my ignorance.
My understanding of those theorems is that they put limits on what can be proved. Rather, they guarantee that consistent systems that can be interpreted to model the natural numbers will contain true statements that cannot be proved.
Nowhere do they state that any proofs are invalid.
You brought up Godel seemingly, to me, to imply that mathematical proofs are not really proofs, but merely reflect the consensus of mathematicians. It's quite clear that that's not what Godel's theorems are about.
What is your interpretation of the theorems?
I'm not saying that Bogwarrior necessarily had any idea what he was talking about, but there is one important corollary to the incompleteness theorem which does cast a certain amount of doubt on mathematical proof, which is the following:
Any axiomatic system which can prove it's own consistency is necessarily inconsistent.
Therefore, we can't know for certain that the axioms upon which we base mathematics are consistent, and so to a certain extent, mathematical truth is based on faith in the axioms. Of course, this is a very small amount of faith, since the axioms all appear to be true. It certainly takes less faith to believe, for example, that there are objects called "sets" which have some properties laid out in axiom form (in the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory axioms) than it takes to believe in an all-powerful and all-knowing being who created the universe. But it is, perhaps, something to consider.
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God's were created to help us understand earthquakes, floods, famine, everything, they gave us an answer...how is this any different from today's world?
But by definition of a "god," could a god truly be created by men?
In any case, in response to the rest of your post, I never meant to say that people don't believe things for such trivial reasons, just that it frequently is not the case. A lot of perfectly sane people do have valid reasons for choosing to believe one thing over another.
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You assume that people choose to believe in a god or gods simply because they cannot accept the alternative; however, people have put forth a number of good reasons for believing so.
I think most people who disagree would claim that the goodness of those reasons is contestable.
There is also the fact that humans in general seem to be endowed with an inherent sense of right and wrong in the world which is non-existant in the wider animal kingdom.
Are you sure it's nonexistent in the wider animal kingdom? I have not really investigated the question; have you? It seems probable to me that other social animals would have some instincts about right and wrong.
It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way.
I am concerned by the use of the word "strong" here. It is likely that some instincts feel strong but aren't, and vice versa. I hardly think that the individual is capable of the level of introspection required to quantitatively measure the strength of a desire.
But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not.
This is begging the question. Maybe it really is the same. Maybe the feeling of wrongness is exactly the result of failing to immediately comply with a certain instinct.
Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses.
Aha, my fears have been realized. Worse yet, C.S. is again begging the question: if in fact the "weaker impulse" and the "Moral Law" are one and the same, and the Moral Law causes you to follow the weaker impuse, then it could just as simply be explained that the impulse was not in fact weaker.
I mean, who's stronger: a malnourished quadripelegic (sp?) backed up by the Army, or a single champion weightlifter?
...
I am regrattably too weak to read the rest of Lewis's article. I have a feeling, though, that arguing in such inexact terms, and on the basis of what-seems-to-make-sense rather than what's actually known about the neurology of instinct and desire, renders the article an interesting work of speculation, but nothing more.
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Sorry to go off topic a little but the current debate is boring and tedious. Based on all the information we have, we can easily make the assumption that we exist and we should be happy with that.
The hardest part in believing in the Christian god, for me, is this;
The bible says that "faith without works is dead" (James 2:24-26).
Essentially the Earth and our lives are like a test to see if we are ready to be with God or not. God won't prove to us that he exists because that would ruin the test - we need to have faith in God to reap the benefits. The line from James is basically saying that we can't have faith if we don't put in an effort to have that faith. To begin with you don't need a lot of faith - there is the common analogy for seeds - you plant seed of faith and then look after it and it grows into a fruit tree and you get lots of fruit :). If you don't look after the tree then it will wither and die. But surely to plant the seed - to put in even the slightest amount of genuine effort requires a tiny amount of faith. Where would that faith come from? You can't have faith without effort and you can't put in effort without faith.
While obviously people do believe in God, I think the reasons they believe are not a case of planting a seed and putting in effort. There is some other event or reason in their lives that has led them to believe what is essentially an illogical and irrational view.
While I could be seen to be putting in effort and I genuinely would like to know if God exists or not - I also feel that I am as completely sure of his non-existence as I am sure of anything. Obviously we can't know 100% that God doesn't exist - just like we can't know 100% that gravity will continue to have the same effect tomorrow - but I am as sure that effects of gravity tomorrow will be the same as they are today as I am sure that God does not exist.
I'm sure Christians will say that I'm not having an open mind, and maybe that's the case but I don't know how to change my frame of mind. I can't consciously change how I view God without new evidence or argument but the Bible clearly says that I won't get that until I have faith. If God really does exist then I can never believe in him. It's not a choice at all, you can't choose to believe things, you have to be convinced that they are true. Can a genuine Christian just decide to not believe in God for no reason? Of course not. Neither can I just decide to have any genuine faith.
My experiment will completely fail unless God does exist but the Bible is wrong - that's really the only way I can see myself finishing the experiment with an opinion other than God does not exist.
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The bible says that "faith without works is dead" (James 2:24-26).
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The line from James is basically saying that we can't have faith if we don't put in an effort to have that faith.
I may be wrong but I felt that this line from James is intended to mean that faith isn't enough to get into heaven: you need to do [good] works as well. It sounds more like your interpretation is better applied to "faith without work is dead" than to "faith without works is dead".
My experiment will completely fail unless God does exist but the Bible is wrong - that's really the only way I can see myself finishing the experiment with an opinion other than God does not exist.
That's depressing.
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You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.
I can prove that I exist.
No, you can't. You could be a figment of our imagination, an alien, a robot, an unexplained atmospheric phenomenon ... the possibilites are endless.
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You're arguing a moot point that can't be "truely" proven 100%.
Just like BOG not giving evidence and making one post trolls.
I do what? I don't understand what you are trying to say.
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No, you can't. You could be a figment of our imagination, an alien, a robot, an unexplained atmospheric phenomenon ... the possibilites are endless.
I think perhaps he was saying "I can prove to myself that I exist." However, I still claim that, in the end, you find that the only thing we can truly prove is that thinking exists. I can doubt that my body exists. I can even doubt that my "self" exists. But when I doubt that "doubt" exists, I'm left to conclude that the only way I can disprove "doubthood" is if "doubthood" exists for me to disprove it. Actually, that's gibberish but it kind of gets to the core of things...
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You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.
I can prove that for any given number, there exists a larger prime number.
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No, you can't. You could be a figment of our imagination, an alien, a robot, an unexplained atmospheric phenomenon ... the possibilites are endless.
That doesn't mean I don't exist. All it means is I might not be human.
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You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.
I can prove that for any given number, there exists a larger prime number.
And if there exists a mathematical system that isn't designed that way? Your claim doesn't allow for other systems, outside your comprehension.
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No, you can't. You could be a figment of our imagination, an alien, a robot, an unexplained atmospheric phenomenon ... the possibilites are endless.
That doesn't mean I don't exist. All it means is I might not be human.
You could be the figment of some higher being's imagination.
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If god exists, where is he? I don't see him anywhere. I haven't seen any definative scientific proof of him either. All I get are tall tails about god or gods or spirits from old books and other people, but none of them ever met god either, they just believe, without ever thinking that maybe, just maybe, there is no god. But no, there HAS to be! Why? Because I simply cannot believe otherwise, that is why.
Morons.
That's like saying that because you can't see your brain that it doesn't exist. But you just kind of know it's there, because somebody told you so, and when you think about it, it makes sense that way. It's the same way with God and the Christian religion.
Just because what people say here is very predictable, I will also point out that if you're still alive there's no way you can see your brain. You might see an x-ray or something, but I've also seen pictures of a round Earth, and most people here say they're fake, so your brain x-rays could be fake also.
no it's NOT the same thing fuckface. You can see your brain, you can touch it and feel it, it's in your head. Xrays and catscans are pictures of your actual brain. If you want to see it just crack your head open on something, hopefully you will. You can't see any god(s), because they don't exist. No pictures, no nothing. You can sit and pray and hope your whole stupid lifetime and you will STILL never see him.
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no it's NOT the same thing f**kface. You can see your brain, you can touch it and feel it...
Although I certainly don't recommend it.
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no it's NOT the same thing fuckface.
Whoa...calm down.
You can't see any god(s), because they don't exist. No pictures, no nothing. You can sit and pray and hope your whole stupid lifetime and you will STILL never see him.
Now supposing that there's a "creator" that isn't visible within our universe...
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Although I certainly don't recommend it.
I hear it can be rather stimulating.
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blah blah blah and a few paragraphs of crap.
*yawn*
You forget that there are other social creatures besides humans that perform acts to impress the group such as being generous and such. how do you know that they don't have the same kind of feelings about so called "right" and "wrong" that we do? Morality has not a thing to do with god or religion in all actuality. It's just something that religious people have somehow managed to claim for their own, at least in the public eye. But anyone with a keen and skeptical mind can easily see why this this void. Creating arbitrary dogmatic rules and codes for people to live by? That's morality? What is so moral about herding into church every sunday? Or praying 5 times a day on your knee like a moron?
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Creating arbitrary dogmatic rules and codes for people to live by? That's morality?
It might be that you're using "morality" interchangably with "ethics." That which is moral according to a certain code need not be ethical.
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You forget that there are other social creatures besides humans that perform acts to impress the group such as being generous and such. how do you know that they don't have the same kind of feelings about so called "right" and "wrong" that we do? Morality has not a thing to do with god or religion in all actuality. It's just something that religious people have somehow managed to claim for their own, at least in the public eye. But anyone with a keen and skeptical mind can easily see why this this void. Creating arbitrary dogmatic rules and codes for people to live by? That's morality? What is so moral about herding into church every sunday? Or praying 5 times a day on your knee like a moron?
From what I've heard, it's generally only humans and dolphins having sex for pleasure. I figure any other animal trying to impress another would be for the purpose of getting a mate. Animals tend to avoid extinction when possible.
I also don't think morality is something religious people have tried to claim as their own. I don't think morality necessarily has to have any connection with religion at all. All I said was that people use the sense of morality to help justify the existence of a higher being.
Never as far as I can tell did anyone equate morality to attending church and praying. I don't know what made you think that.
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You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.
I can prove that for any given number, there exists a larger prime number.
And if there exists a mathematical system that isn't designed that way? Your claim doesn't allow for other systems, outside your comprehension.
I meant I could prove it's true within our system of mathematics. (I.e. given what we mean by the set of numbers, what we mean by prime, and what we mean by larger) Of course you could invent other systems if you wanted to, but why would you? There's a reason we have the one we do.
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You forget that there are other social creatures besides humans that perform acts to impress the group such as being generous and such. how do you know that they don't have the same kind of feelings about so called "right" and "wrong" that we do? Morality has not a thing to do with god or religion in all actuality. It's just something that religious people have somehow managed to claim for their own, at least in the public eye. But anyone with a keen and skeptical mind can easily see why this this void. Creating arbitrary dogmatic rules and codes for people to live by? That's morality? What is so moral about herding into church every sunday? Or praying 5 times a day on your knee like a moron?
From what I've heard, it's generally only humans and dolphins having sex for pleasure. I figure any other animal trying to impress another would be for the purpose of getting a mate. Animals tend to avoid extinction when possible.
I also don't think morality is something religious people have tried to claim as their own. I don't think morality necessarily has to have any connection with religion at all. All I said was that people use the sense of morality to help justify the existence of a higher being.
Never as far as I can tell did anyone equate morality to attending church and praying. I don't know what made you think that.
So there needs to be a higher being because for the mostpart we try to be ethical in our treatment of other people? One has nothing to do with the other.
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From what I've heard, it's generally only humans and dolphins having sex for pleasure.
Completely false. There are hundreds of examples of homosexual animals;
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0722_040722_gayanimal.html
Mentions beetles, sheep, fruit bats, dolphins, penguins, ostriches, flamingos, macaques, bonobos and orangutans.
(OMG bibicul, I said something and backed it up with a source yet again!)
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So there needs to be a higher being because for the mostpart we try to be ethical in our treatment of other people? One has nothing to do with the other.
I didn't say that either.
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Completely false. There are hundreds of examples of homosexual animals;
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0722_040722_gayanimal.html
Mentions beetles, sheep, fruit bats, dolphins, penguins, ostriches, flamingos, macaques, bonobos and orangutans.
(OMG bibicul, I said something and backed it up with a source yet again!)
I think we're starting to drift away from what the topic was supposed to be about.
We're talking about animals having moral codes, not gay sex. The only reason I said anything about sex was because troubadour claimed that animals "...perform acts to impress the group such as being generous and such." I think that's usually only to get a mate. I doubt most animals would care whether or not they're being generous. In other cases, it may be that they're sharing food so their offspring don't starve to death.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality#Development_of_morality
Case closed?
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I never said any of this was true. All I said was that morality has been used to justify the existence of a higher being.
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I never said any of this was true. All I said was that morality has been used to justify the existence of a higher being.
Sure sure... I'm just saying that there are at-least-as-reliable arguments for morality from a naturalistic perspective. You know, just tossing it out on the table.
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Sure sure... I'm just saying that there are at-least-as-reliable arguments for morality from a naturalistic perspective. You know, just tossing it out on the table.
It felt like we were getting a little sidetracked, but yes, I agree with that.
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I have my reason to believe in God, it just makes sense to me, if it doesn't to you...
So "I have a suspended belief in something not based on reason, because I have reached the conclusion that this something exists based on reason." I hope you see the contradiction here, and if you read this post, perhaps you will see the profound problem with the root of religious faith. There is no well demonstrated cognitive to believe in a god; faith springs from an emotional desire to believe something made up as truth. Chaos ensues.
I never said any of this was true. All I said was that morality has been used to justify the existence of a higher being.
Sure sure... I'm just saying that there are at-least-as-reliable arguments for morality from a naturalistic perspective. You know, just tossing it out on the table.
If a belief in God made people moral, or happy, it would not be an argument for the existence of God. That makes no sense.
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You forget that there are other social creatures besides humans that perform acts to impress the group such as being generous and such. how do you know that they don't have the same kind of feelings about so called "right" and "wrong" that we do? Morality has not a thing to do with god or religion in all actuality. It's just something that religious people have somehow managed to claim for their own, at least in the public eye. But anyone with a keen and skeptical mind can easily see why this this void. Creating arbitrary dogmatic rules and codes for people to live by? That's morality? What is so moral about herding into church every sunday? Or praying 5 times a day on your knee like a moron?
From what I've heard, it's generally only humans and dolphins having sex for pleasure. I figure any other animal trying to impress another would be for the purpose of getting a mate. Animals tend to avoid extinction when possible.
Dead wrong. (http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php)
On the subject of religion, I'd like to announce two things
1) A middle-aged Canadian women was recently killed by a ceremonial snake bite in a church
2) Two students from my school (twins), have been forbidden by their parents to compete in a large regional cross country meet because it takes place on a Sunday, which we all know as the weekly Christian holiday. I'm not saying taking Sunday off is a bad thing, I'm just saying that their parents are very stupid. :evil:
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I don't attack atheism, I don't see the reason why you feel that attacking Christianity is so important, but whatever floats your boat.
Well, I think he can attack it for the sake of the attack... I don't believe anybody's viewpoints ought to be exempt from criticism, and I don't think people should ever "just agree to disagree".
That said, maybe he has a good reason for attacking Christianity. Maybe he thinks it's dangerous to somebody, such as society as a whole, or religious individuals, and that therefore it behooves right-thinking people to put a stop to it.
I completely agree, the only thing is, we've been over the same ideas at least four or five times now, without getting anywhere, so we know it's not going to go anywhere... so what is the point?
If at first you don't succeed...
Perhaps one of these times something productive will come out.
With supernaturalism, the miracle of evolution is replaced by a Creationist magic trick, the annals of reality, with its confounding mystery and unfathomable beauty is warped into a human likeness, the mechanics of causality and mystified into a cloud of spiritual uncertainty, the practice of science is chained by unmovable assumptions, and the desire to stir a false boredom pushes away the truth - and real "magic" of the universe.
In any case, the supernatural can only be the unexplained natural.
'Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.' - John Stuart Mill
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You forget that there are other social creatures besides humans that perform acts to impress the group such as being generous and such. how do you know that they don't have the same kind of feelings about so called "right" and "wrong" that we do? Morality has not a thing to do with god or religion in all actuality. It's just something that religious people have somehow managed to claim for their own, at least in the public eye. But anyone with a keen and skeptical mind can easily see why this this void. Creating arbitrary dogmatic rules and codes for people to live by? That's morality? What is so moral about herding into church every sunday? Or praying 5 times a day on your knee like a moron?
From what I've heard, it's generally only humans and dolphins having sex for pleasure. I figure any other animal trying to impress another would be for the purpose of getting a mate. Animals tend to avoid extinction when possible.
Dead wrong. (http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php)
Damnit, why doesn't anyone ever read all of the posts?
EDIT:
If a belief in God made people moral, or happy, it would not be an argument for the existence of God. That makes no sense.
I think you're missing the point.
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If a belief in God made people moral, or happy, it would not be an argument for the existence of God. That makes no sense.
It would be an argument for the belief in the existence of god. You should believe in god, not because he exists, but because it's good for you. Now sit down and shut up, and take your vitamins!
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It would be an argument for the belief in the existence of god. You should believe in god, not because he exists, but because it's good for you.
That reminds me of pragmatism... or pragmaticism... one of those.
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for me, it realy isnt the concept of a god that makes no sense. (it makes some scence, but not very much). The main reason i have problems with religion is, basicly which religion should i pick? Why should i be Christian (etc)? Personaly, the Roman gods make just as much scense as the Christian god.
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You have a good point about that. Many theists will claim that there might exist a "God" (by whatever definition they use that word for), yet that most likely all of the versions of God previously thought of are wrong. Indeed, many of the versions of God previously thought of are impossible.
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Indeed, many of the versions of God previously thought of are impossible.
you do realise, that if you take a step back and look at any religion, they are all just as possible/impossible as eachother. The only things that dont fit here are things like the Flying Spaghetti Monster (etc) (you know what i mean).
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Well, there are religions that espouse characteristics of God that are logically impossible.
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Well, there are religions that espouse characteristics of God that are logically impossible.
Such as?
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Such as?
Such as a religion that says:
(1) We are predestined, and
(2) We have free will.
or
(1) God can perceive things (this is sense data collection), and
(2) God does not have a body to sense things with
or
(1) God is completely outside of nature--totally disconnected from it, and
(2) God influences nature
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I don't attack atheism, I don't see the reason why you feel that attacking Christianity is so important, but whatever floats your boat.
Well, I think he can attack it for the sake of the attack... I don't believe anybody's viewpoints ought to be exempt from criticism, and I don't think people should ever "just agree to disagree".
That said, maybe he has a good reason for attacking Christianity. Maybe he thinks it's dangerous to somebody, such as society as a whole, or religious individuals, and that therefore it behooves right-thinking people to put a stop to it.
I completely agree, the only thing is, we've been over the same ideas at least four or five times now, without getting anywhere, so we know it's not going to go anywhere... so what is the point?
If at first you don't succeed...
Perhaps one of these times something productive will come out.
With supernaturalism, the miracle of evolution is replaced by a Creationist magic trick, the annals of reality, with its confounding mystery and unfathomable beauty is warped into a human likeness, the mechanics of causality and mystified into a cloud of spiritual uncertainty, the practice of science is chained by unmovable assumptions, and the desire to stir a false boredom pushes away the truth - and real "magic" of the universe.
In any case, the supernatural can only be the unexplained natural.
'Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.' - John Stuart Mill
The only "productive" thing that could come is you being more accepting toward others beliefs, and not being so stubborn in something that noone can ever know for certain.
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Such as a religion that says:
(1) We are predestined, and
(2) We have free will.
I think this is not a logical contradiction. For one thing free will can be restricted and yet still exist. If for some reason I could not choose not to wear read every day, but I could still choose everything else, I would still have free will. The free will is simply not arbitrary in scope.
(1) God can perceive things (this is sense data collection), and
(2) God does not have a body to sense things with
Also not a logical contradiction; we do not know the limits on what mechanisms of perception might exist. It is inconsistent with our understanding of perception, but it is not itself internally inconsistent.
(1) God is completely outside of nature--totally disconnected from it, and
(2) God influences nature
I think this is a straw man -- it's worded so that it's obviously inconsistent. However if you say something fuzzier like what some religions actually say -- for example, "God transcends nature" or "God is not bound by natural laws" or "God's nature is not within the framework of nature that man can comprehend," then it's no longer inconsistent.
That said, I think that omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence are mutually exclusive, at least in terms of how humans understand benevolence; God may be benevolent in a way that humans cannot understand, but then it is inconsistent to refer to that quality of God as "benevolence" in the first place.
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so basilcy your saying they dont work becaseu they controdict themselves? What about Christiantiy? Some of the bigest controdictions ive ever seen are ain the bible.
PRO 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
ECC 1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
1 Cor.1:19: "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and wil bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."
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Here is a logical contradiction: "We are predestined to either go to heaven or hell according to God's will and pleasure, BUT, we have the free will to do the things that allow us into either heaven or hell." That's a logical contradiction. The predestined part suggests that the future is already determined a certain way according to the will of God; the free will part suggests that the future is undetermined and that we have the power to make the future in any of an infinite possibility of ways. Those are mutually exclusive principles.
The argument you brought against the logical contradiction was that you can be predestined to read a certain book at a certain time, but that the clothes you decided to wear earlier that morning might have been chosen by your free will. Although I would probably disagree with this, I don't need to right now. It's necessary for me to stipulate that I'm talking about predestination and free will occurring at the same time and in the same respect (you're talking about different times and instances).
Traditionally, the idea of perception entails that there is some sort of sense data collection. It is possible that God has some sort of body that he can sense things with (in the way we use the word 'sense'). However, if one were to claim that God does not have a body to sense things with, yet that he still senses things somehow, there would be a logical disconnect in the conversation. Granted, it might be possible that God has some kind of property which allows this to happen, but since we don't know of such a property and since we can only speculate (and most importantly, since we define our words a certain way to mean a certain thing in regards to 'perceive' and 'sense' and then we turn around and try to say that these words mean something different to God), all this belief really yields is "Blah blah blah...I have no idea what I'm talking about..."
The third one might be a straw man. But probably not. The point of it is to show that somebody who believes that God is outside of nature yet that he is also inside of nature is logically inconsistent.
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but like i said, the bible kills itself
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wait... how many stalls of horses?
KI1 4:26 And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.
CH2 9:25 And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen; whom he bestowed in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem.
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to righteous or not?
Ps.92:12: "The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree."
Isa.57:1: "The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart."
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Judas died how?
"And he cast down the pieces of silver into the temple and departed, and went out and hanged himself." (Matt. 27:5)
"And falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all of his bowels gushed out." (Acts 1:18)
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PRO 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
ECC 1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
That's not contradictory at all. "Money is the principle thing; therefore get lots of it." "In much money there is much grief." Possibly both true, no?
1 Cor.1:19: "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and wil bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."
I'm not sure what to do with that one without context. However it could mean that the "I" in this case will bring about the destruction by showing the wise that in spite of all their wisdom, they still know only very little about what there really is to know. There are some apocryphal accounts of Jesus making this point (and maybe some canonical ones as well) when he draws a circle in the sand, and then a larger one around it, and says: "Your knowledge is like this smaller circle, and mine is the larger: in knowing more, I know that there is even more for me to learn than for you."
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Here is a logical contradiction: "We are predestined to either go to heaven or hell according to God's will and pleasure, BUT, we have the free will to do the things that allow us into either heaven or hell." That's a logical contradiction.
Okay, I agree, but I'd like to see a reference to a religion that preaches exactly that.
However, if one were to claim that God does not have a body to sense things with, yet that he still senses things somehow, there would be a logical disconnect in the conversation.
Not a logical, but an epistemic one. Basically we just don't know. We definitely do not, however, definte "to perceive" as "to perceive with eyes, hands, etc."
The third one might be a straw man. But probably not. The point of it is to show that somebody who believes that God is outside of nature yet that he is also inside of nature is logically inconsistent.
As with all of the alleged contradictions you listed, I do understand the point. It's a straw man in that nobody who's thought about it really believes that God is inside and outside of nature simultaneously (at the same and in the same instance).
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but like i said, the bible kills itself
I hardly think the examples provided show how the Bible "kills itself".
One is a misrecording of a number (how many people died in the Holocaust? Just because people don't agree doesn't mean it didn't happen. And the Nazis kept better records than Solomon I expect.)
One is two references from two different books; how do we know they refer to the same event? Sounds to me like the first says, "At some special happy point in the future, P will be true." and the second says, "P is false at this moment in history, and nobody seems to care."
The last is two recordings of a story. Stories are often misrecorded. That doesn't mean that you can't learn something about the general sequence of events. The gospels disagree in various ways but all describe similar events.
The Bible doesn't "kill itself", not based on the evidence you give. Sorry.
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The last is two recordings of a story. Stories are often misrecorded. That doesn't mean that you can't learn something about the general sequence of events. The gospels disagree in various ways but all describe similar events.
well, if you use this mindset, then of course i cant prove the bible contradicts itself. The whole book is basically a collection of stories.
One is two references from two different books; how do we know they refer to the same event?
ok, well i see your point, but i don't think we can deny that the bible does contradict itself.
Beast First?
GEN 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
GEN 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Man first?
GEN 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
GEN 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Now, you will probably say something along the lines of a misrecording, but this still does not change the fact that the bible contradicts itself. Ok, i admit saying that it 'kills itself' is a bit harsh, so i retract that statement.
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That's not contradictory at all. "Money is the principle thing; therefore get lots of it." "In much money there is much grief." Possibly both true, no?
ok, il give you that one
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GEN 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
GEN 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
They may be presented in different order, but it says nothing about which one actually came first.
GEN 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
GEN 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
I don't see the contradiction here. If you include the next verse, it says of the beasts no suitable helper was found.
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GEN 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
GEN 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
1. "God made the beast of the earth "
THEN
2. "God said, Let us make man in our image"
GEN 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
GEN 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
1. "It is not good that the man should be alone;"
^ this is showing that man is first
THEN
2. "God formed every beast of the field"... "and brought them unto Adam"
Adam was there before the beasts.
so, in the first quote, the order is Beast then Man, and in the second quote, the order is Man then Beast.
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Now, you will probably say something along the lines of a misrecording, but this still does not change the fact that the bible contradicts itself. Ok, i admit saying that it 'kills itself' is a bit harsh, so i retract that statement.
If I may offer an alternative I think the statement, "The Bible says a whole whop of things that seem, upon reflection, unlikely to be true," is probably much more accurate and easier to defend.
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ok, il go with that :wink:
I actually hate going through the bible and trying to prove it wrong (etc)
like i mentioned before, the largest problem for me in religion is not the actual religions themselves, but the dilemma of which one is true (example: many people at this point in time are christian, but if you look at the old Roman Gods, lots of people followed them at one point in time. It could be that in 10000 years, no one will be christian, and will regard all Christians from the past the same way we regard the Romans who worshiped those gods)
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Erasmus, a Christian can believe that God predestined all of humanity to either heaven or hell prior to the creation of the world. Yet they, at the same time, try to claim that all people have free will to become a Christian and get saved. This is logically inconsistent, yet many Christians believe it to be so because both predestination and free will are supported by scripture. That's why it's important.
As for the other two, I'll have to just get back to you on those later because:
(1) I don't have the will power to look it up
(2) I have to do some research for my Soviet Russia paper
If you want a source to a Christian website that says (1) we are predestined, yet (2) we have free will then ask and I'll look for one for you. We've discussed this before though.
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GEN 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
GEN 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
1. "God made the beast of the earth "
THEN
2. "God said, Let us make man in our image"
GEN 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
GEN 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
1. "It is not good that the man should be alone;"
^ this is showing that man is first
THEN
2. "God formed every beast of the field"... "and brought them unto Adam"
Adam was there before the beasts.
so, in the first quote, the order is Beast then Man, and in the second quote, the order is Man then Beast.
Also, in Genesis 1:27 it says,
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Which implies that he made man and woman at the same time, while in Genesis 2, as we all know says,
And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
Which implies that man was made first and then woman was made from man.
So which is which? >.>
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Erasmus, a Christian can believe that God predestined all of humanity to either heaven or hell prior to the creation of the world. Yet they, at the same time, try to claim that all people have free will to become a Christian and get saved.
I understand what you're saying, but I need to see some references that some religions preach exactly that.
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So which is which? >.>
I am well-versed, but not particular interested, in this activity. I agree that the Bible has some contradictions in it, but I don't think that they destroy the message of the Bible, or that they render the notion of religion in general as impossible. That's what I'm trying to say.
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the largest problem for me in religion is not the actual religions themselves, but the dilemma of which one is true
That is a more interesting point, and is relevant to the question of what religion is actually for.
Religion is actually for creating a tribal bond through mutual worship (my personal theory; no references will be provided). Different tribes have different religions because if they didn't, they would, in some sense, be the same tribe.
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the largest problem for me in religion is not the actual religions themselves, but the dilemma of which one is true
No one has ever explained to me why God wants me to believe in him.
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the largest problem for me in religion is not the actual religions themselves, but the dilemma of which one is true
No one has ever explained to me why God wants me to believe in him.
Low self esteem?
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the largest problem for me in religion is not the actual religions themselves, but the dilemma of which one is true
No one has ever explained to me why God wants me to believe in him.
Low self esteem?
Yes, God is insecure.
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God is emo. (http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=1968)
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For an almighty, omnipotent, omniscient being, the Christian God certainly is petty, vindictive, small, irrelevant, superficial, weak, and limited.
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For an almighty, omnipotent, omniscient being, the Christian God certainly is petty, vindictive, small, irrelevant, superficial, weak, and limited.[/quote
didnt Richard Dawkins say that?
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I understand what you're saying, but I need to see some references that some religions preach exactly that.
Christianity.
http://www.gotquestions.org/predestination.html
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Essentially, God predetermines that certain individuals will be saved.
Not, "God predetermines that certain individuals will be faithful." Free will still allowed, contradiction avoided.
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Not, "God predetermines that certain individuals will be faithful." Free will still allowed, contradiction avoided.
The author wrote: "Essentially, God predetermines that certain individuals will be saved."
If God predetermines that certain individuals will be saved, one cannot have the free will to get themseleves saved by being faithful. I'm having trouble seeing where the disconnect in the conversation is occurring.
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If God predetermines that certain individuals will be saved, one cannot have the free will to get themseleves saved by being faithful. I'm having trouble seeing where the disconnect in the conversation is occurring.
If I am accused of a crime I have free will to hire a lawyer and try to get acquitted. It doesn't mean I will. The judge might by biased; he might have predetermined my guilt or innocence.
You need a reference that says or implies, "A person can affect their own salvation," and, "A person cannot affect their own salvation," for it to be contradictory. Nowhere in that article does it say that a person can affect their own salvation without it having been determined beforehand by God that that person would be saved. In fact it says, paraphrased, "If God selects you to be saved, you will automatically be faithful."
The article is telling people that they don't really have the freedom to be saved. It doesn't touch on the freedom to pick one's nose or listen to certain music or whatever.
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I think now I see the differences between what we're saying. For the purpose of this conversation, let me define a term from my philosophy textbook:
Predestination--the belief that events are predetermined by some personal power (God)...if an event or action is predestined, it will happen no matter what.
Okay, so if the Bible says "God predestines whether or not we will be saved," and it also sends the message "You have the free will to become faithful--which will yield salvation (i.e. you have the free will to get salvation)," then there is a contradiction. We are either predestined to be saved or not saved, or, we have the free will to affect our salvation. Many Christians believe that they have the choice to either accept God into their lives or to shun God. They believe that if they accept God into their lives (on account of their own free will), then they will be saved. However, the Bible says that God has already decided who would be saved and who would not be saved (that is, he predestined that a long time ago and no human choice is going to change his plan). To believe:
(1) God predestined salvation a long time ago and this cannot change, and
(2) Salvation is up for grabs through your own free will choice on whether or not you want to accept God
seems to be a logical contradiction.
The article is telling people that they don't really have the freedom to be saved. It doesn't touch on the freedom to pick one's nose or listen to certain music or whatever.
Once again I think you are not paying attention to the "at the same time and in the same respect" clause I mentioned before. This article is, indeed, telling people that they don't have the freedom to be saved--that salvation is already predestined. Yet people who accept this also attempt to accept the notion that they have the free will to get themselves saved. I've had a discussion with a student here on campus who accepts this and says "I don't know how it works... It's just the divine mystery of God and I take it on faith." The problem here is that you either have the free will to accept God into your life and get your salvation or you don't. The Bible seems to suggest both. So many people accept both, arguing that it doesn't matter if we don't understand it.
As a closing note, I'd like to re-emphasize that you cannot be predestined to do something yet still have the free will to either do or not do that thing. That's impossible, and I think we both know that. Therefore anybody who believes in a God that predestines us to either salvation or non-salvation yet gives us free will to attain our salvation or not attain our salvation is believing in a God that is logically impossible. There are Christians who believe in this type of God (like the one I mentioned--a friend of mine here) even though it is an impossible God.
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Well the only probalem with predestination is that one who believes in predestination can state that God is above everything and is truly all powerful, so he could just go against his own predestination.
I hope you understood what I was just trying to convey, that didn't come out quite as coherently as I hoped it would.
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That isn't a problem with predestination at all. There's no "I'm God so I'm above logic" principle in any rational conversation. Some people do make the claim that you made, but it doesn't serve any purpose except to say, once again, "Blah blah blah, I have no idea what I'm talking about."
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I don't believe in anything like predestination. But I do feel that the concept of Karma holds true to reality. Not in the sense that there is "bad karma" and "good karma", but in the "cause and effect" manner.
My favorite author James Alan Gardner put it perfectly in his book Radiant, saying:
...Karma simply means that the choices you made yesterday affect the options you have today. It's common sense. Nothing is inevitable or predetermined...yet your actions and the actions of others can sometimes produce a cumulative momentum almost impossible to resist. That's what karma is: the momentum of cause and effect that drives you forward, occasionally into bottlenecks or booby traps.
Anyway. Predestination itself isn't exactly the topic at hand, rather the logical inconsistency of God predetermining everyone who will be saved, thus negating the idea of free will to believe in God. Which is pretty self explanatory to me.
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I don't believe in anything like predestination.
What about causality?
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I don't believe in anything like predestination.
What about causality?
Um. That's much too vague of a question. What exactly is causality? Wikipedia just makes things even more vague for me.
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I don't believe in anything like predestination.
What about causality?
Um. That's much too vague of a question. What exactly is causality? Wikipedia just makes things even more vague for me.
Cause and effect.
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Ubuntu, there are some problems with causality as expressed by David Hume.
John Locke said that knowledge comes to us through sense data collection (the mind is a "tabula rasa" at birth--meaning, "blank tablet"). Hume said that if this is the case, and if it is also the case that "to know something is to know its causes," then the causal connections must come to us through sense data collection. Essentially, we would need to be able to perceive the cause, the effect, and the causal connection for this to work. He concluded that we can definitely perceive objects, but not the causal connection between objects--this, he says, comes from the mind itself. He argued that the mind is a "relationsihp-maker" (that it assembles causal connections/relationships).
Hume further argued that how we decide to establish the causal connection is based on habit-forming processes in the mind itself.
Anyway, that's just Hume's take on things. We discussed the other causality stuff before. I need to read a book on this stuff and then re-start that conversation again. It's a good one.
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This debate is silly. It's silly to try to understand what people believe and to argue the case of God based on if he does exist. The fact is that there is absolutely no external evidence that suggests the merest possibility of God existing - there is nothing that can lead you to draw a conclusion that God exists in the world. Coming to that conclusion is not science, it's not logic, it's certainly not reason - it's people making shit up. Shit being the operative word hear because it's a load of crap. God does not exist, people who think God exists are deluding themselves because they find it hard to cope with the unfairness of the world and with our lack of genuine purpose. They are either people who were brought up being told that it's true and can't accept that what they're parents told them is false or they are people who are too insecure and weak to accept reality.
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Coming to that conclusion is not science, it's not logic, it's certainly not reason
Logic and reason are waaaaaay different than science.
Often times when people speak the word "God" they use it to mean a different word than you're probably thinking of. I can imagine a perfectly rational (as far as I know) "God" (i.e. creator) of our so-called "universe" that may or may not exist. If we end the conversation about "God," then we basically kill the greatest philosophical conversation ever to take place. So calm down and let people rationally discuss things philosophically.
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If we end the conversation about "God," then we basically kill the greatest philosophical conversation ever to take place.
I beg to differ!
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Logic and reason are waaaaaay different than science.
The dictionary disagrees with you.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/science
"1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/logic
"1. the science that investigates the principles governing correct or reliable inference."
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I can imagine a perfectly rational (as far as I know) "God" (i.e. creator) of our so-called "universe" that may or may not exist.
I can imagine a house made out of chocolate. Just because you like the answer, if you have no observational evidence to suggest that it is even remotely possible that that statement is true then we have to assume that it is false. It would be nice if God existed just like it would be nice if nobody ever died. Being able to imagine something being true, or to say that it is theoretically true - does not in any way actually make it true. I can imagine that you're actually a lesbian midget biker from Jamaica and theoretically from my perspective that could be the case but there is no reason to think that it actually is the case - just like there is no reason to think that God actually exists.
I didn't say you should stop the discussion, just that it is silly and the reason it is silly is because there is no reason to believe in God - so we shouldn't.
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Most people I run into who dislike my disdain for God usually give me that "It's better to believe in God and him not be real, than to not believe and burn in Hell" crap.
Man, I hate that.
Who's to say which god is the God? I think more education on culture as kids grow up will help stimulate this question in people's minds, "How do I know this god is the true God?" The fact is, it's impossible, just short of the hand of God (or hands of Gods if you swing that way) coming down and showing everyone himself in plain view. Anyone from any faith will tell you that their faith is the correct path, which again is impossible for all of them to be correct. Someone somewhere is full of shit, and my money is on all of them.
That has always been my thoughts towards god. Even though I've toyed with the idea of following Christianity, that thought has always stuck in my mind and made me realize better.
Of course, any Christian will tell me that's the work of Satan clouding my vision, but what the fuck ever. I'd rather not believe in God than be a douchebag and follow whatever everyone else tells me to, and think for myself.
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First, the difference between logic and science is obvious to me, yet maybe not to you. Logic deals with things we can know for "certain"--that is, a priori information such as mathematics. Science deals with a posteriori stuff like observations. There is no logical reason that a posteriori observations (scientific theories) will be necessarily true tomorrow. There is an inherent problem with induction, and that is, that it never leads to certainty. That's the difference between science and logic.
The idea that there is no reason to believe in God is itself a silly statement because you're once again generalizing the usage of the word "God" to mean a certain thing--that is, what you take it to mean. Like I said, people tend to use the word to mean different things, so to not recognize that fact would be silly. There are actually plenty of reasons to believe in God: existence itself, complexity of the human body, the beauty of nature, etc. Now granted, your scientific story can also give an answer to these questions. However, what you seem to be doing is saying "I can answer that a different way so there's no reason to think your way about it." Well, a theist could easily say "I can answer these questions a different way so the way you're thinking about it is useless." You have to recognize that there are different viewpoints in order to keep the conversation going. Otherwise you become the same dogmatic fundamentalist that doesn't listen to anything the opposing side says as religious fundamentalists.
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There are actually plenty of reasons to believe in God: existence itself, complexity of the human body, the beauty of nature, etc. Now granted, your scientific story can also give an answer to these questions. However, what you seem to be doing is saying "I can answer that a different way so there's no reason to think your way about it." Well, a theist could easily say "I can answer these questions a different way so the way you're thinking about it is useless." You have to recognize that there are different viewpoints in order to keep the conversation going. Otherwise you become the same dogmatic fundamentalist that doesn't listen to anything the opposing side says as religious fundamentalists.
There is no reason that suggests that God is the answer to those phenomenon. Explain to me a reason that suggests any kind of supernaturalism is responsible for the beauty of nature, the complexity of the human body or existence.
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Most people I run into who dislike my disdain for God usually give me that "It's better to believe in God and him not be real, than to not believe and burn in Hell" crap.
Man, I hate that.
Ah, Pascal's Wager. Can't they dredge up some more recent BS than that, at least?
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There are actually plenty of reasons to believe in God: existence itself, complexity of the human body, the beauty of nature, etc. Now granted, your scientific story can also give an answer to these questions. However, what you seem to be doing is saying "I can answer that a different way so there's no reason to think your way about it." Well, a theist could easily say "I can answer these questions a different way so the way you're thinking about it is useless." You have to recognize that there are different viewpoints in order to keep the conversation going. Otherwise you become the same dogmatic fundamentalist that doesn't listen to anything the opposing side says as religious fundamentalists.
There is no reason that suggests that God is the answer to those phenomenon. Explain to me a reason that suggests any kind of supernaturalism is responsible for the beauty of nature, the complexity of the human body or existence.
The flying spaghetti monster :wink: :roll:
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Explain to me a reason that suggests any kind of supernaturalism is responsible for the beauty of nature, the complexity of the human body or existence.
It appears that I exist in a world of other things that exist. It is hard for me to understand exactly why things exist instead of not existing. Therefore, I believe that there must be a purpose and creator to it all.
or
It appears that things exist. I won't speculate at all as to why because there's no reason to believe that there's a purpose or a God.
I have reason to believe that there might be a creator. I'll be thinking about my reason for the next few years and eventually write something about it. Basically, it's not all that hard to accept the possibility of a creator as long as you recognize the different definitions for "God" (i.e. he is not necessarily omnipotent, omniscient, etc.). I'll be taking Philosophy of Religion sometime with my fav. professor but until then I can only investigate on my own time by reading books and stuff (and I'll read both theistic and atheistic books). Next semester I'm taking Philosophy of Sciences where we get to learn in detail why modern science fails. Fun fun.
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Your reason in no way suggests that there is any supernaturalism responsible for the world.
It appears that I exist in a world of other things that exist. It is hard for me to understand exactly why things exist instead of not existing.
Your observation is that you find it hard to understand why things exist. Nothing from that observation suggests any kind of supernaturalism. You can't just see something (in this case your lack of understanding) and make up a reason for that observation when you have no reason to believe what you've just made up.
It appears that I exist in a world of other things that exist. It is hard for me to understand exactly why things exist instead of not existing.
That's not what I'm doing at all, or what you should do. We can see many reasons why things exist from different contexts. We need to understand that the concept of "purpose" is a human invention and that the natural world does not have purpose. We need to understand that just because we don't understand something, inventing an explanation won't provide us with the truth - instead we need to recognise that we don't know and continue trying to find more real observations that will lead us to conclusions.
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It appears that I exist in a world of other things that exist. It is hard for me to understand exactly why things exist instead of not existing. Therefore, I believe that there must be a purpose and creator to it all.
DAWKINS: To me, the right approach is to say we are profoundly ignorant of these matters. We need to work on them. But to suddenly say the answer is God--it's that that seems to me to close off the discussion.
The idea that there is no reason to believe in God is itself a silly statement because you're once again generalizing the usage of the word "God" to mean a certain thing--that is, what you take it to mean. Like I said, people tend to use the word to mean different things, so to not recognize that fact would be silly.
It's not very productive to just whore words around as you please.
There are actually plenty of reasons to believe in God: existence itself, complexity of the human body, the beauty of nature, etc.
Believing in a god based on these things would be high foolery, scientific ignorance, and shortsightedness.
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Unlike FE or RE god can not be disproved. So really theres no point in talking about it. Not that you'll listen.
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hmm wow, that seems like something I've said a few times already, they really do not listen.
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The concept of a creator cannot be disproven, but human made gods all can.
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not necesarily, it could easily be said that writers of the bible were exagerating God's interaction in human affairs, or that he simply has forsaken us, prooving or disproving is not entirely possible (using the example of a Judeo-Christian God, obviously
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hmm wow, that seems like something I've said a few times already, they really do not listen.
Good to see I'm not the only (kinda) sane one on this thread. BTW Dark Tower=Greatest book series of time.
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i do not believe in god because i think its stupid and because god is stupid and because its pretty stupid to belive in god because he is stupid and it is stupi to belive in something whose existance is highly improbable and stupid because it is a spawn from the fantasies of some guy from the middle east
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not necesarily, it could easily be said that writers of the bible were exagerating God's interaction in human affairs, or that he simply has forsaken us, prooving or disproving is not entirely possible (using the example of a Judeo-Christian God, obviously
By saying that the authors of the Bible are not God himself pretty much debunks the religion singlehandedly, since the Bible claims itself being the word of God. ;)
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Only if you are a very strict and devout christian/catholic, I mean come now, not everyone believes everything a religion tells them to.
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i do not believe in god because i think its stupid and because god is stupid and because its pretty stupid to belive in god because he is stupid and it is stupi to belive in something whose existance is highly improbable and stupid because it is a spawn from the fantasies of some guy from the middle east
God is stupid? When did he take a IQ test?
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I wonder what IQ omniscient is?
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yes he is stupid because he is the creation of a madmans fatasies and the madman is the offspring of the worms from the center of the universe. i am the master, therefor i control the worms.
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It's not very productive to just whore words around as you please.
Dude, I've never seen somebody as dedicated as you are to try and simplify the definition of words to "What I believe it to mean." If you cannot recognize that there are different meanings to this word, "God," for different people, then you're the one who's being foolish. When you say "God does not exist," you obviously have some meaning of the word that you're actually using--otherwise you wouldn't be using it. You seem to mean, much of the time, "the Judeo-Christian God does not exist." Yet you, more than anybody else I've ever seen I think, force yourself to not recognize any other meaning of the word. It's ridiculous.
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Unlike FE or RE god can not be disproved. So really theres no point in talking about it. Not that you'll listen.
Well, we can't prove that pandas exist, so why bother talking about whether they're going extinct or not?
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(http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/8794/wormsnc4.png) (http://imageshack.us)
ive got proof.
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yes he is stupid because he is the creation of a madmans fatasies and the madman is the offspring of the worms from the center of the universe. i am the master, therefor i control the worms.
How can a thing that isn't real be stupid?
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Unlike FE or RE god can not be disproved. So really theres no point in talking about it. Not that you'll listen.
Well, we can't prove that pandas exist, so why bother talking about whether they're going extinct or not?
Whats your point? That gods real? fake?
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because he is, but he isnt at the same time like when a football doesnt hit the fence, but does it its doing a thing and not doing the same thing at the same time because god is stupid and like the man that came from the worms is stupid because he gave birth to god and all of his children( the centerbeings of the globe) so when he goes to sleep god sleeps too and is stupid when not doing anything because he sleep and not being stupid at the same time.
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because he is, but he isnt at the same time like when a football doesnt hit the fence, but does it its doing a thing and not doing the same thing at the same time because god is stupid and like the man that came from the worms is stupid because he gave birth to god and all of his children( the centerbeings of the globe) so when he goes to sleep god sleeps too and is stupid when not doing anything because he sleep and not being stupid at the same time.
Wow. Try some commas, or perhaps some line breaks. Certainly one of the longest sentences that I've ever seen.
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well, you know im like a preacher that try to teach the world about the truth and guys like you just love to ruin things for me no one is perfect and im not perfect but youre not perfect either since no one is perfect if everyone was perfect the world wouldve become a boring place without flaws and no one would have had the pleasures of touching others.
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Second longest sentence I've seen! Keep 'em coming!
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I agree, these sentences are comical. Just do what we're doing; break your sentences up a bit.
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i have my ways of talking and i like to deliver my preachings in long sentences maybe its because my mother had long breasts i dont know but you guys should not be so mean and you should try to be more friendly and i dont like peoples who ignore other peoples flaws you should try to accept them and welcome them because im not a bad person just a confused one and it may be because my father had long breasts too but i dont know because im confused atleast i use spacebar.
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i have my ways of talking
It's impossible to have an intelligent debate in a language which one of the parties has only partial grasp of.
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well i do know how to write properly but i dont like to use my knowledge when im talking about religion i dont know why but maybe because of my childhood i was a lonely child and often had to say a lot of thing in short time because sometimes the teapot would steal my thunder and i didnt like that so that may be the reason.
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atleast i use spacebar.
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well i do use spacebar and it is rocking my world without it my whole world would have gone to hell for sure and i dont like hell because it doesnt exist like heaven but heaven do exist but not as in the bible but it is a place called heaven and it is not that nice because its pretty cold but it is blue and blue is nice i like blue.
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lol, i refuse to read your posts anymore unless you use punctuation marks.
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well i dont force your to read it i just want to say something and i dont like ignorant persons like you i am just a guy that has something on his heart, i like peaches but theyre not here, it is sad. there.
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ok, well i have no idea what you just said.
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Suffice it to say that there remains, over 3800 years since the onset of the abrahmic monotheistic religions, absolutely no empiracle, tangible, or even credible evidence that can prove the existence of a god, christian or otherwise.
The need for a belief in a superior being to conduct one's self in a civilized manner based on fear of sternal damnation, or the greed of reciept of eternal paradise, has come and gone.
Organized religion is an evil, nasty, horrible entity that has historically, and continually ostracized, persecuted, and suppressed the free thinking mind for thousands of years. Resorting to violence in the crusades, and beyond.
Ignorance of the facts, and tangible proofs that we have acquired in archeological digs, scientific discovery, and even the simplest of botanical sciences that my 11 year old mentaloly disabled niece can learn, disproving most of the biblical explanations of the origin of the world and mankind is the christian/jewish/sunni/shieite/muslim (and the list goes on) way of life. Keep in the dark, that way the power remains with the clergy, and man does not progress.
Only until the US made a founding law about religion and government, did they have power over the people. Now they are grasping at straws, and people are becoming aware of the facts, instead of just taking the word of the clergy's word for it.
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yeah what he said but the worms are real i showed you evidence it is for real theyre in the universe controlling our lives and we do what they want because they made us and they controll us were not bananas but they dont eat us i like waffles.
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I think maybe we should consider that this person is either a child, or someone that has no punctuation on his keyboard.
However, is points that he brings up are a little off the wall, and very off target. I might submit that we are possibly dealing with a "Special Person", in that same breath we should extend the proper courtesies, and not completely bash him k?
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welli like to think that everyone is special and that it is not bad to be special and that if you are special you should be proud of yourself and that it is important to be special because if no one was special everyone would have been pretty much the same since speicalities makes peoples different and good at different things or maybe just interesting and i am special and so are you since we are not the same and you and me are not the same as eveyone else so that is a good thing in my opinion.
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welli like to think that everyone is special and that it is not bad to be special and that if you are special you should be proud of yourself and that it is important to be special because if no one was special everyone would have been pretty much the same since speicalities makes peoples different and good at different things or maybe just interesting and i am special and so are you since we are not the same and you and me are not the same as eveyone else so that is a good thing in my opinion.
omg, seriously. do you ever use punctuation? honestly, how old are you? writing one "sentence" the size of a paragraph using the word "and" 7 times makes me realise what they say about the quality of the education system these days.
please, just say your age so we can sigh in relief at the fact that you've still got time to learn proper written english. :?
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i dont like to tell others what my age is because i am female and my age is going upwards like my weight is doing and if you cant accept that and respect me then i am going to call you A FUCKING WHORE! no, seriously...YOU ARE A DIRTY, FUCKING CRAPTARD NUDGING YOUR OWN NUTSACK!
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its great to see literate and intelligent people on the forum some people think that gramma doesnt matter and that you can write whatever you want on the internet but the fact is that it really makes a difference in how hard a sentence is i would also point out that if youre trying to win arguments then you need to be as straight forward and as understandable as possible otherwise people will ignore you or judge your intelligence based on your writing skills if you ever involve yourself in serious debating not competitive debating but a debate within an organisation or political party or between political parties you will find that nothing is ever achieved unless people can understand each other fuck it is difficult to understand posts with absolutely no punctuation at all to be honest i truly believe that there is a direct relationship between literacy and intelligence obviously there are some exceptions to this rule but they are very rare
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i think the reason youre so ignorant is because youre from australia. you are a bastard.
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i think the reason youre so ignorant is because youre from australia. you are a bastard.
i think you are quite strange, and i dont mean that in an insulting way. i asked for your age because your writing style is very poor and frusterating to try and read. quite frankly looking at what you write makes me NOT want to read it but becase its poorly written. if you were young then i can understand that your literary skills mightnt be up to the same standard as some of the other people here, but then you going on a tangent about your weight and insulting people is just plain bizzare. :shock:
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thank you i try to be a nice person but sometimes it is a bit hard the reason i write so poorly is because were talking about god and it is like when the closet close it doors on me and i cant get inside again if you know what i mean it is not my fault and i am sorry if you guys find it hard to read and i understand if you find it frustrating to see such bad typing but i am having some problems when italk about some topics and especially god since he doesnt exist and he is stupid since the worms are the only creators in this universe besides me.
epic.
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Why are we even arguing with a fat old woman?
(http://www.sunnews.com/images/2004/0212/bellville.jpg)
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i dont like your attitude, YOU AUSTRALIAN SHITFACE. you are australian. it is a sin to be australian.
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i dont like your attitude, YOU AUSTRALIAN SHITFACE. you are australian. it is a sin to be australian.
so, i guess you dont believe in a literal version of the bible then? :?
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the bible is the diary of a madman.
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the bible is the diary of a madman.
then why do you talk of sin?
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well even though the bible is just some insane ramblings i do have the right to talk about sin sin is just the word for doing something wrong and i think it is wrong to come from australia and even though we should all love eachother im not going to love someone from australia do you want to enter my invisible spaceship?
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Unlike FE or RE god can not be disproved. So really theres no point in talking about it. Not that you'll listen.
Well, we can't prove that pandas exist, so why bother talking about whether they're going extinct or not?
Whats your point? That gods real? fake?
My point is that a god's existence would have a tremendous effect on the Universe, and that belief in any deity has tremendous effect on all people.
Dude, I've never seen somebody as dedicated as you are to try and simplify the definition of words to "What I believe it to mean." If you cannot recognize that there are different meanings to this word, "God," for different people, then you're the one who's being foolish. When you say "God does not exist," you obviously have some meaning of the word that you're actually using--otherwise you wouldn't be using it. You seem to mean, much of the time, "the Judeo-Christian God does not exist." Yet you, more than anybody else I've ever seen I think, force yourself to not recognize any other meaning of the word. It's ridiculous.
When I say "there is no God" this means...
a) all organized theistic religions and holy books are false
b) there are no conscious omniscient or omnipotent beings
c) there are no entities that operate in a supernatural way
d) reality/the universe was not created by a sentience
e) there is no interactive energy that connects all matter and consciousness
Anything else is not "God" anymore than a clock is a computer.
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Why are we even arguing with a fat old woman?
(http://www.sunnews.com/images/2004/0212/bellville.jpg)
OMG I LOVE THE TRIPLETS OF BELLVILLE!
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Ubuntu, I think you're confusing this character "God" (traditionally the name of the Judeo-Christian deity) with the term "god."
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Knight, you claim that all the specific deities invented by human religions are false because we know they were invented by humans. Yet the *concept* of god was also invented by humans. By the same logic, shouldn't the whole concept of god also be false?
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Knight, you claim that all the specific deities invented by human religions are false because we know they were invented by humans.
I hope I didn't say that. The way I know that specific deities do not exist is based on whether or not their characteristics are logically impossible. If a deity, say "God," were to have characteristics that are impossible, then I can safely rule out the foundational existence of that character. I do believe that that character "God" as well as every other deity I've ever thought of (Zeus, Aphrodite, etc.) exist (but at a metaphysical level of "If it is conceived in thought, it exists"). But that's beside the point.
Yet the *concept* of god was also invented by humans. By the same logic, shouldn't the whole concept of god also be false?
It depends on what you're referring to. I think you're saying "_____ is false because it has been proven that it was invented by humans."
In that case, anything that has ever been conceived by human consciousness would be false. Keep in mind that the concept 'god' is ambiguous. It does not refer to any one thing. Often times philosophically the concept 'god' actually does not describe a thing with certain characteristics (a deity), but instead describes an activity (verb).
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Knight, please tell us more about the concept of God, or a god.
Less popular than the Wii article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God
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I already described it on the fifth post down here:
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4516&start=360
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I already described it on the fifth post down here:
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4516&start=360
I can't find anything you wrote about God or god... religion, but not supernatural creators.
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Oh I'm dumb. I thought I had written about it before but it turns out it was just the post that I posted above.
Basically I was referring to the theological (and metaphysical) distinction between God (the character in the Bible, or a 'god') and god (an ambiguous term that can mean many things). Something my professor told me was that the only concept of 'god' that is really possible (logically) is a 'god' concept that means "to be" (a verb). However, I think that it's possible, on a much more local level, that our world can still have a God character. We'll be discussing it again in class tomorrow. Interesting stuff. I think I'm going to read The End of Faith or Letter to a Christian Nation over Christmas break.
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I think I'm going to read The End of Faith or Letter to a Christian Nation over Christmas break.
The God Delusion makes the perfect Christmas gift!
(http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/3141/europebeliefingodkl1pa9.png)
'The percentage of people in European countries who said in 2005 that they believe in God. Countries with Catholic or Muslim majorities tend to poll highest.'
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I'll also read Dawkins's books and also The Language of God. Not all over Christmas break though.
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I had intended to read The Language of God, however after reading TIME's interview with Dawkins and Collins, I was disappointed with the poverty of Collins' arguments. Personally I'd rather re-read Finding Darwin's God.
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Hey guys, here are two really good debaters arguing Atheism vs. Theism:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7278326259607745595&q=Atheist+debate&hl=en
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i see GOD in every one of us ! :idea:
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but if god is in everyone of us we dont exist because god doesnt not exist because i know that because it is the worms that made the earth and the earth is shaped like a cone and that may be because i like balls and i made the worms of the center of the universe so i know because i am your overfiend and that is because once i saw this peach and it fell of the tree and it landed near my hip so i ate it yummi.
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Hey guys, here are two really good debaters arguing Atheism vs. Theism:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7278326259607745595&q=Atheist+debate&hl=en
That was an OK debate. I haven't seen many, so I couldn't really compare.
My biggest problem is that the Humanist/Atheist kept arguing passages from the bible against the other guy's "morality" statements, to which he claimed that "the fallibility of the bible is not the issue" or some shit like that.
Of course, we've already had that argument here--where I stated that if the Bible is not literally true, it is pretty much useless and does not really work in justifying the Christian Myth. Of course, there was a big stink about that here about there being good moral in it, but that's not the point.
The Bible is the only piece of significant physical "evidence" that the Christians have. There's really nothing else before or after the New Testament that confirms anything about their beliefs. Many claim that Science itself confirms a God just because of the complexity of reality, but much like Michael Shermer said in that video in the Dr. Dino thread, replacing an unexplained event with "God did it!" still doesn't explain a damn thing, and that is NOT science.
Morality indeed is relative, as is ethics, which is the one thing the Theist in this debate doesn't take into account. Hitler indeed did believe that the Jews were greedy, horrible people, and believed that they were ruining his country. So, he decided to eradicate them from his country, as well as the countries that were conquered during his reign. This seems so terrible in retrospect, but many people in the country, even the region felt the same way. Even the Vatican deliberately did not take any action to oppose Germany (http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/12448/) during this whole ordeal. Anti-semitism is still very prevalent in Germany today, Nazi or not.
Slavery still exists in many places in Africa as well, which is plenty of evidence that morality is relative. Relative to what, I couldn't really say--education, perhaps. But the fact is, there isn't really a completely common view on morality in the world, and the Theist in that video's argument does not hold any water.
The Humanist, however, hit the nail on the head. If morality is set by God, then we should all still be killing thousands of innocent non-believers including men, women, and children; stoning homosexuals, fortunetellers, and defiant children; and all sorts of other horrid things as described in the bible.
That seemed to be the biggest issue in the debate by far, and I don't think either of them argued it very well. But oh well.
Anyone have any other good debates? This stuff is really interesting, and my TV is in the shop right now, so I need stuff to watch!
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Go to Google Video and type "Atheist Debate" or any other phrase.
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Well, I meant more in the way of suggestions. Finding a video on Google Video doesn't guarantee a good debate. (Especially if Kent Hovind is involved ;) )
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He's a good debater. Just look for some, watch part of them, and see if it's any good.
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He is indeed a good debater, but he's still full of shit. ;P
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I found THIS (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4007930854195650071&q=Atheist+debate) debate to be VERY good. James Bower is now one of my new heros. I found it hilarious how pissed off and impatient Pendelton started getting about halfway through the debate. I bet from his point of view, he was getting smashed--and I would be inclined to agree.
The results of the survey (http://theatheistagenda.org/files/debate_results/index.html) that was conducted that night are very disappointing, though. Amazing how many people are so stubborn in their mystical beliefs...
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That's one of the debates I actually started watching but the sound was horrible so I didn't. Now that you've told me it's good I'll give it a watch when I have the chance. But the sound is horrible. And the balloon thing was dumb.
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God exists. I have grown close to Him over the years and His presence is felt inside of me. I know there is no way of proving this to others, since it can only be proved to oneself. Also, there is no way for an Athiest to explain miracles, healing, and exorcism. I would suggest reading the book Can Man Live Without God by Ravi Zacharias which disproves many claims made by Athiests. (Athiesm is a state of belief as is religion)
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Thanks for the reference to the book, I'll check it out sometime. I've felt the same feeling as you at times. For a long time I believed that it was the Christian God that I felt inside of me, but now I can see that it could be many other possible things. It's an interesting topic to meditate on.
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Also, there is no way for an Athiest to explain miracles, healing, and exorcism.
Sure there is. Miracles don't exist, although coincidences and luck do, and are sometimes labeled as miracles. Exorcism doesn't exist, but some con-men manage to scam people into paying them to perform it anyways. Healing of course does exist, but if you mean miracle or faith healing, it can be explained by similar means as exorcism and miracles, together with the remarkably strong connection between mind and body. This connection can literally cause the mind to heal the body of certain ills by simply believing strongly enough. This is a medically documented fact, and is, among other things, the reason that medical tests give placebos to the control group, rather than leaving them completely unmedicated.
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Also, there is no way for an Athiest to explain miracles, healing, and exorcism.
Sure there is. Miracles don't exist, although coincidences and luck do, and are sometimes labeled as miracles. Exorcism doesn't exist, but some con-men manage to scam people into paying them to perform it anyways. Healing of course does exist, but if you mean miracle or faith healing, it can be explained by similar means as exorcism and miracles, together with the remarkably strong connection between mind and body. This connection can literally cause the mind to heal the body of certain ills by simply believing strongly enough. This is a medically documented fact, and is, among other things, the reason that medical tests give placebos to the control group, rather than leaving them completely unmedicated.
Truth.
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God exists. I have grown close to Him over the years and His presence is felt inside of me. I know there is no way of proving this to others, since it can only be proved to oneself. Also, there is no way for an Athiest to explain miracles, healing, and exorcism. I would suggest reading the book Can Man Live Without God by Ravi Zacharias which disproves many claims made by Athiests. (Athiesm is a state of belief as is religion)
This is, of course, a very common argument put forward by religious people fairly often. It's a very convenient argument because it essentially says that we can't use science to demonstrate that God does or does not exist. Of course this is plainly false and doesn't even make sense. Can you please explain a rational reason why we can't test the existence of God with scientific method? Can you back that argument up with any independent sources or evidence? Of course you can't, and the reason you can't is that this argument that there is no way of proving God to others comes from the fact that science so totally destroys the belief in God that they have to resort to making up arguments that attempt to explain why science isn't credible. If what they're saying is true they would be able to back it up easily.
It's all very well to say that you feel the presence of God and that miracles, healing and exorcism exists but the fact is that all the independent studies into this apparent existence have failed. Indeed scientists can now show that religious people of all religions, including non-theistic religions such as Buddhism all experience the same feelings when they pray/mediate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology
It's also well documented that people of all kinds of religions make the similar outlandish and unbelievable claims. For example in parts of Africa where they have strong religions involving spirits and witches, it is easy to find people who claim to have seen witches flying overhead. However can you explain why in places that don't have those beliefs you can't find people who make the same claims? Why is that people who don't live in cultures indoctrinated with a particular religious belief ever take up those beliefs until they get in contact with them? Why is that God only tells you what to believe when you already know what he wants you to believe? Why does he never give out information that people don't already have?
People have all kinds of irrational and unreasoned beliefs. In fact there are many explanations for why they hold those beliefs. In particular it is built in to people to believe what they're told from a young age and to personify objects. This is because children who believe their parents when they say not to go near the fire are less likely to be burnt and people who are quick to realise the intent of an animal are less likely to be eaten by it. Unfortunately that also means that they believe the lies they are told about religion and they find it easy to assume things have an intent when they actually don't.
Regarding Can Man Live Without God
Here is a great article that explains just what a load of unreasoned and illogical crap that book is.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/zacharias.html
I would finally like to point out that atheism and religion are completely different types of belief. While you can define everything as a 'belief' - religion is a belief in things that are unbacked up by observational evidence and have no probability of actually being true. Atheism, on the other hand, is based on observing the world and trying to draw conclusions based on what we actually see in the world. This is a completely different view. It's one where you question what you're told and are prepared to change your views as new facts are presented. For example, for a long time atheists didn't understand why people believed in God and wrote them off as either crazy or brainwashed. Now we know that it is an evolutionary trait, probably an unlucky cause of other more useful evolutionary advantages our mind has.
That said, just because we understand why something happens, it doesn't mean that we should be part of it.
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Can you please explain a rational reason why we can't test the existence of God with scientific method?
Uhhh... essentially, yes I can. Later today (I have class coming up) I'll try to remember to get back on here and explain to you a concept of 'god' that cannot be tested by science. Basically, it's because we exist in two different realms. But I'll explain that later and it probably won't sound all that hard to believe.
science so totally destroys the belief in God
Not necessarily, again. Not if science cannot measure god's realm.
If what they're saying is true they would be able to back it up easily.
Why?
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I don't know if responding with "yes I have an answer, but you'll have to wait until later for me to post it" is a very strong argument.
You've refuted some points but I'll refrain from commenting until you put forward an argument backing up what you've said.
Regarding your question of why they should be able to back up their claims - if they can't back them up, there is no reason to believe them and obviously a lot of good reasons not to believe them. A theory without any evidence behind it is meaningless - and that's what these types of religious theories are - meaningless. We can think about them as much as we like, but until their is some significant evidence to support them, we can easily dismiss them as utter rubbish.
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Can you please explain a rational reason why we can't test the existence of God with scientific method?
Sure. Science is based on the cycle of observation, theory, hypothesis, observation. Suppose one wanted to use science to disprove the existence of a divine being. Well, our theory is that there is no divine being, so we need to make a hypothesis about some observation we might be able to carry out that would go one way if there was, or another if there was not. But to do this, we need said divine being to directly intervene in our experiment. So there is know way of knowing whether there was no divine being, or there was one who chose not to act. On the other hand, suppose that some observation has no natural explanation. How can we ever know that there is no natural explanation, and not just that we can't think of one?
The problem is that supernatural explanations can in principle explain anything, but so can some unknown natural force or agent that we don't yet know the properties of, and we can never prove which is the cause of some unexplained phenomena.
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I don't know if responding with "yes I have an answer, but you'll have to wait until later for me to post it" is a very strong argument.
Come on beast, he wasn't saying it was. He was just saying that he intended to post one later, and you should check back when he did.
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I have to disagree with beast; we can't formulate and test a hypothesis of "There is no God". Science has nothing to say here.
However, logic has a great deal to say. Theists are the ones making a positive claim here. It is therefore on them to bring forth evidence that God exists, not on atheists to bring evidence that he does not. It is irrational to believe a positive claim that is not substantiated by evidence.
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Dysfunction is quite correct. It is for those who believe in a deity to prove its existance (they seem very willing to do so most of the time anyway.)
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Dysfunction is quite correct. It is for those who believe in a deity to prove its existance (they seem very willing to do so most of the time anyway.)
They seem willing to provide fallacious arguments, but nothing I would call *evidence*.
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Me either, but they think it is evidence. :roll:
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Dysfunction is quite correct. It is for those who believe in a deity to prove its existance (they seem very willing to do so most of the time anyway.)
I don't know if I'd agree. I think it is still beneficial for non-believers to try to disprove/prove a deity's existence. I myself would believe in the Christian God if there were actually some substantial evidence to supports its existence. Or any God for that matter.
I'm sure most atheists would share the same sentiments.
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It depends what sort of athiest you are. I am one, and have been for many years. However, I don't feel like I need to 'spread the word' like some sort of mirror image missionary. Usually because people don't listen, but that's bneside the point.
So, if the religious people are going to try to convince me it is they that bear the onus of proof.
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Dysfunction is quite correct. It is for those who believe in a deity to prove its existance (they seem very willing to do so most of the time anyway.)
I don't know if I'd agree. I think it is still beneficial for non-believers to try to disprove/prove a deity's existence. I myself would believe in the Christian God if there were actually some substantial evidence to supports its existence. Or any God for that matter.
I'm sure most atheists would share the same sentiments.
We don't have to, and can't possibly, disprove god's existence. All we have to do is show it's currently irrational to believe in him.
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Him? It? She? That'd be worth seeing, they prove there is a god and find out it's female!! :lol:
But you're right Dysfunction, seriously.
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It depends what sort of athiest you are. I am one, and have been for many years. However, I don't feel like I need to 'spread the word' like some sort of mirror image missionary.
I'm glad of this. As an atheist, I'm baffled by the desire of the New Atheist movement to "spread the good word" of atheism, and criticise religion on the basis of spreading intolerance. But the evangelical atheists are doing the exact same thing! They use the same justification that every other religion uses: they think that if everyone else believed what they did, the world would be a better place. They (both the religions and the atheists) are probably right about this, because if everyone had the same beliefs, there would be one less thing for us to fight about. But in trying to stamp out diversity with the justification that everyone who isn't an atheist is wrong and moreover lends power to intolerence is trying to put out the fire by pouring on lighter fluid.
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Can you please explain a rational reason why we can't test the existence of God with scientific method?
Uhhh... essentially, yes I can. Later today (I have class coming up) I'll try to remember to get back on here and explain to you a concept of 'god' that cannot be tested by science. Basically, it's because we exist in two different realms. But I'll explain that later and it probably won't sound all that hard to believe.
If interactions cannot occur between the two realms, it doesn't matter to one if the other exists. If they can indeed interact, they are the same realm.
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It depends what sort of athiest you are. I am one, and have been for many years. However, I don't feel like I need to 'spread the word' like some sort of mirror image missionary.
I'm glad of this. As an atheist, I'm baffled by the desire of the New Atheist movement to "spread the good word" of atheism, and criticise religion on the basis of spreading intolerance.
There's this evil thing in our world. Should we not stamp it out?
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There's this evil thing in our world. Should we not stamp it out?
Just because you think religion is evil does not mean it actually is. I should also point out that the concept of evil is in itself a religious concept, since without a God or gods it doesn't exist.
I agree with you, but that doesn't make us right.
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There's this evil thing in our world. Should we not stamp it out?
Just because you think religion is evil does not mean it actually is. I should also point out that the concept of evil is in itself a religious concept, since without a God or gods it doesn't exist.
I'm pretty sure that the concept of evil is still valid without a God or gods. Just because ethics may not be dictated by a transcendent being, doesn't mean that there can't be a universal set of ethics that we all can agree on, which defines what actions are "good" and what actions are "bad."
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I'm glad of this. As an atheist, I'm baffled by the desire of the New Atheist movement to "spread the good word" of atheism, and criticise religion on the basis of spreading intolerance.
There's this evil thing in our world. Should we not stamp it out?
Not if in doing so, we become it.
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A theory without any evidence behind it is meaningless - and that's what these types of religious theories are - meaningless.
I sharply disagree with this statement for a couple of reasons:
1) Religious belief is a methodology that makes assumptions from the beginning that cannot be proven (within the methodology of that given belief system). Scientific belief is a methodology that makes assumptions from the beginning that cannot be proven (within the methodology of that given belief system).
2) Religions are very meaningful. If you mean by "meaningless," "that which has no meaning," then it is a clearly preposterous claim. Now, if you mean by "meaningless," "that which does not exist in fundamental reality" then you might have a valid point.
Can you please explain a rational reason why we can't test the existence of God with scientific method?
My argument is this:
If I mean by the word 'god' something that is a 'creator,' it is very possible that we rationally cannot test the creator's existence with scientific method. This is essentially because the creator very well may exist outside of our world (i.e. that our world exists within the world of the creator but his does not exist inside ours). To illustrate this, let me give an example of a possible conception of a creator. Assume that one thousand years from now, scientists have mastered Artificial Intelligence and have been able to successfully utilize it. If a scientist creates an Artificially Intelligent being into existence (out of energy), and places that Artificially Intelligent being in a computer program, the world of the creator is not observable from the world of the computer program that the being lives in. Essentially, the AI being can just be a computer program itself living in a computer program. In this sense, that being, let's call it Fred (the AI being), would be the creation of the creator (Janet). Janet would be a 'god' (if used to mean 'creator') to Fred. If in Fred's world, he attempts to observe that which is outside of his observable world (namely, the creator Janet), Fred will find that he cannot do so.
To me, this use of the word 'god' does not necessarily break the rules of logic or rational thought. Keep in mind that the AI computer program analogy is only an example of how it can be possible. Also keep in mind that Janet (the creator, or 'god' of Fred) is not the creator of her own world. She is not omnipotent, omniscient, etc. in regards to the world she lives in.
Anyway, I believe that illustrates that there are possible conceptions of 'god' that cannot be measured scientifically from within the computer program world.
However, logic has a great deal to say. Theists are the ones making a positive claim here. It is therefore on them to bring forth evidence that God exists, not on atheists to bring evidence that he does not. It is irrational to believe a positive claim that is not substantiated by evidence.
Good point. It is necessary for any conception of 'god' to be logical in order for it to be believed and in order for it to have any chance of existing in fundamental reality. There are actually several logical arguments for the existence of god that are rationally obligatory (that is, no rational person can deny their truth). However, these rational arguments for the existence of god tend to not describe the god as a 'being' (a thing with distinct properties). Instead, these rational arguments only hold up if 'god is meant to be 'Being' (that is, "to be") or meant to be 'thinking.' One cannot rationally deny that 'Being' or 'thinking' exists, and therefore these synonyms for 'god' are rationally obligatory.
As a side note, none of the religious tribal gods are rationally obligatory. That is, the character "God" from the Bible is obviously not rationally obligatory. One can be rational and not believe in the existence of this god, but one cannot be rational and not believe in the existence of the verb-god 'to be' or 'to think' (that is, 'Being' or 'thinking). A wonderful discussion.
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This is a rather strange definition of God you have, Knight. It seems God could be anything at all by your definition; and in that case what meaning does the word have?
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I'm pretty sure that the concept of evil is still valid without a God or gods. Just because ethics may not be dictated by a transcendent being, doesn't mean that there can't be a universal set of ethics that we all can agree on, which defines what actions are "good" and what actions are "bad."
Of course. I meant that there is no intrinsic quality in the universe that defines things as "good" or "evil", and the concepts are, insofar as we know, human ones.
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There's this evil thing in our world. Should we not stamp it out?
Just because you think religion is evil does not mean it actually is.
:shock: I am thunderstruck by this revelation!
I should also point out that the concept of evil is in itself a religious concept, since without a God or gods it doesn't exist.
Whereas evil means "immoral" and "immoral" means "causing human suffering and reducing human happiness," it would be inane to say religion invented the concept.
Very few sensible atheists, including Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, would like to pass laws or use violence against religion. However, many sensible atheists would like to show the many faithful the errors in their beliefs and would like that children are properly educated.
The "mission" of the "New Atheists" could be executed with a minimum of conflict... legally and physically that is.
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Can you please explain a rational reason why we can't test the existence of God with scientific method?
My argument is this:
If I mean by the word 'god' something that is a 'creator,' it is very possible that we rationally cannot test the creator's existence with scientific method. This is essentially because the creator very well may exist outside of our world (i.e. that our world exists within the world of the creator but his does not exist inside ours). To illustrate this, let me give an example of a possible conception of a creator. Assume that one thousand years from now, scientists have mastered Artificial Intelligence and have been able to successfully utilize it. If a scientist creates an Artificially Intelligent being into existence (out of energy), and places that Artificially Intelligent being in a computer program, the world of the creator is not observable from the world of the computer program that the being lives in. Essentially, the AI being can just be a computer program itself living in a computer program. In this sense, that being, let's call it Fred (the AI being), would be the creation of the creator (Janet). Janet would be a 'god' (if used to mean 'creator') to Fred. If in Fred's world, he attempts to observe that which is outside of his observable world (namely, the creator Janet), Fred will find that he cannot do so.
To me, this use of the word 'god' does not necessarily break the rules of logic or rational thought. Keep in mind that the AI computer program analogy is only an example of how it can be possible. Also keep in mind that Janet (the creator, or 'god' of Fred) is not the creator of her own world. She is not omnipotent, omniscient, etc. in regards to the world she lives in.
Anyway, I believe that illustrates that there are possible conceptions of 'god' that cannot be measured scientifically from within the computer program world.
The one thing that stands out to me, is that the computer program (or our "realm") is contained within Janet/God's "realm". I'm fairly sure what you do mean by the two "realms", but in this case they are completely within contact with each other at all times (being that God's realm exists "around" the creation's realm). I don't see how hypothetically that Fred couldn't eventually decipher the workings of his universe (the computer program), and eventually find out a way to "transcend" his realm--like patching his way from his program into another program, or even find a way to communicate with or observe the "parent" realm. Going of of your same analogy, Computers have input and output devices (otherwise they're kind of useless as devices)--so who says that the universe we live in, if it was indeed created, there aren't "input" and "output" devices to this creator's realm?
I also beg to ask the question that I'm sure beast will ask as well: Where did Janet come from? Who created the creator, and if no one--how can the creator just flat out exist? It just doesn't make sense.
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:shock: I am thunderstruck by this revelation!
Since you said that we have an evil thing that should be stomped out I, felt it pertinent to the discussion at hand. Believing that something is bad or evil (when other people do not) does not give you the right to eliminate it.
Whereas evil means "immoral" and "immoral" means "causing human suffering and reducing human happiness," it would be inane to say religion invented the concept.
As I've said before, it very much depends on your definition of "Evil".
Very few sensible atheists, including Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, would like to pass laws or use violence against religion. However, many sensible atheists would like to show the many faithful the errors in their beliefs and would like that children are properly educated.
The "mission" of the "New Atheists" could be executed with a minimum of conflict... legally and physically that is.
What I am saying is that it doesn't matter how little conflict would be needed to accomplish it. The simple fact that you cannot know that you are right means that you cannot reasonably attempt to force your beliefs on another person.
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Where did Janet come from? Who created the creator, and if no one--how can the creator just flat out exist? It just doesn't make sense.
Magic dancing monkeys ad infinitum.
Believing that something is bad or evil (when other people do not) does not give you the right to eliminate it.
Our veterans didn't hesitate with the Nazis.
The simple fact that you cannot know that you are right means that you cannot reasonably attempt to force your beliefs on another person.
"Force"? Goodness no sir. That is the polar opposite of what trying to convince someone to see is.
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The simple fact that you cannot know that you are right means that you cannot reasonably attempt to force your beliefs on another person.
It means nothing of the sort. Barring mathematical truths, nobody can really know they are right about anything; that doesn't mean they can't reasonably attempt to "force their beliefs on another person", whatever that means. I consider it my right to try to convince other people of anything I want, and if I think that believing a certain thing is dangerous to the believer or those around him, and I give a damn, I will consider it my ethical responsibility to try to convince him otherwise, even if it means "forcing my belief" on him.
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It means nothing of the sort. Barring mathematical truths, nobody can really know they are right about anything; that doesn't mean they can't reasonably attempt to "force their beliefs on another person", whatever that means. I consider it my right to try to convince other people of anything I want, and if I think that believing a certain thing is dangerous to the believer or those around him, and I give a damn, I will consider it my ethical responsibility to try to convince him otherwise, even if it means "forcing my belief" on him.
I agree with you, I'm just talking about religious beliefs against atheism here, nothing more. By "force your beliefs on another person" I didn't mean "try to convince people of anything you want". I was referring to "stamping out this evil thing in our world".
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This is a rather strange definition of God you have, Knight.
I tend to find the defintion of 'god' as "creator" or "that which creates" not very strange, really. I'm sure other people use this defintion.
It seems God could be anything at all by your definition; and in that case what meaning does the word have?
First off, "God" is usually a character (or a certain 'god'--meaning a certain 'being'). The term 'god,' throughout history, has been defined as "that which is fundamental" or "that which there is no going behind." Therefore, it can easily be concluded that "thinking" and "Being" are perfect synonyms of the verb-god. There is nothing more fundamental than "Being."
I don't see how hypothetically that Fred couldn't eventually decipher the workings of his universe (the computer program), and eventually find out a way to "transcend" his realm--like patching his way from his program into another program
Keep in mind that the analogy is probably not the only working example. But what you're essentially saying is that if, in a thousand years, Janet (the human being, scientist, computer programmer) creates a computer program with an AI being named Fred (who is a computer program within the world-program), Fred (a computer program) can somehow transcend the computer program-ness that he lives in and come into what we think of as the "real world." I don't think this is possible by virtue of the fact that what we think of as "real world" presents a visible disconnect to a computer program. It seems that it would be possible for the computer programmer, Janet, to create Fred in such a way that he cannot transcend the world in which he lives (in our case, the universe).
Where did Janet come from? Who created the creator, and if no one--how can the creator just flat out exist? It just doesn't make sense.
George is the god (creator) of Janet's realm (or universe). Billy is the god (creator) of George's realm (or universe). Etc., etc., etc...
Essentially, to answer your question, you're asking "What about fundamental reality?" I admit that this model says nothing at all about a creator that exists fundamentally, at the end of the long chain of creators. However, it doesn't really matter. Because if the example I provided is logically possible, then Janet could still give us religious things like "life after death" (heaven) or "death after death" (hell). In essence, our god (if it is a 'being') is not omnipotent, omniscient, etc. in fundamental reality, but that being can still basically do anything he/she wants to our universe. Could be a Deist god running an experiment to see how things turn out. Who knows... But the essential thing to realize is that I never claimed to answer the question "What is fundamentally real?" Really, that question cannot be knowningly answered...ever. It could be that fundamental reality is much different than what we observe it to be in our computer program universe.
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I consider it my right to try to convince other people of anything I want, and if I think that believing a certain thing is dangerous to the believer or those around him, and I give a damn, I will consider it my ethical responsibility to try to convince him otherwise, even if it means "forcing my belief" on him.
You can believe this if you want, but that doesn't mean you can't cause a great deal of harm by trying to convince others of your beliefs, even if you do it by reasonable persuasion.
The New Atheists say, publically, that not only is religion wrong, but it perpetrates evil in the world, such as encouraging intolerance, and goes on to state that even moderate adherents to a religious faith are complicit in this, because their mere presence adds weight to the intolerant statements of the religious conservatives who preach intolerance. Essentially they are saying that all religious followers are helping to cause intolerance. How is this any better than religious conservatives who state that homosexuality is a sin?
They have the right to preach whatever they want, but that doesn't stop them from being hypocrites when they do.
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I'm just talking about religious beliefs against atheism here, nothing more. By "force your beliefs on another person" I didn't mean "try to convince people of anything you want". I was referring to "stamping out this evil thing in our world".
What a misunderstanding of a figure of speech! If by organized education, reasoning, and discussion, religious belief can be gradually voluntarily and of independent will discarded by the religious (as is happening more and more with us young folks), would that mission not be stamping out foolery?
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A theory without any evidence behind it is meaningless - and that's what these types of religious theories are - meaningless.
I sharply disagree with this statement for a couple of reasons:
1) Religious belief is a methodology that makes assumptions from the beginning that cannot be proven (within the methodology of that given belief system). Scientific belief is a methodology that makes assumptions from the beginning that cannot be proven (within the methodology of that given belief system).
But why is this? Lets imagine for example that God actually doesn't exist and that religion is a made up response to humans misinterpreting the world. Science can and has explained this - it explains why we have this response and why it isn't true. So it seems very convenient that religious people defend their beliefs by saying that science doesn't apply to them.
A fantastic example is the cargo cult (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult) which is a religion that we can easily see the origins of, the reasons for their beliefs and the similarities between their beliefs and other religions. Why would it be that younger religions can easily be explained, while older ones can't? Science doesn't apply to religion only if you are religious and you don't want to accept the facts.
2) Religions are very meaningful. If you mean by "meaningless," "that which has no meaning," then it is a clearly preposterous claim. Now, if you mean by "meaningless," "that which does not exist in fundamental reality" then you might have a valid point.
I mean the latter - sorry for the confusion. I mean that in terms of explaining how the world came into being and why we should follow the ethical beliefs that we do follow, religion is a meaningless argument. Actually it's not because people believe it - but in terms of providing a good argument, the fact that it can't back up what it says means that it is invalid - because people choose to believe it without real evidence gives it meaning, but it's not at all a legitimate way of arguing and the reason people believe it is because they are brainwashed from birth and because they let their primitive instincts control their beliefs. The vast majority of people have the same religious beliefs that their parents have.
Can you please explain a rational reason why we can't test the existence of God with scientific method?
My argument is this:
If I mean by the word 'god' something that is a 'creator,' it is very possible that we rationally cannot test the creator's existence with scientific method. This is essentially because the creator very well may exist outside of our world (i.e. that our world exists within the world of the creator but his does not exist inside ours).
How can you say 'The creator very well may exist outside of our world?" How is that more probable than "The creator does not exist" or "The creator is a giant hypnotic toad?" There is no reason to think that a creator exists or that it exists inside or outside of our world. Natural selection shows very well why life is like it is and the concept of a creator is completely contradictory to natural selection. You are speculating with no reason to believe that your speculations are true.
To illustrate this, let me give an example of a possible conception of a creator. Assume that one thousand years from now, scientists have mastered Artificial Intelligence and have been able to successfully utilize it. If a scientist creates an Artificially Intelligent being into existence (out of energy), and places that Artificially Intelligent being in a computer program, the world of the creator is not observable from the world of the computer program that the being lives in. Essentially, the AI being can just be a computer program itself living in a computer program. In this sense, that being, let's call it Fred (the AI being), would be the creation of the creator (Janet). Janet would be a 'god' (if used to mean 'creator') to Fred. If in Fred's world, he attempts to observe that which is outside of his observable world (namely, the creator Janet), Fred will find that he cannot do so.
To me, this use of the word 'god' does not necessarily break the rules of logic or rational thought. Keep in mind that the AI computer program analogy is only an example of how it can be possible. Also keep in mind that Janet (the creator, or 'god' of Fred) is not the creator of her own world. She is not omnipotent, omniscient, etc. in regards to the world she lives in.
Anyway, I believe that illustrates that there are possible conceptions of 'god' that cannot be measured scientifically from within the computer program world.
But it doesn't explain why we would think that their is a reality outside of this one, why we would think that we're 'in the computer' so to speak. It doesn't explain why this is at all a probable likely hood while you presumably would dismiss a theory that we are actually bred on the Earth as food for aliens.
However, logic has a great deal to say. Theists are the ones making a positive claim here. It is therefore on them to bring forth evidence that God exists, not on atheists to bring evidence that he does not. It is irrational to believe a positive claim that is not substantiated by evidence.
Good point. It is necessary for any conception of 'god' to be logical in order for it to be believed and in order for it to have any chance of existing in fundamental reality. There are actually several logical arguments for the existence of god that are rationally obligatory (that is, no rational person can deny their truth). However, these rational arguments for the existence of god tend to not describe the god as a 'being' (a thing with distinct properties). Instead, these rational arguments only hold up if 'god is meant to be 'Being' (that is, "to be") or meant to be 'thinking.' One cannot rationally deny that 'Being' or 'thinking' exists, and therefore these synonyms for 'god' are rationally obligatory.
Lets hear these "rational arguments."
Also lets be clear about our definition of God. By God, we mean any kind of supernatural entity with some kind of influence on the world. If you're talking about God in some other sense, a feeling of awe at how amazing the world is or a sense of inner peace - well we obviously can't argue about the existence of that God, nor is it relevant. It's just you taking a word and using its connotations to strengthen a separate feeling.
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You can believe this if you want, but that doesn't mean you can't cause a great deal of harm by trying to convince others of your beliefs, even if you do it by reasonable persuasion.
Of course. On some level, public, social existence is about conflict of ideologies. My point is that maybe atheists ought to try to convince others that their beliefs are right, and theists ought to do the opposite. If everybody restricts themselves to purely rational arguments and everybody is purely rational, society will win.
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But why is this? Lets imagine for example that God actually doesn't exist and that religion is a made up response to humans misinterpreting the world.
Yes, we can suppose that the character "God" or many of the mythic 'god' characters have, throughout history, been completely made up. However, if you're going to operate within the methodology of Christianity, for example, you must begin by accepting the axioms: (1) God exists, and (2) the Bible is the word of God.
If you don't feel like playing the game of Christianity, you don't have to. It is not rationally obligatory, as I've said. But it is also not rationally obligatory to play the game of science (i.e. to operate within the methodology of science). Because in order to operate within the methodology of science, you must begin by accepting the axioms: (1) Matter/Energy exists, and (2) it can be measured.
Neither of these methodologies are compulsory. They both accept axioms that cannot be proven within their respective methodologies.
So it seems very convenient that religious people defend their beliefs by saying that science doesn't apply to them.
It's not rationally obligatory to play the game of science. Also, religions can explain science just like science can explain religions.
I mean the latter
I thought that's what you meant.
Actually it's not because people believe it - but in terms of providing a good argument, the fact that it can't back up what it says means that it is invalid - because people choose to believe it without real evidence gives it meaning, but it's not at all a legitimate way of arguing and the reason people believe it is because they are brainwashed from birth and because they let their primitive instincts control their beliefs. The vast majority of people have the same religious beliefs that their parents have.
Religion need not necessarily provide observable empirical evidence to be true. However, I agree with you that most (if not all) traditional mythic religions are human imaginations. That doesn't mean they are "meaningless" or that their gods don't exist. Most likely, though, their gods do not exist in what I keep referring to as "fundamental reality."
How can you say 'The creator very well may exist outside of our world?" How is that more probable than "The creator does not exist" or "The creator is a giant hypnotic toad?"
Traditionally, many religions make the claim "the creator exists outside of our world." This can be seen by looking at any "two-world" model of religion--such as the tribal religion of Christianity. Many people would contend "God exists up there in heaven (one world) and we exist down here on earth (another world)."
My claim had nothing to do with probability. I did not claim to believe the story I proposed. Essentially, if the 'creator' (or 'god') is a being (that is, an entity with specific properties) then it doesn't matter what properties you mention ("giant hypnotic toad") as long as the properties aren't logically self-refuting.
To clear up your confusion about my story, though, keep in mind what the initial statement you made was. You first asked how it is possible that a religion be true yet we humans not be able to scientifically measure god. My solution to this problem was that the 'god' (creator) and the humans (creation) might very well exist in different worlds where there can be interaction on behalf of the creator and the world (but there need not be) but there cannot be human interaction with the creator's world. Essentially, I solved the problem you had by showing how it is not necessarily the case that we can measure god.
You are speculating with no reason to believe that your speculations are true.
Of course I'm speculating. You asked a question about how a religion can make the claim that God cannot be scientifically measured and I answered your question (adequately, I believe).
But it doesn't explain why we would think that their is a reality outside of this one, why we would think that we're 'in the computer' so to speak.
Like I already said, there need not be justification for my claim if it is only meant to answer your initial question. Also keep in mind that a person may very well have justification to believe in this sort or religious model--but since we cannot know everybody else's internal thoughts, we cannot necessarily come to the same conclusions.
Lets hear these "rational arguments."
I'll give you one, called the Ontological argument for the existence of god:
The argument in a nutshell is that because a person can conceive a perfect being, that perfect being must exist because the very nature of the "perfect" being entails the characteristic that it exists. However, ths argument quicly falls apart if you try to argue it to prove a certain entity noun-god (like the Christian God, for example).
The argument works if you think of 'god' as 'Being' (instead of a 'being'). It is impossible to think 'non-Being' because it entails 'Being' to think it in the first place. Here, 'Being' is used as a verb ("to be").
Essentially, that's the basic argument. I kinda skipped over some stuff because I have some other stuff to do but that's the gist of it. It is rationally obligatory to accept the existence of this verb-god. It is not rationally obligatory to accep the existence of the noun-gods that we hear about all the time.
Also lets be clear about our definition of God. By God, we mean any kind of supernatural entity with some kind of influence on the world.
I generally try to use the term "God" to refer to a specific character (a 'god')--most usually the character described in the Bible. I don't know what you mean by "supernatural entity" and what kind of influence you're talking about. I described in my last post that usually these concepts of certain 'gods' that supposedly exist (the gods that are characters in mythic religions) are not the same thing as the concept of 'god' I was describing when I said it is rationall obligatory to believe in them.
It's just you taking a word and using its connotations to strengthen a separate feeling.
It's just using the word 'god' in a different way than you grew up using it. Please please please don't be like Ubuntu and claim that the definition of 'god' can only be meant to describe the thing you think it usually describes. If you accept the fact that the term itself is ambiguous, you can see a difference between its usage as a verb and its usage as a noun. You're an atheist in regards to the noun-gods. If you're rational, you're not an atheist (although I don't think 'theist' and 'atheist' are the right words to describe verb-god--perhaps these words only refer to noun-gods) in regards to the use of the word 'god' to mean 'Being.'
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I agree, except I don't think theism is rational.
edit: I mean I agree with Erasmus.
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I agree, except I don't think theism is rational.
To me, that's a separate difficulty.
Being rational makes you more likely to be right.
Science and religion both offer things people want, but science has a better track record of coming through with its promises. There are ways you can always trust the "audience" to be rational: in their own interests. You can trust people to prefer heated homes, automobiles, clean water, etc., to everlasting life any day. Because "our side" applies methods of argument that have some regularity, they're more likely to turn out right reguarly, and I think people will drift towards "our side" as time goes on because of this.
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Of course I'm speculating. You asked a question about how a religion can make the claim that God cannot be scientifically measured and I answered your question (adequately, I believe).
There seems to be some confusion. Obviously people do believe crazy stuff for no reason, and it's theoretically possible to back up their crazy beliefs with speculation. What I meant was more along the lines of why should we believe their is any possibility that that is actually true?
I'll give you one, called the Ontological argument for the existence of god:
The argument in a nutshell is that because a person can conceive a perfect being, that perfect being must exist because the very nature of the "perfect" being entails the characteristic that it exists. However, ths argument quicly falls apart if you try to argue it to prove a certain entity noun-god (like the Christian God, for example).
The argument works if you think of 'god' as 'Being' (instead of a 'being'). It is impossible to think 'non-Being' because it entails 'Being' to think it in the first place. Here, 'Being' is used as a verb ("to be").
Essentially, that's the basic argument. I kinda skipped over some stuff because I have some other stuff to do but that's the gist of it. It is rationally obligatory to accept the existence of this verb-god. It is not rationally obligatory to accep the existence of the noun-gods that we hear about all the time.
If God is perfect and exists, surely a God that achieves the same outcome as this perfect God but by doing less is, of course, "more perfect". Surely a god that does even less than that god is even "more perfect". - I'm sure you can see the limit I'm approaching - surely a God that achieves the same outcome for the world without actually existing is the most perfect entity.
It's just using the word 'god' in a different way than you grew up using it. Please please please don't be like Ubuntu and claim that the definition of 'god' can only be meant to describe the thing you think it usually describes. If you accept the fact that the term itself is ambiguous, you can see a difference between its usage as a verb and its usage as a noun. You're an atheist in regards to the noun-gods. If you're rational, you're not an atheist (although I don't think 'theist' and 'atheist' are the right words to describe verb-god--perhaps these words only refer to noun-gods) in regards to the use of the word 'god' to mean 'Being.'
Of course I'm not an atheist towards god as a verb. Ubuntu is a girl.
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Ubuntu is a girl.
:x ...
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I'll give you one, called the Ontological argument for the existence of god:
The argument in a nutshell is that because a person can conceive a perfect being, that perfect being must exist because the very nature of the "perfect" being entails the characteristic that it exists. However, ths argument quicly falls apart if you try to argue it to prove a certain entity noun-god (like the Christian God, for example).
The argument works if you think of 'god' as 'Being' (instead of a 'being'). It is impossible to think 'non-Being' because it entails 'Being' to think it in the first place. Here, 'Being' is used as a verb ("to be").
Haven't we gone over this one before? In another thread? I seem to recall punching that argument in the face. Ah, here it is (http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2583&start=11).
In other words, even if you think that Anselm's argument is sound, you're still not forced to believe anything other than the following: "If you conceive of God, you must conceive that he exists in reality."
I then go on to define trolls as those things more terrifying than which nothing can be imagined, and proving that trolls must exist in reality.
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Ubuntu is a girl.
:x ...
It's true too. It's funny and true. :lol:
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There seems to be some confusion. Obviously people do believe crazy stuff for no reason, and it's theoretically possible to back up their crazy beliefs with speculation. What I meant was more along the lines of why should we believe their is any possibility that that is actually true?
Yes, people do believe crazy stuff for no reason sometimes. Usually they have a reason, but not a good reason. The point I was getting at is that I answered your question so I get a golden star :-)
By the way, it is rationally necessary to believe that there is a possibility that the story I presented is true (as long as the story I presented is rationally sound). However, this doesn't beging to approach the probability that it is true.
If God is perfect and exists, surely a God that achieves the same outcome as this perfect God but by doing less is, of course, "more perfect"
You lost me. Anyway, the basic thing that Anselm (and Descartes) said was that because they could conceive of a perfect being, the very definition of that perfect being would entail that it exists. However, it's clear to see that this argument falls apart if you apply any thought to it. But if you consider it in light of a "one-world" model and use the argument that 'god' is not referring to 'a being' but instead to 'Being' itself, it is logically sound.
Of course I'm not an atheist towards god as a verb.
I knew you would be because you're rational.
Haven't we gone over this one before? In another thread? I seem to recall punching that argument in the face.
I'm glad you punched it in the face. I hope you don't think I was presenting it to be a proof for the existence of some entity called "God." Instead, I was presenting it to be a proof for the existence of a verb-god as I've said several times now. Anybody can "punch it in the face," I think. Observe:
"I can conceive of the perfect unicorn. Because a necessary quality of the perfect unicorn entails that it exist, unicorn's exist." That's clearly a stupid argument. But it's not a stupid argument if we mean something different by the word 'god.'
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I'm glad you punched it in the face. I hope you don't think I was presenting it to be a proof for the existence of some entity called "God." Instead, I was presenting it to be a proof for the existence of a verb-god as I've said several times now.
Sorry, I was temporarily overcome by my own machismo... I was not my own master!
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But clearly we aren't discussing your definition of god. We are discussing the notion of god as a literal creator, who may or may not have interfered after the moment of creation. I don't think anyone is an atheist towards your definition.
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It's not rationally obligatory to play the game of science.
Sure it is, when you set foot on science's playground. When religion avoids doing that, science and religion won't be in conflict (though religion will remain by its nature in conflict with logic). But all religions that I can think of, with the possible exception of Buddhism, do step onto science's playground quite frequently. Divine actions very often are supposed to have real, measurable repercussions in the natural world (Noah's flood, for example). And, in fact, if a religion completely avoided postulating supernatural interference in the natural world, it wouldn't be religion at all; it would be philosophy.
But in any playground, it is rationally obligatory to play the game of logic.
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Yes, logic is rationally obligatory. But it is not rationally obligatory to believe:
1) Matter/energy exists, and
2) It is measurable
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Believing that something is bad or evil (when other people do not) does not give you the right to eliminate it.
Our veterans didn't hesitate with the Nazis.
This is a horrible example, because it is the exact opposite of what I'm saying. The Nazis were the ones trying to force their beliefs on someone else, while the Americans were trying to stop them from doing so.
But yes, I did misunderstand what you meant by "stomp out", so I apologize for making that assumption.
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Of course. On some level, public, social existence is about conflict of ideologies. My point is that maybe atheists ought to try to convince others that their beliefs are right, and theists ought to do the opposite. If everybody restricts themselves to purely rational arguments and everybody is purely rational, society will win.
I have no problem with rational discourse. I do have a problem when radical atheists start saying that radicals of other religions are bad because they teach their followers to be intolerent, and the moderates of other religions are bad because they lend credence to the radicals by their silent acceptance.
If they want to say that people should be more tolerant, that's fine. If they say that moderates should speak up when the radicals are being intolerant, that's all well and good. But when they themselves become intolerant of moderate religious adherents because of what the radical members of the same faith are teaching, then the accusers become as bad as the accused.
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Believing that something is bad or evil (when other people do not) does not give you the right to eliminate it.
Our veterans didn't hesitate with the Nazis.
This is a horrible example, because it is the exact opposite of what I'm saying. The Nazis were the ones trying to force their beliefs on someone else, while the Americans were trying to stop them from doing so.
But yes, I did misunderstand what you meant by "stomp out", so I apologize for making that assumption.
I think a more accurate example from the WWII era is the US stealing the land from under the Palistinians to give the Jews Israel. Ever heard of the Mossad? Their "brand" of justice is no better than Hitler's, if you ask me.
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Their "brand" of justice is no better than Hitler's, if you ask me.
I never said it was.
But in the case Ubuntu is referring to, it was the Nazi party attempting to force their beliefs on the rest of the world, so trying to imply that what I was saying in some way defended Nazism is absurd.
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I wasn't really directing that at you. Moreso Ubuntu. The Americans kicking the Nazi's ass wasn't such a bad thing, but stealing land from the Palistinians was a bad move. I mentioned the Mossad, which is basically like Israel's version of the US's Secret Service, and they have a very... obscure way of taking care of things.
More or less what I mean, is that the US defeated one evil, just to create another.
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I wasn't really directing that at you. Moreso Ubuntu. The Americans kicking the Nazi's ass wasn't such a bad thing, but stealing land from the Palistinians was a bad move. I mentioned the Mossad, which is basically like Israel's version of the US's Secret Service, and they have a very... obscure way of taking care of things.
Ah, sorry about that. I didn't pay attention to what you quoted above it.
More or less what I mean, is that the US defeated one evil, just to create another.
I totally agree with you there.
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More or less what I mean, is that the US defeated one evil, just to create another.
I totally agree with you there.
yin yang...
without evil there can exist no good...
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More or less what I mean, is that the US defeated one evil, just to create another.
I totally agree with you there.
yin yang...
without evil there can exist no good...
god and the devil. good creates evil?
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If you look at it from the scientific perspective it's even stupider than the FE theory
God exists in literature.
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Oh lol. How is that relevant to the post you quoted?
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There you go again.
http://theflatearthsociety.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6153&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
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Yes, logic is rationally obligatory. But it is not rationally obligatory to believe:
1) Matter/energy exists, and
2) It is measurable
I don't believe that matter/energy necessarily exists or that certain or real knowledge can be extracted from tests on it, and yet I practice meaningful science almost daily in the school lab.
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I don't believe that matter/energy necessarily exists or that certain or real knowledge can be extracted from tests on it, and yet I practice meaningful science almost daily in the school lab.
Okay...
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I don't believe that matter/energy necessarily exists or that certain or real knowledge can be extracted from tests on it, and yet I practice meaningful science almost daily in the school lab.
Okay...
Therefore it is not necessary to have those beliefs to practice science.
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Therefore it is not necessary to have those beliefs to practice science.
Uhhh... yes it is. If you do not accept the existence of matter/energy and its measurability, you cannot begin to measure it (i.e. practice science). There has to be a starting point for any methodology (axioms). Science has axioms just like any other methodology.
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Therefore it is not necessary to have those beliefs to practice science.
Uhhh... yes it is. If you do not accept the existence of matter/energy and its measurability, you cannot begin to measure it (i.e. practice science). There has to be a starting point for any methodology (axioms). Science has axioms just like any other methodology.
No, absolutely not. Science is the philosophy that works using the thinking "if our theories are true..." Such as, "if fire exists, and if we can attain knowledge of fire, and if we can test it by inserting our hand in it, and if our hand exists...
...and we insert our hand into the fire and receive a "hot" sensation...
...then we can conclude that fire, in theory, is hot."
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Oh, sorry Ubuntu. I didn't realize you were redefining the methodology of science to be something other than what it is. Methodologies have to have a starting point (axioms) and science has them. In order to play the game of science you must first believe in matter/energy. But you can redefine science all you want and try to make it a non-methodology. Heck if I care.
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In order to play the game of science you must first believe in matter/energy.
If that were true, that would mean to be a Devil's Advocate I would have to actually believe the argument I was advocating and it would be impossible for anyone to be both a scientist and a philosopher.
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I don't believe that matter/energy necessarily exists or that certain or real knowledge can be extracted from tests on it, and yet I practice meaningful science almost daily in the school lab.
This is a very silly viewpoint. You're so caught up in the whole "existence" notion that you've ignored the obvious: stuff exists, if not "in the world" then at least in your solipsistic imaginary universe. If you can't tell the difference, then I guess they're not different any important way.
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I don't believe that matter/energy necessarily exists or that certain or real knowledge can be extracted from tests on it, and yet I practice meaningful science almost daily in the school lab.
This is a very silly viewpoint. You're so caught up in the whole "existence" notion that you've ignored the obvious: stuff exists, if not "in the world" then at least in your solipsistic imaginary universe. If you can't tell the difference, then I guess they're not different any important way.
It's the same way you can play Ouija without believing it... it's experimental. The same is not true for believing something... there is no way to practice belief without believing... prayer and rituals yes, but not faith.
Or perhaps it is more like when I use Tarrot cards to predict my friends futures and give them a line about "electrical pulses from the brain to the cards on the quantum scale" to observe their wide-eyed reactions when I read the cards... xD
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If you do not accept the existence of matter/energy, yet you do experiments to measure matter/energy, the results cannot be helpful to you unless you accept its existence. You cannot reap the benefits of a methodology that, in its axioms, takes the existence of matter/energy to be self-evidently true, while denying the very existence of that which yielded the results in the first place.
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i think that since god is a mirror image of the guy that smoked weed in jerusalem some thousand years ago we should think about the apple of truth since apples have known the truth a long time because apples are higher beings.
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If you do not accept the existence of matter/energy, yet you do experiments to measure matter/energy, the results cannot be helpful to you unless you accept its existence. You cannot reap the benefits of a methodology that, in its axioms, takes the existence of matter/energy to be self-evidently true, while denying the very existence of that which yielded the results in the first place.
Of course you can reap benefits! Even if you were knowingly in the Matrix and knew nothing around you existed, you could still seek to increase your own happiness with digital pleasures.
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Ubuntu, I think I see the problem you're encountering in this whole methodology business. You're saying that there are no axioms in the methodology of science (that is, there is nothing that scientists must take on faith before proceeding). Well, getting around the fact that you're wrong, I can now see that you're essentially just trying to re-word the story in a way that makes it seem like you're right. Before I counter what you're arguing, I'll reiterate that in order to play a game of football, you must first take it on faith that the football actually exists. You don't go play football thinking "Well, if this football actually does exist, then I think it would be travelling along this trajectory to point B where I'm supposed to catch it in 4.35 seconds... if it existed." Instead, you temporarily accept the existence of the football (even if you do not know that it exists in fundamental reality) so you can play the game of football. Same goes for science. When you're going to play the game of science and try to measure matter/energy in the universe, you must (at least temporarily) accept the existence of that which you are measuring. Otherwise you wouldn't be measuring anything at all.
What you're trying to say is that scientists need not always accept the necessary existence of matter/energy (and its measurability) in order to play the game of science. Well, yeah. In order for me to operate within the methodology of Christianity, I must accept the existence of God and the Bible as the word of God--even if ten minutes later I want to stop playing that game. For the time, if I do not accept the existence of God, then I'm not playing the game of Christianity at all. Same goes for science. If I want to play the game of science, I'd first have to accept on faith the fact that stuff actually exists for me to conduct scientific studies with. If I don't, I'm not playing the game of science at all. But if I do accept that axiom from the beginning, and proceed to play by the rules of the methodology and come to conclusions within the methodology of science, then I have played the game of science. However, ten minutes later I can stop playing that game and no longer accept the existence of the stuff I just did.
What you're saying does not change the fact that science has axioms. Whether you accept these axioms as true all the time doesn't matter. That's like defining the Christian methodology as "Well, if God did exist, and if the Bible was the word of God, then..." However, that's only the beginning step of the methodology. In order to become a Christian for a little while, you must fully accept that which is being put forth as an axiom and then proceed.
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Knight, please address why I can play Ouija and Tarrot without believing that the supposed forces that drive them exist.
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Knight, please address why I can play Ouija and Tarrot without believing that the supposed forces that drive them exist.
Hmmm... let me think very hard on this and get back to you
***(ten seconds later)***
Do you accept the existence of the Ouija board and the Tarot cards before you play? If not, then I'll go ahead and tentatively state that you aren't playing those games at all.
But you want to know about the actual "supernatural forces" that make the games special. If indeed this is a necessary axiom to the games (which I've never played) then I'll again inform you that if you do not temporarily accept the existence of the axioms (even if it's something that you'd never otherwise consider believing in) then you cannot play the game at all. You cannot be a Christian without (at least temporarily) believing in the existence of God just like you cannot be a scientist without temporarily accepting the existence of that which you are studying. Just like you cannot play football without first accepting the existence of the football.
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Just like you cannot play football without first accepting the existence of the football.
If it is at any instant possible to doubt the existence of the football, there is no reason why this couldn't be during the game.
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Let me ask you, Ubuntu: How does one deny the existence of the football and play the game of football at the same time? Am I the only one who believes this sounds silly?
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Let me ask you, Ubuntu: How does one deny the existence of the football and play the game of football at the same time?
The same way you deny the existence of the football any other time.
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When you are playing football, you do not deny the existence of the football. When you're in the middle of a game and you decide to deny the football's existence, you stop playing football. Then you can resume when you once again accept the football's existence.
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When you are playing football, you do not deny the existence of the football. When you're in the middle of a game and you decide to deny the football's existence, you stop playing football. Then you can resume when you once again accept the football's existence.
This seems like a dogmatic statement rather than a reasonable one. Why would you stop playing football just because the football is an illusion, and does not exist?
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How does one play football while denying that it exists Ubuntu? By denying that the football exists I'm also referring to the phenomenological existence of the football (i.e. any sensing of the phenomenological football would cease to exist). You would not be able to see the ball, feel the ball, throw the ball, catch the ball, etc. because it would not exist. Just like when you're playing the game of atheism you cannot sense the character God. But anyway, this conversation is beginning to get repetitive. I think you're carrying it on just for the sake of annoying me :?
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How does one play football while denying that it exists Ubuntu? By denying that the football exists I'm also referring to the phenomenological existence of the football (i.e. any sensing of the phenomenological football would cease to exist). You would not be able to see the ball, feel the ball, throw the ball, catch the ball, etc. because it would not exist. Just like when you're playing the game of atheism you cannot sense the character God. But anyway, this conversation is beginning to get repetitive. I think you're carrying it on just for the sake of annoying me :?
It's not helping that you do not know what denying existence means.
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What does it mean to you, Ubuntu?
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What does it mean to you, Ubuntu?
Denying Existence: Believing that something does not exist.
Please note that Solipsists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism) still interact with the Universe.
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Denying Existence: Believing that something does not exist.
And just to get this straight, it's your claim that scientists can deny the existence of that which they are measuring. Doesn't that logically necessitate the non-existence of the measurements they are taking of a non-existent thing?
Please note that Solipsists still interact with the Universe.
Noted. However, a solipsist does not believe he/she is interacting with the Universe because a solipsist denies the existence of that which you call "Universe." Instead, he/she believes that everything is a construct of his/her own mind, and thus, can only be interacting with his/her own mind. Yet to you, a solipsist might actually be interacting with the universe and just not believing that he/she is.
Anyway, I'll think more hardly about this topic and perhaps ask my professor for you tomorrow. What question should I ask him about it? Maybe: "Is it possible to be a Christian while denying the existence of God?" or "Is it possible to be an atheist while denying the non-existence of God?" or "Is it possible to play football while denying the existence of the football and the football field?" Take your pick or suggest another and I'll maybe ask him if I find a chance tomorrow. It might be that I'm messing something up in this discussion by not paying enough attention to what you're saying. I might be missing the point of what you're talking about. But we'll see.
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Denying Existence: Believing that something does not exist.
And just to get this straight, it's your claim that scientists can deny the existence of that which they are measuring. Doesn't that logically necessitate the non-existence of the measurements they are taking of a non-existent thing?
No, as a measurement is a number, and numbers exist within your mind.
Please note that Solipsists still interact with the Universe.
Instead, he/she believes that everything is a construct of his/her own mind, and thus, can only be interacting with his/her own mind. Yet to you, a solipsist might actually be interacting with the universe and just not believing that he/she is.
This works perfectly for the football case.
"Is it possible to play football while denying the existence of the football and the football field?"
This is the only one I would answer affirmatively to.
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No, as a measurement is a number, and numbers exist within your mind.
The tree does not exist; but the tree is thirty eight feet tall, brown, has green leaves, absorbs CO2 and H20, etc. However, the measurement "feet" does not exist, the colors "green" and "brown" do not exist, CO2 and H20 do not exist. But the CO2 on earth is composed of two parts of oxygen and one part of carbon while the H20 on earth is composed of two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen. However, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen do not exist. And the nonsense conversation goes on and on and on...
This is the only one I would answer affirmatively to.
Then I guess this will be the one I'll ask him (also the one about the axioms of science). Perhaps he'll be able to explain it better than I can.
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I talked to my professor and the conversation went something like this:
ME: "A friend of mine claims that it is possible to play football while denying the existence of the football."
HIM: "I have no idea what he is talking about." *starts to walk away*
ME: "Well, I think he's saying that the football doesn't necessarily exist in fundamental reality."
HIM: "Oh, yes. He may be playing some kind of mind game."
ME: "So... what do you think?"
HIM: "Most likely he is defining existence in a different way than has been established by philosophers."
Basically, it might just be that we're talking about two different things here. You're referring to "that which exists in fundamental reality" and I'm referring to "that which exists." If you conceive of the football at all, then it necessarily exists (even if only intra-mentally). My question to you is, what does extramental existence add to the existence of a thing? Philosophers have established that intramental and extramental existence of a thing do not add or detract to it's existence--they only clarify location of existence.
If you attempt to deny that the football exists, you must essentially be saying: "This football does not exist." But by virtue of the fact that you're referring to something (i.e. the football), it must exist because it has been conceived. It is impossible to claim that the phenomenological football does not exist, because once you conceive of that which you are giong to deny the existence of, it necessarily exists (intramentally).
Anyway, I've found that I have less of a grasp on this subject than he does and I can't remember everything from our conversation. But essentially he told me that the question I can ask to proceed is the one I asked (the one above about existence and its intra and extra mental properties). Other than that, I'm beginning to get so lost in the conversation that I cannot seem to dig through all this wording and get to the core of what we're talking about. I'll ask that question and maybe proceed from there. Otherwise, I'll be forced to stop the conversation because I can't figure out what the heck is being said anymore. Anyway, what do you think about the existence question?
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Philosophers have established that intramental and extramental existence of a thing do not add or detract to it's existence--they only clarify location of existence.
Now you're playing games: word games, at least. "In my head" vs. "In the world" is a different kind of location from "on the left" vs. "on the right", etc. You can't "clarify the location of existence" in the sense of "in my head" vs. "in the world" without adding something to the existence of that object.
And I don't think philosophers have established anything, really, especially not on this level.
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"In my head" vs. "In the world" is a different kind of location from "on the left" vs. "on the right", etc.
How is it different? Keep in mind that I never said "In my head" (I said something more along the lines of "intramental").
You can't "clarify the location of existence" in the sense of "in my head" vs. "in the world" without adding something to the existence of that object.
"In my head" is different than "intramental," as far as I'm concerned. I use "intramental" to describe a conception of consciousness, whereas "in my head" refers to a specific left-right-up-down location.
I've gone through this with you before, I believe. What difference does it make whether or not something is extramental? The only thing we know for sure that exists is thinking itself. "Things" do not necessarily exist outside of consciuosness. So really, the things that exist are those that are conceived.
And I don't think philosophers have established anything, really, especially not on this level.
Okay *shrug*
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"In my head" is different than "intramental," as far as I'm concerned. I use "intramental" to describe a conception of consciousness, whereas "in my head" refers to a specific left-right-up-down location.
I think that it's pretty clear that what I meant by "in my head" is the same as what you mean by "intramental". Mine just doesn't sound so fancy.
I've gone through this with you before, I believe. What difference does it make whether or not something is extramental? The only thing we know for sure that exists is thinking itself. "Things" do not necessarily exist outside of consciuosness. So really, the things that exist are those that are conceived.
Sure, things don't necessarily exist outside. That doesn't mean it's not useful to talk about them as though they do, and furthermore, that it's not pointless to suppose they're not. If it is the case that everything I perceive is in fact "intramental", then I can just redefine "reality" to be everything I perceive, and then continue about my business.
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Sure, things don't necessarily exist outside. That doesn't mean it's not useful to talk about them as though they do, and furthermore, that it's not pointless to suppose they're not.
When you go about acting as if things do exist outside of consciousness, what exactly are you referring to? I mean, in order for something to exist, it must have defining properties. In order to have defining properties, there must be something that defines the object. If it is outside of consciousness, what is the defining principle? Sometimes people solve this by saying "god is the defining principle of things." How do you solve this?
If it is the case that everything I perceive is in fact "intramental", then I can just redefine "reality" to be everything I perceive, and then continue about my business.
Okay.
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When you go about acting as if things do exist outside of consciousness, what exactly are you referring to?
Right now I'm taking location in space and time as the defining property for objects existing outside of my consciousness. You have a location in space and time if and only if you exist outside of my consciousness.
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When you're going to play the game of science and try to measure matter/energy in the universe, you must (at least temporarily) accept the existence of that which you are measuring. Otherwise you wouldn't be measuring anything at all.
What you're trying to say is that scientists need not always accept the necessary existence of matter/energy (and its measurability) in order to play the game of science. Well, yeah. In order for me to operate within the methodology of Christianity, I must accept the existence of God and the Bible as the word of God--even if ten minutes later I want to stop playing that game.
Not true. One does not have to accept that something exists in order to test for it.
You define expectations and test for them. For example, if I capture bubbles rising up from a fluid and want to see if they were hydrogen, I do not have to "believe" Hydrogen is in the tube, I know that if there is hyrdogen in the tube I can place a glowing ember in it and it will explode.
There is no act of faith here. Observation that a specific result will occur under certain circumstances, and an attempt to create those circumstances. The only "faith" is that there is a limited causuality - that hydrogen will react in a certain way, everytime.
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Right now I'm taking location in space and time as the defining property for objects existing outside of my consciousness. You have a location in space and time if and only if you exist outside of my consciousness.
Isn't location in "space" and "time" a defining property? If so, can't that only be established through consciousness? I'm not referring to your consciousness, but all consciousness.
You're essentially saying: "Things exist even when nobody (or nothing) is experiencing them." My question is, why are you saying this?
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You're essentially saying: "Things exist even when nobody (or nothing) is experiencing them." My question is, why are you saying this?
That is indeed what I am saying. I think to say otherwise is needlessly egocentric. I don't think there's anything special about my consciousness, another human's consciousness, or another arguably conscious animal's consciousness. The universe is sufficiently regular for me to be comfortable in the admittedly unprovable belief that it really would exist even if I didn't.
I feel like philosophy is at that stage that infants are at, when things go outside their visual field and they conclude that those things no longer exist. C'mon. The world doesn't revolve around anybody's consciousness.
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Philosophers have established that intramental and extramental existence of a thing do not add or detract to it's existence--they only clarify location of existence.
Now you're playing games: word games, at least.
Indeed!
And I don't think philosophers have established anything, really, especially not on this level.
This is absolutely correct; prominent philosophers disagree on EVERYTHING! Actually, that might be a good definition for a philosopher. :wink: I think it is certain that, if at any time all of a philosopher's contemporaries agreed with him, it wasn't a very good idea anyway.
Firstly, I think saying "if something is conceived, it exists" is confusing the issue, because that means that intramental "in my head" existence necessarily implies extramental "outside my head" existence, which is sheer lunacy.
Secondly, if I were to suppose the football were an illusion, meaning it would not physically and "extramentally"exist, there is no reason I couldn't play football. This is the same reason why Solipsists can practice science, naturalists can search for ghosts and attempt witchcraft, and a perfectly sane person can RP on WoW for 400 hours in a year.
Thirdly, equating science and faith is like placing sanity and insanity on the same level. Both are methods of living with set mental functions. Faith is inherently rationally deficient, and religious beliefs just stack more "axioms" (in quotes because they are often untrue) on top of the assumptions of a secular, logical mind.
As for your statement about the certainty of thinking existing (albeit that existing isn't well defined), well, I hope you will join me in my new topic, Cogito ergo sum: not an absolute truth after all (http://theflatearthsociety.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=76345) which I am hoping will invite hot dispute, and perhaps, to my delight, I will somehow be proven wrong.
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That is indeed what I am saying. I think to say otherwise is needlessly egocentric.
Hmmm... egocentric?
I don't think there's anything special about my consciousness, another human's consciousness, or another arguably conscious animal's consciousness.
Nothing special? Consciousness is what defines things. Definition is what allows things to exist. Thus, the very existence of a thing is dependent upon some sense of definition.
I feel like philosophy is at that stage that infants are at, when things go outside their visual field and they conclude that those things no longer exist.
How can they exist if they are not defined?
C'mon. The world doesn't revolve around anybody's consciousness.
Existence revolves around consciousness.
prominent philosophers disagree on EVERYTHING! Actually, that might be a good definition for a philosopher.
Logic itself is the authority that philosophers subscribe to. Keep that in mind.
I think it is certain that, if at any time all of a philosopher's contemporaries agreed with him, it wasn't a very good idea anyway.
Uhhhh why? Wouldn't that just mean that the philosopher probably proved something to be necessarily true?
Firstly, I think saying "if something is conceived, it exists" is confusing the issue, because that means that intramental "in my head" existence necessarily implies extramental "outside my head" existence, which is sheer lunacy.
No, it doesn't necessarily imply that at all.
Secondly, if I were to suppose the football were an illusion, meaning it would not physically and "extramentally"exist, there is no reason I couldn't play football.
That's not denying the existence of the football. By conceiving of the football that you're playing with you're ensuring that the football necessarily exists phenomenologically.
Faith is inherently rationally deficient
Can you demonstrate this?
religious beliefs just stack more "axioms" (in quotes because they are often untrue)
I'm guessing that you're saying "untrue" because the axioms in a given religious methodology do not conform to the "truth" given in another methodology (science). Sorry sparky, but that's a two-way street. A person operating within a religious methodology might know that the truth within that methodology does not conform to the axioms you, as a scientist, accept as self-evidently true. Because science and Christianity are regional methodologies, they can't just be used to disprove each other. You need to use a universal methodology to show that the axioms of one methodology are untrue (thus, you use logical arguments and not scientific arguments to show that God doesn't exist).
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Existence revolves around consciousness.
I'm afraid you're going to have to prove that before you just repeat it dogmatically.
That's not denying the existence of the football. By conceiving of the football that you're playing with you're ensuring that the football necessarily exists phenomenologically.
The idea of the football and the football are not the same thing. If you are saying the idea or perception of the ball exists, be clear. If you are saying the idea of the football and the football are the same thing, you are going to have to demonstrate why this is so.
Faith is inherently rationally deficient
Can you demonstrate this?
Faith is believing something as truth because someone tells you to, rather than anything to do with its truthfulness or untruthfulness. If finding truth is a goal, this is one of the worst ways to achieve this goal, as it rests on sheer probability rather than any sort of investigation. Also, faith beliefs often include paradoxes, that are believed regardless, nearly guaranteeing the beliefs are false, and that the truth has not been achieved.
If finding truth is a goal, faith is (for the aforementioned reasons) an extremely irrational way of going about it.
You need to use a universal methodology to show that the axioms of one methodology are untrue (thus, you use logical arguments and not scientific arguments to show that God doesn't exist).
That would be valid, except that logic isn't a universal methodology. That's the very idea of fundamentalism.
Besides, logical arguments would in turn say scientific arguments are valid, so it has nothing to do with which people's philosophical subscriptions, only the most convincing way to bargain with simpletons.
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Consciousness is what defines things. Definition is what allows things to exist. Thus, the very existence of a thing is dependent upon some sense of definition.
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How can they exist if they are not defined?
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Existence revolves around consciousness.
This is what I mean by "egocentric". You haven't demonstrated that things need to be defined (by a human) before they can exist; you've merely stated it. I'd also like you to clarify what you mean by "Consciousness is what defines things," especially addressing the issues of what it means for a thing to be defined, and why it is that only consciousness can achieve this effect, and perhaps also touching on what status a thing has before it gets defined by sombody's consciousness.
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Nothing special? Consciousness is what defines things. Definition is what allows things to exist.
So then how can any definition ever be wrong? What happens when two Consciousnesses disagree on definitions? Is there some kind of Quantum split where both are right? should we start a new religion where we have a God as the final arbitrator, whose sole purpose is to be the highest level of Consciousness to define our reality?
Did atoms not exist until someone thought of them? Do spirits create diseases until someone rationalizes that they are caused by micro organisms?
That's just sloppy thinking. Definitions are reflections of existence, they are tools for our understanding, not for creation...Or would me defining a world destroying space amoeba cause it's creation?
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Existence revolves around consciousness.
I'm afraid you're going to have to prove that before you just repeat it dogmatically.
If something is to exist, it must be definite. In order to determine definition, there must be something that determines the defintion. Consciousness determines the definition of things. Thus, when consciousness exists, definitions exist, and things exist. Some people say "Well, even if no conscious being conceives of a thing, it still exists." What many of them must rely on, though, is the concept of god (in order for this to work). Perhaps god is "that which determines the definition of things and thus, causes their existence." If this is the case for you, what are you taking 'god' to be?
If you are saying the idea or perception of the ball exists, be clear.
Yes, that's what I was saying I think. The phenomenological existence of the football is "the football that appears."
If you are saying the idea of the football and the football are the same thing, you are going to have to demonstrate why this is so.
The question is, why are they different? If you go outside and play with a football right now, why is the existence of the ball any different if you believe that it exists in fundamental reality?
Faith is believing something as truth because someone tells you to, rather than anything to do with its truthfulness or untruthfulness.
Yes, because "faith" beliefs are beliefs that have no truth value. They cannot be determined to be true or false within the given methodology.
Also, faith beliefs often include paradoxes, that are believed regardless, nearly guaranteeing the beliefs are false, and that the truth has not been achieved.
I agree with you. There are many "beliefs" that simply cannot be because they are logically self-defeating. However, I'm not sure I would call these "faith" beliefs. For one, their truth value can be determined to be false (within the universal methodology of logic). However you define something like this, I like to believe that no rational person would still take beliefs on faith that they have been shown are absolutely impossible.
If finding truth is a goal, faith is (for the aforementioned reasons) an extremely irrational way of going about it.
Hmmm... I'm not sure you showed the rational obligation to believe that faith beliefs are irrational. But whatever.
That would be valid, except that logic isn't a universal methodology.
*shrug* Okay Ubuntu, whatever you say.
You haven't demonstrated that things need to be defined (by a human) before they can exist; you've merely stated it.
Yikes. I hope I haven't claimed that. I don't mean that things need to be defined by a human being, but rather, by some kind of definer.
I'd also like you to clarify what you mean by "Consciousness is what defines things," especially addressing the issues of what it means for a thing to be defined, and why it is that only consciousness can achieve this effect, and perhaps also touching on what status a thing has before it gets defined by sombody's consciousness.
What I mean by "A thing must be defined to exist" is that if a thing must be definite to exist. That is, it must be a "this" and not a "that." I'll have to check my facts on whether or not only consciousness can define things. In the meantime, you can list some other definers. As for the "what status a thing has before it gets defined": well, if a thing is not defined, then it simply isn't.
What happens when two Consciousnesses disagree on definitions?
I don't know. I suppose they would experience things differently.
should we start a new religion where we have a God as the final arbitrator, whose sole purpose is to be the highest level of Consciousness to define our reality?
Wouldn't be new by any means.
Did atoms not exist until someone thought of them?
My philosophy professor, I believe, would argue "no."
That's just sloppy thinking.
Or... maybe it's philosophical thinking. Your thinking is that things exist independent of them being conceived. My question to you is, "why?" You cannot demonstrate that things actually exist, so why do you believe it at all? Wouldn't this be "sloppy thinking?" Many people tend to think so.
Definitions are reflections of existence, they are tools for our understanding, not for creation...
Are you sure? A thing can exist without being definite and without having definite properties?
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Did atoms not exist until someone thought of them?
My philosophy professor, I believe, would argue "no."
That's just sloppy thinking.
Or... maybe it's philosophical thinking. Your thinking is that things exist independent of them being conceived. My question to you is, "why?" You cannot demonstrate that things actually exist, so why do you believe it at all? Wouldn't this be "sloppy thinking?" Many people tend to think so.
Definitions are reflections of existence, they are tools for our understanding, not for creation...
Are you sure? A thing can exist without being definite and without having definite properties?
Does not love exist? Does it have definite properties? A thought? A Dream? What are the properties of the quantum particles? The dimentions above our standard 4? We know qualities of many things, but not all qualities of all things. They still exist, because we are affected by them, but we are not all knowing and learn more everyday. To say that the qualities do not exist until we look for them is to make existance mutable and subject to paradox.
In such an existance, two people meet, and have two different definitions for the same thing (Say the shape of the earth) when they create the ultimate test, one that can only point to one of the two possibilities, one reality must dissolve.
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In such an existance, two people meet, and have two different definitions for the same thing (Say the shape of the earth) when they create the ultimate test, one that can only point to one of the two possibilities, one reality must dissolve.
Let's look at an example of this. In October of 1917 an event occurred which is called "The Miracle of the Sun." Basically, several thousand people got together to see an appearing of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What occurred was that several thousand people reported seeing the sun dance across the sky, zig-zag down closer to the earth, and then go back to its original position. At the same time, I believe, the sun was spinning like a disk and changing colors.
Several other people claimed that they didn't experience this at all. To them, the sun just stayed where they expected it to stay and none of that other stuff happened. So, which one is it? There's only one truth, after all. So which story is "the one and only true story"?
Check the story out here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_sun
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(http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b190/MissMaryMack/pics/Cool_Shit/signs/biblewarninglabel.jpg)
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Haha. I love it.
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In such an existence, two people meet, and have two different definitions for the same thing (Say the shape of the earth) when they create the ultimate test, one that can only point to one of the two possibilities, one reality must dissolve.
Let's look at an example of this. In October of 1917 an event occurred which is called "The Miracle of the Sun." Basically, several thousand people got together to see an appearing of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What occurred was that several thousand people reported seeing the sun dance across the sky, zig-zag down closer to the earth, and then go back to its original position. At the same time, I believe, the sun was spinning like a disk and changing colors.
Several other people claimed that they didn't experience this at all. To them, the sun just stayed where they expected it to stay and none of that other stuff happened. So, which one is it? There's only one truth, after all. So which story is "the one and only true story"?
Check the story out here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_sun
Not a bad example, thousands of people gathered together desiring to witness a religious experience. A storm passes, people are directed to look up, and the sun apparently wobbles, spins "dances". Some report it to have done a lot of movement, and others report not seeing anything out of the ordinary.
Several possible explanations,
Miracle, Solar Flare, High altitude clouds, mass hysteria, UFO, Conspiracy.
My belief, opinion, or knowledge of the event do not change it. People's perceptions were different. Peoples beliefs about what they saw were different, but to believe that each saw something different leads down a path the defies any logic or reason.
Added: A more simple example, My uncle is a member of the magician's union, he used to get us tickets to their annual Banquet, which included stage presentations of about 10 different Magicians, and after the show, there were dozens of vendors selling"Tricks".
Part of the audience were magicians, the rest Friends and families. Just because it look to me that they really did make a Tiger appear on stage out of thin air, doesn't mean it happened that way, I just didn't know the trick.
Or, look at any crime investigation, police have to sort through conflicting reports. Not that anyone lied necessarily, or their reality was different, but what they perceived was not quite what happened.
One reality, multiple perceptions. Facts, not truths.
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best pic ever
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Several possible explinations,
Miracle, Solar Flare, High altitude clouds, mass hysteria, UFO, Conspiracy.
I'm thinking that maybe they have a little too much lead, or LSD in their water. One of the two.
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People's perceptions were different. Peoples beliefs about what they saw were different
Well...
Several thousand people claim that some pretty strange phenomena occured in regards to the sun that day, yet several thousand other people claim that nothing out of the ordinary happened. I guess you could be like thedigitalnomad and go on believing that several thousand people were under the influence of LSD back in 1917 :-) --note, LSD was first synthesized in the late 1930s.
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People's perceptions were different. Peoples beliefs about what they saw were different
Well...
Several thousand people claim that some pretty strange phenomena occurred in regards to the sun that day, yet several thousand other people claim that nothing out of the ordinary happened. I guess you could be like thedigitalnomad and go on believing that several thousand people were under the influence of LSD back in 1917 :-) --note, LSD was first synthesized in the late 1930s.
You say several thousands, yet the reports I've been able to find only have a handful of witnesses, there were thousands there, and witnesses say that others saw something, but there is nothing to substantiate that thousands saw anything.
The difference is between witnessing and heresay.
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I guess you could be like thedigitalnomad and go on believing that several thousand people were under the influence of LSD back in 1917 :-) --note, LSD was first synthesized in the late 1930s.
Clearly the LSD thing was a joke anyway :P
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Clearly the LSD thing was a joke anyway
I know. I bet your belief is that the sun didn't actually do all that crazy stuff that day. Would I be irrational if I claimed that I believe the sun actually did do that?
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Clearly the LSD thing was a joke anyway
I know. I bet your belief is that the sun didn't actually do all that crazy stuff that day. Would I be irrational if I claimed that I believe the sun actually did do that?
Yes.
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Lol. Why does that constitue ir-rationality?
P.S. I'm going to bed. That is very rational.
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Lol. Why does that constitue ir-rationality?
We have seen the sun do the same thing every day for our entire lives, and the same with the laws of physics. We have records dating back milennia which show all sorts of evidence that the laws of physics were the same back then too. To believe that the laws of physics were suspended one day in 1917 in a small area of Spain is contrary to all experience of how the world works. So yes, it would be irrational.
P.S. I'm going to bed. That is very rational.
Yes it is.
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Hundreds of people in one spot claim to have seen the same thing.
Millions of others who can see the same object (ie. the Sun) don't see the same thing.
Who's more likely to be right?
In cases like this, you don't say something "can't" have happened, just that it probably didn't.
I heard loud banging on the freezer last night, like every night.
It's possible that a burglar was in the house banging on the freezer.
It's possible that aliens were trying to steal my freezer but their little grey arms just couldn't lift it.
It's possible that the government was conspiring to remove my freezer to make way for the highway.
It's possible that cats were on the freezer and stupidly knocked the food off.
I found the food dish on the ground, the freezer was still in the same spot it was before and the cobwebs behind it looked pretty undisturbed. Also, as I came out of my room, I noticed a cat running away from the freezer and out the dog door.
Now, it's still possible that the other explainations happened. Just unlikely. So I'm going to go with the wild conclusion that it was cat-related.
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Yikes. I hope I haven't claimed that. I don't mean that things need to be defined by a human being, but rather, by some kind of definer.
You can replace "human" with "agent" if you like; my complaint remains.
What I mean by "A thing must be defined to exist" is that if a thing must be definite to exist. That is, it must be a "this" and not a "that."
?
I'll have to check my facts on whether or not only consciousness can define things.
"facts"?
well, if a thing is not defined, then it simply isn't.
Simply isn't defined? Okay. This being the crux of the disagreement, I can repeat my viewpoint, or not.
Did atoms not exist until someone thought of them?
My philosophy professor, I believe, would argue "no."
Again, very silly. Obviously atoms didn't exist qua atoms, but something existed, they just hadn't been labelled as such by a sufficiently empowered labeller.
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What I mean by "A thing must be defined to exist" is that if a thing must be definite to exist. That is, it must be a "this" and not a "that."
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Let me clarify. If a thing is to exist, it must be definite. It must have defining properties (small, yellow, round, etc.). Definition is what distinguishes one thing from another thing (it makes my desk a "this" and not a "that"). Sorry for the confusion.
I'll have to check my facts on whether or not only consciousness can define things.
"facts"?
I was using the "check my facts" phrase in the general sense that we usually tend to use it in. What I mean is, I'll try to find out if there are other things that can define things other than consciousness. I'm thinking of one right now that I'm surprised you haven't mentioned yet.
well, if a thing is not defined, then it simply isn't.
Simply isn't defined?
Sorry for the confusing wording again. That's not what I meant by "it simply isn't." What I meant was "it simply isn't in existence" or "it simply does not exist."
My philosophy professor, I believe, would argue "no."
Again, very silly. Obviously atoms didn't exist qua atoms, but something existed, they just hadn't been labelled as such by a sufficiently empowered labeller.
Okay. That's what I always believed too. I don't expect you to change your belief on the matter based on my testimony (basically because I cannot argue the points as well as an epistemologist). I'll be taking Philosophy of Science next semester with the same professor so perhaps I'll get a better grasp of the subject and be able to explain it more then. Otherwise, I'll look for books on this matter that might help.
Interestingly, my professor told us a story in class when we were talking about this subject. He had a friend in the science department, who, upon learning about this, came close to killing himself. He had grown up believing that "things exist outside of his thinking about them." He had been trained to think that way for years. We all have. It's comforting to think that way. But once he realized what Kant said about the matter, he found it impossible to argue with Kant. I've seen my classmates feel the same resistance to this belief. Oh well, I think it just makes things ever more fascinating.
In conclusion, here, you don't have to agree with me now. It's becoming apparent that I won't convince you unless I go back and watch all those lectures (we can view them online), and I don't have time to do that now. Or I guess I could get my philosophy professor to join this forum. Nah, I bet he has better things to do with his time. Oh crap I have to go to work.
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I've read about Kant before; this isn't the first time I've heard these ideas. A couple of years ago I was more in agreement, but then I.... how shall I say it, woke up to reality?
There was a short story in which a mathematician suggests that the laws of mathematics and physics are not specified until tested. For example, in the early universe, before two particles ever collided, the mathematics governing the laws of physics governing particle collisions did not exist, and, in fact, could have turned out any old way. She further hypothesizes that somewhere very distant, in an isolated part of the universe, the laws of mathematics might be different. Not on the very simple levels of arithmetic, probably, but Godel promises us that there will be true statements that we cannot prove, or, that there will be statements that can be proven both true and false. Maybe far away there's a statement that they've proven true, that has been proven false here.
Anyway the characters design a computer to look for inconsistencies and undiscovered statements in mathematics and test them. Eventually it actually finds some inconsistencies. After a while they find that they are actually changing mathematics, because the statements they discover in some way have an affect on the mathematics that's already known. Machines stop working, gravity behaves differently, etc. Things go bad, until they turn the computer off, or something like that.
I don't know what the author's intent with this story was, but what I learned from it is this: philosophy, mathematics, physics, etc. are all just descriptive, not prescriptive. Our "laws" don't tell the universe what to do. If we change them, the universe won't change as a result. As far as the universe is concerned, it's all just another arrangement of electrical signals in our brains, or shards of graphite stuck to compressed dead trees. In other words, what we believe to be true about the universe does not affect what's really true about the universe in any way, and I think this applies to our philosophy as well. Kant can think what he likes about reality, and I can agree or disagree, but the Earth is going to continue spinning around the sun, totally oblivious to our little intellectual pursuits. That's why I say that this view is egotistical: it implies that somehow, nature thinks that what we think is important. I take it one step farther and claim that nature wouldn't really notice if we didn't have the capacity for rational thought, or if we didn't exist, or indeed if agents didn't exist anywhere. Even if we weren't there, the universe still would be.
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AMEN
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"things exist outside of his thinking about them"
And why wouldn't they? That would imply that he is the only entity that exists, therefore, Solipsism is true.
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And why wouldn't they?
Well, there's no justification for believing it. But as I've said, I'm definitely not educated about the topic enough to convince you or Erasmus, so I'm kind of just going to throw in the towel and wave a white flag. I could just go back and watch all the online lectures and then come back here and argue it again, but I think I'll wait until we talk about it again next semester in Philosophy of Science and then come back and argue this point. Until then... Well, I think our original debate was about methodology. I think we'll study them next semester too and I'll continue to study the nature of methodologies. Or maybe I'll watch those lectures within the next few weeks. Eh *shrug*
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I could just go back and watch all the online lectures and then come back here and argue it again,
What online lectures?
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The online lectures for my class. My professor, a few years ago (I believe), recorded all of the lectures in front of a camera. These are posted online in our school's website tool called eCompanion. There's tons of lectures--some of which I haven't watched yet but need to find time to watch :-(
It's not that fun to watch them online. Much more fun to be in a classroom setting, but he still lectures in class. We're in the theology section of the class--fun! But I was referring to the epistemology section of the course where we learned about the nature of science (also the methodology section of the course where we learned about... methodologies).
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The online lectures for my class. My professor, a few years ago (I believe), recorded all of the lectures in front of a camera. These are posted online in our school's website tool called eCompanion. There's tons of lectures--some of which I haven't watched yet but need to find time to watch :-(
I hit a brick wall here: http://smconline.org/index.real?action=eCompanion
This lecture, however, is intensely interesting! :o http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6308228560462155344
We're in the theology section of the class--fun!
I hope it's a short one. God is just one unlikely metaphysical theory and it gets far more attention than it deserves.
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No, theology is a big section and deserves much attention. We have already proven in the class that god exists. But we just can't seem to prove that "God" exists :-)
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By the way that's not our eCompanion and you definitely wouldn't find the lectures there. The eCompanion we have is on my college's website but you would hit a wall there as well because you have to be enrolled in this university and in this class to see the lectures.
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We have already proven in the class that god exists.
man what
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man what
Lol yes, to an extent that no rational person could deny it.
In regards to the video Ubuntu posted (I'm one minute into it :-)) I just wanted to share this quote he said: "Yet the assumptions that quantum theory needs to make in order to deliver those predictions are so mysterious..." Key word that caught my attention was "assumptions." But anyway, so far, a good video.