Nature of God [Archive] - HyeClub Forum

spiral

01-28-2004, 09:53 AM

speaking of chicken... I LOVE THIS!

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

GEORGE W. BUSH - We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either with us or it is against us. There is no middle ground here.
COLIN POWELL - Now at the left of the screen, you clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

HANZ BLIX - We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed access to the other side of the road.

MOHAMMED ALDOURI (Iraq ambassador) - The chicken did not cross the road. This is a complete fabrication. We don't even have a chicken.

SADDAM HUSSEIN - This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

RALPH NADER - The chicken's habitat on the original side of the road had been polluted by unchecked industrialist greed. The chicken did not reach the unspoiled habitat on the other side of the road because I was crushed by the wheels of a gas-guzzling SUV.

JERRY FALWELL - Because the chicken was gay! Isn't it obvious? Can't you people see the plain truth in front of your face? The chicken was going to the "other side." That's what they call it-the other side. Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And, if you eat that chicken, you will become gay, too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like "the other side."

DR. SEUSS - Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, The chicken crossed the road, But why it crossed, I've not been told!

ERNEST HEMINGWAY - To die. In the rain. Alone.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.- I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

GRANDPA - In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

JOHN LENNON - Imagine all the chickens crossing roads in peace.

ARISTOTLE - It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

KARL MARX - It was an historical inevitability.

VOLTAIRE - I may not agree with what the chicken did, but I will defend to the death its right to do it.

RONALD REAGAN - What chicken?

CAPTAIN KIRK - To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.
FOX MULDER -You saw it cross the road with your own eyes! How many more chickens have to cross before you believe it?

SIGMUND FREUD -The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

BILL GATES - I have just released eChicken 2003, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook-and Internet Explorer is an inextricable part of eChicken.

ALBERT EINSTEIN - Did the chicken really cross the road or did the road move beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON - I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What do you mean by chicken? Could you define chicken, please?

felizitation

01-28-2004, 09:56 AM

God is an idea.

God does not care of time, so I always think that if he haven't done something yet, he has the eternity to do it :)

What about time ? isn't God the time itself ? Can time exists without God ?
If not, and if he kills himself, there would be no more time. So there would be no more life nor humans. And then no witnesses of his death.

Again... I always arrive to the same conclusion. God exists because of us. Maybe we exist because of God.

spiral

01-28-2004, 09:57 AM

God exists because of US!

Now why did the chicken cross the road?

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 09:59 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse This is the silliest argument I have yet seen against God. You might as well write a children's book on Atheism. What do we look like a bunch of dumbasses? And why must God be a "He"? Can God just not be God?

Nice little critical analysis there, buddy. I take it you have no actual answer.

felizitation

01-28-2004, 10:00 AM

Not bad Spiral :) you made me laugh

Anonymouse

01-28-2004, 10:01 AM

Too many of these threads have been popping up like poisonous mushrooms, each asking the wrong questions and looking at this the wrong way. Man's views with regard to God are limited, within the constraints of finite human intelligence. Since we are finite, we cannot form no adequate idea of the infinite. Being material, we can form no adequate idea of the spiritual. We all acknowledge and believe in the infinity of space and time and the spirituality of the soul, but the idea of that infinity and spirituality eludes us. Even omnipotence cannot infuse infinite conceptions into finite minds. Human intelligence can't grasp it, nor our language express it. As the ancient sages would say, the visible is necessarily the measure of the invisible.

Our consciousness of the individual reveals itself alone. Our knowledge can't pass beyond the limits of our own being. Our conceptions of God and soul and other things are merely our conceptions not those things themselves. The universe is infinite while our ideas and conceptions are finite, since we are finite beings.

Thus God is not an object of knowledge, but faith. You shouldn't approach this by understanding, but by a moral sense, nor should you conceive it, but rather feel it. All attempts to embrace and try to interpet the infinite in the conception of the finite are just accomodations of the frailty of humans. Here thought retreats in conscious weakness, and our intellect is most obviously aware of its own insufficiency. This is why you cannot ask these questions and why this thread is pointless. It is here that we as humans display our stupidity by dogmatizing this, and trying to map out Gods nature and qualities.

All our damn cherished ideas of each of us are not pure truth or anything relating to God, but our own errors, or you can say our guess at the truth.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 10:02 AM

How about this? If God is completely free and morally perfect, is he free to do something immoral? If he is omniscient and completely free, is he free to act against what he already knows he will do?

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 10:04 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Thus God is not an object of knowledge, but faith.

Faith in what? If you have no idea of what God is or even can be, then what is it that you are believing in?

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 10:05 AM

What is the point in having faith in that which cannot be grasped. Why not simply remain skeptical? A God that we can't hope to have any knowledge of can't possibly expect a rational person to have any concrete belief regarding him.

felizitation

01-28-2004, 10:10 AM

Originally posted by spiral
Now why did the chicken cross the road?

So, God is some kind of illogicallity of the human mind.

For the chicken, we have to keep in mind the chaos theory. Nothing is less determined than a chicken behaviour. Let me introduce some of my arguments:

The chicken (which is actually one of the most stupid animal) does not have logic. That is certainly one of the reasons it crossed the road and why we can't explain it.

The other reason is certainly because someone like pasa was running after it.

The third probable reason is certainly because you aimed at making it cross the road. I saw you, you were at the other side, trying to attract it with corn, in perfect synchonization with the truck that actually crushed the chicken.

No more chicken -> no more problem.

By the way: if there is no solution, it's because there is no problem.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 10:13 AM

Originally posted by felizitation So, God is some kind of illogicallity of the human mind.

For the chicken, we have to keep in mind the chaos theory. Nothing is less determined than a chicken behaviour. Let me introduce some of my arguments:

The chicken (which is actually one of the most stupid animal) does not have logic. That is certainly one of the reasons it crossed the road and why we can't explain it.

The other reason is certainly because someone like pasa was running after it.

The third probable reason is certainly because you aimed at making it cross the road. I saw you, you were at the other side, trying to attract it with corn, in perfect synchonization with the truck that actually crushed the chicken.

No more chicken -> no more problem.

By the way: if there is no solution, it's because there is no problem.

Take this nonsense elsewhere. Start a chicken thread.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 10:14 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse This is the silliest argument I have yet seen against God. You might as well write a children's book on Atheism. What do we look like a bunch of dumbasses? And why must God be a "He"? Can God just not be God?

By the way, that wasn't an argument against God. It was an argument against the Christian theistic attempt to define God. Read a little more carefully before erupting like a five year-old.

felizitation

01-28-2004, 10:16 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Too many of these threads have been popping up like poisonous mushrooms, each asking the wrong questions and looking at this the wrong way. Man's views with regard to God are limited, within the constraints of finite human intelligence. Since we are finite, we cannot form no adequate idea of the infinite. Being material, we can form no adequate idea of the spiritual. We all acknowledge and believe in the infinity of space and time and the spirituality of the soul, but the idea of that infinity and spirituality eludes us. Even omnipotence cannot infuse infinite conceptions into finite minds. Human intelligence can't grasp it, nor our language express it. As the ancient sages would say, the visible is necessarily the measure of the invisible.

Our consciousness of the individual reveals itself alone. Our knowledge can't pass beyond the limits of our own being. Our conceptions of God and soul and other things are merely our conceptions not those things themselves. The universe is infinite while our ideas and conceptions are finite, since we are finite beings.

Thus God is not an object of knowledge, but faith. You shouldn't approach this by understanding, but by a moral sense, nor should you conceive it, but rather feel it. All attempts to embrace and try to interpet the infinite in the conception of the finite are just accomodations of the frailty of humans. Here thought retreats in conscious weakness, and our intellect is most obviously aware of its own insufficiency. This is why you cannot ask these questions and why this thread is pointless. It is here that we as humans display our stupidity by dogmatizing this, and trying to map out Gods nature and qualities.

I was saying exactly this, in the wrong thread i admit ("evolution & religion", Arvee).

God take birth from the reflect of human intelligence on itself. It's a natural idea.
What is for you (anon) the nuances between a "faith" and an "idea" ?

felizitation

01-28-2004, 10:18 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname Take this nonsense elsewhere. Start a chicken thread.

Quoting myself (again ...)

From me: "if there is no solution, it's because there is no problem"

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 10:19 AM

Originally posted by felizitation I was saying exactly this, in the wrong thread i admit ("evolution & religion", Arvee).

God take birth from the reflect of human intelligence on itself. It's a natural idea.
What is for you (anon) the nuances between a "faith" and an "idea" ?

What he said amounts to sophistry. It contains no coherent thought and could be used to justify belief in any conceivable metaphysical system. Makes me wonder why he calls himself a Christian.

felizitation

01-28-2004, 10:19 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname Faith in what? If you have no idea of what God is or even can be, then what is it that you are believing in?

Faith in something that completely supersedes our existance, our way of thinking, our preoccupations.

I don't know if supersedes is the good word...

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 10:27 AM

Originally posted by felizitation Faith in something that completely supersedes our existance, our way of thinking, our preoccupations.

I don't know if supersedes is the good word...

That is very nearly faith in nothing. How does this change the way you live your life or view the world? No religion, nor any form of spiritual lifestyle, would follow from this kind of non-specific faith.

Anonymouse

01-28-2004, 10:27 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname Faith in what? If you have no idea of what God is or even can be, then what is it that you are believing in?

You will never understand. In fact, you can't understand for every mans conception of God must very with his mental cultivation and mental powers. If anyone contents himself with any lower image than his intellect is capable of grasping then he contents himself with that which is false to him as well as false in fact. If its lower than one can reach one must needs feel it to be false. What may be truth the philosopher, may not be truth to the scientist, and respectively to the peasant. What many must believe is not necessarily more correct than what the refined and reflective few believe.

Thus we don't know of God we can only believe in God. ALl of us without being aware of it, although you will deny, worship a conception of our own mind, for all symbolism as well as all language shares the subjective character of the ideas it represents. It is these symbols with the names that come to us that Jung settled on in Man and his Symbols. The names we give to God only recall these symbols to the eye and mind. So like the belief in God, the belief in the souls immortality is rather a natural feeling, an extension of self consciousness, rather than a dogma belonging to any particular age or religion. It gives eternity to our nature and makes us strong in weakness and it alone gives us adequate object for our hopes and energies and value and dignity in our pursuits. It goes hand in hand with the belief in an infinite, eternal spirit ( God ), since it is through consciousness of the dignity of the mind with us that we learn to appreciate its evidences in the universe.

felizitation

01-28-2004, 10:30 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname What he said amounts to sophistry. It contains no coherent thought and could be used to justify belief in any conceivable metaphysical system. Makes me wonder why he calls himself a Christian.

I do not think so. Maybe it's just a matter of character, but the doubt concerning our existance is for some people present, for others absent.
For instance, since my childhood, I was always wondering how color would be perceived if I was on someone else's body.

Descartes convinced people of the being of their mind. But again in the basis of their own "system" or "referential". Granted the mind exists and all of you are more than just the fruit of my imagination, can I ever know if there is something out of my referential ? No, i'm confined in.
All I see, i see it though my eyes. My imagination and my experience are built upon this. All based on my unique referential.

The knowledge of this would breed the doubt concerning my referential, and thus the idea of something outside this referential.
What is on all referentials is God.

I'm not trying to convince you. It's too personnal. I'm exposing you the way i think, finding some logical reason of avoiding the non-existance of God.

With my poor words ...

Jenny

01-28-2004, 10:31 AM

The whole concept of Christianity is based on one word which is love. Love never dies that's why God wouldn't kill himself coz he's filled with love.
God is immaterial, he doesn't have a material body but a soul. He;s with us through it and through angels ofcourse.

Christianity doesn't believe in destiny so humans are free to do whatever he wants. God being almighty knows our future, and just like us he tries to deny it sometimes and gives us a chance to regret and ask for forgiveness simply bcoz he loves us not because he doubts the future or anything

I can talk forever about this but then again I don't want to bore u. No matter what God loves us so show a little more respect and let ur arguments be logical. And ofcourse if u hadn't read the bible and have shallow knowledge of ur religion don't bother arguing.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 10:36 AM

That is very eloquently put, but it still doesn't change any of the logical difficulties inherent in a spiritual worldview, nor does it cite any form of evidential or rational basis for having that worldview. I'm not going to affirm or deny what we ALL have. To do so would be idiocy. You can't possibly know what every single human being who has ever existed wants or feels.

You've been acting like I'm attacking you, and I'm not. I'm not against spiritualism. I actually happen to suspect that there may very well be a spiritual aspect to human existence, but the more I critically analyze that proposition, instead of just having the blind, unquestioning faith that you seem to be advocating, the more I am left with nothing.

Of course we all long for immortality. A person's survival instinct, which is explainable in purely biological terms, is enough to account for this. It isn't necessary to invoke the actual existence of anything infinite. Neither space nor time is thought to be infinite by physicists who study them. That is only a common misperception. They are said to be unbounded, and there is an important difference.

P.S. This is directed at the Mouse.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 10:39 AM

Originally posted by felizitation I'm not trying to convince you. It's too personnal. I'm exposing you the way i think, finding some logical reason of avoiding the non-existance of God.

I'm not asking to be convinced of anything. But if you have a particular spiritual worldview, then I would like to know why you have that. You don't seem to have anything specific, in which case I am asking what the point of believing in any spiritual aspect to existence is in the first place. How does this affect the way you actually live your life or evaluate anything in this world?

felizitation

01-28-2004, 10:41 AM

Originally posted by Jenny The whole concept of Christianity is based on one word which is love. Love never dies that's why God wouldn't kill himself coz he's filled with love.
God is immaterial, he doesn't have a material body but a soul. He;s with us through it and through angels ofcourse.

Christianity doesn't believe in destiny so humans are free to do whatever he wants. God being almighty knows our future, and just like us he tries to deny it sometimes and gives us a chance to regret and ask for forgiveness simply bcoz he loves us not because he doubts the future or anything

I can talk forever about this but then again I don't want to bore u. No matter what God loves us so show a little more respect and let ur arguments be logical. And ofcourse if u hadn't read the bible and have shallow knowledge of ur religion don't bother arguing.

"Religion" and "God" can fall into two distinct parts:
The God, for many religions, is the "same" (at least monotheistic ones). Religion is said to "kill" God, and I agree with that: it's something killing the faith through material manifestations of its existance (my belief, you won't change it, i won't change yours)

Religions came after God, and this point is sure, since the opposite would be completely illogical (and since religions are made from humans - thus we wan apply human logic :) )

I've never read the bible. I don't think I will. I have "faith", not because someone told me, just because it seems logical to me.

So, you talked about religions, and what about God ?

spiral

01-28-2004, 10:48 AM

Anonymouse

01-28-2004, 10:50 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname That is very eloquently put, but it still doesn't change any of the logical difficulties inherent in a spiritual worldview, nor does it cite any form of evidential or rational basis for having that worldview. I'm not going to affirm or deny what we ALL have. To do so would be idiocy. You can't possibly know what every single human being who has ever existed wants or feels.

You've been acting like I'm attacking you, and I'm not. I'm not against spiritualism. I actually happen to suspect that there may very well be a spiritual aspect to human existence, but the more I critically analyze that proposition, instead of just having the blind, unquestioning faith that you seem to be advocating, the more I am left with nothing.

Of course we all long for immortality. A person's survival instinct, which is explainable in purely biological terms, is enough to account for this. It isn't necessary to invoke the actual existence of anything infinite. Neither space nor time is thought to be infinite by physicists who study them. That is only a common misperception. They are said to be unbounded, and there is an important difference.

Faith must flow from some source within us, when the evidence of that which we believe is not presented to our senses, or it will in no case be the assurance of the truth of what is believed. The consciousness is the highest possible evidence of God and soul, if not the only real proof of the verity of certain things. What you would call reason and rely on that, that is our imperfect human reason, will only lead us away from the truth in God and with regard to the invisible and of the infinite, if we determine to believe nothing but that which it can demonstrate or not to believe that which it can by its processes of logic prove to be contradictionary, unreasonable or absurd. Reason cannot measure infinity. Faith begins where reason ends. For example, to reason, infinite justice and infinite mercy and love in the same being are inconsistent and impossible. One can argue that one excludes the other.

Reason cannot admit that a supreme intelligence infinitely powerful and wise must have created the boundless universe. It also tells us we are as unimportant in it as the bacteria or the ants or wolves, just part of the cycle. It is faith that and the foundation of faith that we believe God is interested in us.

Jenny

01-28-2004, 10:52 AM

To how beleiving affects life.
That's a question asked by ppl who don't know christianity. We all sin a lot, jesus is there to save us from them so that we won't burn in hell. All you need to do is belive, not pray only for a ticket to heaven but bcoz some1 who loves us that much deserves it.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 11:00 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Faith must flow from some source within us, when the evidence of that which we believe is not presented to our senses, or it will in no case be the assurance of the truth of what is believed. The consciousness is the highest possible evidence of God and soul, if not the only real proof of the verity of certain things. What you would call reason and rely on that, that is our imperfect human reason, will only lead us away from the truth in God and with regard to the invisible and of the infinite, if we determine to believe nothing but that which it can demonstrate or not to believe that which it can by its processes of logic prove to be contradictionary, unreasonable or absurd. Reason cannot measure infinity. Faith begins where reason ends. For example, to reason, infinite justice and infinite mercy and love in the same being are inconsistent and impossible. One can argue that one excludes the other.

Reason cannot admit that a supreme intelligence infinitely powerful and wise must have created the boundless universe. It also tells us we are as unimportant in it as the bacteria or the ants or wolves, just part of the cycle. It is faith that and the foundation of faith that we believe God is interested in us.

Again, reason is known to produce knowledge and can provide a detailed justification of its epistemic principles. You have yet to provide any account of how knowledge may be brought about through faith.

Reason has no trouble admitting that which is reasonable. Faith that goes against reason is a dangerous tool that can be used to justify anything from suicide bombing to the rape of virgins and the sacrifice of innocent human beings. It is morally reprehensible to hold a belief based on faith alone with no other justification.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 11:02 AM

Originally posted by Jenny To how beleiving affects life.
That's a question asked by ppl who don't know christianity. We all sin a lot, jesus is there to save us from them so that we won't burn in hell. All you need to do is belive, not pray only for a ticket to heaven but bcoz some1 who loves us that much deserves it.

Start a separate Christianity thread and I can get into that.

felizitation

01-28-2004, 11:08 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname I'm not asking to be convinced of anything. But if you have a particular spiritual worldview, then I would like to know why you have that. You don't seem to have anything specific, in which case I am asking what the point of believing in any spiritual aspect to existence is in the first place. How does this affect the way you actually live your life or evaluate anything in this world?

I don't know exactly how you would define "spiritual worldview".
I do not believe in religions, i do believe in God, for the reasons I exposed just before.
Now, knowing if God is more love or whatever, i don't wonder that. Maybe i'm athee, but i believe in God. And it doesn't change anything in my life. I have my opinion on the "right" and the "wrong", induced by my education more than religion.

So, as you said, I should not have any spiritual worldview. But i have a worldview.

Jenny

01-28-2004, 11:10 AM

I'm sorry, but it's just that I don't like ppl talking about religion like that. God has helped me many times in life, and that's why I'm extremly religious. When ppl doubt Him, I just can't stand it and I can even say cry. Haven't God helped u in something? Haven't u felt his exisence?

Anonymouse

01-28-2004, 11:13 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname Again, reason is known to produce knowledge and can provide a detailed justification of its epistemic principles. You have yet to provide any account of how knowledge may be brought about through faith.

Reason has no trouble admitting that which is reasonable. Faith that goes against reason is a dangerous tool that can be used to justify anything from suicide bombing to the rape of virgins and the sacrifice of innocent human beings. It is morally reprehensible to hold a belief based on faith alone with no other justification.

Again, you don't get it. Reason and the material knowledge cannot deal with the ethereal, that is what we call faith. You keep jammering about this yet you cannot grasp it. You cannot grasp that human intelligence is finite, therefore cannot conceive of the infinite, and reason simply cannot admit to the spiritual and faith. Faith and reason are as far from each other, as earth is from pluto. That is the problem in philosophy, the most difficult problem that it cannot overcome, faith and reason. The encroachments of reason on faith and faith on reason is like the eclipses of the sun or moon, and when they happen, the source of light and its reflection become useless.

"Morally reprehensible" is not how I'd put it, for science perishes by systems that are nothing but beliefs and mans own mind. Thus when all is said and done, you are either an atheist or a believer. Philosophy and reason have taught us nothing about the nature of our sensations, our perceptions, our cognizances, the origina of our thoughts and ideas, but words, or even our souls.

Thus to try to answer the immaterial, the ethereal and faith through knowledge of reason, is as foolish for you to go into biological sciences to study human consciousness. Thus your whole purpose in this thread is an oxymoron. Until you learn to make the distinction of faith and reason, you cannot understand how anyone can believe in God.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 11:16 AM

Originally posted by Jenny I'm sorry, but it's just that I don't like ppl talking about religion like that. God has helped me many times in life, and that's why I'm extremly religious. When ppl doubt Him, I just can't stand it and I can even say cry. Haven't God helped u in something? Haven't u felt his exisence?

Nope.

It doesn't seem to occur to people that if they have been indoctrinated with something since their youth, their mind will be conditioned to feel certain things and accept certain things uncritically. I was never indoctrinated, and so I have never felt anything like that. I look at the complexity of the human ear, and I'm not moved to a religious response. I just marvel at the capabilities of natural law.

Furthermore, I have never felt any need to invoke supernatural help when I have a problem. I've solved them perfectly well on my own. If God couldn't create beings that were capable of coping without him, he isn't much of a God.

felizitation

01-28-2004, 11:18 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname
Reason has no trouble admitting that which is reasonable. Faith that goes against reason is a dangerous tool that can be used to justify anything from suicide bombing to the rape of virgins and the sacrifice of innocent human beings. It is morally reprehensible to hold a belief based on faith alone with no other justification.

I do not consider this as an argument. This is very extrem manifestations of the "faith", used as a tool. But it is merely ignorance, directed in the conditionning of ppl.
And if you ask someone who is ready to kill himself for "faith", I'm sure it's an ignorant person, who neither don't understand the religion he adheres to, nor is able to give consistence into the God he believes in. Mindless people, without opinions or critical sense.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 11:20 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Again, you don't get it. Reason and the material knowledge cannot deal with the ethereal, that is what we call faith. You keep jammering about this yet you cannot grasp it. You cannot grasp that human intelligence is finite, therefore cannot conceive of the infinite, and reason simply cannot admit to the spiritual and faith. Faith and reason are as far from each other, as earth is from pluto. That is the problem in philosophy, the most difficult problem that it cannot overcome, faith and reason. The encroachments of reason on faith and faith on reason is like the eclipses of the sun or moon, and when they happen, the source of light and its reflection become useless.

You have not given any reason to believe that there exists anything ethereal or infinite. Your argument is tantamount to this:

A. I Believe it exists.
B. What I believe must be true.
C. Therefore, it exists.

That is not sound reasoning, my friend. You're making a fool of yourself.

Originally posted by Anonymouse "Morally reprehensible" is not how I'd put it, for science perishes by systems that are nothing but beliefs and mans own mind. Thus when all is said and done, you are either an atheist or a believer. Philosophy and reason have taught us nothing about the nature of our sensations, our perceptions, our cognizances, the origina of our thoughts and ideas, but words, or even our souls.

I don't know what books you've been reading, pal, but science and philosophy teach us plenty about these things.

Anonymouse

01-28-2004, 11:22 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname Nope.

It doesn't seem to occur to people that if they have been indoctrinated with something since their youth, their mind will be conditioned to feel certain things and accept certain things uncritically. I was never indoctrinated, and so I have never felt anything like that. I look at the complexity of the human ear, and I'm not moved to a religious response. I just marvel at the capabilities of natural law.

Furthermore, I have never felt any need to invoke supernatural help when I have a problem. I've solved them perfectly well on my own. If God couldn't create beings that were capable of coping without him, he isn't much of a God.

Only arrogance would assume that you yourself are free of indoctrination. Being indoctrinated with reason and that reason is the only answer is another form of indoctrination. Man is nothing but an agent to be indoctrinated with, what else will the mind be filled with? We are all indoctrinated with something, otherwise we will not argue or defend our convictions the way we do.

As far as the ear, natural law, is but a product of God. Who has yet made it obvious for us how from the contact with a foreign body, the image in the eye, the wave of air impringing on the ear, particular particles entering the nostriles and coming in contact with the palate, come sensations in the nerves and from that perception in the mind of the man or animal. Science cannot answer these. It can only give names to the externalities but the thing itself, the origin of it, it will never know. That is what I marvel at, that no matter how well we use our finite minds and intelligence, at a certain point it ceases and science becomes hopeless.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 11:24 AM

Originally posted by felizitation I do not consider this as an argument. This is very extrem manifestations of the "faith", used as a tool. But it is merely ignorance, directed in the conditionning of ppl.
And if you ask someone who is ready to kill himself for "faith", I'm sure it's an ignorant person, who neither don't understand the religion he adheres to, nor is able to give consistence into the God he believes in. Mindless people, without opinions or critical sense.

They are most likely mentally ill, but that is beside the point. The point is that they are willing to do it precisely because they are uncritical. They continue to believe that what they are doing is right in spite of all evidence to the contrary. You and the Mouse both continue to believe in God, without any evidential basis, and despite all of the evidence to the contrary. My qualm is not so much with you, as you say you take no worldview from it and it does not effect your daily life. But Mousy at least claims to be a Christian, and that certainly entails a certain structure to his beliefs and his life that requires a better justification than faith alone. As I said, faith can be used to justify anything. If you find that an acceptable epistemology, then you have no grounds for opposing what was done by suicide bombers who invoke exactly the same argument that you do.

Anonymouse

01-28-2004, 11:26 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname You have not given any reason to believe that there exists anything ethereal or infinite. Your argument is tantamount to this:

A. I Believe it exists.
B. What I believe must be true.
C. Therefore, it exists.

That is not sound reasoning, my friend. You're making a fool of yourself.

Yes, I believe it exists, and what I believe must be true for me. Whether it is reasonable for you is of no relevance, for I have already explained that reason and faith are two different things, and reason cannot deal with what is faith, just like faith cannot deal with what reason is. Apparently you are having trouble grasping this, thus making your position from reason, totally pointless in understanding the position of faith. Faith doesn't deal with reasoning, faith is precisely faith, for faith is the absence of reason, it is belief, otherwise it would not be faith.

Originally posted by loseyourname I don't know what books you've been reading, pal, but science and philosophy teach us plenty about these things.

You accuse me of believing in something then it must be true, yet your position on reason is the same thing, for you believe that all things can be answered by reason and science, which is an arrogant assumption, and an incorrect one. I have said a thousand times, you can marvel at the extensions of the ear, to the eye, and all the nervous system, yet what science and philosophy teach are nothing but words and more words, not what lies behind the substances themselves nor its origin. Science immediately falls when man begins to ask, how did we get here? And from then, faith replaces science. You cannot grasp this nor understand this, and for you to concede this would mean letting go of your ego since youre a biology student and believe that biological sciences hold the answers to everything, much like your mistaken assumption of going into biological sciences to study human consciousness.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 11:27 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse As far as the ear, natural law, is but a product of God. Who has yet made it obvious for us how from the contact with a foreign body, the image in the eye, the wave of air impringing on the ear, particular particles entering the nostriles and coming in contact with the palate, come sensations in the nerves and from that perception in the mind of the man or animal. Science cannot answer these. It can only give names to the externalities but the thing itself, the origin of it, it will never know. That is what I marvel at, that no matter how well we use our finite minds and intelligence, at a certain point it ceases and science becomes hopeless.

What the hell are you talking about? Science can explain perfectly fine how these sensations are caused. It has nothing to say about what they are exactly, but I don't see any answers coming from faith, either. All I see is you telling me they are manifestations of a soul without giving any reason whatsoever that that should be believed. I can say that they are planted there by an evil demon using exactly the same reasoning. Why is your explanation to be preferred?

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 11:31 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Yes, I believe it exists, and what I believe must be true for me. Whether it is reasonable for you is of no relevance, for I have already explained that reason and faith are two different things, and reason cannot deal with what is faith, just like faith cannot deal with what reason is. Apparently you are having trouble grasping this, thus making your position from reason, totally pointless in understanding the position of faith. Faith doesn't deal with reasoning, faith is precisely faith, for faith is the absence of reason, it is belief, otherwise it would not be faith.

You accuse me of believing in something then it must be true, yet your position on reason is the same thing, for you believe that all things can be answered by reason and science, which is an arrogant assumption, and an incorrect one. I have said a thousand times, you can marvel at the extensions of the ear, to the eye, and all the nervous system, yet what science and philosophy teach are nothing but words and more words, not what lies behind the substances themselves nor its origin. Science immediately falls when man begins to ask, how did we get here? And from then, faith replaces science. You cannot grasp this nor understand this, and for you to concede this would mean letting go of your ego since youre a biology student and believe that biological sciences hold the answers to everything, much like your mistaken assumption of going into biological sciences to study human consciousness.

My position on reason is backed up, as I have already pointed out, by the fact that reason is known to produce useful knowledge by means of a known epistemology. You have provided no similar defense of faith. The fact that you believe something can be true for you and not for me gives you absolutely no ground on which to argue with me. I can be right and you can be right, so why aren't you saying that I can be right?

I don't see any reason for you to say that I can't grasp the fact that science can't answer questions about how the universe got here. I have never indicated that I believed science can answer everything. In fact, I have several times mentioned questions that science cannot answer, and I even used exactly that example.

Anonymouse

01-28-2004, 11:31 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname What the hell are you talking about? Science can explain perfectly fine how these sensations are caused. It has nothing to say about what they are exactly, but I don't see any answers coming from faith, either. All I see is you telling me they are manifestations of a soul without giving any reason whatsoever that that should be believed. I can say that they are planted there by an evil demon using exactly the same reasoning. Why is your explanation to be preferred?

So you concede that science doesn't explain what they exactly are, and you want answers from faith.

Here you are fain to admit that human intelligence is finite, and reason at some point cannot answer certain things. Faith begins where reason ends.

You cannot have an answer in the material sense for humans are limited, thus we have faith, we believe in certain things that cannot be answered. We cannot possibly know everything, and reason presupposes this.

There is also faith in your everything examples of knowledge. For example we don't know China exists if you haven't been to China, but we have evidence from peoples' testimony, and pictures, and we have faith that these are true. In other words, it would be unreasonable, one can argue, to hold this as absolute knowledge without first experiencing it through one of our five senses, thus we place faith in that persons testimony and those pictures that China exists, of course few of the rational creatures will admit this.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 11:33 AM

Again, if you use faith as a basis for knowledge, you are leaving the door open for any possible faith to be invoked as justification for any behavior, including destructive and unethical behavior. That is morally reprehensible. Why is your faith any better than Osama Bin Laden's faith? You have no more basis for your beliefs than he has for his.

Anonymouse

01-28-2004, 11:34 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname My position on reason is backed up, as I have already pointed out, by the fact that reason is known to produce useful knowledge by means of a known epistemology. You have provided no similar defense of faith. The fact that you believe something can be true for you and not for me gives you absolutely no ground on which to argue with me. I can be right and you can be right, so why aren't you saying that I can be right?

I don't see any reason for you to say that I can't grasp the fact that science can't answer questions about how the universe got here. I have never indicated that I believed science can answer everything. In fact, I have several times mentioned questions that science cannot answer, and I even used exactly that example.

Faith is not reason, therefore it is not epistomology. It can only provide knowledge, spiritual knowledge for my own experiences which I attribute to God, certain spiritual experiences, which reason cannot answer. Therefore, the way you are seeking faith as some knowledge on par with reason, is silly, for like I said, you just cannot grasp that the two are different things.

I'm only arguing because you cannot see the distinction between faith and reason and you are holding them on the same measuring stick, asking evidence of faith, on an equivalent ground with reason, whereas faith is far beyond reason. That is what your mistaking, and I can show that even in our everyday knowledge we hold , there is a grain of faith.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 11:35 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse So you concede that science doesn't explain what they exactly are, and you want answers from faith.

Here you are fain to admit that human intelligence is finite, and reason at some point cannot answer certain things. Faith begins where reason ends.

You cannot have an answer in the material sense for humans are limited, thus we have faith, we believe in certain things that cannot be answered. We cannot possibly know everything, and reason presupposes this.

There is also faith in your everything examples of knowledge. For example we don't know China exists if you haven't been to China, but we have evidence from peoples' testimony, and pictures, and we have faith that these are true. In other words, it would be unreasonable, one can argue, to hold this as absolute knowledge without first experiencing it through one of our five senses, thus we place faith in that persons testimony and those pictures that China exists, of course few of the rational creatures will admit this.

Mouse, I am perfectly content not to know everything. I don't invoke faith in order to claim I know that which is unknowable.

loseyourname

01-28-2004, 11:38 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Faith is not reason, therefore it is not epistomology. It can only provide knowledge, spiritual knowledge for my own experiences which I attribute to God, certain spiritual experiences, which reason cannot answer. Therefore, the way you are seeking faith as some knowledge on par with reason, is silly, for like I said, you just cannot grasp that the two are different things.

I'm only arguing because you cannot see the distinction between faith and reason and you are holding them on the same measuring stick, asking evidence of faith, on an equivalent ground with reason, whereas faith is far beyond reason. That is what your mistaking, and I can show that even in our everyday knowledge we hold , there is a grain of faith.

You're ignoring the fact that just claimed something can be true for you and not for me. The truth is the truth, my friend.

I see the distinction between faith and reason perfectly well. It is you that is pretending you are capable of attaining knowledge through faith, while at the same contending that faith begins where knowledge ends. That is a contradiction.

I have no issue with a person having faith. I have issue with people who behave as if their faith is indicative of knowledge. Faith is not knowledge.

Anonymouse

01-28-2004, 11:40 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname Again, if you use faith as a basis for knowledge, you are leaving the door open for any possible faith to be invoked as justification for any behavior, including destructive and unethical behavior. That is morally reprehensible. Why is your faith any better than Osama Bin Laden's faith? You have no more basis for your beliefs than he has for his.

You are mistaking faith with religion here. I have faith that God exists. I have faith that those people who went to China are telling the truth. I have faith that my neighbor won't steal my car when I leave the window open. I have faith that the person I am buying this from won't rip me off. The world would be a bleak place without faith, and faith is evidenced in almost all our actions and doings. You trying to extend what is ethical or not, with regard to faith, is pointless and has nothing to do with faith. Man will dogmatize anything, even science, not because of his faith or his convictions or reason, but because of his ignorance. Thus my personal spiritual experiences are for me, which I attribute to God and I have faith in, for these things cannot be answered by reason nor can you grasp them. Therefore you dragging this into ethics and Osama is totally pointless, for I have not nor do I see any reason in going in that direction. It started out as a nature of God, and God is in each and every one of us, in our souls, and we have faith in God. If you admit that there exists a soul, then you are placing faith in that admission.

Anonymouse

01-28-2004, 11:44 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname You're ignoring the fact that just claimed something can be true for you and not for me. The truth is the truth, my friend.

I see the distinction between faith and reason perfectly well. It is you that is pretending you are capable of attaining knowledge through faith, while at the same contending that faith begins where knowledge ends. That is a contradiction.

I have no issue with a person having faith. I have issue with people who behave as if their faith is indicative of knowledge. Faith is not knowledge.

I said faith begins where reason ends, don't mutate what I said to conform to what you want me to have said. My spiritual experiences and the events that I've been through, are to me testament that there is God. If you want to call this knowledge, fine, call it faith, fine. There is no contradiction, there is truth. I only said that for me, because I am the one that experienced these things, not you. Therefore I acknowledge this truth, which you deny, that is all. There is no contradiction aside from what you make. Faith is only knowledge to each and every one of us of that thing which reason cannot show us, namely God. Thus reason could not answer the experiences I've had.

loseyourname

01-29-2004, 02:01 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse You are mistaking faith with religion here. I have faith that God exists. I have faith that those people who went to China are telling the truth. I have faith that my neighbor won't steal my car when I leave the window open. I have faith that the person I am buying this from won't rip me off. The world would be a bleak place without faith, and faith is evidenced in almost all our actions and doings. You trying to extend what is ethical or not, with regard to faith, is pointless and has nothing to do with faith. Man will dogmatize anything, even science, not because of his faith or his convictions or reason, but because of his ignorance. Thus my personal spiritual experiences are for me, which I attribute to God and I have faith in, for these things cannot be answered by reason nor can you grasp them. Therefore you dragging this into ethics and Osama is totally pointless, for I have not nor do I see any reason in going in that direction. It started out as a nature of God, and God is in each and every one of us, in our souls, and we have faith in God. If you admit that there exists a soul, then you are placing faith in that admission.

Let us go in whatever direction we are taken. I simply want to know how, if you use faith to justify making a knowledge claim, which is what you are doing by saying that you know God exists, you could ever repudiate someone who uses a similar retreat to faith as a justification for actions such as suicide bombing and genocide. They are extreme examples, granted, but there are smaller examples such as Orthodox Mormons who abuse their wives, or small cults such as the Heaven's Gate group, that invoke the same faith in spiritual experience that you are to justify their brutal and immoral actions. Surely you agree that what they have done is morally wrong, but on what would base a judgement of them?

loseyourname

01-29-2004, 02:07 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Thus reason could not answer the experiences I've had.

Perhaps your drug usage could. You're completing ignoring the fact that there are alternative hypotheses that would explain your experiences that are equally or more likely than an experience of God.

felizitation

01-29-2004, 02:49 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname They are most likely mentally ill, but that is beside the point. The point is that they are willing to do it precisely because they are uncritical. They continue to believe that what they are doing is right in spite of all evidence to the contrary. You and the Mouse both continue to believe in God, without any evidential basis, and despite all of the evidence to the contrary. My qualm is not so much with you, as you say you take no worldview from it and it does not effect your daily life. But Mousy at least claims to be a Christian, and that certainly entails a certain structure to his beliefs and his life that requires a better justification than faith alone. As I said, faith can be used to justify anything. If you find that an acceptable epistemology, then you have no grounds for opposing what was done by suicide bombers who invoke exactly the same argument that you do.

I disagree with you in this point. Look, i'm christian, as Mouse and I believe in God. Maybe that had affected me in the way I understand what is the "good" and the "bad", and thus how I'm considering others. Religion is an heritage though, and is a kind of human explanations of what remains unexplained, i.e. God.
Since for me, religion should "serve" God, i think it is secondary.

Beside this, you're saying that faith can justify anything. That is simply not true.
A belief can can be fed by ignorancy. That is the case for ppl you are mentionning. But faith and belief are from different nature - for me.
Belief is something that reason cannot explain, based on intuitions, feelings, also lack of knowledge. Faith is a very special belief dealing only with God, believing in the idea of an entity embodied by the supplementary nature of humans (ie. a domain of existence that would supersede all others) - I think this is unclear -

Once again, ppl thinking "God wants me to kill some people" don't have the necessary detachment to understand that these thoughts are made by humans. This is also why any religion would suffer (ie. ade by men) as soon as we self-clarify what is God.

My third point is the doubt, which is said to be the salt of the spirit (french philosopher "Alain"). I put the doubt on every sciences human kind has made. You are saying that there is no evidence of God's existence.
Of course there is not ! :) But it doesn't change anything.
But, being merely human, physical particles, we are simply unable to prove its unexistence. You cannot prove the unexistence of an idea, the idea exists as soon as it was thought, conceived; and this is the same for God (which is an idea for me)

Ignorance, fear, belief, conditionning were the tools used to make suicide bombers. Once again, some ppl are saying that in the Coran (just an example), it is said that is someone looses his life during a religious battle, God would reward him with a place in heaven. This is simply human preoccupations, notions and crap. God is eternity and omiscience and I do not see heaven in this two words; heaven/hell are two tools used to induce the notion of the good and the bad, through fear.
Again, this is not "faith", this is ununderstanding and ignorancy, thus belief. These two terms are very different to me.

felizitation

01-29-2004, 03:08 PM

I don't know if you've read "The Karamazov Brother" (F.Dostoiovsky). This author tended to avoid dogmatism of religion.

There is an absolutely delicious part of this book, called "The great inquisitor". I highly recommend you to read it.

I found some commentary about the mentionned part on the net:
http://www.philosophos.com/knowledge_base/archives_13/philosophy_questions_1392.html I didn't read it, and don't know its value.

I found also the whole book (2MB) at the following URL:
http://www.friends-partners.org/oldfriends/literature/brothers.html

The mentionned part:
http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid.1/bookid.276/sec.36/

loseyourname

01-29-2004, 03:59 PM

Originally posted by felizitation Beside this, you're saying that faith can justify anything. That is simply not true.
A belief can can be fed by ignorancy. That is the case for ppl you are mentionning. But faith and belief are from different nature - for me.
Belief is something that reason cannot explain, based on intuitions, feelings, also lack of knowledge. Faith is a very special belief dealing only with God, believing in the idea of an entity embodied by the supplementary nature of humans (ie. a domain of existence that would supersede all others) - I think this is unclear -

You haven't given any reason why your faith is valid and the faith of a Branch Davidian is not. They both stem from the same principle - that personal conviction without evidence or logic constitute usable knowledge.

I've read the book. That is a great passage.

Anonymouse

01-29-2004, 04:52 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname Let us go in whatever direction we are taken. I simply want to know how, if you use faith to justify making a knowledge claim, which is what you are doing by saying that you know God exists, you could ever repudiate someone who uses a similar retreat to faith as a justification for actions such as suicide bombing and genocide. They are extreme examples, granted, but there are smaller examples such as Orthodox Mormons who abuse their wives, or small cults such as the Heaven's Gate group, that invoke the same faith in spiritual experience that you are to justify their brutal and immoral actions. Surely you agree that what they have done is morally wrong, but on what would base a judgement of them?

Yes people could manipulate faith to do evil things, no different than people could manipulate science to do evil things, your point? Should we stop having faith because of that? Should we also stop research in science because of that? Nothing is perfect, the state of man is imperfection, that is what you can't understand, for you are approaching this from a purely rational perspective. Do you have faith that you won't be beaten up by the person in the line next to you? Or do you know this for a fact? If you know this for a fact, please tell me, for I'd like to know too.

Anonymouse

01-29-2004, 04:55 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname Perhaps your drug usage could. You're completing ignoring the fact that there are alternative hypotheses that would explain your experiences that are equally or more likely than an experience of God.

Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Advil, Sports Creme, Marijuana? So you're saying these have made me believe the things I have? Of course, most of those experiences that I did live through happened before I even touched weed, so I don't see how you can know about my experiences any better than I can, and your need to try to pin miracles or supernatural events otherwise not explainable by reason or science, into the realm of science. To me you are trying to make everything fit in to your cozy worldview so you can be right.

Of course, I've already highlighted that if we approach faith and God via reason, there is no proof. Reason can never deal with faith, the two are mutually exclusive things which you still have not grasped. How we got here, what our purpose is, and our ability to come up with reason is the exact mystery which science cannot answer, then and there faith comes in. But don't let this deter you, for you are absolutely convinced that everything is explained by reason.

loseyourname

01-29-2004, 05:46 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Advil, Sports Creme, Marijuana? So you're saying these have made me believe the things I have? Of course, most of those experiences that I did live through happened before I even touched weed, so I don't see how you can know about my experiences any better than I can, and your need to try to pin miracles or supernatural events otherwise not explainable by reason or science, into the realm of science. To me you are trying to make everything fit in to your cozy worldview so you can be right.

Tell me what your experience was, and we'll see if science can explain it.

loseyourname

01-29-2004, 05:48 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Nothing is perfect, the state of man is imperfection, that is what you can't understand.

Yes, Mouse, I'm talking about genocide and suicide cults because I don't understand that man is imperfect.

Anonymouse

01-29-2004, 07:23 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname Yes, Mouse, I'm talking about genocide and suicide cults because I don't understand that man is imperfect.

Originally posted by loseyourname Tell me what your experience was, and we'll see if science can explain it.

Telling you the things I experienced won't make this issue any understandable to you than it already is. For what might appear to be a mere accident, or some traumatizing event, to you, or the unbeliever may seem something regular that everyone experiences in their lifetimes. To the believer, who is experiencing that moment, they are experiencing a transcendental experiencing. Science and reason would say this is just hallucinations and superstition, that I made myself, via faith, believe that for so long, that when an event happened, I interpreted to mean it was from God or a miracle. I know how these arguments work, you aren't the first nor the last to state these, and it is curious why you disregarded all my other points on how much we place faith in our everyday lives.

Are you saying that somehow Genocide is because of religion? The Nazis were anything but Christians or adherents to religion. In fact, genocide and war is not a result of religion, for all religions essentially speak of humility, but it is about Statism and collective thinking. Man can dogmatize anything, from religion, to science, your comparisons are seriously flawed for you are attempting to pin madness only on human fanatics warping religion, and not on science, for Hitler's views were a direct result of Darwinism, the survival of the fittest. So let's be careful before we use the tarbrush of generalization one way or another, just like we should be careful how we try to address faith with reason.

loseyourname

02-01-2004, 12:06 PM

Anonymouse

02-01-2004, 05:30 PM

I suppose you're right about my use of human fanaticism as an argument. Fanaticism will use anything to justify evil. My only point is that if they say they are using faith in the same way you are, there is absolutely nothing you could say to rebuke them, whereas is they attempt to use reason or science to justify their evil, they can logically be proven wrong.

I don't see what you're aiming at here. You start off by saying that yes fanaticism will corrupt everything, then go on to somehow make faith more worse than the other things. If you're insinuating that because some abuse faith, no different than some abuse reason, then that makes faith lesser than reason, I don't agree for the same argument can be made towards reason. This sort of argument attempts to paint one holier than the other and thereby to the ignorant reader forming a judgement that faith is evil, yet you yourself have faith in your every day life, which I pointed out, which you conveniently ignored.

Your relunctance to state your experiences is understandable. I am assuming that yes, they are relatively commonplace, hell, maybe even similar to experiences that I have had. I have experienced a great deal of luck in my lifetime, including bad situations that turned into great learning experiences and a couple of times I was very close to dying and probably should have. The simple fact is, that if put to the test, science and luck can explain these perfectly fine, without resort to supernatural explanations.

Like I've said science itself is a victim of faith in the end. Look at Darwin and evolutionary science. It is nothing but faith. I doubt science can answer some of the things I know which I attribute to God.

The fact that I am not the first to use this argument doesn't make it in invalid argument.

No one said it is invalid. In fact, you have a problem with making stuff up of things I am supposed to have said but in reality I haven't said at all and you are implying that I said that. All I said is I am familiar with your argument because it has been used before by many before you in that science can offer cozy explanations. I don't buy it. Whether you accept that or not is your problem.

You have no answer for it. All you can say "I know because I know."

Actually I do have an answer. It's God and my faith in God. So somehow by the above you actually know more about my experiences and my outlook than I supposedly do. This is the last resort of the arrogant ones who believe they alone are some sacred adepts that have mastered the use of reason. Even the greats philosophers recognized faith, because it was in a different realm than reason, they only believed that reason was enough for our material world, but it cannot explain phenomenon that transcends the material world and so they avoided it. Clearly you haven't really read up on the classic if you still do not understand the dichotomy between faith and reason and insist that reason is right and faith is wrong. For if you have, you would realize that neither faith nor reason are right or wrong, they simply are.

That is reasoning, and it is faulty reasoning. Human beings do not come to conclusions based on faith.

Really? So somehow you are here making the claim that you are the arbiter of what is truly valid or invalid knowledge and that reason reigns supreme. So my personal exerpiences, as well as those of my parents, somehow are all flawed because they didn't se reason. I'd be more inclined to say that in your world arrogance reigns supreme. Of course your inability, or rather, your hang up with trying to prove to me that having faith is stupid and reason can answer everything, yet ignoring all the examples of faith I displayed in our everyday lives, highlights to me someone who is obssessed with being 'right' about this because he is 'right'. In fact in this case I cannot even rebuke you. You claimed fanatics in faith cannot be rebuked well here you are a man of reason cannot be rebuked. Your point? Should we stop having faith or exercising reason? I know you will find a nice clever way to turn this around and re explain your position but eh...

Human being come to conclusions based on faith everyday, and all you had to do was read my examples of faith in our everyday lives. Most of what we 'know' is based on faith to. We have faith that those who wrote those history books did so accurately and honestly. We don't know that they did, but we have faith that they did. Thus we come to a conclusion based on faith.

There exists experiential evidence in your memory that is enough to convince you, through reason, that what you have been through cannot be explained through any means other than faith. Your faith is only used to fill in the gaps in your reasoning, and flatly put, you are wrong.

Well like I said, I never denied reason in fact I reason all the time, like we are doing now. But some things science is unable to answer such as where we came from or how we even have our memory, or who gave it to us? What about self consciousness? How do you explain an organismic consciousness that is conscious of itself? Where did this come from? Science may attempt to answer it using clever jargon and words to give it an aura of science, but it is no more of a guess, than it is that we descended from simple celled organisms.

You may lead a very nice life, full of spiritual pleasures and wonderful brain states induced by your beliefs, and that is all fine and dandy. But you have compromised the principal of truth, and that is something that I will never do.

Truth? No one may know truth. We can only have guesses and or attempts at it. Only human arrogance would be fain to admit this. Reason answers many things, no one denies this. Faith replaces reason on many more things. You're absolute denial of faith is in itself a denial of truth, since all things contain a bit of truth, but not the absolute truth.

I would rather live with uncertainty.

Good for you.

I have no idea whether or not there is a God, though I suspect that there probably is, for far different reasons than you have. I also have no idea what will happen to me when I die, and that is fine. I am perfectly content to live solely in reality, and not believe that which is not built from a sound foundation. A person can convince themselves of just about anything, and if it is not backed up by evidence or reason, it is hollow and no better than the ravings of a schizophrenic. It is particularly hollow when it goes against the evidence and reason, as is the case with Christian belief.

Faith in moral principles in virtue ad in God are necessary for the guidance of man, just as instinct is for the animal. Humans in possession of a mind and soul cannot help but exercise faith. If they were mindless animals, it wouldn't necessarily be so. We recognize a soul, a conscience and the sense of an authority above us, with universal moral laws and all these rest on the principles of faith. No one can suffer and be patient, or struggle and conquer, nor improve and be happy without a conscience, without hope, and without God. In some degree we all use faith, even you, which you will be fain to admit. To claim that all knowledge necessarily needs to meet the scientific method is strong limiting yourself and in fact means you should disbelieve all the faith based claims and actions you make in your everyday life.

The total rejection of all faith and belief would strike out a principle from human nature, which human nature is hopelessly tied to; man is a faithful creature. After all faith must flow out from some source within us when the evidence of that which we are to believe is not presented to our senses. If science and knowledge is the sun, belief is the man. It is inescapable. Only arrogance would deny the use of faith in the journey of mankind. It is precisely our stepping away from the idea of an authority, a force above us, the doctrine that man is God, is why we can cause so much destruction, and that is the driving force for the world now. That by science man will somehow conquer nature and become its God. Once again, this is a circular argument unless you wish to cede that faith and reason are the positive and negative, light and dark.

ckBejug

02-01-2004, 06:55 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname I'm going to assume, for the sake of argument, that God exists in this thread. Let's discuss what the nature of this being might be. The stock theistic model these days goes something like this: God is an immaterial, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, completely free intelligent being who created the universe. Does that really make any sense? I can make a couple of pretty decent arguments that that is nothing more than a load of incoherent nonsense. So what do you think God is?

Even if you don't believe in God, consider this. Hell seems to be an eternal separation from God. Not believing in a God is the complete and absolute rejection of the one phenomenal thing that loves you in spite of yourself. If you say a God doesn't exist, you're dismissing something that has no choice but to love you, something whose pure and absolute love willed your existence. The rejection of that is a complete and horrifying denial of one's capacity to be loved at all. Is it not?

Please don't think I say this to argue the existence or inexistence of a God. That was merely an opinion and nothing anyone says is going to make me change my mind about it, because there is nothing to change my mind about as it is not MY opinion, I just wanted to throw that out there to see what you guys thought about it. The end.

loseyourname

02-03-2004, 09:37 AM

If this is hell, it aint all that bad.

Anonymouse

02-20-2004, 01:28 PM

This response is from the previous thread in the other forum in the other thread which was closed.

Originally posted by loseyourname That is your belief. Others, who use exactly the same faith that you use, come to different conclusions. They don't think that when you analyze, competing faiths will reconcile. They believe that you are wrong, or that Islam is wrong, or that Jainism is wrong, or that Hinduism is wrong, or that Shamanism is wrong, or that Satanism is wrong. How is it that you are the one person amongst all these that happens to be right?

Are you trying to make my point for me here? You have just shown why it is foolish to accept things on faith alone. The fact that we do it doesn't mean we should be doing it. Quite to the contrary, I believe that any prudent person would agree that we should always critically analyze and question the assertions of historians, politicians, and lovers.

That is the problem of those people who believe one is wrong over the other. When I look at the grand scheme of things, I ask myself, why do every society in everytime have religious beliefs? And if you take that further and compare, contrast, and study them, you see similarities. You see that all morality emanates from this. Why do all societies have morality? I see purpose here, and I see power that is beyond us. When have I been against critically analyzing historians, politicians, and even lovers? But it remains nonetheless that we spend less time critically analyziing them, than we do believing them.

Originally posted by loseyourname So you admit that you contradict yourself, but it's okay because it is faith contradicting faith? Is this honestly how you acquire a belief system?

I was being sarcastic Mr. Lose. Anything can contradict anything per the rules of logic Mr. Lose. I already mentioned. I already went as far as saying that it is not logical nor reasonable to believe in God, essentially argued your position.

Originally posted by loseyourname You observed me state many times that I do not believe it is moral to use faith alone as a justification for metaphysical belief, and that I would battle anyone who attempted to do so. Then you said that it was my ego that was forcing me to keep this up. First off, that is a knowledge claim. Second, you have made many others, saying that all humans desire a creator and that all humans desire moral order. Third, what is it that is making you keep this up that is any different from what is making me keep this up?

All metaphysical beliefs themselves have their root in faith and the immaterial, since from where do these ideas come from and what is their purpose? As far as humans desiring, do you deny you have desire to know things beyond our limitations? Do you desire for no moral order? So you desire for immorality? This would contradict your previously held position that you believe morality is objective, in essence admitting to morality. What makes me keep this up is to develop my mind and discuss, ask questions, as this helps me uncover secrets in my mind that I previously did know. What else is the purpose of humans if they didn't think, or express thought?

Originally posted by loseyourname I agreed that knowledge can come from revelation. You are not arguing that your knowledge came from revelation. You are saying it came from experiences that defy logic. You will still not say what they are, and so we don't know if they even do defy logic.

What else is knowledge through revelation other than experiences that defy logic? As far as your insistence about what they are, I don't know you therefore I'm not comfortable telling you my whole life story.

Originally posted by loseyourname Assumed by who? I never assumed that.

It is assumed by fundamentalist scientists.

Originally posted by loseyourname Then be cool. Show me some logic that proves we have to have been created.

For example, the first law of thermodynamics states taht "Matter cannot be created or destroyed". Then where did matter come from?

Originally posted by loseyourname If it's a matter of arguing and not being right, why are you continually claiming that you are right and that our universe is the product of an intelligent creator. I have never made any similar knowledge claim.

My experiences have led me to that. Thus, I believe, therefore know, just like I think, therefore I am. You claim you don't know, which is better said that you don't believe there is a purpose or creator. When you say "You don't know" it is no different than saying there is no purpose therefore no creator. Only creator and intelligent design would highlight purpose. When you "don't know" you are showing doubt at creative design, therefore doubt at there being purpose. Thus it is a simply matter of either creator or no creator. There is no middle ground Mr. Lose. When I look back at my atheism and agnostic years, atheism was simply not even willing to think about this, but brush it aside. I simply didn't even bother dealing with this questions since they were to me, pointless. When I was an agnostic, it was different in that I still highlighted disbelief, but it was more akin to wanting to have myself proven wrong, in otherwords I was a closet believer that needed validation. Now that to me has been validated. I never said I'm "right" per se, just in my experience and my personal transition from these paths. You might be perfectly right. This might all be hallucinations, no different than the ancients believing that lightning meant God was angry.

Originally posted by loseyourname I would like you to demonstrate for us how my argument that there are things we can't know leads to the logical conclusion that we can eventually know everything.

When did I attribute them to genes? I said they may be attributable to genes. If you want to start a thread about this, do so. I will have mountains of evidence on my side, and I'm guessing you will have more sophistry.[/B][/QUOTE]

That's not what you were saying. You said eventually something along the lines of mapping thought onto genes, which I thought was absurd, and this implies that we can know beyond, since thought is beyond material terms. It is inconceivable to the human mind how thought can be mapped onto genes. Brainwaves, electric stimuli, etc., can, but thoughts?

Originally posted by loseyourname This is because there are thinking human beings alive today that have knowledge of what these thoughts are. These thoughts will die as soon as they are forgotten, or thinking entities capable of remembering them vanish. This is beside the point anyway. The point isn't whether thoughts can persist. The point is whether individual awareness of these thoughts exists. Sure, Socrates' argument are still here for us to read and study. But does Socrates himself still exist?

Because the laws of physics, by themselves, are enough to explain the order and diversity of life that we find today. There is no need to invoke intelligent creation. There are only two questions left unanswered.

First, how did those laws themselves come into existence? This may very well be something we can never answer, and that's fine. As I said, I believe there are things that we will never answer. Science might be able to explain this through M-theory, which is nowhere near being fully worked out, but even then, it cannot explain where superstrings themselves came from. There is always a cap on human knowledge. One can make a leap of faith and say they were created, or one can make a leap of faith and say that they are uncreated. I will make no such leap.

The second question pertains to human consciousness? What exactly is it, and how did it arise? It remains to be seen whether or not science has much of meaning to say about this. The scientific study of consciousness is a very new and unorganized discipline. Fifty years from now, when this is no longer the case, we can get back together and do this all over again, just like old times.

Socrates doesn't exist in the material world, the thought of Socrates does. God doesn't exist in the material world ( although I'd say everything has a touch of God ), his thought ( us ) does. We feel ourselves to be aware, yet can never map this empirically. Why is that? Why am I me? I can think. I am not you, nor he, but me. My souls texture, and personality are different and how I express my thoughts are different. A human thought is then a force, and a power, and existence, capable of controlling mind. Our thoughts influence others and we ourselves are influenced by others thoughts from before and eventually they go back to its source, God.

Thus it is the thought of God that guides all men and morality heading towards an ideal. It his is thought that comes to us and we spread it further, that controls the universe, and actions of humanity. It speaks to our soul and ever man who lives, speaks to us in stars, in winds, in beauty, in lightning, in love, in words. Of course this is what we all seek and aspire to, although you will now tell me I am making a knowledge claim, which I am, based on my initial drive and will, that is part of all human nature, I am applying to all humans.

And thus, Socrates is dead, but the thought of Socrates lives on, we know who he is upon the thought of his name, and that thought of his name leads us to further thoughts about his own thoughts. Thus it is the thoughts of the past that are the laws of the present and future. That which we say and do, if its effects dont last past our lives is unimportant to us. That which lives beyond our lives when we die, is the only thought and act worth speaking and doing. And that is why all things spring from this. It is a desire to live past our lives, a desire which guided the most noble and ignoble humans, from all the alphabets of men, from Aristotle, to Hitler, to Einstein, to Darwin, to Kant, to Confucius to the common peasants throughout history and to those creating a family so that they themselves can imbue in their children that their parents have imbued in them. Thus the desire to do something that will benefit the world and live past our lives is the noblest ambition that we all hold. And you cannot surely tell me that science will one day map this thought on a gene.

Originally posted by loseyourname That's exactly what I said, Mousy. There is no need to prove these things because all humans report having the same experience of morality and self-awareness and thought. Of course I would not kill anyone. I do not refrain from doing so because it is against the law. An intelligent person can very easily avoid being caught and prosecuted under that law.

If that's exactly what you said, why are you here arguing with me about this?

violette829

02-20-2004, 01:36 PM

Mods? Aren't we forgetting to move this into the Intellectual Lounge? Cmon now...someone's not doing his/her job!!!:cool:

Baron Dants says: Only for you Violette jan.

loseyourname

02-20-2004, 02:50 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse That is the problem of those people who believe one is wrong over the other.

Mousy, you believe they are wrong. What's the difference?

When I look at the grand scheme of things, I ask myself, why do every society in everytime have religious beliefs?

So do I. The conclusion is that they observed things that they could not explain, and so invented supernatural explanations. Gradually, we have become able to answer many of the things they couldn't, and their supernaturalism was disproved. Even so, we still have questions that can't be answered, and people like you still exist to give them supernatural answers, even though it has been shown historically that such an attempt will always be ill-fated.

And if you take that further and compare, contrast, and study them, you see similarities. You see that all morality emanates from this. Why do all societies have morality?

A society with no morals would kill itself off. Therefore, none are observed. How's that for natural selection?

I see purpose here, and I see power that is beyond us. When have I been against critically analyzing historians, politicians, and even lovers? But it remains nonetheless that we spend less time critically analyziing them, than we do believing them.

And it remains a fact that we are wrong to do that. You are also wrong not to critically analyze your faith in God.

I was being sarcastic Mr. Lose. Anything can contradict anything per the rules of logic Mr. Lose.

This is your excuse for contradicting yourself?

As far as humans desiring, do you deny you have desire to know things beyond our limitations? Do you desire for no moral order? So you desire for immorality?

Of course. Every one of these desires is explainable biologically. Perhaps this is why you are so adamantly against evolution, because it is evolution that explains it.

What makes me keep this up is to develop my mind and discuss, ask questions, as this helps me uncover secrets in my mind that I previously did know. What else is the purpose of humans if they didn't think, or express thought?

Indeed, there would be little purpose. It seems a little unfair to characterize yourself as the knowledge seeker and me as the person who only keeps this up because of his ego.

What else is knowledge through revelation other than experiences that defy logic?

An act of divine revelation is God directly communicating to you metaphysical truth.

As far as your insistence about what they are, I don't know you therefore I'm not comfortable telling you my whole life story.

Then you will need to quit using them and insisting that logic can't explain them, since that remains to be seen.

It is assumed by fundamentalist scientists.

And I am not a fundamentalist scientist. You are arguing with me, remember that. Quit bringing in all these peripheral issues.

For example, the first law of thermodynamics states taht "Matter cannot be created or destroyed". Then where did matter come from?

Matter cannot be destroyed or created in a chemical process. Matter is routinely created and destroyed in nuclear processes. You are showing a fundamental lack of understanding of the laws of thermodynamics.

My experiences have led me to that. Thus, I believe, therefore know, just like I think, therefore I am.

Mousy, I believe, therefore it is true means that anything a person believes is true. I thought you were against relativism.

You claim you don't know, which is better said that you don't believe there is a purpose or creator. When you say "You don't know" it is no different than saying there is no purpose therefore no creator.

It is quite different.

Only creator and intelligent design would highlight purpose. When you "don't know" you are showing doubt at creative design, therefore doubt at there being purpose.

First off, I have no difficulty finding purpose in an uncreated universe. Second, even if I couldn't, that would mean nothing. Our universe could very well be purposeless. There is no reason to exclude that possibility.

Thus it is a simply matter of either creator or no creator. There is no middle ground Mr. Lose.

There is no middle ground in what is true. There either is or is not a creator. This does not mean you must believe one or the other. Let me ask you something: Do you believe that Calabi-Yau topography adequately shows a means of translating superstring vibrations into elementary particles?

When I look back at my atheism and agnostic years, atheism was simply not even willing to think about this, but brush it aside. I simply didn't even bother dealing with this questions since they were to me, pointless. When I was an agnostic, it was different in that I still highlighted disbelief, but it was more akin to wanting to have myself proven wrong, in otherwords I was a closet believer that needed validation. Now that to me has been validated. I never said I'm "right" per se, just in my experience and my personal transition from these paths.

Well, thank you for a personal history. I am touched. I don't see how this pertains to what is being discussed.

You might be perfectly right. This might all be hallucinations, no different than the ancients believing that lightning meant God was angry.

Well, thank you for admitting that. If I might be right, then you might be wrong, which means that you don't know for sure. Have we reached reconciliation on this matter? Don't worry, because we still have plenty else to argue about.

That's not what you were saying. You said eventually something along the lines of mapping thought onto genes, which I thought was absurd, and this implies that we can know beyond, since thought is beyond material terms.

Thoughts are not mapped onto genes. I said quite specifically that all gene expression is modified through behavior. The genes contain codes for building a brain, which in turn thinks. What a person thinks is not determined genetically.

Socrates doesn't exist in the material world, the thought of Socrates does.

Of course they do. Again, that is not the point. Will they continue to exist when all human perception and all the paper they are written and every record of them disappears? Does there exist anything that can be called "Socrates" anywhere, not just here in the physical universe.

Thus it is the thought of God that guides all men and morality heading towards an ideal. It his is thought that comes to us and we spread it further, that controls the universe, and actions of humanity. It speaks to our soul and ever man who lives, speaks to us in stars, in winds, in beauty, in lightning, in love, in words.

This an awful lot of unfounded speculation here. Your premises are completely unconnected to your conclusions.

Of course this is what we all seek and aspire to, although you will now tell me I am making a knowledge claim, which I am, based on my initial drive and will, that is part of all human nature, I am applying to all humans.

Yes, you speak of each person's autonomy of thought and desire, then you proceed to say that because you have a certain desire, all humans must have them. Even if that were the case, it still would prove nothing.

And thus, Socrates is dead, but the thought of Socrates lives on, we know who he is upon the thought of his name, and that thought of his name leads us to further thoughts about his own thoughts.

I don't know about you, but the idea of my thoughts living on doesn't do much for me. I want to know whether or not I will live on. A man is a lot more than the sum of his thoughts. A man is the awareness of his thinking.

Thus it is the thoughts of the past that are the laws of the present and future. That which we say and do, if its effects dont last past our lives is unimportant to us. That which lives beyond our lives when we die, is the only thought and act worth speaking and doing. And that is why all things spring from this. It is a desire to live past our lives, a desire which guided the most noble and ignoble humans, from all the alphabets of men, from Aristotle, to Hitler, to Einstein, to Darwin, to Kant, to Confucius to the common peasants throughout history and to those creating a family so that they themselves can imbue in their children that their parents have imbued in them. Thus the desire to do something that will benefit the world and live past our lives is the noblest ambition that we all hold.

Yep, and all of this desire to live on may be perfectly explainable through survival instinct. I'm not saying that is all there is to it. Don't get me wrong. Such a statement would be ludicrous in its arrogance, and even I am not that arrogant. Nonetheless, what you have here does not constitute proof of either God or an individual soul

And you cannot surely tell me that science will one day map this thought on a gene.

I have already explains that thoughts are not genetically determined. It is oversimplifying to say anything like that. They may be, however, describable entirely in terms of biochemical reactions in the human brain that result from a combination of genetic and sensory input. I would like to think there is more to it than that. I would like to think that the existence of free will is more than an illusion, but the simple fact is, we don't know.

Anonymouse

02-20-2004, 04:00 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, you believe they are wrong. What's the difference?

Who is wrong? I'm lost. maybe you can not quote snippets and quote a few passages so I know where exactly from the paragraph you are quoting.

Originally posted by loseyourname So do I. The conclusion is that they observed things that they could not explain, and so invented supernatural explanations. Gradually, we have become able to answer many of the things they couldn't, and their supernaturalism was disproved. Even so, we still have questions that can't be answered, and people like you still exist to give them supernatural answers, even though it has been shown historically that such an attempt will always be ill-fated.

Things that happen to "superstitious" people are not observed, they are things outside of our natural observable frame. The best word I can say is "feel" from my own experience.

Supernaturalism was never "disproved" despite such gigantic claims. If my "supernatural", you mean God, then God was never disproved. God cannot be proven or disproven according to our man made material standards of science. This is what I've reiterated time and again.

As for your claim that "historically it has been ill fated" is pure conjecture. What are you basing it on, mans misunderstanding of the natural elements? No one denies science' role. One can reuse your quote in the same way, historically it has been shown that if science is employed alone we have dire results and I can point to Nazism for that.

Originally posted by loseyourname A society with no morals would kill itself off. Therefore, none are observed. How's that for natural selection?

For this to be true, we would have to know if animals are self aware like us and can think between "right" and "wrong". We don't know what they think. Thus if animals have no morals, and we know we do, how can we make this general and broad statement?

Originally posted by loseyourname And it remains a fact that we are wrong to do that. You are also wrong not to critically analyze your faith in God.

Sure Mr. Lose it might sound all nice in rhetoric to say "we should always question our teachers, historians, politicians or LOVERS", but how many of us actually do that? This goes back to my point that human nature, and humans themselves are naturally more inclined to believe and behave according that, than they are to question, otherwise we wouldn't have blind masses following Marxist or Hitlersque thought.

Originally posted by loseyourname This is your excuse for contradicting yourself?

Did I say it's an excuse? You did. I was playing with you because it got silly. And where did I contradict myself? Between all the one liners you've been quoting I don't know from where, I've lost all sense of what your accusation was pertaining to, to begin with.

Originally posted by loseyourname Of course. Every one of these desires is explainable biologically. Perhaps this is why you are so adamantly against evolution, because it is evolution that explains it.

I'm aware evolution through natural selection can explain this. We seek to survive. That is a given, if we approach humans as mere animals. But we are not mere brutes, we have thought, intelligent thought, and I've already gone into how thought itself is intangible, we just know it, feel it, and express it. There is no source of thought in our genes, other than our mind.

Originally posted by loseyourname Indeed, there would be little purpose. It seems a little unfair to characterize yourself as the knowledge seeker and me as the person who only keeps this up because of his ego.

I didn't characterize you such, I asked you a question to prove to you that I'm making a "knowledge claim" that is valid for all.

Originally posted by loseyourname An act of divine revelation is God directly communicating to you metaphysical truth.

Really? Who defines what "divine revelation" God is to communicate. You do? This is why such experiences defy reason and this is why you cannot grasp this in rational terms.

Originally posted by loseyourname Then you will need to quit using them and insisting that logic can't explain them, since that remains to be seen.

Really? I have to quit using them? Why? Says who? Is there some rule in the discussion that says that? That is the whole basis of why I went from an atheist who made fun of my parents for essentially the same thing that I believe in now. Not sharing my "evidences" to some stranger online is my personal choice. Of course if it defies reason and logic what is the point of you insisting on it, or wanting to know them in the first place? Just know that they defy reason, thats all, and from that to you it shouldn't be worth taking it seriously.

Originally posted by loseyourname Matter cannot be destroyed or created in a chemical process. Matter is routinely created and destroyed in nuclear processes. You are showing a fundamental lack of understanding of the laws of thermodynamics.

Matter only changes form Mr. Lose, I didn't make that up, thats what the 1st Law states. We cannot just go into a lab and "create" matter out of thin air. "Nuclear processes" are all theoretical lets not forget. Even before humans had a grasp on physics, there was matter, how did it get there? Now please don't dodge the question? Your answer should be "I don't know". It's that simple.

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, I believe, therefore it is true means that anything a person believes is true. I thought you were against relativism.

This is not relativism it is God, and not mere "anything". What I believe has been validated to me. If it wasn't I wouldn't make the claim that I believe in God, because I used to be an atheist.

Originally posted by loseyourname First off, I have no difficulty finding purpose in an uncreated universe. Second, even if I couldn't, that would mean nothing. Our universe could very well be purposeless. There is no reason to exclude that possibility.

But purpose would mean that there is a design, and intelligence. If evolution is about randomness and haphazardness, there is no purpose, and if you subscribe to it then you shouldn't believe there is purpose from unpurpose. Only from order do we move towards chaos, let's not forget since all systems move towards disorder. Thus when I look at the intricacies of nature randomness cannot be responsible for its precision and how it all works. If you claim to see purpose, then it means there is intelligence behind that purpose.

Originally posted by loseyourname There is no middle ground in what is true. There either is or is not a creator. This does not mean you must believe one or the other. Let me ask you something: Do you believe that Calabi-Yau topography adequately shows a means of translating superstring vibrations into elementary particles?

I'm not a physics student Mr. Lose, but if we go as far as superstrings, where did superstrings come from? If they came from this or that, where did those come from? Science eventually tip toes to a dead end, and I just thought of skipping all this and going back to the source. It's a matter of yes or no.

Originally posted by loseyourname Well, thank you for admitting that. If I might be right, then you might be wrong, which means that you don't know for sure. Have we reached reconciliation on this matter? Don't worry, because we still have plenty else to argue about.

I only said you might be right for the sake of argument because of the constant adamance of given positions. Thus, at that point I wouldn't believe, I'd be back to being an agnostic. You believe you may be right and power to you. I believe I am right. My experiences have been too great and for all time validated what I have been seeking and couldn't make sense of using exactly rational criteria. And yes, I am using my "experiences" as "evidence" for my position. Whether its inconceivable to the rational mind, to simply assert that only through reason we can understand the world is ignorant, for we are gifted with the faculty of faith as well, which is another thing that separates us from mere animals, unless we know their thoughts.

Originally posted by loseyourname Of course they do. Again, that is not the point. Will they continue to exist when all human perception and all the paper they are written and every record of them disappears? Does there exist anything that can be called "Socrates" anywhere, not just here in the physical universe.

This is equivalent of assuming that if all humans die, thought will die to, but since we ( those of us that or of the persuasion that there is a God ) believe that our thought didn't just come to us from nowhere, but it was given to us by a more intelligent power, that is responsible for intelligent design, for only intelligent thought can produce purpose and design, why we have gravity, why there is rainfall, why there are four seasons, why the planets do not fall off their axis. We can always explain WHAT is happening but when we ask the question of HOW it came to be, we reach a void where science cannot answer.

Originally posted by loseyourname This an awful lot of unfounded speculation here. Your premises are completely unconnected to your conclusions.

I would disagree with you. My inner sense tells me otherwise. We are all a product of other peoples' thought. And you yourself are influenced and are upholding the thoughts of those before you.

Originally posted by loseyourname Yes, you speak of each person's autonomy of thought and desire, then you proceed to say that because you have a certain desire, all humans must have them. Even if that were the case, it still would prove nothing.

I don't know about you, but the idea of my thoughts living on doesn't do much for me. I want to know whether or not I will live on. A man is a lot more than the sum of his thoughts. A man is the awareness of his thinking.

Yep, and all of this desire to live on may be perfectly explainable through survival instinct. I'm not saying that is all there is to it. Don't get me wrong. Such a statement would be ludicrous in its arrogance, and even I am not that arrogant. Nonetheless, what you have here does not constitute proof of either God or an individual soul

So you deny aspirations of this sort, to have your thoughts, and actions live past your life? I believe this is true for all of us humans, Mr. Lose. Where does that awareness to think come? Where does that awareness to grasp thoughts of others previously before us and defend them and build on them come? Where does that awareness that seeks to transcend its limited sense of self and live past his life in his thoughts and actions, come from?

loseyourname

02-20-2004, 04:31 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse [B]Who is wrong? I'm lost. maybe you can not quote snippets and quote a few passages so I know where exactly from the paragraph you are quoting.

Fundamentalist who claim that their faith is the only true faith and that all others will suffer eternal damnation. You have said that they are wrong, that others will suffer nothing of the sort and fundamentalism is a misinterpretation of divine intent.

Supernaturalism was never "disproved" despite such gigantic claims. If my "supernatural", you mean God, then God was never disproved. God cannot be proven or disproven according to our man made material standards of science. This is what I've reiterated time and again.

Supernaturalism was disproved. Spirits do not cause crops to grow. Water, sunlight, and nutrients cause this. God does not cause rain to fall. Condensation of water vapor causes this. Every time one more thing is explained, one more superstition is disproven. I didn't mean that all supernaturalism has been disproven, only that it has a history of being wrong time and again. Science does not.

For this to be true, we would have to know if animals are self aware like us and can think between "right" and "wrong". We don't know what they think. Thus if animals have no morals, and we know we do, how can we make this general and broad statement?

I guess you didn't get the wit. My fault.

Sure Mr. Lose it might sound all nice in rhetoric to say "we should always question our teachers, historians, politicians or LOVERS", but how many of us actually do that? This goes back to my point that human nature, and humans themselves are naturally more inclined to believe and behave according that, than they are to question, otherwise we wouldn't have blind masses following Marxist or Hitlersque thought.

Not to mention all those blind masses following Christ and Mohammed and Joseph Smith.

Really? Who defines what "divine revelation" God is to communicate. You do? This is why such experiences defy reason and this is why you cannot grasp this in rational terms.

Well, if we are going to be discussing this, it seems we should know what the other means when he says "divine revelation." I mean God directly revealing something to you. You mean having an experience that you cannot grasp using your knowledge of logic. We had a misunderstanding. Now we don't. Neat the way that works, isn't it?

Matter only changes form Mr. Lose, I didn't make that up, thats what the 1st Law states. We cannot just go into a lab and "create" matter out of thin air. "Nuclear processes" are all theoretical lets not forget.

There's nothing theoretical about several grams of uranium becoming pure energy and obliterating 300,000 Japanese lives. What you meant to say is that matter/energy is never created or destroyed, because the two are interchangeable. Where this matter/energy came from, I don't know. But this line will get you nowhere, for you can always ask what the last cause in your line came from. Eventually, something must have been uncreated. It is either God, or is our universe. One was uncreated. Which it is, we don't know.

This is not relativism it is God, and not mere "anything".

If what anybody believed was automatically true simply because they believed it, which is the argument you are using, then relativism ensues, as not everybody will believe the same thing.

But purpose would mean that there is a design, and intelligence. If evolution is about randomness and haphazardness, there is no purpose, and if you subscribe to it then you shouldn't believe there is purpose from unpurpose.

First off, evolution is not about randomness. Only mutation is random. The way they are adopted by the gene pool is not.

Only from order do we move towards chaos, let's not forget since all systems move towards disorder. Thus when I look at the intricacies of nature randomness cannot be responsible for its precision and how it all works.

You are again misunderstanding the laws of thermodynamics. A closed system always moves toward disorder, and the aggregate disorder in the universe is always increasing. Simple calculations show that every time a biochemical reaction makes a complex molecule out of simpler ones, heat is released, and the result is more net disorder. The order we observe does not violate this rule.

If you claim to see purpose, then it means there is intelligence behind that purpose.

Yes, and I am that intelligence. I didn't say the universe itself had a purpose. It may or it may not. I said that I had a purpose. I don't need a God to give me that.

I'm not a physics student Mr. Lose.

Exactly my point. You don't what a Calabi-Yay space is, and so you can't answer the question. Your knowledge of the topic is limited, and so you hold no belief regarding it. There you go. Now you know how I can hold no belief regarding whether or not the universe is created.

This is equivalent of assuming that if all humans die, thought will die to.

No it isn't. It's the equivalent of asking. I am assuming nothing. Furthermore, I still don't understand what you're saying here, so please answer my questions. Do you believe that Socrates still exists in some form? Not Socrates' thoughts, but Socrates.

I would disagree with you. My inner sense tells me otherwise. We are all a product of other peoples' thought.

So you would cease to exist if you were alone?

So you deny aspirations of this sort, to have your thoughts, and actions live past your life?

When did I deny them? I said that they exist, and that furthermore, they are probably explainable entirely by survival instinct. Please let us not get into this. I know that instinct alone is not what drives it. The desire to live on is a conscious process that involves thought. Nonetheless, it may very well originate entirely in survival instinct.

Where does that awareness to think come? Where does that awareness to grasp thoughts of others previously before us and defend them and build on them come? Where does that awareness that seeks to transcend its limited sense of self and live past his life in his thoughts and actions, come from?

I don't have the answers to these questions, and it is my contention that you do not, either. You have ideas, which is fine. I have those as well, and they not be all that different from yours. The difference is that my ideas have not crystallized into beliefs because nothing exists to verify them or test them. Perhaps if I had had your experiences, then I would believe. But that alone would make me wonder. Why is it that God allows some people to have these experiences, and not others? Why do you get the answers, whereas others do not?

Anonymouse

02-20-2004, 05:32 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname Fundamentalist who claim that their faith is the only true faith and that all others will suffer eternal damnation. You have said that they are wrong, that others will suffer nothing of the sort and fundamentalism is a misinterpretation of divine intent.

Fundamentalism is akin to fanaticism. That is exactly what I said. What is your point? Every religion, not just Christianity, claims the same. Could it not be that they are all the same, sending the same message with different allegories and symbols? Of course it can, and I showed that when one has a proper understanding of religions themselves, one can have an understanding of them in relation to each other.

Originally posted by loseyourname Supernaturalism was disproved. Spirits do not cause crops to grow. Water, sunlight, and nutrients cause this. God does not cause rain to fall. Condensation of water vapor causes this. Every time one more thing is explained, one more superstition is disproven. I didn't mean that all supernaturalism has been disproven, only that it has a history of being wrong time and again. Science does not.

No one said spirits cause crops to grow. But the science you just described, that in itself is the power of God, of purpose. I see that as science revealing the magic hand of a purpose.

Originally posted by loseyourname Not to mention all those blind masses following Christ and Mohammed and Joseph Smith.

What's wrong with following them? Do you know what their messages are? We all follow someone or somebody's thoughts. You are following Darwin.

Originally posted by loseyourname There's nothing theoretical about several grams of uranium becoming pure energy and obliterating 300,000 Japanese lives. What you meant to say is that matter/energy is never created or destroyed, because the two are interchangeable. Where this matter/energy came from, I don't know. But this line will get you nowhere, for you can always ask what the last cause in your line came from. Eventually, something must have been uncreated. It is either God, or is our universe. One was uncreated. Which it is, we don't know.

What is our universe then I ask? Where did the universe come from? Eventually we can go back only so far before we realize something must have created something else.

Originally posted by loseyourname If what anybody believed was automatically true simply because they believed it, which is the argument you are using, then relativism ensues, as not everybody will believe the same thing.

But I am not believing something simply because I want to. Even when I was an atheist I adhered to an objective moral law. Now by belief has been based on experiences that have testified to me that I was wrong previously. This isn't about silly earthly beliefs of relativism such as "I believe I can kill". This is about something our mere material world, Mr. Lose and it's either you are of the persuasion that there is purpose, or not. If the initial, then it needs an intelligence.

Originally posted by loseyourname First off, evolution is not about randomness. Only mutation is random. The way they are adopted by the gene pool is not.

And that is the randomness I disagree with. I suggest we live this for the evolution thread, no?

Originally posted by loseyourname You are again misunderstanding the laws of thermodynamics. A closed system always moves toward disorder, and the aggregate disorder in the universe is always increasing. Simple calculations show that every time a biochemical reaction makes a complex molecule out of simpler ones, heat is released, and the result is more net disorder. The order we observe does not violate this rule.

I never disputed thermodynamics Mr. Lose, nor did I misunderstand it as it is. Randomness is not a part of order. If there is randomness there is no order. Everything perfectly fits into everything else in nature. We know that crops are affected by the four seasons, no different than our day and night is affected by our earth spinning. This is a design that cannot have come about through randomness and no purpose. Let's confine this to the evolution thread. I see this as the product of exactly that which we cannot materialize and have trouble mapping

Originally posted by loseyourname Yes, and I am that intelligence. I didn't say the universe itself had a purpose. It may or it may not. I said that I had a purpose. I don't need a God to give me that.

That everything is precisely arranged mathematically is no purpose to you, the fact that 2+2 are equal to 4 is not a result of intelligence? The fact that our body contains sacred numbers such as 11,22, and 33, which are all multiples of 11, is something that displays no intelligence?

Originally posted by loseyourname Exactly my point. You don't what a Calabi-Yay space is, and so you can't answer the question. Your knowledge of the topic is limited, and so you hold no belief regarding it. There you go. Now you know how I can hold no belief regarding whether or not the universe is created.

Comparing my lack of knowledge of Calabi Yay to God, is a bit of an over exaggerating. You have knowledge of what you just descrbed me, and you are trying to use this to make a claim that since I don't know about Calabi Yay, therefore this applies to God as well. Calabi Yay, if I studied, I would know what it is about. Just like when we study everything around us from science to religion, we come to know what God is and what is responsible for both science and religion, which in turn wouldn't even exist if there was no human. Thus I don't see this as a valid analogy, for I already expressed lack of knowledge in physics, which if I was a physics student I would have knowledge of. This is therefore, a non-issue.

Originally posted by loseyourname No it isn't. It's the equivalent of asking. I am assuming nothing. Furthermore, I still don't understand what you're saying here, so please answer my questions. Do you believe that Socrates still exists in some form? Not Socrates' thoughts, but Socrates.

We humans have a problem of conceiving things that are abstract and not quantified in some way or mapped onto a formula. Thus, where the invisible and the visible meet. Socrates, physically, does not exist in the material world. Socrates' soul exists for us through thought. It is his thought that has lived on, and is with us today. It is no different the thoughts of our grandfather that have lived on to us today. I can think of my grandfather, and although having never met him, his thoughts are very much a part of me, no different than anyone else, and hence it is the dead that control us.

Originally posted by loseyourname So you would cease to exist if you were alone?

This is inconceivable. How can a human be alone? The best I can make this argument out to be is that, let's assume I get shipwrecked on an island. I am alone. But prior to it, I lived in civilization, and whatever thoughts from there I carry on. I will die. Those back home will remember me and my thoughts, and I will live again. This is why those of us that acknowledge a God, see that as the first cause, the antecedent, the thought before our thoughts.

Originally posted by loseyourname When did I deny them? I said that they exist, and that furthermore, they are probably explainable entirely by survival instinct. Please let us not get into this. I know that instinct alone is not what drives it. The desire to live on is a conscious process that involves thought. Nonetheless, it may very well originate entirely in survival instinct.

Pleeease, let us get into this. How would this be part of survival instinct? If we are merely to survive, why should we desire to compose an Opera that will live beyond our years? Or art that still speaks to us? If we just simply wanted to survive like mere animals, all we would do is eat, sleep, kill, have sex and release waste.

Originally posted by loseyourname I don't have the answers to these questions, and it is my contention that you do not, either. You have ideas, which is fine. I have those as well, and they not be all that different from yours. The difference is that my ideas have not crystallized into beliefs because nothing exists to verify them or test them. Perhaps if I had had your experiences, then I would believe. But that alone would make me wonder. Why is it that God allows some people to have these experiences, and not others? Why do you get the answers, whereas others do not?

Moreover Mr. Lose this isn't about what is provable or not, or right or wrong, it is how these are reflected in your soul, in that inner self which you call "Me". I have questioned God before. I was an unbeliever. I doubted. Doubt is important. It is the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovere, for itmust accompany all stages of our onward progress. We are gifted with the faculty of doubting and questioning, without which or faculties of comparison and judgement would be worthless. Our ability to doubt, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason. Can a turtle doubt his existence? Can a turtle send man into space? Knowledge will always be imperfect, or complete only so far as in which discovery multiplies doubt, and doubt leads to new discovery. Thus what science boasts of is not so much its results, but its capacity for unlimited progress. Thus the more we know, the more doubts we have, but in reality the more we are studying and unfolding the workings of a purposeful design the more we in reality learning about God. The true religious philosophy of imperfect beings such as us is not a system of creed, but as Socrates thought, in infinite search or approximation.

Crimson Glow

02-20-2004, 05:40 PM

Ok. Before anyone thinks I'm pin-pointing them or their views/arguments, I'm going to start out by saying I'm totally unbiased on the subject. I understand that there is a possibility that something greater then our selves resounds above us, and I also accept the possibility that we are all there is to life. I've been balancing this paradox on both sides of the scale for many years now, so please don't feel that I'm trying to rip anyone or am out to destroy one's beliefs. This is for the sake of discussion in the never ending pursuit of a never ending question.

Mouse, you keep mentioning that you can't prove your faith because it is in a completely different realm to which our laws of science and reasoning do not apply. I'm still struggling to understand where this faith stems from. I touched on this a bit in the other thread about souls. If faith is built into us inherently, or intrinsically, at what point does it start? At what point do you just "know", as you're saying Mouse, that there is a God, there is a "holy" landlord watching over its property? And again I ask, if this is built into us, why are there so many variances in this faith?

You mentioned something earlier about every culture having religions, thus giving ground to the argument that there is something supernatural responsible for this. But what about the fact that every culture (at least that I know of) has music? Or that once upon a time, every culture thought males were superior to females? Or how about the desire of so many cultures to conquer all others? What about all the fairy tales in every culture about the dashing hero saving a damsel in distress? There are MANY universally traits besides religion and faith. Carl Jung was big on discussing these universals. He called it the collective unconscious, our ability to somehow tap into our ancestors subconsciously, producing behaviors and traditions for which we are not certain as to the origins of, but yet seem so familiar. Obviously, this is one form of spiritual belief, but that was the way he chose to link all these common denominators. Anyone can attempt to explain these coincidences in any number of ways. That's one reason I don't buy the use of every culture having a religion as a form of evidence. Another reason is because, in spite of some similarities in more modern religion, ancient mythology gods bore little to no resemblance to today's concepts and faiths. Many of these gods were known as "petty and cruel", deceptive, and even down right evil! (gasp!) Why were these universal faiths held for so long? Most likely because of the more reasonable explanation: The unexplainable. When people feel helpless or feel their fate is no longer in their hands’, what else do they have left to fall back on except faith that something stronger above them has a way to make changes which are not possible by the tangible and material methods we know? I’m sure the first person that discovered fire thought it was some miracle or act of god. That doesn’t make it so. My opinion is that religions started out as nothing more then uneducated superstitions, taking a different shape and form century upon century until it snow balled into what we have today. Now this doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that there may be something far beyond what the human mind can conceive at this point in time, be it a “god” or something totally unimagined as of yet, but I'm just pointing out why I don’t feel this is a good argument for faith.

The other argument I don’t care for is that we were not meant to comprehend an entity such as God. Wasn’t that the whole point of Jesus being “given” to us? Wasn’t that the point of him dying for us? He came to us to speak of his father, the lord, and to lay down the ground rules for getting into heaven and what he expected from us. If our minds are so finite and we are not meant to understand the infinite god, why the rules? Why give us regulations in a “material” form? Why did Jesus come down to "explain" God? It seems to be a cycle. To get the answers and understand God, look into the Bible. If you question the Bible, your finite mind was not meant to understand God. Sounds more like an excuse to me as opposed to an elucidation.

And so no one feels left out :D ...

Loose, I don't feel that discrediting his omnipresence and such is really eroding the possibility of God's existence. Just because he doesn't exercise all his "powers" doesn't mean he is not capable of them. If someone in a stock Honda Civic lines up next to me at a light and wants to race, I'm probably not going to waste my "powers" on him. There is a reason for this power, and it isn't to display against a car with a 17 second quarter mile time. Does this mean I don't have the power to destroy his car in a race? Heeeeeeeeeell no! But in his mind, I'm sure he thinks he won because I didn't display this power for him, so anything I say will be consider by him as an excuse or a disproving of my capabilities. In reality, it’s merely a case of "a time and place for everything". This case just so happened to be neither.

Alrighty, that’s all I got time for. Man, I don’t know how you two have the time to keep up the extremely long posts, but damn…nice discussion going. :D

loseyourname

02-20-2004, 06:26 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse [B]Fundamentalism is akin to fanaticism. That is exactly what I said. What is your point? Every religion, not just Christianity, claims the same. Could it not be that they are all the same, sending the same message with different allegories and symbols? Of course it can, and I showed that when one has a proper understanding of religions themselves, one can have an understanding of them in relation to each other.

A fundamentalist Muslim would disagree with you. He would say you are going to hell. Presumably, you think that you are not going to hell. Only one of you can be right.

No one said spirits cause crops to grow.

Really? Then why did Roman cults castrate themselves to make the harvest bountiful? They did it because they believed it would please the Gods that cause the crops to grow. The symbolism is obvious. We now know that they were incorrect, that it is primarily nitrogen and carbon dioxide and sunlight that cause the plants to grow.

But the science you just described, that in itself is the power of God, of purpose. I see that as science revealing the magic hand of a purpose.

It makes little difference how you see it. The simple fact is all we know for certain is that rain falls because the temperautre in a cloud becomes too low for water to remain in a gaseous state. There is no need to assign any purpose to this.

What's wrong with following them? Do you know what their messages are?

Yes, I do. Jesus Christ claimed to be the son and human incarnation of the one true God. Joseph Smith claimed that the angel Moroni came to earth and informed him that Jesus was indeed not the human incarnation of God. You cannot follow both of them.

We all follow someone or somebody's thoughts. You are following Darwin.

First off, I believe what Darwin said. He did not give any dictates on how to live one's life. In that arena, I waver between Aristotle and J.S. Mill and my own conscience, for the most part. Second, I believe what he said because it meets certain standards of verifiability and logical plausibility and what he said fits the evidence. I do not believe what he said because of faith.

What is our universe then I ask? Where did the universe come from? Eventually we can go back only so far before we realize something must have created something else.

No, the fact remains that one thing must have been uncreated. Either the universe was uncreated, or it was created and its creator was uncreated. This line of reasoning will get you nowhere because if God could be uncreated, so could the universe itself. Neither is less plausible than the other.

But I am not believing something simply because I want to.

Look backward in this thread. I said that your argument was that because you believed it to be true, it was true. You agreed that that was your argument.

Even when I was an atheist I adhered to an objective moral law. Now by belief has been based on experiences that have testified to me that I was wrong previously. This isn't about silly earthly beliefs of relativism such as "I believe I can kill". This is about something our mere material world, Mr. Lose and it's either you are of the persuasion that there is purpose, or not. If the initial, then it needs an intelligence.

Yes, it is, and someone can use your exact argument to prove that there is no purpose, whereas you use the argument to show that there is purpose. There is no way to evaluate either, because, according to you, faith is not subject to critical evaluation. That is relativism.

I never disputed thermodynamics Mr. Lose, nor did I misunderstand it as it is. Randomness is not a part of order. If there is randomness there is no order.

Mousy, if you understood the law, you would not be using it to show that intelligence is needed to generate the order observed in the natural world. Chemists would not have proposed the law if the entire world existed in violation of it. Think about that for a second. And furthermore, trust me on the fact that there is no violation. I have done the calculations, and I'm not going to repeat them here. I can give a small example, if you really want me to, but you'll need to give me time.

Everything perfectly fits into everything else in nature. We know that crops are affected by the four seasons, no different than our day and night is affected by our earth spinning. This is a design that cannot have come about through randomness and no purpose.

Life evolved that fit the world. The world wasn't created to fit the life. You have it backwards.

That everything is precisely arranged mathematically is no purpose to you, the fact that 2+2 are equal to 4 is not a result of intelligence? The fact that our body contains sacred numbers such as 11,22, and 33, which are all multiples of 11, is something that displays no intelligence?

I have 2 arms. I have 1 brain. I have several billion cells, several trillion molecules. In fact, I would imagine just about every conceivable number can be found to exist somewhere in the human body. The fact that this doesn't prove anything should be rather obvious.

Comparing my lack of knowledge of Calabi Yau to God, is a bit of an over exaggerating.

No it isn't. You don't possess the prerequisite knowledge to come to a conclusion about the question I asked. I don't possess the prerequisite knowledge to answer the question of whether or not the universe was created, and flatly put, the knowledge I do possess is as much as any 23 year-old out there, except for you. You have your revelation. I don't have that. Imagine yourself without the experiences you have had that you claim led you to this belief. If not for them, you would not possess this belief. On what am I supposed to base the belief? I have shown pretty effectively that the aggegrate weight of all the evidence and arguments out there is not enough.

Socrates, physically, does not exist in the material world. Socrates' soul exists for us through thought.

This isn't what I asked. I am quite aware that Socrates' thoughts are still in existence. In fact, I have read them quite extensively and they have done a lot to shape my current worldview. But again, Socrates is more than his thoughts. Socrates was an individual that existed as an awareness of these thoughts. As you said, we are primarily beings of self-consciousness. Socrates was an individual consciousness. I want to know if this consciousness still exists. You cannot say that it does simply from the fact that his thoughts are still studied. There are many people who never wrote down anything and who have been forgotten. In fact, most of the people that have ever lived fall into this category. Does one need to be a great thinker of influential figure in history to be capable of immortality?

This is inconceivable. How can a human be alone? The best I can make this argument out to be is that, let's assume I get shipwrecked on an island. I am alone. But prior to it, I lived in civilization, and whatever thoughts from there I carry on. I will die. Those back home will remember me and my thoughts, and I will live again. This is why those of us that acknowledge a God, see that as the first cause, the antecedent, the thought before our thoughts.

It is impossible. It is not inconceivable. Unless you have no imagination whatsoever, you should be able to conceive of existing by yourself. You claimed that we exist only because of the thoughts of others. I think that is quite a ridiculous claim, and I'm guessing you probably meant to say something else. If that is the case, fine. Just say so.

Moreover Mr. Lose this isn't about what is provable or not, or right or wrong, it is how these are reflected in your soul, in that inner self which you call "Me". I have questioned God before. I was an unbeliever. I doubted. Doubt is important. It is the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovere, for itmust accompany all stages of our onward progress.

What do you want me to say, Mousy? I was in the same position you were two years ago when I was your age. I had grown up a Christian, even though my parents didn't practice. I went to church on my own. Then I questioned it and became an atheist. Then I started reading Sitchin and Frissell and Kierkegaard and Aquinas and I came back to belief, something of a unitarian - almost new age - belief, much like your own. Then I realized how completely unbased some of my ideas were, and I decrystallized them. Now they are only ideas, not beliefs. I will only believe that which can be proven by some means. It doesn't need to be through argumentative logic or through science, but it must be proven somehow, even if through revelation. Nothing has ever been revealed to me, so I do not believe.

The true religious philosophy of imperfect beings such as us is not a system of creed, but as Socrates thought, in infinite search or approximation.

Exactly, Mousy. I do not come to any conclusions, whereas you have. I am only searching. I will most likely die searching. At that point, I will either have my answers, or I will cease to exist. Whatever it be, it will not stop me from constantly searching, and constantly reading, and constantly arguing and constantly questioning as long as I am here. As I said, even if I never get the answers, I find the pursuit of knowledge to be noble in and of itself.

loseyourname

02-20-2004, 06:47 PM

Originally posted by Crimson Glow Alrighty, that’s all I got time for. Man, I don’t know how you two have the time to keep up the extremely long posts, but damn…nice discussion going.

Well, my man/woman, the Lakers are on and a man must have his priorities straight. This will be resumed at a later time, and I will address what you have said. I should probably invite you to introduce yourself in the intro thread in General Talk. Later on folks.

Anonymouse

02-21-2004, 01:28 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname A fundamentalist Muslim would disagree with you. He would say you are going to hell. Presumably, you think that you are not going to hell. Only one of you can be right.

Do you think fanatacism is confined to religion? This goes back to you trying to somehow link religious violence to belief systems therefore it is bad to have faith. Only one of us can be wrong according to that fundamentalist Muslim, and according to you, but does this conclusion display actual thought into studying religion, not just your own, but of others? I've already made my point, thus you are drilling a non-issue.

Originally posted by loseyourname Really? Then why did Roman cults castrate themselves to make the harvest bountiful? They did it because they believed it would please the Gods that cause the crops to grow. The symbolism is obvious. We now know that they were incorrect, that it is primarily nitrogen and carbon dioxide and sunlight that cause the plants to grow.

My point was that I didn't make that claim, and hence why they would have made it, because to them it was not obvious. Moreover, belief has taken a new turn. You believe that the result gained from science are indeed valid.

Originally posted by loseyourname It makes little difference how you see it. The simple fact is all we know for certain is that rain falls because the temperautre in a cloud becomes too low for water to remain in a gaseous state. There is no need to assign any purpose to this.

You just described a purpose and a process, and then go on to say there is no need to assign any purpose to this. To me it seems clear there is a reason why the things happen, as you described, rain falls because the temperature in the cloud is low for it to remain gaseous. Therefore that is purpose, there is a reason behind it, a design. Can you prove that? No, you can't. But you have faith in science.

Originally posted by loseyourname Yes, I do. Jesus Christ claimed to be the son and human incarnation of the one true God. Joseph Smith claimed that the angel Moroni came to earth and informed him that Jesus was indeed not the human incarnation of God. You cannot follow both of them.

Can you not follow Jesus as both a human and a God? Sure you can, it is the belief of whoever holds the faith. Moreover, we have faith, and that is what our perception of the world eventually amounts to. We have faith either in the creation of God or the uncreation. We have faith in either Jesus or no Jesus. And faith is how we determine our consciousness, faith in science, or faith in God, or faith in both. I will post a thread about this.

Originally posted by loseyourname First off, I believe what Darwin said. He did not give any dictates on how to live one's life. In that arena, I waver between Aristotle and J.S. Mill and my own conscience, for the most part. Second, I believe what he said because it meets certain standards of verifiability and logical plausibility and what he said fits the evidence. I do not believe what he said because of faith.

It is not a matter of giving dictates on how to live. It is a morality which humans haven't made, it is something that has been handed down to them by their creator eventually. Moreover, ask yourself, where did J.S. Mill and Aristotle get their ideas?

Originally posted by loseyourname No, the fact remains that one thing must have been uncreated. Either the universe was uncreated, or it was created and its creator was uncreated. This line of reasoning will get you nowhere because if God could be uncreated, so could the universe itself. Neither is less plausible than the other.

This line of reasoning implies that it's either God or Universe. Moreover, the Universe is another product of God. Those who have faith in God see the beautifully above the great wide human errors, shines the calm natural human religion, revealing to us God as the infinite cause of all things, even the vast stretches the universe to the forming dust and nebulas as far as Orion.

Originally posted by loseyourname Look backward in this thread. I said that your argument was that because you believed it to be true, it was true. You agreed that that was your argument.

You are missing the point of my statement. I agreed insofar as believing because of certain experiences that to me were reason enough to believe and simply believing because it is cool or I'm a blind believer. Faith has no prerequisites aside from faith. I have faith in God, you have faith in science. Thus a little that was revealed to me, is alot gained. God is the principle moral of truth, and of personal morality. I am a moral person. You are a moral person. That means we are one endowed with reason and liberty. We are capable of virtue, and virtue has two forms, respect for others, and love of others. Thus to admit that morality is universal, is to admit to a truth.

Originally posted by loseyourname Yes, it is, and someone can use your exact argument to prove that there is no purpose, whereas you use the argument to show that there is purpose. There is no way to evaluate either, because, according to you, faith is not subject to critical evaluation. That is relativism.

Musy, if you understood the law, you would not be using it to show that intelligence is needed to generate the order observed in the natural world. Chemists would not have proposed the law if the entire world existed in violation of it. Think about that for a second. And furthermore, trust me on the fact that there is no violation. I have done the calculations, and I'm not going to repeat them here. I can give a small example, if you really want me to, but you'll need to give me time.

God is not a logical being, you forget. Nor is its nature explained by deduction, and by any means of algebraic equations. When the attributes of God are attempted to be deduced we end up with nothing but abstractions. Thus from a critical point of view of using logic, you cannot approach God, or any discussion of God, although we may certainly discuss God. If you cannot understand why this is, it is because of our consciousness, that which determines all reality. Thus the first notion we have of God is of an infinite being, not given us a priori, independently of all experience. It is our consciousness of ourselves, a limited being at once, that raises us to the conception of a being, the principle of our being, and itself without limits. Therefore there is no relativism aside from what we make. Essentially all our approach to this world, and even science is based and rooted in our consciousness.

The claim was that matter had its roots somewhere. And that the order we see is a result of intelligence, because only intelligence can create such order that has laws and rules for how it works. From the beginning an infinite being must create and preserve the finite, and we the finite must in our own way give our kind. We cannot conceive of any finite thing existing without a God, an infinite basis. God is the necessary logical condition of a world, its necessitating cause. A world, is then,the necessary logical condition of God, its necessitated consequence or cause.

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, if you understood the law, you would not be using it to show that intelligence is needed to generate the order observed in the natural world. Chemists would not have proposed the law if the entire world existed in violation of it. Think about that for a second. And furthermore, trust me on the fact that there is no violation. I have done the calculations, and I'm not going to repeat them here. I can give a small example, if you really want me to, but you'll need to give me time.

I never misunderstood it, nor did I question the validity of it. All I said was we observe an order that could not result from nothingness, which can only be the result of intelligent design. Somehow, the massive amount of precision and order and purpose we see in nature, is translated as meaning something other than what it is obviously implying.

Originally posted by loseyourname Life evolved that fit the world. The world wasn't created to fit the life. You have it backwards.

How do you know you don’t have it backwards? That life evolved is itself an educated guess, it is taken upon faith, in fact, most of science is.

Originally posted by loseyourname I have 2 arms. I have 1 brain. I have several billion cells, several trillion molecules. In fact, I would imagine just about every conceivable number can be found to exist somewhere in the human body. The fact that this doesn't prove anything should be rather obvious.

We got 33 bones in our vertebrae. Our skull has 22 bones and our ribs have 11 bones. 11, 22, and 33, are precise numbers that are multiples of 11 and are encoded within our DNA. This is only the result of intelligent thought, because as we know mathematically it is improbable for such things to come about due to random mutations. To deny this is one thing, to say that this means nothing is another which shows someone who doesn’t want to come to grips.

Originally posted by loseyourname No it isn't. You don't possess the prerequisite knowledge to come to a conclusion about the question I asked. I don't possess the prerequisite knowledge to answer the question of whether or not the universe was created, and flatly put, the knowledge I do possess is as much as any 23 year-old out there, except for you. You have your revelation. I don't have that. Imagine yourself without the experiences you have had that you claim led you to this belief. If not for them, you would not possess this belief. On what am I supposed to base the belief? I have shown pretty effectively that the aggegrate weight of all the evidence and arguments out there is not enough.

Physics is not about revelation. It is something we can all study. The illogical nature of your analogy is apparent, once it is exposed to your own argument. You believe you can never gain any knowledge of God, therefore why comment on it, it is impossible to know. Then to make your analogy you state that one cannot make a judgment about topography because one doesn’t know. Whereas in the case of God you say we can never know because it is beyond our knowledge, the area of physics is not, therefore making your analogy moot.

Originally posted by loseyourname This isn't what I asked. I am quite aware that Socrates' thoughts are still in existence. In fact, I have read them quite extensively and they have done a lot to shape my current worldview. But again, Socrates is more than his thoughts. Socrates was an individual that existed as an awareness of these thoughts. As you said, we are primarily beings of self-consciousness. Socrates was an individual consciousness. I want to know if this consciousness still exists. You cannot say that it does simply from the fact that his thoughts are still studied. There are many people who never wrote down anything and who have been forgotten. In fact, most of the people that have ever lived fall into this category. Does one need to be a great thinker of influential figure in history to be capable of immortality?

Thoughts are intangible and as such live before and after us. Thoughts are sort of akin to electricity traveling, we don’t see it, we don’t touch it, it just is, it’s the current that connects the whole of humanity into one whole consciousness. That most people aren’t famous and that we don’t know there thoughts mean nothing for their thoughts live with their children, and their children’s children. My grandfather wasn’t famous, but his thoughts are here, and so are his fathers. The point which I am making is that thoughts live past us, and all our actions and thoughts are an attempt to live past our lives as well, our desire to transcend our limited sense of self and have thoughts live past our lives into the minds of others.

Originally posted by loseyourname It is impossible. It is not inconceivable. Unless you have no imagination whatsoever, you should be able to conceive of existing by yourself. You claimed that we exist only because of the thoughts of others. I think that is quite a ridiculous claim, and I'm guessing you probably meant to say something else. If that is the case, fine. Just say so.

It’s not that it’s impossible, it is inconceivable to me that a human can be alone. That makes no sense whatsoever, even the Bible as a last ditch reference, states that at least 2 humans had to be created for anything to happen. I cannot conceive of how that would even be. We exist because of the whole of humanity, it is one single thought. A human cannot exist by itself, that is impossible, and this is where Marx is right, for once.

Anonymouse

02-21-2004, 01:30 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname What do you want me to say, Mousy? I was in the same position you were two years ago when I was your age. I had grown up a Christian, even though my parents didn't practice. I went to church on my own. Then I questioned it and became an atheist. Then I started reading Sitchin and Frissell and Kierkegaard and Aquinas and I came back to belief, something of a unitarian - almost new age - belief, much like your own. Then I realized how completely unbased some of my ideas were, and I decrystallized them. Now they are only ideas, not beliefs. I will only believe that which can be proven by some means. It doesn't need to be through argumentative logic or through science, but it must be proven somehow, even if through revelation. Nothing has ever been revealed to me, so I do not believe.

The names of Kierkegaard, Aquinas are all refreshing. I myself have indulged in those, even Adler, and Sitchin’s 12th Planet is simply a marvel. I never grew up Christian. In fact, my family was very secular, they did however believe in God. They lived in the Soviet Union so they had not been really religious. They nonetheless believed in God, and that was it. I was never forced to go to Church, and nor do I go now.

Originally posted by loseyourname Exactly, Mousy. I do not come to any conclusions, whereas you have. I am only searching. I will most likely die searching. At that point, I will either have my answers, or I will cease to exist. Whatever it be, it will not stop me from constantly searching, and constantly reading, and constantly arguing and constantly questioning as long as I am here. As I said, even if I never get the answers, I find the pursuit of knowledge to be noble in and of itself.

And search you will, to paraphrase the great Albert Pike, just because God is not within our reach nor understanding does not mean we shouldn’t work towards the great truth and the best evidence of that is our goodness, our ability to seek, and to respect, and love.

anileve

02-21-2004, 05:01 PM

I finally had some time to read through this fascinating thread. Reading arguments between Loser and Anon I have to conclude they consist of a cyclic pattern, a rejection of certain views based on the concept that ones opinion is more “logical” than the that of the other by not allowing the consideration of an alternate possibility. I also see a lot of terms being thrown around without clearly understanding the concept. Thus I am posting some of the terms and their “dictionary” definitions for you to examine the apparent connections that result in the same concept of the arguments you are trying to present.

faith __

1.Confident belief in the truth (search for the truth), value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2.Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
3.Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5.The body of dogma of a religion
6.A set of principles or beliefs.

rea·son __

1.The basis or motive for an action, decision, or conviction.
2.A declaration made to explain or justify action, decision (i.e. search for the truth)
3.An underlying fact or cause that provides logical sense for a premise or occurrence
4. The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought
5.Good judgment; sound sense.
6.A normal mental state; sanity
7.Logic. A premise, usually the minor premise, of an argument.

log·ic __

1.The study of the principles of reasoning, especially of the structure of propositions as distinguished from their content and of method and validity in deductive reasoning.
a.A system of reasoning: Aristotle's logic.
b.A mode of reasoning: By that logic, we should sell the company tomorrow.
c.The formal, guiding principles of a discipline, school, or science.
2.Valid reasoning (that in itself is subjective, a belief that your truth is righteous)

Also I'd like to bring up a quote by Loser which I think sums it all up without draining it's complex and rather precise view of our existence.

“I am perfectly content not to know everything. I don't invoke faith in order to claim I know that which is unknowable.”

I'd have to say that this is precisely how faith is born. It's is in our undying quest of finding answers to what we are not meant to discover or comprehend.

Anon wrote “Faith doesn't deal with reasoning, faith is precisely faith, for faith is the absence of reason, it is belief, otherwise it would not be faith,” this reasoning is based precisely on critical analysis deductive reasoning. Faith exists BECAUSE of reason, and if you take a close look at the definition of the two terms, you shall see why. We turn to faith because we apply reasoning, in effect “logic” exists in the idea that if the answers to some matters is not scientifically or factually proved, than it must be God (the “NAME” or “TERM” for the unknown). Thus you can see that you apply reason and logic to come to that conclusion.

What we would consider lack of “logic” or “reason” are statements such as “just because”, “it's right”, “it's wrong”. In those statements logic or reason doesn't exist only because analysis of the issue or the path of how one came to that conclusion is not explored, they are just fragments of clichés that have been imposed by the social standards of what is acceptable. As an example of how majority never looks in the concept of “Opening doors to women” or “Brushing your teeth”, people have been conditioned with the accepted habitual standards without applying reason as to what evokes such actions. Their common assessment lies in the habitual instinct thus statements such as “it's right” or “it's the right thing to do” arise.

It is evident that science has not come up with explanations for everything and to rely on it's power to do so, or invest your faith in is omnipotent power to do so is absurd. Our mind must not be bound to to a single concept for our existence is so complex that to rely on one ideology to explain everything is foolish and a waste of common sense. We cannot rely on God to explain environmental factors, or medical science or human psychology, for if we do there would be no room for advancement, it's the delegation of powers that keeps the world revolving and continuation of life. If the world would consist of only spiritual devotees that rely on the higher power to provide them with all of the answers, human race would cease to exist.

René Descartes said “I think, therefore I am”, that is on its own a display of faith in self. The ability to apply reasoning which ensures our existence. He did not say “God thinks, therefore I am”. It is the belief in self that justifies the existence.

All of us are enslaved by our quest in search of a purpose, a purpose that may very well not exist. It is the idea of penetrating the shell of the unknown that gives us the drive to live. And on the contrary of our belief the lack of purpose would not make life not worthwhile but it is the search for the answer that keeps us yearning to live. Once the purpose is discovered the interest is lost. Think of it in terms of a film or a book: You open the book read first few pages and then skip to an end, you lose your interest in reading it in it's entirety, the interest is lost due to discovered conclusion and purpose. Perhaps the purpose does not exist and if it doesn't our faith in life will be shattered, it's not easy to cope with an idea that there is nothing.

In the end everyone must believe in something to exist call it God, Satan, Anileve, Feminism, Communism, Lavash, Basturma, what ever else, but it is the search of some purpose that keeps us breathing, that cannot be denied. Discovery of the purpose in antidote of life.

It is the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. --
Robert Pirsig

Anonymouse

02-21-2004, 06:13 PM

I appreciate anileves attempt at trying to sift through the thread to try to see from a third eye to the development of it, but I must also point out that, the whole "reason" and "faith" cliches are indeed exclusive.

While we use reason to arrive at conclusions based on our known world, we use reason in our discussions, and our analytical mind, even with regard to God, but at a certain point, it ends. It is limited. Using reason and logic, to approach the nature of God, asking myself "Why should I believe in God if I don't know via my reasoning faculties or it cannot be proven?" means it is unreasonable and illogical to believe in God from a purely rational approach of analyzing and reasoning. Thus, we cannot conceive of that which is not here or does not deal with reason or our senses, in this world, hence reason fails at a certain point. It is at this gap of reason where faith begins to take hold. If the assertion of loser and anileve is correct, we humans wouldn't care to nor care for of conceiving the immaterial that which is not here, but it is instead our innate drive to be drawn to that thought, instead we would only be confined to that thought of only that which is reasonable and logical. But we don't and we do veer off and take faith in that which is beyond logic and reason.

We can have no actual knowledge of the absolute itself, the very God, or Providence, or Deity. Our means of obtaining what is commonly termed actual knowledge, are our senses only if to see, to hear, to smell, to touch, and feel be knowledge, from this it means we have no knowledge of our soul, if this is constituted as the only things we know, that of our senses. From this we have no knowledge of not only our soul, not even of our thoughts, not even magnetism or electricity. We see and feel and taste an acid or an alkali and know something of the qualities of each, but it is only when we use them in combination with other substances, and learn their effects, taht we really begin to know their nature. It is because of chemistry that give us knowledge of the nature and powers of these substances. As these are cognizable by inspect of our senses, we may partially know them by that alone, but the soul, either of ourself or of another, being beyond that cognizance, can only be shown by the acts and words that are carrying the thoughts which are its effects.

Magnetism, electricity are also beyond our jurisdiction of the senses, and when they are in action we see, feel, hear, taste, and smell only their effects, not the actual things themselves. We do not know what they are, but only what they do. We can know the attributes of God, or Providence, or whatever you want to call it, only through its manifestations. To ask anything more, is to ask, not knowledge, but something else, for which we have no name. God, Providence, Allah, Astvats, is a power, and we know nothing of any power itself, but only its effects, results, and action, and what we reason teaches us by analogy.

Ultimately, this comes to two outlooks on how we perceive the world and nature. Do we see, order, harmony, and beauty in nature, or do we see no order, no harmony, and no beauty in nature? IT is from this question which ones views on God develop. Those that say they don't know, or are confused along the way, are struggling in themselves to try to fuse the visible with the invisible, the order and harmony and beauty that they see and feel, with that which cannot be conceive of or comprehended.

anileve

02-21-2004, 08:56 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse
While we use reason to arrive at conclusions based on our known world, we use reason in our discussions, and our analytical mind, even with regard to God, but at a certain point, it ends. It is limited.

Your post exudes poetry, but in the essence is only a paraphrase of my post. In your first sentence you say that “reason” and “faith” cliches are indeed exclusive. Yet you insist on arguing that faith and reason are independent variables where as I've pointed out that there is a parity between faith and reason.

The fact that you have come to an acceptance of the existence of God, demonstrates that your assertion was a result of deductive reasoning. You refused to accept God as a “standard of living”, your faith is not based on the conditioning of your surroundings but due to the application of reason, which in the event brought you the current conclusion. Thus you can see how faith and reason is interrelated. What you speak of is “religious faith”, the theological virtue. Where as I refer to faith as a belief that makes an explicit reference to a transcendent source.

Your definition of God still stands unclear, you refuse losers and my concept of the belief in the unknown, yet you still cannot elucidate your faith in God. Do you perceive the role of God as the creator, as the omniscient force that controls life? And if so that what how do you suggest to go about means of acknowledging God? Live a virtuous life? How so, who and what decides what a virtuous life is? Many claim it is God, but we must almost belief in the integration of God with a human image. For it is the habit of humans to dictate the accepted virtue which varies in its standards from culture to culture. Cannibalism in the Christian understanding of living a virtuous life is a moral turpitude, a crime against God, yet many tribes practice it due to their belief in the divinity of the act. "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him," - Jesus

Why is our belief is more virtuous than theirs, simply because we follow the teachings of the Bible or the conditioning of the society we live, or the convictions of our parents? What does God represent for you? People fail to look into their belief, yet justify their refusal of accepting the “unknown” as the belief in God, which they formalize into a human creature.
We have no standard virtues to abide by, it varies one instance to another. The represents the “unknown” it does not hold guidelines or morals, it's just infinite and invincible. “God” is simply a term for the “unknown”, so that we can identify with its incomprehensible force.

So to impose your view of the image of God you hold as the ideal is inaccurate, since you yourself cannot entirely define its purpose or validity. “Why should I believe in your God, if my people believe in this God, what makes you say that yours is more righteous than mine, if you can't formalize the significance of your belief?” God doesn't have guidelines, in effect it is unknown and it's left upon us to decide what morals work well with our lifestyle, it is our responsibility to reason and rely on our understanding of logic.

In addition, contrary to the common belief, I am not struggling with the definition of God, I found my peace in the acceptance of the unknown. And I consider myself a product of the society and a conditioned specie just as everyone else, my thoughts are neither original nor unique. Moreover I dwell in the joy of my ability to be a creator of my own virtues or morals, I enjoy being a "writer" of my destiny, nor do I fear the higher force. I acknowledge the limit of my powers and I don't strive to understand the purpose. Having an delicious platter of a perfect breakfast consisting of ideal eggs, powerfully crisp bacon, and divinely well prepared pancakes is more important to me. :D

loseyourname

02-23-2004, 09:14 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Only one of us can be wrong according to that fundamentalist Muslim, and according to you, but does this conclusion display actual thought into studying religion, not just your own, but of others? I've already made my point, thus you are drilling a non-issue.

You are ignoring my point. You think the fundamentalist Muslim is incorrect to say that you will go to hell. He thinks he is correct. You cannot both go to hell and not go to hell. Therefore, you cannot both be correct. You both use faith to come to your conclusions. There is no way to evaluate competing faiths. Person A can say he has faith that the moon is made of cheese. Person B can say he has faith that the moon is made of paper mache. How does faith determine which of these persons is correct?

My point was that I didn't make that claim, and hence why they would have made it, because to them it was not obvious.

It makes little difference why they made that specific claim. The point is that they didn't have an answer, so they made one up, and backed it up with faith. They were wrong. Now, this pattern has been repeated thousands of times in the history of man, and there's a pretty damn good chance that many of the claims you are making, based on faith, will also one day be shown incorrect.

You just described a purpose and a process, and then go on to say there is no need to assign any purpose to this.

That is ridiculous. The mechanics of how rain falls does not include a purpose. There is reason in that there is a causal basis for it, but there is no intent.

Therefore that is purpose, there is a reason behind it, a design.

That is the mind of early man at work right there, a man with no scientific knowledge of the workings of nature, blindly attributing purpose and design to everything he sees in the world because it all works so well. Have you ever heard of the anthropic principle?

Can you not follow Jesus as both a human and a God?

You cannot simulataneously believe that he is God and believe that he is not God. That should be self-evident.

Sure you can, it is the belief of whoever holds the faith. Moreover, we have faith, and that is what our perception of the world eventually amounts to.

That is non-sequitir, completely unrelated to the question of who is making the correct claim, Jesus Christ or Joseph Smith.

We have faith either in the creation of God or the uncreation.

Or we don't come to premature conclusions. Would you please take that mouse out of your pocket?

We have faith in either Jesus or no Jesus.

More specifically, you have faith in Jesus. Why are you Christian as opposed to Mormon? What critical evalution have you performed of each faith in order to determine that the one you hold is correct?

It is not a matter of giving dictates on how to live.

Really? When you said that I live my life in accordance with Darwinism, that has nothing to do with how I live?

Moreover, ask yourself, where did J.S. Mill and Aristotle get their ideas?

My guess is you have probably read both of these dudes, and you already know that they obtained their ideas through the use of reason. It is pretty well explained by both.

This line of reasoning implies that it's either God or Universe.

Not necessarily. If God was created, then it goes back to his creator. If that creator was created, then it goes back one step further. The point is that we can't have infinite regression. Something must have been first. The two options we have before us, however, are God and the universe. Those are the competing claims. Neither is more or less logical than the other. Your attempt to show that the universe must have been created using logic has failed.

Those who have faith in God see the beautifully above the great wide human errors . . .

Those who have knowledge of the laws of physics and evolutionary theory see the beauty of nature at work. It is indeed something transcendent in a far less literal sense. As Darwin himself said, "there is wonder in this way of looking at the world."

You are missing the point of my statement. I agreed insofar as believing because of certain experiences that to me were reason enough to believe and simply believing because it is cool or I'm a blind believer.

There you go. You claim that your faith has a rational basis in the inexplicability of your experiences. That is reasoning, and can easily be shown to be faulty. You are again left only with faith, just as blind as if you had never had those experiences to begin with.

Faith has no prerequisites aside from faith. I have faith in God, you have faith in science.

Wrong. I believe in science because it has been proven to reveal usable knowledge and irrefutable facts. Science also involves speculation, granted, but in order to be considered fact, it must be verified according to very strict rules, including peer review and repeatability. People of faith are always in disagreement. Jainists do not even believe there is a God. Buddhists believe that our souls work toward Nirvana over the course of many lives. xxxs believe they are the chosen people. The Cult of the Heaven's Gate believed that extraterrestrials would take their souls to paradise if they killed themselves as the Hale-Bopp comet approached. This isn't to say that scientists always agree, but they have approved methods by which they may come to agreement. Faith does not.

Thus a little that was revealed to me, is alot gained. God is the principle moral of truth, and of personal morality. I am a moral person. You are a moral person. That means we are one endowed with reason and liberty. We are capable of virtue, and virtue has two forms, respect for others, and love of others. Thus to admit that morality is universal, is to admit to a truth.

It is to admit that humans have enough in common to come to agreement on such basic innate beliefs. Eagle chicks are born with a reflex to move away from cliff ledges. This keeps them alive before they are old enough to fly. Humans are born with a basic sense that it is good to be decent and loving toward one another. In principle, this should keep the race from killing itself.

God is not a logical being, you forget.

God is free from the dictates of cause and effect? Then how did he cause the universe?

Nor is its nature explained by deduction, and by any means of algebraic equations.

Nor is a human being. That doesn't make us illogical beings.

When the attributes of God are attempted to be deduced we end up with nothing but abstractions. Thus from a critical point of view of using logic, you cannot approach God, or any discussion of God, although we may certainly discuss God.

I realize that. In fact, that is what my second post to this thread said. You want misunderstanding, go back and read what you said in reply to it.

If you cannot understand why this is, it is because of our consciousness, that which determines all reality.

I thought it was God that determined reality? If we do this ourselves, what is his purpose? How do you know your illogical experiences are not simply evidence of hidden powers that you subliminally possess, and not an external deity?

Thus the first notion we have of God is of an infinite being, not given us a priori, independently of all experience.

So basically what you're saying is that you can't approach God using logic, and yet you can come to the logical conclusion that he is infinite.

It is our consciousness of ourselves, a limited being at once, that raises us to the conception of a being, the principle of our being, and itself without limits. Therefore there is no relativism aside from what we make. Essentially all our approach to this world, and even science is based and rooted in our consciousness.

That is a pathetic attempt at evasion of my point. If everyone's beliefs are true, then competing truths will exist. That is the very definition of relativism. You have your truth, I have mine. Person B has his. Person C has his. None can have anything to say about the other, because it is all a result of individual perception. Mousy, that is relativism.

The claim was that matter had its roots somewhere.

Funny you should use a law that states matter/energy can never be created to show that it must have been created.

And that the order we see is a result of intelligence, because only intelligence can create such order that has laws and rules for how it works.

That is incorrect. The laws of physics are perfectly adept at creating order in one system at the expense of overall universal order. I suggest you take a class on thermodynamics. This is all very basic to any student of chemistry or biology and has been known for hundreds of years.

From the beginning an infinite being must create and preserve the finite, and we the finite must in our own way give our kind. We cannot conceive of any finite thing existing without a God, an infinite basis.

Yes, I can. So can every other person on this planet who is either an atheist or an agnostic. In fact, I have trouble conceiving of anything infinite, period. Infinity is an all-inclusive set, but all-inclusive of what set? Is God everything? Is he simply everything immaterial? Is he simply everything that is conscious? Again, what is the infinity you speak of?

God is the necessary logical condition of a world, its necessitating cause. A world, is then,the necessary logical condition of God, its necessitated consequence or cause.

What the hell are you trying to say here? God needs the world as much as the world needs God? Then how did God exist before the world. I think you are misunderstanding the idea of causal necessity as opposed to necessary existence. A necessary being that is the cause of all other beings does not himself need a cause.

I never misunderstood it, nor did I question the validity of it. All I said was we observe an order that could not result from nothingness, which can only be the result of intelligent design.

That, right there, is a misunderstanding of the law. Nothing implied in the law leads to anything resemblind the conclusion that intelligence is necessary to create order.

Somehow, the massive amount of precision and order and purpose we see in nature, is translated as meaning something other than what it is obviously implying.

There is no mystery here. The somehow is logical fallacy. That is what leads you to believe that natural order must have been intelligently designed.

We got 33 bones in our vertebrae. Our skull has 22 bones and our ribs have 11 bones. 11, 22, and 33, are precise numbers that are multiples of 11 and are encoded within our DNA.

One brain, two intestines, four chambers of the heart, five fingers, eight contact joints, three catabolic processes, varying numbers of hairs, etc., etc., etc. Again, you can find any number in the human body. The fact that you single out these particular numbers proves only how far you will reach to find evidence for what you are looking for.

Physics is not about revelation. It is something we can all study. The illogical nature of your analogy is apparent, once it is exposed to your own argument. You believe you can never gain any knowledge of God, therefore why comment on it, it is impossible to know.

What does this have to do with my analogy? There is nothing illogical about it? You can come to have knowledge of Calabi-Yau spaces through reading. I can come to have knowledge of God through revelation. As of this moment, you do not have that knowledge, and so you come to no conclusions regarding the validity of its usage in translating string vibrations into elementary particles. As of right now, God has not been revealed to me, and so I come to no conclusions regarding whether the universe was created or uncreated. There is no flaw in the analogy.

Then to make your analogy you state that one cannot make a judgment about topography because one doesn’t know. Whereas in the case of God you say we can never know because it is beyond our knowledge, the area of physics is not, therefore making your analogy moot.

I said I think we can never know. We certainly cannot know through the use of argumentative logic. I did, however, leave a loophole through divine revelation.

Thoughts are intangible and as such live before and after us. Thoughts are sort of akin to electricity traveling, we don’t see it, we don’t touch it, it just is, it’s the current that connects the whole of humanity into one whole consciousness. That most people aren’t famous and that we don’t know there thoughts mean nothing for their thoughts live with their children, and their children’s children. My grandfather wasn’t famous, but his thoughts are here, and so are his fathers. The point which I am making is that thoughts live past us, and all our actions and thoughts are an attempt to live past our lives as well, our desire to transcend our limited sense of self and have thoughts live past our lives into the minds of others.

You have once again ignored my question. Does Socrates still exist? Not his thoughts.

It’s not that it’s impossible, it is inconceivable to me that a human can be alone.

Is your imagination that poor that you can't imagine being alone? Honestly, Mousy? I can imagine that pretty easily.

We exist because of the whole of humanity, it is one single thought. A human cannot exist by itself, that is impossible, and this is where Marx is right, for once.

Oh, man, I beg you to come up with some kind of backing for that assertion. In the most literal sense, sure, we exist because we other humans screwed and brought us into existence. But if every person on this planet was killed, and I was the only survivor, something gives me the feeling I would not cease to exist because of that.

Anonymouse

02-23-2004, 02:30 PM

Actually, you know what..I'm wrong. Cancel all that. There is no purpose, there is no reason, there is no God, just science. Science is supreme, I believe. :cool:

Anonymouse

02-23-2004, 08:01 PM

Originally posted by anileve Your post exudes poetry, but in the essence is only a paraphrase of my post. In your first sentence you say that “reason” and “faith” cliches are indeed exclusive. Yet you insist on arguing that faith and reason are independent variables where as I've pointed out that there is a parity between faith and reason.

The fact that you have come to an acceptance of the existence of God, demonstrates that your assertion was a result of deductive reasoning. You refused to accept God as a “standard of living”, your faith is not based on the conditioning of your surroundings but due to the application of reason, which in the event brought you the current conclusion. Thus you can see how faith and reason is interrelated. What you speak of is “religious faith”, the theological virtue. Where as I refer to faith as a belief that makes an explicit reference to a transcendent source.

Your definition of God still stands unclear, you refuse losers and my concept of the belief in the unknown, yet you still cannot elucidate your faith in God. Do you perceive the role of God as the creator, as the omniscient force that controls life? And if so that what how do you suggest to go about means of acknowledging God? Live a virtuous life? How so, who and what decides what a virtuous life is? Many claim it is God, but we must almost belief in the integration of God with a human image. For it is the habit of humans to dictate the accepted virtue which varies in its standards from culture to culture. Cannibalism in the Christian understanding of living a virtuous life is a moral turpitude, a crime against God, yet many tribes practice it due to their belief in the divinity of the act. "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him," - Jesus

Why is our belief is more virtuous than theirs, simply because we follow the teachings of the Bible or the conditioning of the society we live, or the convictions of our parents? What does God represent for you? People fail to look into their belief, yet justify their refusal of accepting the “unknown” as the belief in God, which they formalize into a human creature.
We have no standard virtues to abide by, it varies one instance to another. The represents the “unknown” it does not hold guidelines or morals, it's just infinite and invincible. “God” is simply a term for the “unknown”, so that we can identify with its incomprehensible force.

So to impose your view of the image of God you hold as the ideal is inaccurate, since you yourself cannot entirely define its purpose or validity. “Why should I believe in your God, if my people believe in this God, what makes you say that yours is more righteous than mine, if you can't formalize the significance of your belief?” God doesn't have guidelines, in effect it is unknown and it's left upon us to decide what morals work well with our lifestyle, it is our responsibility to reason and rely on our understanding of logic.

In addition, contrary to the common belief, I am not struggling with the definition of God, I found my peace in the acceptance of the unknown. And I consider myself a product of the society and a conditioned specie just as everyone else, my thoughts are neither original nor unique. Moreover I dwell in the joy of my ability to be a creator of my own virtues or morals, I enjoy being a "writer" of my destiny, nor do I fear the higher force. I acknowledge the limit of my powers and I don't strive to understand the purpose. Having an delicious platter of a perfect breakfast consisting of ideal eggs, powerfully crisp bacon, and divinely well prepared pancakes is more important to me. :D

I can only refer the reader to Kant, who was nothing more than the time's response as a critic to the dry sobriety of empiricists such as Hume. Reason and faith are two different things in and of themselves, albeit at times they can be used in parity as you suggested, yet even then they are not the same for it is by our perception of the world that we change it, by the use of faith, in others and in ourselves foremost. Therefore since reason is limited we ought not to believe what reason denies; that at which the sense of right revolts, that which is self-contradictory, that which degrades the character of Providence, or even Providence itself. A persons faith is as much his own, as his reason is. No one can decide what other people should believe as to any tenet of faith. Except to those who first receive it, every truth of all writings depend on human testimony and internal evidences, to be judged of by reason, and accepted by the wise analogies of faith. Enthusiasm is unreason. Emotions are unreason. Love is unreason. Faith is unreason. Yet these are the wings of our souls, and without these we would not be human, yet we know of them, we adhere to them, and we move about more by them, then by the use of reason, and these are all contrary to reason. The power of the pen, the sword, or reason, compared to that of the spirit, is poor and contemptible. It is precisely with the fascination with knowledge that we exert faith in knowledge that elevates man over man and of why people revere the intellect more than the physical. We tread on earth more by what we believe than what we know, and what can man point to that he knows without believing?

As I would agree with Kant, most of what we deem 'knowledge' on this planet is all based on faith. Reason is indeed misleading. To paraphrase Kant, all knowledge is based on experience. "Religious faith" is nothing more than "faith", for how is the faith a Church goer has in God who is religious, any different than a non Church goer or a non-religious? My faith is not based on "application of reason". An "application of reason" as I have numerous times pointed out, is misleading and can lead us, in fact, away from truth. I go along the lines of Kant, and a priori synthetic truths Thus, this equates to losers attempt at trying to use the brush of reason to paint on faith, when it is precisely this misunderstanding. It is only a metaphysical assumption that all ‘knowledge’ can flow from scientific research, or reason for that matter. The only time I am employing reason is in a discussion with you folks to communicate what is essentially non-communicable. Thus reason is a means to an end, the endpoint being faith. What the "reason" you and loser are referring to is analytical knowledge, such as two plus two equals to four which is true in that it agrees from what it is derived from. That would be deductive. The conclusion follows the premises but says nothing about the actual nature of our world. "God" is not to be approached by logic, or by reason, or by dry empiricism. Such attempts are only humans using their limited sense of self at trying to grasp something beyond analytical skills and logic. The premise is not the evidence that has been heralded into nature by God, this is only the conclusion and the effect. The premise, is not known as you would state. Therefore, there is no way of using deductive skills to trace back that which we see to a first cause or antecedent. Reasoning fails at once. There is a second form of knowledge, which synthetic knowledge is as is evidenced from the statement such as "My bed has a stain on its sheets". This is a synthesis of known and knower. My statement is open for critique, and even discussion. As loser has told me in our previous discussion regarding my "revelation", that my "experience" can be a result of deception, imagination or any number of other factors which make it beyond absolute "knowledge", but only in comparison to what is "absolute" by reference to analytical knowledge. Thus this argument deems analytical knowledge supreme over other forms of knowledge. This knowledge is known with as much certainty as that knowledge which is analytical knowledge, in essence knowledge via of the known and knower without experience of the known by the knower. And perhaps the best evidence that this knowledge is real is the knowledge of time, which we do not experience but which we do assign relevance to and attest to whose reality is evident in the experience of events in our daily lives which have sequence.

As to the lack of clarity on my definitions, I believe the universe is that which is the uttered word of God, or Providence, or Allah, or Mercury, or "the unknown" ( if it is which you seek ), is infinite in extent. It is the thought of that which is the first cause. We cannot conceive of the first cause, and it is only human to slap a human image on the first cause but this is evidence in us that we are limited, and the first cause is in us and we in it, and are creators ourselves, in it, and make reality out to be what we deem it to be. It is because of this connection which the creator has to the created that even the most adamant atheist will turn to God when the terrorist hijacks his plain. The universe never was nothing, since nothing we cannot conceive. Forms of creation change, suns and moons change, planets come and go, stars are created and destroyed, but the universe itself is infinite and eternal, because, what I call God, and another calls Allah, is, was, and will forever be. To show the necessity for a cause of the creation is to also need to show the cause for that cause. As that old saying goes "We rest the world on the elephant, and the elephant on the tortoise, and the tortoise on - nothing". We cannot conceive of that. It is when an understanding of religions is gained that one begins to understand that it has always been the same intelligence that has been worshiped by man in different tongues and in different gods.

I am not imposing my definition of God on anyone. I am merely describing that which I see through me, and at the same time trying to show the flaw in the belief that only through reason do we gain knowledge. I cannot tell you what God is or isn’t, or at the same time if it is at all for you. For me it is obvious. All of us without even being aware worship a conception of our own mind. It is not one religion only, but rather the fusion and basis of all religions that reveal truth that is in all religions and the origin of all. Science, wandering in error, aims to strike out the hand of intelligence from us, and substitutes it with what it calls "Forces", i.e. "Forces of nature". It only deals with phenomena which can be observed, with behaviors and reactions, yet most of science turns out and deals with the invisible and the infinite, which is faith. When it rants about the powers or causes that prodce these or those things, or what the essence of those things are, it only uses the nice aura of scientific words and gives names and nothing more. It no more knows what light, or sound or perfume is, than the Kurdish sheep herders did, or the Babylonians with their swords and fire sticks.

To the assertion that we invent our own morality as we choose, I will have to disagree, for we don't choose, we merely feel in our conscience what is right and wrong, what we 'ought' to do, and what we 'ought not' to do. We should never do unto others what we should never want others to do unto us. That is not leaving any room for arbitrary morality, but something firm and objective - universal. Arbitrary rules in morals are always injurious and misleading as history attests to this. That people in all times and places consider harm inflicted on the soul, by means of torture, war, and killing and unfaithfulness, or deceit, as being wrong, contends to the belief that there is a universal guideline emanating from our conscience, not something arbitrary. As any relative or arbitrary morals claim to be, they are somehow based on a "scientific view of morals". Analysis of human behavior is the task of sociologists respectfully. But all too often it is from the field of sociology, and anthropology, that these self styled experts jump to conclusions and value judgments. These fields exist only to tell us what people are doing, not what they should be doing. Thus it cannot deal with morality or what is virtue. Therefore, you cannot use sociology, or anthropology, as a measuring stick regarding morality, because people can be doing many things in times and places that are not necessarily the things they themselves believe they 'ought' to be doing or that they should be doing.

We as humans have a sense of justice in our nature. It is instinctive more so by its inward effects, than by its outward ones. We feel the nature of rightness of what we feel we ought to be or do, as it determines reasonable rule of conduct. It is an object of the conscience, what we all too often call “guilt”. It is that which holds the balance, between individuals, between families, between nations, between races. The temporary interests of individuals will always collide. That we show respect, and do good works, is a universal debt we aim for. We intuitively understand what right and wrong is, better than we can depict it in formulas or words. We very well may differ as to the abstract right of many things, for every question has many sides, and few will only look at them all but one. But we all recognize cruelty, unfairness, inhumanity by their faces as wrong. Any relativism implied in a society, will eventually become corrupt and lead that society to ends destructive. This is similar to how in a democracy "right" and "wrong" become a matter of majorities. Certain tribes have a majority in their view on the virtue of cannibalism. Does their unanimous consent on this issue make it moral? This same reasoning can be applied to the Nazis or the Young Turks. If the majority of the Germans believed in the destruction of xxxs by the Nazis, then their actions were "right," and other cultures should have withheld any criticism of Germany as it is “their business”. If the majority of the Turks believed in the extermination of the Armenians from their historic lands by the Young Turks, then there actions were "right", then we should have stopped any criticism of their actions, and further not have condemned them. Moral "relativism" is nothing more than a status quo and “might makes right”. Those who yield and abide by this ethical norm must consider that if there is no standard by which society can be judged, or people held accountable for their actions, then society, or the given status quo, becomes the judge and when that transpires and unfurls, no one is safe, not the dissenters, not the heretics, not the unborn, not the low class, not the retards, and perhaps not even the feminists.

anileve

03-03-2004, 08:34 PM

A mountain climber slips over a precipice and clings to a rope over a thousand-foot drop. In fear and despair, he looks to the heavens and cries, "Is there anyone up there who can help me?" A voice from above booms, "You will be saved if you show your faith by letting go of the rope." The man looks down, then up, and shouts, "Is there anyone else up there who can help me?"

PASAMONSTER

03-03-2004, 08:36 PM

Now see this post was inteligent, amusing and has a very deep meaning!

no argument for this one I will give you the most proper respect.

loseyourname

03-04-2004, 06:33 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Actually, you know what..I'm wrong. Cancel all that. There is no purpose, there is no reason, there is no God, just science. Science is supreme, I believe. :cool:

http://www.extraheavymarcellus.com/Images/DeadMouse/mouse2.jpg

Bow down.

Anonymouse

03-04-2004, 10:31 PM

You know loser, there are alot of non issues in your response that simply don't make sense such as "prove it" and other one liner sentences that simply do not merit a discussion but are merely ego centered, as in "I can post a reply to you". Therefore, I chose to respond to anileve, and in fact in my response to hers, alot of it is a response to your major points. The minor points you've raised have swayed us from the discussion at hand and we got bogged down in minor non essentials, therefore it is not conducive to a productive discussion, in which case I consider our last responses moot.

loseyourname

03-05-2004, 09:59 AM

There is only issue, my man. Can knowledge be obtained through faith alone? No, it cannot. You have failed to address every objection I bring up, instead deflecting to other issues. That is how we ended up with such a long, unfocused, drawn-out discussion. All you have done is find new ways to state arguments that I have already debunked. I understand your frustration.

Still, take a joke.

Anonymouse

03-05-2004, 10:14 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname There is only issue, my man. Can knowledge be obtained through faith alone? No, it cannot. You have failed to address every objection I bring up, instead deflecting to other issues. That is how we ended up with such a long, unfocused, drawn-out discussion. All you have done is find new ways to state arguments that I have already debunked. I understand your frustration.

Still, take a joke.

Because it is tedious to address one liners that lack any base, such as "Wrong! Blah blah blah blah prove it". I thought anileves argument was a refresher as opposed to your tautological nuances. As for knowledge through faith, interesting how now you say that "can knowledge be obtained by faith alone", whereas earlier it was not even an option. you already know my position, on a priori synthetic truths. Well, funny you say "debunked". I say the same thing.All you have done is repeat tautological statements that I have debunked. Your point?

loseyourname

03-05-2004, 10:20 AM

Point out one tautological statement I have made, and one debunking that you have made.

Anonymouse

03-05-2004, 10:24 AM

For one, your continuous insistence on using reason to cancel out faith, when I've already pointed you have no knowledge of it.

As for debunking, well I certainly debunked your whole argument when I pointed out that the idea that all knowledge comes through material means, aka scientific method, is itself a metaphysical assumption, to which you agreed.

loseyourname

03-05-2004, 10:48 AM

I never used reason to cancel out faith. You can have faith in whatever you want. My only point is that your faith does not give you knowledge. It is only faith.

Your second strike right there is a logical fallacy itself, a diversionary tactic known as a straw man. I never said knowledge can only come from use of the scientific method. I have, in fact, repeatedly said that several types of knowledge can be obtained through other means. Among them are rational knowledge, which comes through the use of pure reason, self-knowledge, which comes from introspection, and knowledge through divine revelation.

Try again.

Anonymouse

03-05-2004, 11:12 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname I never used reason to cancel out faith. You can have faith in whatever you want. My only point is that your faith does not give you knowledge. It is only faith.

That is untrue.

Originally posted by loseyourname Your second strike right there is a logical fallacy itself, a diversionary tactic known as a straw man. I never said knowledge can only come from use of the scientific method. I have, in fact, repeatedly said that several types of knowledge can be obtained through other means. Among them are rational knowledge, which comes through the use of pure reason, self-knowledge, which comes from introspection, and knowledge through divine revelation.

Try again.

That is again untrue. You are referring to "analytical knowledge" as I pointed out, quite different from synthetic knowledge.

You ask me to make two points, I do. Now I am accuse of "diversionary tactics" and to 'try again". You see why our discussion bogged down? It's too much about the ego for you. I liked anileves input.

A real discussion doesn't center around "Wrong." or "diversionary tactics" or "try again", akin to your ad hominems earlier. That's the sign of desperation.

loseyourname

03-05-2004, 11:15 AM

Mouse, what are you talking about? You just pointed out two things that I never did in an attempt to show fallacy on my part. At least criticize claims that I actually make.

Anonymouse

03-05-2004, 11:18 AM

Originally posted by loseyourname Mouse, what are you talking about? You just pointed out two things that I never did in an attempt to show fallacy on my part. At least criticize claims that I actually make.

Now he evades to give himself an aura of validity. Typical.

loseyourname

03-05-2004, 11:22 AM

Dude, what am I evading? You attacked two arguments that I never made. If you can ever find me saying that knowledge comes only through the scientific method, do so. I guarantee you that you can't. You will also not find me ever using reason to cancel out faith. I only debunk claims made on faith.

Anonymouse

03-05-2004, 11:23 AM

Okay, if you didn't make them, why are you trying to hard here to justify yourself?

loseyourname

03-05-2004, 11:46 AM

I'm not too sure what you mean. I'm not trying to justify anything. I'm certainly not trying hard.

On a side note, I suggest we end this before we get into another big endless spat. Perhaps someday I can buy you a drink and we can sit down and have a nice civil conversation. For now, there are plenty of other things going on and this is old news. Don't make me regret posting in here again. I was just trying to make a cute little joke. If it bothers you that much, I'll gladly delete it.

Anonymouse

03-05-2004, 12:48 PM

"Cute little joke"? Hahaha so you are saying you would regret posting in here if I continue this? Well, guess what, brace yourself.

You are trying too hard to justify yourself that "you're right", since this is about who posts the last post, isn't it? Which goes to prove my point that this was never intended as a discourse but an ego tug of war. It remains, you deviated from alot of the points, name called, and confused the issue over and under, I don't mind though.

When you you made misunderstood statements about reason and faith we dwelled on that for more than half of the conversation, yet now you coldly deny has having ever confused the two. Like I said, this is to be expected. So don't let me make the last post, join in.

loleeg

03-05-2004, 01:28 PM

i believe in a god. but he is mine. and you can't have him because once you try and take him you make you own god. :)

sSsflamesSs

03-05-2004, 01:34 PM

wheeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!

loleeg

03-05-2004, 01:39 PM

shhh. don't make fun. i'm new! :D

Anonymouse

03-05-2004, 01:49 PM

This is not a chat room forum you two. Leave at once. Yes I'm mean.

ckBejug

03-07-2004, 02:52 PM

God is a scapegoat.

He's the cop-out that we use so that we can blame everything on something else. It’s easy to say “God will provide” because that means we don’t have to provide for ourselves. It is easy to say “God will forgive” because that means we will be forgiven if we repent. It is easy to say, “I will be with God when I die” because that means anything we do when we are still alive is only a trial run to our “true life” in Heaven. And Satan? Oh he’s the other scapegoat. Between God and Satan, we basically don’t have to be responsible for anything.

God cannot help you. Neither does he punish you. This is because we have free will. If God helped you get that job, then that means he let the other person not get it. If God let you win the lottery, that means singled you out to receive good things, and let others lose. If God interferes with one person’s life, by definition, he has interfered with everybody’s life. This because there is no action without consequence. Remember the Laws of Physics? Yes, God made those laws; he has to abide by them. God cannot contradict himself, otherwise he is not God. He cannot say, “Thou shalt not kill” and then add “except everyone named Joe.” God cannot say: “You have free will” and then interfere with your life. What’s the incentive for us to do anything for ourselves?

Now, let’s tackle some tough questions.

“I prayed to God that I would pass my Organic Chemistry test. I got an ‘F’, God is testing me.”

First of all, instead of praying, you should be studying. Second, God is not testing your faith by giving you "challenges". If you got an “F”, God would be the first to say: “Idiot, you should have been studying instead of praying.” You should have turned in that paper on time; you should have trained your dog to be smart enough to only eat love letters from your ex instead of your chem paper.

“God will provide.”

God has already provided. He has given you air, sunlight, those cute freckles on your cheeks. To ask for basic necessities like food and a job is just being plain greedy. You need to do your best to provide for yourself. And if you can provide for yourself, make plans and be prepared for the rainy days. It will not be sunny forever.

“How about the starving children in Africa, Asia, and Mars?”

That’s not God’s job, that’s YOUR job. If there are people who are hungry in Africa or in your block, it is up to YOU to feed them. If those kids died of starvation, don’t turn to God and dramatically, with tears rolling down one eye and say “why? why? why do you let these things happen?” Don’t shake your fist in the air and yell “Damn you, Satan!”

“I got into an accident and now I’m paraplegic. Why is God punishing me?”

I’m sorry if you are in this state. However, in all probability, God had nothing to do with that. God did not make your hand slip or make your tires lose their traction or make you go out when it is snowing. Satan did not whisper in the other guy’s ear to drink that one last sweet drink before getting in the car. There are risks in driving, skiing, or even breathing. You implicitly accepted those risks when you engaged in these activities. It is easier to blame God or Satan than to accept that things happened because you failed to estimate the risks and accept them.

“How about diseases like Cancer? AIDS? The common cold?”

Let’s start with the easiest one, the common cold. If you don’t know the answer to this yet, the answer is wash your hands. The common cold is most often transmitted not by people sneezing into your general vicinity, but from touching non-porous materials such as plastic, metal and wood contaminated by infected people and then transferred to your mouth or eyes from your own hands. AIDS? Devastating but quite preventable--use a condom. Cancer. Tough one. I could say that human beings have created so many bad things that poison our bodies and cause cancer like cigarettes and asbestos. Some we can prevent knowingly, therefore we bear full responsibility. For others, we all need to get together and do something about, like electing government officials who can make changes to laws. If we choose not to, then if we get cancer, it’s too late to blame God. It’s not, however, too late to blame your elected official. Think about it.

You are responsible for your own destiny. Every action sets into motion a sequence of events that affect you and everyone else. For everything else that happens? That is just part of living and dying.

sSsflamesSs

03-07-2004, 03:08 PM

Ck, I really enjoyed your post and agree wholeheartedly. I had a rant a while back about some bumper sticker I saw on someone's car (it said something to the effect of "no worries - God's in control"). I cannot stand it when people use God as a scapegoat - they have no sense of responsibility. Sticking your book under your pillow and praying for osmosis is not going to get you an A on that O Chem final if you haven't studied (loved the example :p). People are such weaklings.

You get provided with the tools - now friggin use them! No matter what you are dealt in life, you always have a choice - ALWAYS.

ckBejug

03-07-2004, 03:16 PM

Originally posted by sSsflamesSs Ck, I really enjoyed your post and agree wholeheartedly. I had a rant a while back about some bumper sticker I saw on someone's car (it said something to the effect of "no worries - God's in control"). I cannot stand it when people use God as a scapegoat - they have no sense of responsibility. Sticking your book under your pillow and praying for osmosis is not going to get you an A on that O Chem final if you haven't studied (loved the example :p). People are such weaklings.

You get provided with the tools - now friggin use them! No matter what you are dealt in life, you always have a choice - ALWAYS.

I was looking for that rant for ten minutes, I was going to reply to it with this, and I couldn't find it.... so I just posted in here. I guess you wrote it in the flamer forum?

I agree with you!

Too bad about the osmosis though!

Anonymouse

03-07-2004, 04:18 PM

Originally posted by loleeg shhh. don't make fun. i'm new! :D

Loleeg, can you type a 8 page paper describing what it is that you seek to accomplish by posting in this thread?

loleeg

03-07-2004, 04:29 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Loleeg, can you type a 8 page paper describing what it is that you seek to accomplish by posting in this thread?

haha i got a better idea mistermouse! you type an 8 page paper to your fellopw oldbies telling them not to make fun of people for stupid things like signatures when they don't have a good response to give to a serious post. my serious post was "i believe in a god. but he is mine. and you can't have him because once you try and take him you make you own god" and instead of people responding to that your friend made a comment about my sig and you said i was chatting. ur barking up the wrong tree dude

Anonymouse

03-07-2004, 04:31 PM

Two people same response. Let's get back on topic.

loseyourname

03-07-2004, 04:38 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse You are trying too hard to justify yourself that "you're right", since this is about who posts the last post, isn't it?

There goes Mr. Mouse's four hundredth knowledge claim about the motivation of an individual external to his own psyche. Yeah, man, I only post to get an ego boost, and all I care about is getting the last word. Nothing else matters to me.

Which goes to prove my point that this was never intended as a discourse but an ego tug of war. It remains, you deviated from alot of the points, name called, and confused the issue over and under, I don't mind though.

Let's see. You went off on tangents regarding evolutionary theory, big bang theory, geological timescales, etc., etc., etc. Who's confusing issues here?

When you you made misunderstood statements about reason and faith we dwelled on that for more than half of the conversation, yet now you coldly deny has having ever confused the two. Like I said, this is to be expected. So don't let me make the last post, join in.

Reason is the means by which the human mind explains the observations it makes in the world. It is one means by which we come to have knowledge. Faith is what a person uses to invent an explanation for that which he can not explain using reason. It is a guess and does not constitute a means by which one might attain knowledge. I am either right or I am wrong; I am most certainly not confused. I have backed up my position many times with examples of how faith can lead to contradicting claims with no means of picking truth out of either. You have been able to provide us with no refutation of this, saying only that all faiths have a lot in common. This does not change the fact that they also make competing claims that cannot both be true. You have failed to provide any reason to believe that faith can produce knowledge. If you still think you can, go ahead and give it another try.

Anonymouse

03-07-2004, 05:54 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname There goes Mr. Mouse's four hundredth knowledge claim about the motivation of an individual external to his own psyche. Yeah, man, I only post to get an ego boost, and all I care about is getting the last word. Nothing else matters to me.

This is based on your behavior displayed on this thread, and nothing more. And when something is pointed you respond with "there goes another knowledge claim".

Originally posted by loseyourname Let's see. You went off on tangents regarding evolutionary theory, big bang theory, geological timescales, etc., etc., etc. Who's confusing issues here?

Now he tries to put the blame on me for what was his initial name calling and insecurity.

Originally posted by loseyourname Reason is the means by which the human mind explains the observations it makes in the world. It is one means by which we come to have knowledge. Faith is what a person uses to invent an explanation for that which he can not explain using reason. It is a guess and does not constitute a means by which one might attain knowledge. I am either right or I am wrong; I am most certainly not confused. I have backed up my position many times with examples of how faith can lead to contradicting claims with no means of picking truth out of either. You have been able to provide us with no refutation of this, saying only that all faiths have a lot in common. This does not change the fact that they also make competing claims that cannot both be true. You have failed to provide any reason to believe that faith can produce knowledge. If you still think you can, go ahead and give it another try.

We don't "invent faith" Mr. Loser, it is part and parcel of human nature. Everything that we "know" is a guess, whether its your assertion of trying to determine how old the earth is, or whether you believe in evolutionary theory.

I myself have backed up my claims on how reasoning can lead to faulty conclusions.

As for your assertion on me "failing to provide any reason to believe that faith can produce knowledge", I have already done that. That was the purpose of all my examples of how we move about more by faith in our everydear endeavors than by reason, and my examples of business deals, love, and the existence of other places on earth are based on our willingness to believe. We reason only to get to faith, is a better way of putting it.

loseyourname

03-07-2004, 06:11 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Everything that we "know" is a guess.

Juxtapose this with the your next statement to get an idea of what I'm dealing with here.

As for your assertion on me "failing to provide any reason to believe that faith can produce knowledge", I have already done that. That was the purpose of all my examples of how we move about more by faith in our everydear endeavors than by reason, and my examples of business deals, love, and the existence of other places on earth are based on our willingness to believe. We reason only to get to faith, is a better way of putting it.

All right, you have pointed out how we use faith to make a guess. I suppose that's a start. You still have not pointed out a way that faith can give us knowledge.

Anonymouse

03-07-2004, 07:41 PM

We have faith that we revolve around the sun. We have faith that someone loves us. We have faith that we have landed on the moon. We have faith that what someone told us is the truth. We have faith that there is gravity. Yet in our everyday lives we move about as if this is knowledge. Like I said, what can you point to that is not somehow in some fashion based on what we believe?

dusken

03-08-2004, 07:46 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse We have faith that we revolve around the sun. We have faith that someone loves us. We have faith that we have landed on the moon. We have faith that what someone told us is the truth. We have faith that there is gravity. Yet in our everyday lives we move about as if this is knowledge. Like I said, what can you point to that is not somehow in some fashion based on what we believe?

This is absurd. One can point to mathematics. You are posting out of ignorance.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 09:33 AM

Yes we can also point to mathematics regarding time. Your point? Our time measurement is arbitrary. I suggest you make more of an effort than just stating "this is absurd".

dusken

03-08-2004, 09:50 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Yes we can also point to mathematics regarding time. Your point? Our time measurement is arbitrary. I suggest you make more of an effort than just stating "this is absurd".

It does not matter. The solutions to all time related formulas are significant even though they are relative to us. All units of measurement, including distance or volume are arbitrary. That does not take the validity out of the numbers. I will replce the words "this is absurd." How about we do not have faith that we revolve around the sun. We know we do. The numbers are there and they cannot be argued with. You are arguing the way many people of faith do: with incredulity derived from ignorance. If you truly cared to know, all the numbers that cannot be argued with are available to you. You just assume people accept it with faith because they have not been presented to you in your limited schooling.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 10:03 AM

Originally posted by dusken It does not matter. The solutions to all time related formulas are significant even though they are relative to us. All units of measurement, including distance or volume are arbitrary. That does not take the validity out of the numbers. I will replce the words "this is absurd." How about we do not have faith that we revolve around the sun. We know we do. The numbers are there and they cannot be argued with. You are arguing the way many people of faith do: with incredulity derived from ignorance. If you truly cared to know, all the numbers that cannot be argued with are available to you. You just assume people accept it with faith because they have not been presented to you in your limited schooling.

I never assumed people accept it on faith, in fact it's a given that whatever we accept we are placing faith in that thing we are accepting. You don't have to like it.

dusken

03-08-2004, 10:12 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse I never assumed people accept it on faith, in fact it's a given that whatever we accept we are placing faith in that thing we are accepting. You don't have to like it.

Yes, and we can all wake up tomorrow into reality and 1+1=4. There is no value in making such arguements. Especially since Descartes took care of most of that a long time ago.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 10:15 AM

I still see no point with what you're saying. No one denies mathematics, and the logic of it. Of course applying it to anything else is arbitrary, such as measurements in meters or feet, or miles, etc., etc.

dusken

03-08-2004, 10:26 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse I still see no point with what you're saying. No one denies mathematics, and the logic of it. Of course applying it to anything else is arbitrary, such as measurements in meters or feet, or miles, etc., etc.

The point in what I am saying is addressing that statements such as "we have faith that we revolve around the sun" are ignorant and vacuous. If mathematics is above faith then so is applied mathematics. An opinion stating otherwise is misguided.

loseyourname

03-08-2004, 11:21 AM

It's amazing to me that you assert belief in a heliocentric solar system is faith-based in order to defend faith-based belief in an omnipotent deity that created our universe. Belief in a heliocentric solar system is backed up by far more than Kepler's equations. We have also placed probes in deep space that have photographed the phenomenon as occuring. Do there exist multiple photographic documents showing that an omnipotent deity created the universe? Does there exist incontrovertible mathematical proof that only the god hypothesis is capable of explaining the sum of our observation of the universe? Comparing the two is ridiculous, and if this is all you have, you may as well have nothing.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 11:22 AM

You keep insisting the same thing when you do not know absolutely we revolve around earth, but have faith. Where do the numbers come from and how are they applied? Do you know that man has been on the moon? Do you know that the earth is round? Sure you've seen pictures and based on those you are placing faith in those pictures, in the government, and in those who took the pictures, that they are genuine. I'm only pointing out the absurdity of claiming you know something without using the human tendency of belief.

dusken

03-08-2004, 11:31 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse You keep insisting the same thing when you do not know absolutely we revolve around earth, but have faith. Where do the numbers come from and how are they applied? Do you know that man has been on the moon? Do you know that the earth is round? Sure you've seen pictures and based on those you are placing faith in those pictures, in the government, and in those who took the pictures, that they are genuine. I'm only pointing out the absurdity of claiming you know something without using the human tendency of belief.

In this sense you can question what you see with your very own eyes. There is an element of faith involved in accepting what you see as really happening. This arguement is meaningless because you are not achieving anything. It is all relative; relative to what we feel is reality. Like I said, 1+1 may not be 2, but in the way we perceive reality, it is.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 11:33 AM

You just confirmed what I've been saying all along.

dusken

03-08-2004, 11:38 AM

Originally posted by Anonymouse You just confirmed what I've been saying all along.

Not necessarily. I do not give it the credit you do. You have now accepted that there is no point in ever discussing anything because reality may be a dream. This is useless but if you feel that way then why do you bother posting? This is like that meaningless Selflessness thread where Arvestaked tried to convince everyone that selflessness did not exist. There is no point in arguing something like that because relatively speaking, it does.

loseyourname

03-08-2004, 11:38 AM

So this is your new argument?

Human perception cannot be trusted to produce absolute knowledge, therefore the universe was created by an omnipotent deity.

Are you kidding me?

Arvestaked

03-08-2004, 11:54 AM

Originally posted by dusken This is like that meaningless Selflessness thread where Arvestaked tried to convince everyone that selflessness did not exist. There is no point in arguing something like that because relatively speaking, it does.

Hey, crap sack, I never took sides in that arguement.

loseyourname

03-08-2004, 12:01 PM

Originally posted by Arvestaked Hey, crap sack, I never took sides in that arguement.

True that. It was spiral and flames that postulated the non-existence of human altruism.

dusken

03-08-2004, 12:05 PM

My appologies. I will redirect my finger pointing to the concept itself because it does, in fact, relate to what is being discussed here.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 01:10 PM

Originally posted by dusken Not necessarily. I do not give it the credit you do. You have now accepted that there is no point in ever discussing anything because reality may be a dream. This is useless but if you feel that way then why do you bother posting? This is like that meaningless Selflessness thread where Arvestaked tried to convince everyone that selflessness did not exist. There is no point in arguing something like that because relatively speaking, it does.

Let's get back to the original argument that Loser was insinuating. You came and cherry picked one thing, us revolving around the sun, and got off on a tangent. My original point was that we only reason to get to faith, reasoning is a means to an end, faith. We reason with the given "evidences" in whatever we are reasoning about and when we see it is fair enough we then believe it is true. It cannot work any other way. You believe that all the answers come through science and reason, not the other way, and that in itself is a belief, it is faith. When someone chooses to not believe in a God it in itself is a belief. You believe that there is no God, you don't know that there isn't. It is why one cannot prove the non-existence of a God using the same criteria you uphold. To know that God does not exist one would have to know everything, for if there were just one thing he did not know, that might be that God exists. So, to be an atheist one has to resort to faith and believe God does not exist. The atheist leans on faith while he chides others for leaning on faith.

As much as I wanted to avoid the "faith vs science" battle, it seems the "super rationalists" among us have turned into that. What started with losers misunderstanding of faith and reason ( although because none of us make a mistake he will claim otherwise ), led me to constantly bring that up in the form of trying to distinguish the two; now has no mutated into "reason vs faith", those of the persuasion of science as absolute truth vs those who believe in faith as absolute truth. That may all seem to be dandy, but not what I was initially defending, and my assertions in fact do hold science in high esteem, it's just the scientist/rationalist/atheist assumes that only through science can one reach truth and when this happens then it becomes a dogma, faith based.

I have come to the conclusion that scientific theory, which is in many ways another form of faith, and religious faith, which is another form of a theory, have validity, and I wanted to avoid precisely that sluggish devotion to one over the other, yet it morphed into that regardless. I see both as metaphors which mirror reality and serve for a better understanding of whatever "reality" actually is.

And from that it follows that we have faith more than we follow with reason since we are spiritual beings. If you do not believe we are spiritual beings, that in itself is a belief, since what constitutes a spiritual being is exactly that, to believe, and to immerse oneself in all the things that are non reason, i.e. faith.

dusken

03-08-2004, 01:36 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Let's get back to the original argument that Loser was insinuating. You came and cherry picked one thing, us revolving around the sun, and got off on a tangent. My original point was that we only reason to get to faith, reasoning is a means to an end, faith. We reason with the given "evidences" in whatever we are reasoning about and when we see it is fair enough we then believe it is true. It cannot work any other way. You believe that all the answers come through science and reason, not the other way, and that in itself is a belief, it is faith. When someone chooses to not believe in a God it in itself is a belief. You believe that there is no God, you don't know that there isn't. It is why one cannot prove the non-existence of a God using the same criteria you uphold. To know that God does not exist one would have to know everything, for if there were just one thing he did not know, that might be that God exists. So, to be an atheist one has to resort to faith and believe God does not exist. The atheist leans on faith while he chides others for leaning on faith.

As much as I wanted to avoid the "faith vs science" battle, it seems the "super rationalists" among us have turned into that. What started with losers misunderstanding of faith and reason ( although because none of us make a mistake he will claim otherwise ), led me to constantly bring that up in the form of trying to distinguish the two; now has no mutated into "reason vs faith", those of the persuasion of science as absolute truth vs those who believe in faith as absolute truth. That may all seem to be dandy, but not what I was initially defending, and my assertions in fact do hold science in high esteem, it's just the scientist/rationalist/atheist assumes that only through science can one reach truth and when this happens then it becomes a dogma, faith based.

I have come to the conclusion that scientific theory, which is in many ways another form of faith, and religious faith, which is another form of a theory, have validity, and I wanted to avoid precisely that sluggish devotion to one over the other, yet it morphed into that regardless. I see both as metaphors which mirror reality and serve for a better understanding of whatever "reality" actually is.

And from that it follows that we have faith more than we follow with reason since we are spiritual beings. If you do not believe we are spiritual beings, that in itself is a belief, since what constitutes a spiritual being is exactly that, to believe, and to immerse oneself in all the things that are non reason, i.e. faith.

It was not a tangent if you are arguing for the dimissal of all knowledge. You are being hypocritical just by defending your position. Even if everything was based on faith, finding truth would not be done by accepting faith but by constantly seeking to evade it. It would be easy for all questions to be answered with the same idea: a god. But the fact that knowledge can grow without accepting that the answer to any given question is God, is enough of a reason to dismiss it infinitely.

Belief does not suggest that someone is accepting an idea with a lack of complete knowledge, which is what you are insinuating. Again, if all that exists is faith then one need not argue anything because you are even invalidating the idea of faith.

Atheism is well explained in Paul Atkins's "The Creation" and Michael Martin's "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification." I know that you will turn around and say "stop throwing out titles and make arguments" but there is a reason that the argument is books in length. However, I will say that a god can be infinitely lazy. And I will also add my own opinion: there are as many gods as there are minds but there are very few manifestations of scientific fact.

The fact is that one who now argues for religion is attempting to make logical sense of something whose beginings were illogical. There is no reason for an individual to make such an argument except for nostalgic preservation.

Arvestaked

03-08-2004, 01:45 PM

Originally posted by dusken It was not a tangent if you are arguing for the dimissal of all knowledge. You are being hypocritical just by defending your position. Even if everything was based on faith, finding truth would not be done by accepting faith but by constantly seeking to evade it. It would be easy for all questions to be answered with the same idea: a god. But the fact that knowledge can grow without accepting that the answer to any given question is God, is enough of a reason to dismiss it infinitely.

Belief does not suggest that someone is accepting an idea with a lack of complete knowledge, which is what you are insinuating. Again, if all that exists is faith then one need not argue anything because you are even invalidating the idea of faith.

Atheism is well explained in Paul Atkins's "The Creation" and Michael Martin's "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification." I know that you will turn around and say "stop throwing out titles and make arguments" but there is a reason that the argument is books in length. However, I will say that a god can be infinitely lazy. And I will also add my own opinion: there are as many gods as there are minds but there are very few manifestations of scientific fact.

The fact is that one who now argues for religion is attempting to make logical sense of something whose beginings were illogical. There is no reason for an individual to make such an argument except for nostalgic preservation.

Atheism unknowingly attempts to refute probability and statistics and ignores the fact that it may not have to infinately defeat a god, as he may plainly manifest himself in the pursuit of answers, though it does succeed in making it illogical to accept a god as entirely fact.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 02:13 PM

Originally posted by dusken It was not a tangent if you are arguing for the dimissal of all knowledge. You are being hypocritical just by defending your position. Even if everything was based on faith, finding truth would not be done by accepting faith but by constantly seeking to evade it. It would be easy for all questions to be answered with the same idea: a god. But the fact that knowledge can grow without accepting that the answer to any given question is God, is enough of a reason to dismiss it infinitely.

Belief does not suggest that someone is accepting an idea with a lack of complete knowledge, which is what you are insinuating. Again, if all that exists is faith then one need not argue anything because you are even invalidating the idea of faith.

Atheism is well explained in Paul Atkins's "The Creation" and Michael Martin's "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification." I know that you will turn around and say "stop throwing out titles and make arguments" but there is a reason that the argument is books in length. However, I will say that a god can be infinitely lazy. And I will also add my own opinion: there are as many gods as there are minds but there are very few manifestations of scientific fact.

The fact is that one who now argues for religion is attempting to make logical sense of something whose beginings were illogical. There is no reason for an individual to make such an argument except for nostalgic preservation.

Belief never meant accepting an idea without evidence, this is why I said we reason only to an end and then we accept it on faith. No one invalidated the idea of faith, I don't know where you are getting this from. I did suggest that atheism is itself a faith, even though you will be adamant in stating so otherwise. Unless you had knowledge of everything there is to know, then you wouldn't have faith, that we don't and we are naturally finite and limited creatures, we naturally believe.

To be an atheist, one has to believe that matter has either always been here, or that it was produced by nothing from nothing. Yet that doesn't change the fact that it itself is a belief. This is my point that man naturally resorts to believing, because it is part of human nature, you must also believe that the mind you use for believing and reasoning came from that which was mindless and thoughtless, yet a belief nonetheless.

dusken

03-08-2004, 02:19 PM

Since you are not understanding what I am saying, I will step down from this argument. Throw whatever punches at this action that you like. I just do not wish to repeat myself only to be misunderstood and criticized for repeating myself. Good luck to Anonymouse, Arvestaked and loseyourname.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 02:30 PM

Getting back to the claim that only through science/reason, can there ever be truth, since I am assuming Arvestaked is of the persuasion. If he is not, he should correct my assumption. So with that said, all scientists recognize that no theory is proven, it is tentatively held hypotheses of how our world function, i.e. belief. All theories are held in belief until something better comes along, such as quantum mechanics replacing Newtonian, chemistry over alchemy, or neuropsychiatry over psycoanalysis. At each point this is an ongoing process, we never know we are right, we believe we are. And we will hold dear to what we have until something better comes along. That is the way it goes. I cannot change it.

Arvestaked

03-08-2004, 02:50 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Getting back to the claim that only through science/reason, can there ever be truth, since I am assuming Arvestaked is of the persuasion. If he is not, he should correct my assumption. So with that said, all scientists recognize that no theory is proven, it is tentatively held hypotheses of how our world function, i.e. belief. All theories are held in belief until something better comes along, such as quantum mechanics replacing Newtonian, chemistry over alchemy, or neuropsychiatry over psycoanalysis. At each point this is an ongoing process, we never know we are right, we believe we are. And we will hold dear to what we have until something better comes along. That is the way it goes. I cannot change it.

I am agnostic and so believe that even though a god is a possibility it is also an improbability and is insignificant. I believe that there are degrees of faith, as in how much faith you put in something and how much faith is required to accept something. Dusken did touch on this concept. Why would you just accept something because you can? Even scientists would say that any fact of science has a 99.9999...% of being true. But religion in most cases would have an infinitesimal probability or 50% at best (since it can always be the other side of a hypothesis). I do not see what the issue is with trying to achieve that high percentage with as many ideas as possible. It is counterproductive, in the sense of gathering knowledge, to decide that you have the answer until it is proven wrong. If we always did that, the entire present world would be a Spanish Inquisition! Saying that god exists is useless when it comes to gaining knowledge. That is the difference between the arrogance of science and the arrogance of religion: science says it can get the answer and religion says it has it.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 03:13 PM

I do not believe in God because I can, I believe in God because I have come to that conclusion based on certain things. My belief in a God is not without justification. With that said, it is as ignorant to state that religion claims it has the answer, yet absolve science from the same thing, because science itself claims it has the answers. Fanaticism is not bound by anything. Religion is natural to man. Everything naturally evolves into a religion ( such as science ), because man cannot be confined with that which he finds himself in, the present, and science itself naturally attempts to answer our origin and the whys no different than religion in the traditional sense. I never claimed to revere or hold religion in higher esteem over science, but have claimed a difference between the two because of understanding, whereas you are clinging to one over the other because of preconceived notions, i.e. you are already determined to dismiss religion, without understanding religions themselves.

Arvestaked

03-08-2004, 03:37 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse I do not believe in God because I can, I believe in God because I have come to that conclusion based on certain things. My belief in a God is not without justification. With that said, it is as ignorant to state that religion claims it has the answer, yet absolve science from the same thing, because science itself claims it has the answers. Fanaticism is not bound by anything. Religion is natural to man. Everything naturally evolves into a religion ( such as science ), because man cannot be confined with that which he finds himself in, the present, and science itself naturally attempts to answer our origin and the whys no different than religion in the traditional sense. I never claimed to revere or hold religion in higher esteem over science, but have claimed a difference between the two because of understanding, whereas you are clinging to one over the other because of preconceived notions, i.e. you are already determined to dismiss religion, without understanding religions themselves.

First, yes, I am determined to dismiss them because religion was born illogically. However I never dismissed the idea of a god; I only comment on his significance. And I have a perfect understanding of religion; you are being presumptuous again. One religion is not better than another to me. You on the other hand, are as determined to blindly accept one so do not opperate under the assumption that acceptance of religion is logically more sound than the dismissal of it. In addition, and I think loser has pointed this out, how can having faith make something universally true if people can have opposing faiths? The only common ground is testing.

You said: "I believe in God because I have come to that conclusion based on certain things." I would like to know what those are. I would like to know what has turned a potentially beautiful Satanist into whatever you are now. I cannot understand why someone would believe he exists as opposed to believe he might exist.

And, science does not claim it has all of the answers; science claims it has some of the answers...an infinitesimal amount of answers actually. So it seems that science is infinitesimally arrogant where religion is infinately arrogant.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 03:48 PM

Originally posted by Arvestaked First, yes, I am determined to dismiss them because religion was born illogically. However I never dismissed the idea of a god; I only comment on his significance. And I have a perfect understanding of religion; you are being presumptuous again. One religion is not better than another to me. You on the other hand, are as determined to blindly accept one so do not opperate under the assumption that acceptance of religion is logically more sound than the dismissal of it. In addition, and I think loser has pointed this out, how can having faith make something universally true if people can have opposing faiths? The only common ground is testing.

You said: "I believe in God because I have come to that conclusion based on certain things." I would like to know what those are. I would like to know what has turned a potentially beautiful Satanist into whatever you are now. I cannot understand why someone would believe he exists as opposed to believe he might exist.

And, science does not claim it has all of the answers; science claims it has some of the answers...an infinitesimal amount of answers actually. So it seems that science is infinitesimally arrogant where religion is infinately arrogant.

I never blindly accepted one religion over another, that is an assumption on your part, and loser, quite innaccurately tried to use one religion to negate another, basing his claim on fundamentalism, when I continuously pointed out that they all stem from the same source and the similarities, allegories and symbols show more purpose than mans mistranslation or error in understanding, and quite accurately even mentioned St Anselm who was a radical for his time in his conception of Christianity.

Your second assumption is God as he. What makes you say that? As for you wanting to know my reasons for believing God, suffice to say that they are too tedious and too personal for me to get into as I told loser, and you can consider that as "sham" or not, i care not. And my reasons are not rational, in that it would be "superstitious", but then again only in this age of super rationalism do we dismiss everything that does not somehow conform to our view. Your assertions on science having "some answers" is again misleading, and basking in science might seem comfortable for you since that is where you have found your comfort zone, your niche and the ability to negate all else, dismiss it all without having an understanding of it, is essential in upholding that dogmatic view of yours. What threatens our prism and our worldview must be cleansed and eradicated.

loseyourname

03-08-2004, 06:24 PM

All right, you are completely mischaracterizing everyone here. No one ever said that science can produce incontrovertible, 100% certainty of anything. Science gives us explanations that work. Newtonian mechanics can still produce correct answers in any equation at a non-particulate level in a system not moving close to the speed of light. Even Ptolemy's equations for retrograde motion can still accurately predict the locations of heavenly bodies at any given time.

There is a huge difference between the way that science comes to conclusions and the way that religion does. Science has an established epistemology consisting of parsimony, repeatability, independent confirmation, and peer review. Scientists at the theoretical level do not always agree, but they have agreed upon methods by which they may come to agreement given enough evidence. Faith has no such devices.

You have sown the seeds of your own destruction by refuting religious fundamentalism. You have said that they misinterpret God's message. You do not believe that a fundamentalist Muslim is correct when he says that he will spend eternity in heaven with virgins at his disposal, whereas you will be banished to hell. It doesn't not make any difference whether or not Mormons and Christians agree on some points. They do not agree on the one essential point that defines Christianity. Mormons do not believe that Jesus was the messiah, or that he was divine in origin. Christians believe he was both. Both of these belief sets cannot be correct in this regard. There is no way in which you might twist things around to make it otherwise. It does not matter what the religions have in common, or where they originated. The fact remains that the Pope in Rome comes to the faith-based conclusion that he is the human voice of God while an LDS separatist hiding out on a compound near the four corners thinks JP II is full of it. There is no means by which these men might come to agreement. Faith does not have any way of differentiating between competing claims, as is the case with science.

Now I never said that it is certain that there is no god. I think it is highly unlikely, but it wouldn't surprise me. But as dusken was pointing out, nothing about our universe dictates that there must be. Science explains perfectly well the state of our universe given nothing more than a very small set of physical laws and constants. For the purposes of parsimony, "Occam's razor," as it is called, there is no need to postulate any further explanation.

I am certain that you will now attempt to claim that I am myself being a fundamentalist by saying that only science can produce knowledge. Before that happens, I will reiterate for the thousandth time that that is ridiculous. I have continually used the examples of self-knowledge, rational knowledge, and mathematical knowledge as types of knowledge that do not come from science, and I will use them again preemptively before you mischaracterize me yet again. Furthermore, I will not rule out divine revelation. I will say, however, that divine revelation can only impart knowledge to that person which is the subject of the revelation. It is not a very useful form of knowledge, as the possessor will have no way of demonstrating his knowledge to any discerning listener, particularly if his claims are illogical and superfluous.

One last aspect of science that makes it superior to religion is its malleability. Science may not always get it right, but science admits when it is wrong. It may take a while, as some scientists do have a vested interest in maintaining a certain theoretical status quo, but the truth cannot be withheld in the scientific arena. When evidence is found that falsifies a certain hypothesis, that hypothesis is discarded and science is back at square one. Religion, in contrast, obstinately clings to outdated beliefs that cannot possibly be true. No Christian will ever accept any amount of evidence that God does not love him. Religious believers will not listen to any amount of reason, as there seems to be this Kierkegaardian belief that virtue lies only in the strength of ones faith, and that faith that stands opposed to logic is even more virtuous than faith that stands in accordance with logic. This is a dangerous idea that has led to a lot of bloodshed and ideological hatred. You will no doubt no point out that science can kill people as well. There is one key difference that you will ignore. Faith is used to justify murder. Science can create a weapon, but the scientific method cannot be perverted so as to make the killing of an innocent person morally acceptable. Richard the Lionheart and Osama bin Laden could not have went into the lab and concocted proof that Muslim infidels needed to purged from Jerusalem and the World Trade Center needed to be brought down while killing thousands of innocent Americans. Only faith could convince them of that.

Now back to the original question: Does God exist? Any freethinking, discerning, rational person that has not been the subject of divine revelation can only come to one conclusion: that he does not know. Only a fundamentalist would claim that he has the answer.

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 07:43 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname You have sown the seeds of your own destruction by refuting religious fundamentalism. You have said that they misinterpret God's message. You do not believe that a fundamentalist Muslim is correct when he says that he will spend eternity in heaven with virgins at his disposal, whereas you will be banished to hell. It doesn't not make any difference whether or not Mormons and Christians agree on some points. They do not agree on the one essential point that defines Christianity. Mormons do not believe that Jesus was the messiah, or that he was divine in origin. Christians believe he was both. Both of these belief sets cannot be correct in this regard. There is no way in which you might twist things around to make it otherwise. It does not matter what the religions have in common, or where they originated. The fact remains that the Pope in Rome comes to the faith-based conclusion that he is the human voice of God while an LDS separatist hiding out on a compound near the four corners thinks JP II is full of it. There is no means by which these men might come to agreement. Faith does not have any way of differentiating between competing claims, as is the case with science.

Science itself is a faith based system, let's not veer off or forget that. With that said I never claimed fundamentalists misinterpret, but exactly do what fundamentalists do, resort to fanaticism. The underying concept of all religions, is humility, love, modesty and a code of morality. The only thing that pervets it is man. Because one may believe the other to be "evil" does not make it so. Your point is completely a rash attempt at trying to drill something for the sake of having to negate one religion with the other. It matters every more that religions show common root and similarities because then it is only evident that man is imperfect and naturally misinterprets it. It is not one religion only, but the basis of all religions, the origin of all religions and the truths of all religions that have owed their life to the foundation which they were reared, that we can understand any religion. Science deals only with phenomena, with this world, with behaviors and reactions. It is charlatanism when it babbles about the powers and or causes that produce these things we see, their essence, only giving mere names. That is why science is another form of religion, contrary to what you claim. It has more theories than laws. All religions deal with morality, just like they deal with God or Gods, for that is what they attribute morality to, that there are certain things man must do and certain codes he must uphold, in other words, it is universal in all religions; just like all thought is result in action, the purpose of religion is an ethic. So in all there is a basis of truth, and pure morality. They all stem from the same source.

Originally posted by loseyourname One last aspect of science that makes it superior to religion is its malleability. Science may not always get it right, but science admits when it is wrong. It may take a while, as some scientists do have a vested interest in maintaining a certain theoretical status quo, but the truth cannot be withheld in the scientific arena. When evidence is found that falsifies a certain hypothesis, that hypothesis is discarded and science is back at square one. Religion, in contrast, obstinately clings to outdated beliefs that cannot possibly be true. No Christian will ever accept any amount of evidence that God does not love him. Religious believers will not listen to any amount of reason, as there seems to be this Kierkegaardian belief that virtue lies only in the strength of ones faith, and that faith that stands opposed to logic is even more virtuous than faith that stands in accordance with logic. This is a dangerous idea that has led to a lot of bloodshed and ideological hatred. You will no doubt no point out that science can kill people as well. There is one key difference that you will ignore. Faith is used to justify murder. Science can create a weapon, but the scientific method cannot be perverted so as to make the killing of an innocent person morally acceptable. Richard the Lionheart and Osama bin Laden could not have went into the lab and concocted proof that Muslim infidels needed to purged from Jerusalem and the World Trade Center needed to be brought down while killing thousands of innocent Americans. Only faith could convince them of that.

Since science serves the purposes of a religion, namely to explain human origin and destiny, they are invariably bundled. Therefore, your point is moot. Everything eventually becomes a class of faith, because man is born to believe. It could never satisfy human nature to not believe. Let's not forget the horrors that rationalism and science can lead to as well. Your idea of trying to cast out faith as being worse and causing more horror and destruction begs the question, for what doesn't cause destruction when reduced to fanaticism? Even Hitler and his Darwinism can be pointed out as the evils of science, yet you don't see me blackballing science over that, do you? But it is naturally for those of the scientific persuasion to try to use the same thinking regarding religion.

Originally posted by loseyourname Now back to the original question: Does God exist? Any freethinking, discerning, rational person that has not been the subject of divine revelation can only come to one conclusion: that he does not know. Only a fundamentalist would claim that he has the answer.

Whether one believes in it or not, one must know that to approach God, one must first accept that man is a spiritual being, and reason will divert from immaterial truths.

loseyourname

03-08-2004, 08:32 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Science itself is a faith based system, let's not veer off or forget that.

I just told you exactly what science is based on. It is based on parsimony, independent confirmation, repeatability, and peer review. There is no faith involved. You are mistaking inductive logic with faith.

With that said I never claimed fundamentalists misinterpret, but exactly do what fundamentalists do, resort to fanaticism.

You claim that they are incorrect. They say you will go to hell. You say you will not. Those are two irreconciable claims.

The underying concept of all religions, is humility, love, modesty and a code of morality.

The underlying concept of Christianity is that Jesus was the human incarnation of God, born of a virgin, that he died on the cross for the sins of humanity and rose again on the third day and that salvation can come through his grace alone. The underlying concept of Mormonism is that Christianity is a bunch of baloney.

The only thing that pervets it is man.

You are a man. Why is it that other men pervert religion, but you get it right?

Because one may believe the other to be "evil" does not make it so. Your point is completely a rash attempt at trying to drill something for the sake of having to negate one religion with the other.

I'm not negating either religion. I'm showing that they can't both be correct and that there is no means by which their competing claims may be reconciled. That is where science is superior. Scientists can come to agreement. A Christian will never agree with a Mormon about the central tenets of their respective faiths.

It matters every more that religions show common root and similarities because then it is only evident that man is imperfect and naturally misinterprets it.

It is very difficult to see how you might connect atheist Jainism with polytheistic Aztec beliefs with reincarnationist Buddhism with non person-God deism with Orthodox Judaism. There is no underlying connection between these disparate faiths. If you told any of their true believers that they were misinterpreting anything, they would likely ostracize you. They would certainly not agree with you. Either they are right, you are right, or neither of you is right. You cannot be correct in saying that they are misinterpreting God's message at the same time that they are correct in saying that they do not misinterpret the message.

It is not one religion only, but the basis of all religions, the origin of all religions and the truths of all religions that have owed their life to the foundation which they were reared, that we can understand any religion.

Greek mythology teached that the gods were fickle and emotional and that they were the cause of evil in the world. Judaism teaches that God is benign and that it is man that brings evil into the world. It is hard to see how these two beliefs might have a common foundation. It is easy to see that they can't both be correct.

Science deals only with phenomena, with this world, with behaviors and reactions. It is charlatanism when it babbles about the powers and or causes that produce these things we see, their essence, only giving mere names. That is why science is another form of religion, contrary to what you claim.

Science doesn't talk about the essence of anything. Vitalism and ether theories were discarded a very long time ago. Science, as you say, deals with the material world, and it explains the material world quite well. Where it becomes irrelevant, as in moral theory, reason takes over, as reason deals quite well with immaterial concepts and ideas. Faith deals well with nothing. Faith only creates disagreements. You can see that right here. If you were a reasonable materialist, you would not disagree with me. In fact, bring any other reasonable materialist in here, and they will agree with me. Several already have. Bring another Christian like say, Violette or sleuth, and they will say you are a heretic for questioning the validity of belief in Jesus as the sole means of avoiding the fires of hell. That right there is the fundamental difference between reason and faith.

It has more theories than laws.

Quite true, which is exactly what I said. Science is malleable. It never claims to have an absolute hold on the truth, unlike religion, which does make such a bold, unfounded claim.

All religions deal with morality, just like they deal with God or Gods, for that is what they attribute morality to, that there are certain things man must do and certain codes he must uphold, in other words, it is universal in all religions; just like all thought is result in action, the purpose of religion is an ethic. So in all there is a basis of truth, and pure morality. They all stem from the same source.

That is not true. Jainism and Buddhism, just to name two, do not attribute morality to a god.

Since science serves the purposes of a religion, namely to explain human origin and destiny, they are invariably bundled.

Science explains material interactions, nothing more. It says nothing about anyone's destiny, but it does explain perfectly well how the human body came into existence. If you think there is more to a human than his body, then that will not be enough. That doesn't change the fact that faith cannot answer these questions either.

Therefore, your point is moot. Everything eventually becomes a class of faith, because man is born to believe.

That is quite an arrogant statement. How is it that theologians and philosophers have debated this for millenia but here you come with the answer? Man was born to believe. A baseless statement.

It could never satisfy human nature to not believe.

I am human. I do not believe. I am satisfied. Your point is invalidated.

Let's not forget the horrors that rationalism and science can lead to as well.

Indeed. If you can show one instance where someone used legitimate science or reason to prove that one person or class of persons must die, then please do so, because lord knows I and others have provided plenty of examples of where faith has done just that.

Your idea of trying to cast out faith as being worse and causing more horror and destruction begs the question, for what doesn't cause destruction when reduced to fanaticism? Even Hitler and his Darwinism can be pointed out as the evils of science, yet you don't see me blackballing science over that, do you?

Social Darwinism was most decidely unscientific. Science has absolutely nothing to say about moral values or about the worth of human life.

Whether one believes in it or not, one must know that to approach God, one must first accept that man is a spiritual being, and reason will divert from immaterial truths.

There is no reason to believe this. Man may or may not be a spiritual being, but he is most certainly a rational being. Our universe is most certainly a rational universe. Why should one assume that anything existing outside of the universe be irrational? On what do you base this claim?

Anonymouse

03-08-2004, 09:11 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname I just told you exactly what science is based on. It is based on parsimony, independent confirmation, repeatability, and peer review. There is no faith involved. You are mistaking inductive logic with faith.

Too bad evolutionists don't corroborate this. They start babbling of the causes and the beginnings, that's not science, thats imagination no different than a religion.

Originally posted by loseyourname You claim that they are incorrect. They say you will go to hell. You say you will not. Those are two irreconciable claims.

How do you know what I claim? I claimed they are perverting religion, no different than a fanatical scientist perverts science. Your point?

Originally posted by loseyourname The underlying concept of Christianity is that Jesus was the human incarnation of God, born of a virgin, that he died on the cross for the sins of humanity and rose again on the third day and that salvation can come through his grace alone. The underlying concept of Mormonism is that Christianity is a bunch of baloney.

You've stated this a thousand times, and I have yet to see what you are getting at. Human saviors, resurrections, gods are not knew, and are based on more ancient pagan religions. Thus all religions have some truth and similarity and common root. Mormonism itself is an offshoot of Christianity. It has its roots in the same thing, it still adheres to a God, and morality, just differs in its idea of who the savior is, yet a savior nonetheless.

Originally posted by loseyourname You are a man. Why is it that other men pervert religion, but you get it right?

Did I claim to have gotten right? All I claimed is that religions teach a fundamental truth, any religion. You can cherry pick certain aspects and try to use one to negate the other, yet it remains they have more similarities than differences in criteria and structure.

Originally posted by loseyourname I'm not negating either religion. I'm showing that they can't both be correct and that there is no means by which their competing claims may be reconciled. That is where science is superior. Scientists can come to agreement. A Christian will never agree with a Mormon about the central tenets of their respective faiths.

To claim science is superior is arrogant at best, but you are entitled to beliefs. Science cannot explain many things and yet tries to, such as origin, and the causes of what we know. You keep rehashing and saying the same thing. Yes there are different religions based on human finitude and imperfection, yet religions nonetheless, all preaching the same fundamental truth. But I as a Christian prove you wrong by agreeing with a Mormon and that a Morman can be saved as well. St Anselm, proved the absurdity of your argument in the 12th century, and I just did it right now.

Originally posted by loseyourname It is very difficult to see how you might connect atheist Jainism with polytheistic Aztec beliefs with reincarnationist Buddhism with non person-God deism with Orthodox Judaism. There is no underlying connection between these disparate faiths. If you told any of their true believers that they were misinterpreting anything, they would likely ostracize you. They would certainly not agree with you. Either they are right, you are right, or neither of you is right. You cannot be correct in saying that they are misinterpreting God's message at the same time that they are correct in saying that they do not misinterpret the message.

Okay, you are obviously using semantics to try to "corner" me that all these religions are different and compete. That may appear so outwardly, yet they are all religions because they all deal with a code of morality, and inspired not by human reason, but by spirituality, all attesting to humanity being spiritual beings.

Originally posted by loseyourname Greek mythology teached that the gods were fickle and emotional and that they were the cause of evil in the world. Judaism teaches that God is benign and that it is man that brings evil into the world. It is hard to see how these two beliefs might have a common foundation. It is easy to see that they can't both be correct.

They can all be correct for all we know. There is truth. There is a spiritual existence. All religions begin with that a priori synthetic truth. They all begin with a God or Gods or a spiritual plane of existence, and morality emanating from it. Whether they believe as God or Gods is no concern, but only shows human finitude at trying to grasp that eternal truth. If you haven't read on Graham Hanxxxx, or Zechariah Sitchin, or the book we are about to read, you don't know the similarities in many of the religions, or that Jesus was alleged to have visisted the east and been influenced by Bhuddism, or the story of Eden prevalent in many religions, or the symbolism of the serpent, that is prevalent in the Americas, the Near East, and Asia.

Originally posted by loseyourname Science doesn't talk about the essence of anything. Vitalism and ether theories were discarded a very long time ago. Science, as you say, deals with the material world, and it explains the material world quite well. Where it becomes irrelevant, as in moral theory, reason takes over, as reason deals quite well with immaterial concepts and ideas. Faith deals well with nothing. Faith only creates disagreements. You can see that right here. If you were a reasonable materialist, you would not disagree with me. In fact, bring any other reasonable materialist in here, and they will agree with me. Several already have. Bring another Christian like say, Violette or sleuth, and they will say you are a heretic for questioning the validity of belief in Jesus as the sole means of avoiding the fires of hell. That right there is the fundamental difference between reason and faith.

Your point? If you are going to pass that is the fundamental difference between reason and faith, you are making too much of a narrow leap. We've already been through this, and how faith plays more of a role in daily life, than say, reason. Moreover, we reason only to have faith. A means to an end. We reason only to believe, and believe only that which ultimately reason cannot grasp, and that is most of the 'knowledge' on earth.

Originally posted by loseyourname Quite true, which is exactly what I said. Science is malleable. It never claims to have an absolute hold on the truth, unlike religion, which does make such a bold, unfounded claim.

Sadly, that's not the way your demeanor is regarding evolution, nor for that matter on evolutionists.

Originally posted by loseyourname That is not true. Jainism and Buddhism, just to name two, do not attribute morality to a god.

I never claimed they did. Is this your attempt at trying to refute the core of what I am saying, that morality is attributed to God? God is simply one name, it can be attributed to many things, in the latter it is spiritual, nonetheless stemming from immaterialism. I'm sure you also know that Bhuddism claims man is spiritually immortal.

Originally posted by loseyourname Science explains material interactions, nothing more. It says nothing about anyone's destiny, but it does explain perfectly well how the human body came into existence. If you think there is more to a human than his body, then that will not be enough. That doesn't change the fact that faith cannot answer these questions either.

Explaining human origin and destiny is exactly what evolutionary theory does. To deny this, is to deny evolutionary theory, and evolution is the basis of what we know as 'science'. Thus it shows you how misrepresented science is today, akin to a religion.

Originally posted by loseyourname That is quite an arrogant statement. How is it that theologians and philosophers have debated this for millenia but here you come with the answer? Man was born to believe. A baseless statement.

I am human. I do not believe. I am satisfied. Your point is invalidated.

I never came with the answer, in fact philosophy is only a wing of religion. One cannot leap without the other. With that said, you don't believe in God, but you believe in something else. That you do not believe in God is itself a belief for otherwise would mean you know everything there is to know.

Originally posted by loseyourname Indeed. If you can show one instance where someone used legitimate science or reason to prove that one person or class of persons must die, then please do so, because lord knows I and others have provided plenty of examples of where faith has done just that.

Social Darwinism was most decidely unscientific. Science has absolutely nothing to say about moral values or about the worth of human life.

Shall we say Marx and Hitler as being perhaps the two most obvious materialists? Of course, you will now argue against this to save the breath of science, yet what was preached starting from the 19th century is precisely in rational thinking and science, to purge the rest, whether it was the filthy race, or the filthy upper class. And it is expected that now scientists in an effort to distance themselves away from Darwinisms effect have now cast aside "social darwinism", a term invented to somehow still give Darwin legitimacy, but the fact remains that ideas have consequences, and it was science that led to Hitlerian and Marxian epistemology to conclude one group of people or class have to be purged in the name of the other based on their materialist conceptions of the world.

Originally posted by loseyourname There is no reason to believe this. Man may or may not be a spiritual being, but he is most certainly a rational being. Our universe is most certainly a rational universe. Why should one assume that anything existing outside of the universe be irrational? On what do you base this claim?

There is reason to believe man is a spiritual being. And we all "know" we are aware of ourselves and we are our own spirit. Of course for the purposes of this discussion and to uphold your view on the supremacy of science in all matters, we will not be sympathetic to such a view. Reason would not have us believe in God. To believe in God is to go against reason. As William Bramley defines spiritual being, it is an "entity possessed of awareness, creativity, personality", and strangely enough he goes on to say that the modern trend is to view the brain as being the center of all.

loseyourname

03-11-2004, 07:08 PM

Originally posted by Anonymouse Too bad evolutionists don't corroborate this. They start babbling of the causes and the beginnings, that's not science, thats imagination no different than a religion.

Mousy, the core of evolutionary theory has nothing to do with the origins of the universe. It is explanation of how biological complexity could have arisen from pre-existing inorganic molecules. You are taking the theory way too seriously. Some scientists try to take it way outside of the realm of science, I will admit, but they are not in the mainstream. Most evolutionary biologists stick strictly to what is shown in the fossil record and phenomena that are known to occur and are well studied in both a laboratory and natural setting.

How do you know what I claim? I claimed they are perverting religion, no different than a fanatical scientist perverts science. Your point?

They claim you are going to hell. You claim you are not. Therefore, you are claiming they are wrong. Is that really so hard to see? I'm not saying you think they are wrong about everything. But you do think they are wrong about certain things, and these are things that they believe based on faith. You are believe these things are wrong based on faith. Faith has no means by which it may be determined which of your claims is correct. Science does. That really is the end of the story here unless you can come up with some means of evaluating competing faiths.

You've stated this a thousand times, and I have yet to see what you are getting at. Human saviors, resurrections, gods are not knew, and are based on more ancient pagan religions.

Mousy, John Paul II would not agree with you on that. He would say that Jesus most certainly was the one true savior and nothing about him was based on earlier Pagan traditions. The fact that you know he is wrong about that and still call yourself a Christian is strange to say the least.

Thus all religions have some truth and similarity and common root. Mormonism itself is an offshoot of Christianity. It has its roots in the same thing, it still adheres to a God, and morality, just differs in its idea of who the savior is, yet a savior nonetheless.

Mousy, it is a negation of the central tenet of Christianity.

Did I claim to have gotten right?

Yes, you have claimed that fundamentalist are perverting religion. They don't think they are. Why are you correct and not them?

All I claimed is that religions teach a fundamental truth, any religion. You can cherry pick certain aspects and try to use one to negate the other, yet it remains they have more similarities than differences in criteria and structure.

You are completely missing the point here. The fact remains that two people can make competing claims that cannot both be true, both based on faith, and there is no means by which one can determine which is correct. That is not the case with reason or science. I'm not trying to say that religion has no truth to it. You are utterly misunderstanding what I'm getting at.

To claim science is superior is arrogant at best, but you are entitled to beliefs. Science cannot explain many things and yet tries to, such as origin, and the causes of what we know.

Regardless of what science can't explain, the fact remains that it can explain an awful lot, and just about everything it has explained proved some religious belief incorrect. Religion has been unable to explain anything.

But I as a Christian prove you wrong by agreeing with a Mormon and that a Morman can be saved as well. St Anselm, proved the absurdity of your argument in the 12th century, and I just did it right now.

So you agree with a Mormon that your savior is in fact a fraud and that you should completely deny his divinity or be faced with damnation? If not, then I have just proven you wrong.

Okay, you are obviously using semantics to try to "corner" me that all these religions are different and compete. That may appear so outwardly, yet they are all religions because they all deal with a code of morality, and inspired not by human reason, but by spirituality, all attesting to humanity being spiritual beings.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here. I post a devastating criticism that you can't address, so you argue the semantics instead and utter yet another vague sophist non-statement that you can't back up with anything. The fact remains, there religions have far more dissimilarities than similarities. They disagree more than they agree, and you have no way of evaluating their respective claims. You seem to be saying that you know a claim is true when it is a claim made by all religions. The only claim you have been able to come up with that is made by all religions is that human beings should live by a code of conduct not dictated by reason and that humans are spiritual beings. If that is the case, again, why do you insist on calling yourself a Christian?

They can all be correct for all we know.

Two claims that contradict each other cannot both be true. If you really believed that to be the case, you would have absolutely no grounds from which to argue with me.

There is truth. There is a spiritual existence. All religions begin with that a priori synthetic truth. They all begin with a God or Gods or a spiritual plane of existence, and morality emanating from it.

Funny that you should say that right after I just posted multiple religions that are atheistic.

Whether they believe as God or Gods is no concern, but only shows human finitude at trying to grasp that eternal truth.

You should said they all begin with a god or gods, and two lines later you say that whether or not they believe in god is of any concern. You used to at least space out your contradictions a little better. You're losing it, my man.

If you haven't read on Graham Hanxxxx, or Zechariah Sitchin, or the book we are about to read, you don't know the similarities in many of the religions, or that Jesus was alleged to have visisted the east and been influenced by Bhuddism, or the story of Eden prevalent in many religions, or the symbolism of the serpent, that is prevalent in the Americas, the Near East, and Asia.

I've read these dudes, and a man, such as yourself, who claims that evolutionists are making an unfounded leap in saying that one species that is almost exactly like another it follows in the fossil record in the same geographic region came from it should know that their evidence, while certainly provocative, proves nothing.

By the way, how would I know so much about the differences between religions if I knew nothing about the religions or their origins? Please begin to make sense.

Your point? If you are going to pass that is the fundamental difference between reason and faith, you are making too much of a narrow leap.

How can a narrow leap be too much of a leap? Are you suggesting I make a broader leap? But wouldn't that be even more of too much of a leap?

We've already been through this, and how faith plays more of a role in daily life, than say, reason. Moreover, we reason only to have faith. A means to an end. We reason only to believe, and believe only that which ultimately reason cannot grasp, and that is most of the 'knowledge' on earth.

Again, you are mistaking faith with inductive logic.

Sadly, that's not the way your demeanor is regarding evolution, nor for that matter on evolutionists.

If any evidence is ever produced that disproves evolution or if a better theory ever comes along, I will discard Darwinism, as will the scientific community, because that is the way the scientific community operates. Outside of when it was forced to cling to a certain belief by the church, it has an excellent record of accepting new ideas. It is religion that stands stagnant in the face of negative evidence and refuses to accept very obvious truths.

I never claimed they did. Is this your attempt at trying to refute the core of what I am saying, that morality is attributed to God? God is simply one name, it can be attributed to many things, in the latter it is spiritual, nonetheless stemming from immaterialism. I'm sure you also know that Bhuddism claims man is spiritually immortal.

None of this changes the fact that Jainism and Buddhism no not attribute morality to a god. If you are going to reduce the word "god" to include the spiritual aspect of a human being, then you have the stripped the word of all significance. In the interest of parsimony, we may now refer to the creative, intelligent force driving the universe as "man."

Explaining human origin and destiny is exactly what evolutionary theory does. To deny this, is to deny evolutionary theory, and evolution is the basis of what we know as 'science'. Thus it shows you how misrepresented science is today, akin to a religion.

Uh, whatever. Evolution explains how cumulative selection can produce biological complexity. It doesn't say how the universe began or how life first came into existence. It most certainly has nothing to say about where life will end up. You are the one terribly misrepresenting the theory. Start talking to any evolutionary biologist about "destiny" or any "origin" other than the origin of diverse speciation and he will laugh in your face.

I never came with the answer, in fact philosophy is only a wing of religion.

You said man was born to believe. That is an answer. It's cool. Keep backpedalling.

One cannot leap without the other. With that said, you don't believe in God, but you believe in something else.

All right, do you really think you have any right to accuse me of arrogance when you actually have the gall to tell me what I believe?

That you do not believe in God is itself a belief for otherwise would mean you know everything there is to know.

When you know something, you hold a belief. I would think that is rather obvious. The fact that I don't hold a belief shows that I don't know. If I don't know any one thing, regardless of what that one thing may be, how can I possibly know everything? I'll cut you some slack because English isn't your first language, but you aren't making any sense.

Shall we say Marx and Hitler as being perhaps the two most obvious materialists?

Neither was a scientist. Don't mistake materialist for scientist. Besides, you are proving my point by using these examples. Legitimate science and reason can show that these two men were way off base. In fact, you quite regularly employ reason to show how idiotically wrong Marx was. However, use faith to disprove the validity of what Osama bin Laden is doing. You can't do it. Reason can show that he is wrong. Faith cannot, because his faith is just as strong as yours, and faith provides no means by which to evaluate competing faiths.

There is reason to believe man is a spiritual being.

Perhaps, but current neuroscience seems to be hinting at a completely mechanistic explanation of man that accounts for all thought processes and emotions. Whether or not this proves to be the case remains to be seen. I am not going to take a stand on this issue. I will keep my mind open because that is the only rational thing to do. You, on the other hand, will jump right back in with your fundy nonsense saying that yes, man is most decidedly a spiritual being, and there is no question.

And we all "know" we are aware of ourselves and we are our own spirit.

Unfortunately, Mousy, if you knew anything about neuroscience (admittedly, it is an extremely new discipline and there isn't any reason for you to know anything about it) you would know that that awareness may be completely explainable in terms of molecular scanning processes. On the other hand, it may not be. I don't know, and neither do you.

Of course for the purposes of this discussion and to uphold your view on the supremacy of science in all matters, we will not be sympathetic to such a view.

Mousy, please stop mischaracterizing me. I am not unsympathetic to the view. I have said several times that my intuition tells me that neuroscience will not explain everything. However, the fact remains that my intuition is just that, intuition. It is not clairvoyance, it is not prophecy, and it proves nothing.

Reason would not have us believe in God. To believe in God is to go against reason. As William Bramley defines spiritual being, it is an "entity possessed of awareness, creativity, personality", and strangely enough he goes on to say that the modern trend is to view the brain as being the center of all.

Strangely enough, the brain may very well be the center of it all.

Anonymouse

03-11-2004, 08:29 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, the core of evolutionary theory has nothing to do with the origins of the universe. It is explanation of how biological complexity could have arisen from pre-existing inorganic molecules. You are taking the theory way too seriously. Some scientists try to take it way outside of the realm of science, I will admit, but they are not in the mainstream. Most evolutionary biologists stick strictly to what is shown in the fossil record and phenomena that are known to occur and are well studied in both a laboratory and natural setting.

You just confirmed what I was saying. Evolutionary theory does in fact talk about how we originated and where we will go, based on a model, with its structure, no different than Marx, or Adam Smith or other people making a theory for historical development.

Originally posted by loseyourname They claim you are going to hell. You claim you are not. Therefore, you are claiming they are wrong. Is that really so hard to see? I'm not saying you think they are wrong about everything. But you do think they are wrong about certain things, and these are things that they believe based on faith. You are believe these things are wrong based on faith. Faith has no means by which it may be determined which of your claims is correct. Science does. That really is the end of the story here unless you can come up with some means of evaluating competing faiths.

Mousy, John Paul II would not agree with you on that. He would say that Jesus most certainly was the one true savior and nothing about him was based on earlier Pagan traditions. The fact that you know he is wrong about that and still call yourself a Christian is strange to say the least.

You are restating the same things, over and over, without having a working knowledge of religions. Christianity, better yet Judaism, all have their roots in religions prior, by recosntructing the symbolic story of the Sun, with mystery school allegory symbolism such as that of the serpent, and the concept of savior. I never claimed they are wrong, you see, you are forcing upon me, quite incorrectly, in order to have something to debate here. I, like St. Anselm of Canterbury, hold that those who are not Christian can be saved. In fact, anyone who understands the message of their said religions will be tolerant of those who have different faiths. You are basing your whole argument on fanatics in given faiths. Let's examine saviors in pre-Christian religions. The Phrygians had the Son of God called Attis, who was born on Dec. 25th to a virgin. He was the Father and Son combined in an earthly body and when we died to the underworld, three days later he rose up and his body was symbolized as bread and eaten by the believers; Krishna, the Son of God of India; Dyonysus the Son of God of Greece, again born to a virgin mother on Dec. 25; other dieties of whom the Jesus story were told of are Apollo, Hercules, and Zeus of Greece; Marduuk of Assyria; Thor, son of Odin for the Nordics; Mithra of Persia.In fact the story of Mithra is the exact same story of Jesus. Even several of Jesus' parables came directly from Buddhism and Jainism.

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, it is a negation of the central tenet of Christianity.

It is an offshoot of Christianity, if you know anything of the founder of the religion, and their ties to the Jehovahs Witnesses, Watchtower Society. It presents another substitute savior, basing itself on the Old Testament which prophesied the return. "Christ" is of the Greek origin "Christos", simply meaning "Annointed", thus it has no bearing on what you are arguing for, since there have been many Saviors past.

Originally posted by loseyourname Yes, you have claimed that fundamentalist are perverting religion. They don't think they are. Why are you correct and not them?

Precisely, because they have a dogmatic understanding of their faith and not the pillars that came before it. Anyone can be correct too, all one must do is read. That is how I know I'm correct. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Originally posted by loseyourname You are completely missing the point here. The fact remains that two people can make competing claims that cannot both be true, both based on faith, and there is no means by which one can determine which is correct. That is not the case with reason or science. I'm not trying to say that religion has no truth to it. You are utterly misunderstanding what I'm getting at.

Yes, both can be true. Why not? I have already address this a thousand times, yet your hang up with it won't allow you to let it go, since it would mean an obvious blunder, due to your misunderstanding of the issue. Everyone in reality is worshipping one religion without knowing it.

Originally posted by loseyourname Regardless of what science can't explain, the fact remains that it can explain an awful lot, and just about everything it has explained proved some religious belief incorrect. Religion has been unable to explain anything.

Really? When did "Science" ever prove anything? No one can know if reality is existent. They can know they are real due to the fact that they have a concious mind, but they can never know if life or all it entails is truely existent or some elaborate hallucination because they cannot know if anyone else has a concious mind. See solipsism.

Originally posted by loseyourname So you agree with a Mormon that your savior is in fact a fraud and that you should completely deny his divinity or be faced with damnation? If not, then I have just proven you wrong.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here. I post a devastating criticism that you can't address, so you argue the semantics instead and utter yet another vague sophist non-statement that you can't back up with anything. The fact remains, there religions have far more dissimilarities than similarities. They disagree more than they agree, and you have no way of evaluating their respective claims. You seem to be saying that you know a claim is true when it is a claim made by all religions. The only claim you have been able to come up with that is made by all religions is that human beings should live by a code of conduct not dictated by reason and that humans are spiritual beings. If that is the case, again, why do you insist on calling yourself a Christian?

When did I say a Mormon is wrong? Scroll back up. You have misread my quote apparently, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I merely confirmed they can be saved, and my explanation is already obvious for this. But that is nonetheless a clever way of trying to phrase the question to somehow attempt to entrap the debater into a corner of admitting something he didnt admit. You have once again gone into tautology mode, simply because you can, and your so called attempt at trying to use one religion to negate another, based on fundamentalists, is failing, and because if improper knowledge regarding religion. In reality they all derive from one in the same. Mary for example is the virgin that gave birth to Jesus, but it has had many different forms in history in different cultures, from Mari, to Marratu, to Marah, to Mar. It represents the sea, the feminine moon, and "queen of heaven", to balance the masculine sun. Isis is the Egyptian equivalent of Mary, the moon goddess and the virgin that gave birth to Horus. The Hebrews worshipped a goddess called Mariel, and others include Isis, Artemis, Diana, etc. So next time you try to use one faith to negate the other you should at least have some working knowledge. And what is the message of every religion? Morality a code of ethics.

Originally posted by loseyourname Two claims that contradict each other cannot both be true. If you really believed that to be the case, you would have absolutely no grounds from which to argue with me.

I don't see any contradiction. I see similarities. That one fundamentalist says the other is wrong, and for you to use that as "evidence" for your argument here is ignorant, for that saves you the trouble of actually having to read the material. You have done nothing more than make tautological statements and restated the same thing over and over "they make competing claims both cannot be true". Well, I have told you I disagree several times and my reasons as well.

Originally posted by loseyourname You should said they all begin with a god or gods, and two lines later you say that whether or not they believe in god is of any concern. You used to at least space out your contradictions a little better. You're losing it, my man.

How is my statement a contradiction? I stated the existence of God and our inability to grasp it, whether one believes it or not, hence tying to my initial claim of God being Truth. Of course, if you want the illusion of having the upper hand you have it.

Originally posted by loseyourname I've read these dudes, and a man, such as yourself, who claims that evolutionists are making an unfounded leap in saying that one species that is almost exactly like another it follows in the fossil record in the same geographic region came from it should know that their evidence, while certainly provocative, proves nothing.

When did I say they proved anything? It is a theory, and I choose to believe that over evolution anyday, simply because. In fact, this theory would suggest that it is alien intelligence interfering and causing the "evolution" which we come to see. The difference between them and evolutionists is they don't attack someone for disagreeing with a theory

Originally posted by loseyourname By the way, how would I know so much about the differences between religions if I knew nothing about the religions or their origins? Please begin to make sense.

You are repeating fundamentalist claims of "if the Muslim believes you are wrong because you're a Christian, and the Christian believes he is wrong because he is Muslim", is not taking into account the religion or its origin, but the mere opinions of two fundamentalists who themselves obviously did not heed the message of their respective religions.

Originally posted by loseyourname Again, you are mistaking faith with inductive logic.

What can you claim that you "know" without believing?

Originally posted by loseyourname If any evidence is ever produced that disproves evolution or if a better theory ever comes along, I will discard Darwinism, as will the scientific community, because that is the way the scientific community operates. Outside of when it was forced to cling to a certain belief by the church, it has an excellent record of accepting new ideas. It is religion that stands stagnant in the face of negative evidence and refuses to accept very obvious truths.

Your above statement assumes that somehow evolution is a proven empirical fact. That is not so. What is proven about evolution? "We evolved". Really? How do you know that? "The fossil record shows evolution". Right, it doesn't prove it. Stating so doesn't make it so. That is simply an assertion, a belief. Darwinism requires as much belief, as the Mohammedan has, or the Christian, or the Zoroastrian before.

Anonymouse

03-11-2004, 08:30 PM

Originally posted by loseyourname None of this changes the fact that Jainism and Buddhism no not attribute morality to a god. If you are going to reduce the word "god" to include the spiritual aspect of a human being, then you have the stripped the word of all significance. In the interest of parsimony, we may now refer to the creative, intelligent force driving the universe as "man".

"God" is really in us, our spirit. Hence the phrases such as "God is in all of us". It is our sense of morality, which is universal among mankind, that we attribute to a higher power, whether we call it "God" or not, makes no difference. What does Buddhism assign morality to I ask? It is very similar to the morality of other religions. Eventually it is something not of this material world. And let's not forget it is not against a Buddhist to believe in a God. By "God" we don't mean a guy in the cloud. "God" can mean many things to many different people, ultimately it is admission of a spiritual existence on has. So if God is defined primarily as cosmic compassion and wisdom, then some Buddhists may be inclined to say they believe in "God."

Originally posted by loseyourname Uh, whatever. Evolution explains how cumulative selection can produce biological complexity. It doesn't say how the universe began or how life first came into existence. It most certainly has nothing to say about where life will end up. You are the one terribly misrepresenting the theory. Start talking to any evolutionary biologist about "destiny" or any "origin" other than the origin of diverse speciation and he will laugh in your face".

Evolution can explain everything and nothing, by clouding itself with nice scientific words to give itself an aura of science, yet it proves nothing. Based on the claims of Darwin and how the fittest survive and the best fit move on, this would then be taken for "higher breeding" to "breed superhumans to rule the world", and it isn't coincidence that some people have had these ideas and put them in practice. As for origin, well, alot of evolutionists make claims of origins, with big bangs and other imaginitive calls.

Originally posted by loseyourname You said man was born to believe. That is an answer. It's cool. Keep backpedalling.All right, do you really think you have any right to accuse me of arrogance when you actually have the gall to tell me what I believe?

First of all, I never gave an "answer". That we are born to believe is not even a question, for it to have an answer. That we believe is simply the way it is. What can you point to that we "know"? Every thing in some way, shape or form, is based on our ability of believing it is.

Originally posted by loseyourname When you know something, you hold a belief. I would think that is rather obvious. The fact that I don't hold a belief shows that I don't know. If I don't know any one thing, regardless of what that one thing may be, how can I possibly know everything? I'll cut you some slack because English isn't your first language, but you aren't making any sense.

That makes no sense to me. How can you know something to later believe it? That defeats the purpose of believing in it if you already know it. Thus, it's the other way around. We believe we know. If we knew, then we wouldn't need to believe anymore, belief would be something human nature wouldn't need. By you admitting you don't know, you automatically believe something, maybe not God or religion, but in its place science, which is another form of religion.

Originally posted by loseyourname Neither was a scientist. Don't mistake materialist for scientist. Besides, you are proving my point by using these examples. Legitimate science and reason can show that these two men were way off base. In fact, you quite regularly employ reason to show how idiotically wrong Marx was. However, use faith to disprove the validity of what Osama bin Laden is doing. You can't do it. Reason can show that he is wrong. Faith cannot, because his faith is just as strong as yours, and faith provides no means by which to evaluate competing faiths.

I never mistook the two for scientists, however I did pair them up with scientists because all they believed in was success in the material world, yes "belief", just like scientists.

Originally posted by loseyourname Perhaps, but current neuroscience seems to be hinting at a completely mechanistic explanation of man that accounts for all thought processes and emotions. Whether or not this proves to be the case remains to be seen. I am not going to take a stand on this issue. I will keep my mind open because that is the only rational thing to do. You, on the other hand, will jump right back in with your fundy nonsense saying that yes, man is most decidedly a spiritual being, and there is no question.

Unfortunately, Mousy, if you knew anything about neuroscience (admittedly, it is an extremely new discipline and there isn't any reason for you to know anything about it) you would know that that awareness may be completely explainable in terms of molecular scanning processes. On the other hand, it may not be. I don't know, and neither do you.

They don't know, indeed, what do they know? What does anyone know? Hehehe. The spirit or soul has no interface that can be mapped or plugged into an equation. If you believe that the brain would be the cause of our spirit, or awareness, that in itself is a belief. But to me that would make no sense, for how can the material world make something spiritual? This goes back to the idea of creation, how did man get here, and in order for the material world to be, what created it?