Existence of the Soul

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Are you now claiming that the physical universe is not material? You are free to begin coherent thinking any time now.

I did not claim the physical universe is not material per se, but rather this is an attempt to go beyond sciences parameters in trying to answer something that cannot be answered, i.e. something that science alleges takes billions of years to form ( which itself is an educated guess ).

Originally posted by loseyourname Absolute belief in it requires faith. The theory itself does not. It is not a metaphysical assumption. The expansion of a cosmic singularity is a physical occurence. It is not a competing theory to creation by an intelligent designer. It is a theory regarding the physical universe. How that singularity itself came to be or why it expanded is a matter not to be dealt with by science.

We have already demosntrated that even taking someone's word on something is putting faith into that person, or reading the knowledge from books, or devoting our love to our loved ones, is putting faith into that person. Thus these are not absolutes or fanatical things, mere every occurances in our behavior in which we put faith in the littlest of things. Let's test your assertion that only science and reason deal with knowledge, and not with faith. Do you know the theory of evolution occured? Or do you believe it occured? If you know it occured it must be proven to be certain beyond a doubt, it must be, in other words, a law. If it is not, to claim that you know, would be foolish as that itself would be an illogical statement.

Originally posted by loseyourname It is 15 billion revolutions of the earth about the sun. Is that so difficult to understand? The rate of slowing of the expansion is measured, then it is calculated backward to the point where everything comes together. It's quite ingenius. ..

The method of trying to tell time is a guess at best, since time is immaterial, therefore our conception of time is heavily limited and finite, and hence we try to measure time by material standards. Have we seen time or touched time? No but we feel it, it is a duration of consciousness.

Originally posted by loseyourname It is as complete as a theory can get without being directly observable. Evolution explains perfectly every question that had previously plagued biology. It is a consistent model with the fossil record and with common logic. It is not absolute certainty, but it is enough to accept. It does far better than any competing theory.

A theory is a theory until it is a law, to claim it is "complete" and "perfect" would be an exaggeration to a rational mind that relies on evidence. If it cannot be empirically proven that fossil A leads to fossil B, it is putting faith and believing that fossil A leads to fossil B. By your own standards, this cannot be knowledge. So do you know evolution occured, or do you believe it occured? I would greatly like to know the answer to this question.

Originally posted by loseyourname The law of gravity is a method used to calculate force and acceleration. The theory pertains to the nature of gravity itself. That theory is an extension of general relativity that postulates the existence of a graviton, a particle which, although never observed, is predicted by supersymmetry and ties gravity in with the other three forces that all involve the observable exchange of force particles.

Hollow earth and concentric sphere theory are not educated guesses, they are ignorant guesses. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of geology knows the earth is not hollow and anyone with the slightest knowledge of astronomy knows that the cosmos does not consist of concentric spheres. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of general relativity and supersymmtry knows that the existence of the graviton, though it may never be observed because it is so weak, is almost certain.

I never questioned the law of gravity merely the theoretical aspect. But it is interesting to note that there are flaws highlighted in Newton's law by none other than Einstein between the classical and modern physicists. Then again many scientists as you suggests have theorized about quantum particles. I believe there are manycases where classical physics would fail. In any event, to me it is clear that no matter the things we claim to be endeavors for knowledge based on the rules of science, we still require faith to accept even that information, at least from this it is clear to me.

Originally posted by loseyourname And what? The existence of competing faiths that cannot all be true doesn't seem illogical to you? You say Jesus is the incarnation of God. Judaism and Islam say he is not. One of you is incorrect. Without rational, objective standards by which to judge your claims, how do you come to a conclusion?.

You are once again making the erroneous attempt at trying to measure faith with the rules of logic and reason. Do you understand that logic and faith are two different things and you cannot use one to measure the other? Your assumption that if those that believe in Jesus to be the Son of God, and Muslims don't, therefore they will go to hell, is based on a modern perversion of religion itself. Moreoever, those that are versed on St. Augustine's work such as On Christian Doctrine have a far better concept of Christianity and what it truly means, than the modern fundamentalists. Do not measure a faith by a few bad apples. It was in the Scholastic revival of the Middle Ages, with Peter Abelard in the 12th century that stated even people who have never heard of Jesus or Christianity can be good. Contrary to people such as Pope Urban who preached about the Crusades and the need to fight the unbeliever Muslims. In other words there were ethical pagans, and ethical Chinese, etc.

Originally posted by loseyourname Another very eloquent but completely irrelevant point

I didn't think so since I was trying to show that when man rejects one and pursues fanatically the other ( in this case reason ), man will reach ends that will be destructive. The same case can be made for faith.

Originally posted by loseyourname I suggest you bring back Arvy's evolution thread if you want to get back into this.

We do not have to go back to the evolution thread if we are dealing with how we approach evolution, what is implied by it, as opposed to its details. It ultimately boils down to whether or not you know evolution occured as fact, or whether you believe it to have occured.

Originally posted by loseyourname Both fossils exist in the same geographic region. One fossil, showing only slight morphologic dissimilarities with the other, appears in the rock strata right about the time the other disappears. What is illogical about saying that one followed the other? The principle of biogenesis dictates that life comes from life. Species do not appear from nowhere. They appear from the loins of other species.

This is a nice way of avoiding the obvious assumption placed in the fossil record. Instead of addressing the point directly, that fossil A leads to fossil B is an assumption, you then went around, circumvented that, put in more words. The law of biogenesis is infact contrary to evolution. The dictionary defines the law of biogenesis as "the principle that living organisms originate only from other living organisms closely similar to themselves" (Webster's Dictionary). This is not evolution. I have already highlighted the semantic abuse of evolution as a tautology in his thread, if you want to revive it, I will not go into further detail here. But for the basics, it is not empirically verified that fossil A leads to fossil B, it is an educated guess, an assumption that fossil A leads to fossil B. If you cannot accept this on its face value, then you are trying too hard to believe.

Originally posted by loseyourname Nope. All you need to know is naturally occuring levels of radioisotopes, the levels occurent in old rocks, and the half-life of that isotope. A very simple calculation will get you an acceptable time frame. It isn't nailed down to the exact minute the earth separated from the solar systemic debris, but there is a span of between 4-6 billion years in which you can be damn certain it happened. One thing that does not change is the laws of nuclear physics.

This is nice and all and I don't dispute this, what I dispute is its dependency on the Gregorian calender, since even these scientists are basing their conception of time by that standard of the Gregorian calender, which is different from the Julian which in turn different from the Chinese.

Originally posted by loseyourname They are obviously speaking of 5 billion multiplied by the time it takes the earth to make one full revolution of the sun. Nothing arbitrary about it.

Read above this quote and even further up in my post to see that time is immaterial, and to try to measure it in terms of the material is a guess.

Originally posted by loseyourname What do you even mean by infinite? Are you speaking of mathematical infinity? The unboundedness of space? Or are you speaking of temporal infinity, or eternality? I hate to say it, Mousy, but math, space, and time are all quite physical phenomena, most certainly of this world.

I don't know what one is inclined to start making the definitions of infinite and immaterial, elastic, but for the purposes of this discussion I'll elaborate. Anything outside of the physical world where our physical senses are our guide, is immaterial and infinite.

Originally posted by loseyourname No, I would have us believe that when we do not have the answers, it is not acceptable to make up an answer and back it up solely with personal conviction.

No one said we would have the answers, that is why we must believe, and through belief my faith has been reaffirmed. Again, this is my own, whether illogical or logical to you is no importance, since it has no bearing on ones personal faith. Using logic to try to negate faith is like using a stick to kill off a Arab during the crusades. Thus, it is of my belief, that reason is far from being the only guide, in morals or in political science, or what have you. Love and loving kindness must accompany reason, to exclude fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution. We must also have faith in ourselves, and others, or we'll be easily discouraged by obstacles. We mustn't listen to reason alone. Force comes from faith and love, and it is by the aid of these that we scale the loftiest heights of morality or become loved in the eyes of other people. Reason may be the base and hold the helm, but these provide the motive power. As St. Anselm would say "They are the wings of the soul".

[Anonymouse]

My response was too long, therefore I was forced to submit it in two installments. I apologize for the length.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse It will add nothing more than a name to a process further reaffirming our ignorance of its cause. That it works we know, it is merely validating that it works in its intricacies.

It will add understanding of the process, something we currently do not have.

You are once again confusing spiritual experiences with experiences that we have based on our five senses in our everyday world. You have not yet made the break between faith and reason and are still relying on the latter to understand the former.

I am not confusing anything. I have never had an experience that involved no sensory perception. If you have, the least you can do is say that, and at least attempt to explain how that is even possible. In order to experience something, you must perceive it, and you can only perceive through a sense. Perhaps you have some non-physical sense that I don't have, but it is still a sense. If that is the case, just say so.

Spiritual "evidences" are those things that make one experiences moments of transcendence that speak to our inner self of the truth of our faith.

Peyote does exactly the same thing. I assure you, it is only a matter of brain state, and that is quite physical. Again, if you will not say what the experience is, then we will never know if reason can explain it. Your continued assertion that it cannot is not very convincing. Many people have claimed to have such experience that were later explained and there is no reason to believe that your experiences are any different.

Such things that one may experience is not something one can materialize nor express in language or human knowledge, for human knowledge, derived from science and reason in a material world, is finite.

How can a human experience something without having knowledge of it?

To state that consciousness is "most certainly immaterial" then to go on and try to find an explanation or cause for it in the material world begs the question of existence itself.

You're getting confused here. Let me give an example of what I'm talking about. Take alcoholism, for example. Alcoholism itself is immaterial. It is an affliction, and idea that has a definition, and like any other idea, it has no physical existence. It does, however, have a physical cause. It is an alteration in brain chemistry, due to genetic and environmental factors, that cause a person to be physiologically dependent on alcohol to maintain a satisfactory state of being. Something immaterial is caused by something material. That's what I meant. A brain state itself is immaterial, something like a Platonic form, but without any tangible existence. The brain, however, which causes the brain states, is not. Consciousness, as such, is immaterial, but may be entirely a product of the brain, and as such, it may cease with the death of the brain. Only further study can determine this, and there exists a good deal of evidence to be examined for both sides. The fact that you are ignoring this and choosing to believe based simply on the fact that you believe, is not acceptable.

The infinite preceded man, the material creature, and that something must have been there to create something else, the infinite is a void filled with the material, i.e. God filled man within the infinite.

Mousy, what are you talking about?

How can I claim to have knowledge that I do not have?

I know that three plus four equals nine. See how easy that is?

have faith and my spiritual experiences have proven to me that my faith was true, then how would you know what I do or do not have?

This is a discussion, Mousy, an attempt by rational minds to evaluate the evidence for and against existence of an autonomous soul. If all you have is personal conviction, why are you bothering? Your droning, off-topic, sophist nonsense is driving away people who might actually contribute to this thread in some meaningful way.

When you stated you want to go into the biological sciences ( which deals with the material world ) to study human consciousness ( an immaterial ), you are trying to quantify faith or the immaterial by the rules of science and the material.

Why do you keep equating faith with the immaterial? If our minds are indeed immaterial, and out minds are rational, then how does reason have no place with the immaterial? You aren't making any sense, and every time I point that out, you ignore me and once again reassert, with no backing whatsoever, that reason has no place dealing with the immaterial. At least attempt to provide some refutation of my repeated demonstrations of why it does. Throw me a bone here, my man.

We must believe in something higher and nobler than just the mere material world and ideologies that claim to bring an earthly utopia.

Really? We must? Why is that?

All these qualities, and mans system of morality was not something man made, or something parents simply taught their children, for something or some force or someone must have taught them first. No one could be content to believe tha there was no mind that thought for man, or no conscience to enact eternal laws, no God to care or love those whom no one else loved or cared.

Mousy, you're arguing that because you can't stand a universe without a God, there must be one. Quit speaking in the plural first person, because you have no idea what the rest of us can or cannot stomach. I and many other people have no problem with the idea of an uncreated universe with no external authority to it. We are still moral people with plenty of noble purposes. The fact that you can't comprehend it doesn't make it impossible. I am living proof that it is.

We cannot believe that there is no plan, no purpose, and we are just mindless atoms haphazardly living in the fortuitious concourse of events, moreoever, we cannot believe that all things beautiful, all things wise and just and moral are simply an accident and can end tomorrow.

No, you cannot believe, and the simple fact that you cannot believe is not justification for holding a disbelief. The fact that you can't handle the truth doesn't make it less true.

I don't know what world you come from that places scientific knowledge above the knowledge that we can obtain of the soul of another person, which is furnished by that person actions and their life conduct.

Earth. You talk about it like it's such a bad place. I assure you it is not.

Notice how you start of by saying that they are "completelely explainable" then going off to saying that are "at least partially explainable".

All animal behavior is explainable through genetic expression modified by environment. If you don't believe me, read any study done on animal behavior. I assure you it is true. Human behavior is a little more complex, and obviously is not completely understood. That fact alone does not prove that it is not explainable through genetic expression, or even through conscious volition that is entirely a brain phenomenon. We just don't know. There have been many things in the past that science couldn't explain that it now can, wouldn't you say? This may be different, it may not. You have no grounds on which to say that is, and I have no grounds on which to say it is not. We aren't going to get anywhere with this.

That there is evidence for the big bang is true, just like one may find evidence for evolution, but that doesn't make something automatically a scientific law, as all theories go through three steps before becoming a law, and must meet all the evidence and facts to establish certainty, not just some.

Previously you said there was no evidence. You're backpedalling very quickly. I never said the big bang certainly happened. In fact, I have repeatedly said that I favor another theory.

Thus so long as we have theories we have educated guesses that require faith. If you addmited this, it means you should also admit that evolution is an educated guess that requires faith.

Only faith that the fossil record is telling the truth, and that living organisms came to be in the past the same way they do today. That isn't exactly what I would call a leap.

The explanation of the big bang fails on the grounds that whatever it sees observing with a telescope into the distant space, it is only giving its own explanation, not what is happening, thereby only adding a name and something we believe is occuring, not what is actually occuring itself, therefore from this flows that the construction of the big bang, is entirely an educated guess not a scientific law, because one can poke many holes in the big bang, which I don't want to stray off of this thread to do, if you want to make another thread fine.

I WILL REPEAT ONE FINAL TIME. I DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO BIG BANG THEORY. IN ORDER FOR IT TO BE PLAUSIBLE IN A UNIVERSE WITH OUR MASS AND GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANTS, IT IS FORCED TO POSTULATE A PERIOD OF SUPERLUMINAL EXPANSION. THIS IS A VIOLATION OF THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. EKPYROTIC THEORY AVOIDS THIS DIFFICULTY AND SO I FAVOR IT. EVEN SO, THAT THEORY IS QUITE INCOMPLETE, AND QUITE FRANKLY, I DON'T REALLY CARE HOW THE UNIVERSE CAME INTO EXISTENCE. THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse I did not claim the physical universe is not material per se, but rather this is an attempt to go beyond sciences parameters in trying to answer something that cannot be answered, i.e. something that science alleges takes billions of years to form ( which itself is an educated guess ).

If the question cannot be answered, why have you answered it?

We have already demosntrated that even taking someone's word on something is putting faith into that person, or reading the knowledge from books, or devoting our love to our loved ones, is putting faith into that person. Thus these are not absolutes or fanatical things, mere every occurances in our behavior in which we put faith in the littlest of things.

Having faith that something which occured in the past will occur again, based on some small amount of knowledge of a person's character, is not a big leap. Having faith in a metaphysical worldview that goes against all evidence and reason is a very large leap. There is no way you can compare the two.

The method of trying to tell time is a guess at best, since time is immaterial, therefore our conception of time is heavily limited and finite, and hence we try to measure time by material standards. Have we seen time or touched time? No but we feel it, it is a duration of consciousness.

Mousy, you are showing no knowledge of time. Time is a dimension, just the same as length and height. It is quite easy to measure. Look up international standards of weights and measures. I don't feel like providing a link. You will see that our standard measure of time is the second, and it is based on a constant rate of decay that never changes.

I never questioned the law of gravity merely the theoretical aspect. But it is interesting to note that there are flaws highlighted in Newton's law by none other than Einstein between the classical and modern physicists.

I was speaking of Einstein's law. It holds up under all known circumstances.

You are once again making the erroneous attempt at trying to measure faith with the rules of logic and reason. Do you understand that logic and faith are two different things and you cannot use one to measure the other?

So Jesus both is and is not the human incarnation of God? Way to completely ignore my question.

This is a nice way of avoiding the obvious assumption placed in the fossil record. Instead of addressing the point directly, that fossil A leads to fossil B is an assumption, you then went around, circumvented that, put in more words. The law of biogenesis is infact contrary to evolution. The dictionary defines the law of biogenesis as "the principle that living organisms originate only from other living organisms closely similar to themselves" (Webster's Dictionary). This is not evolution. I have already highlighted the semantic abuse of evolution as a tautology in his thread, if you want to revive it, I will not go into further detail here. But for the basics, it is not empirically verified that fossil A leads to fossil B, it is an educated guess, an assumption that fossil A leads to fossil B. If you cannot accept this on its face value, then you are trying too hard to believe.

What is wrong with assuming that one generation is produced by the next? Experience dictates that that is the case. If all you have to critique evolution is the fact one organism is assumed to be generated from another, that isn't much. Never in recorded history has any organism been shown to come from nothing. You are severaly misinterpreting biogenesis. Put away the dictionary and pick up a high school biology text. You will see that biogenesis is not a law that is meant to hold up regarding the first membrane-enclosed, reproducing cell that ever existed. Frankly, I'm not ready to accept chemical evolution. That theory assumes far too much. Biological evolution does not. There is nothing outrageous about assuming that complex organisms, such as dogs and cats and humans and daisies, were generated from other organisms, rather than spontaneously assembled. Such a hypothesis would be completely preposterous.

This is nice and all and I don't dispute this, what I dispute is its dependency on the Gregorian calender, since even these scientists are basing their conception of time by that standard of the Gregorian calender, which is different from the Julian which in turn different from the Chinese.

It is based on revolutions of the earth about the sun. What can you not understand about this? This is an occurence that exists separately from human perception. It is not subjective. Multipy it by five billion, and you will have roughly the age of the earth.

Read above this quote and even further up in my post to see that time is immaterial, and to try to measure it in terms of the material is a guess.

Mousy, from where are you pulling this crap? Time is an integral dimension of our universe. To measure it in terms of a phenomenon in this universe is more than reasonable.

I don't know what one is inclined to start making the definitions of infinite and immaterial, elastic, but for the purposes of this discussion I'll elaborate. Anything outside of the physical world where our physical senses are our guide, is immaterial and infinite.

And you contend that the physical world was generated from this infinite nothing? Without getting into a critique of why nothing cannot be infinite, I will ask why you continue to assert, if one world was generated from another, that it cannot have any knowledge or bearing on the other?

Let me put it this way. You contend that our souls are out consciousness apparatus, and that they are immaterial. This means the locus of consciousness, and thus thinking, exists immaterially, separate from the physical world, in this other spirit world you speak of. Why then, can our thinking not comprehend things that are of this other world that it exists in? Why can reason, which is the hallmark of our minds, not fathom the very immaterial nothingness from which it emanates?

No one said we would have the answers, that is why we must believe.

The fact that you don't have any answers is precisely why you must not believe.

Thus, it is of my belief, that reason is far from being the only guide, in morals or in political science, or what have you. Love and loving kindness must accompany reason, to exclude fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution. We must also have faith in ourselves, and others, or we'll be easily discouraged by obstacles.

Yes, you must have reasonable faith. If reason dictates that you cannot jump more than fifteen feet, and you have faith that you can nonetheless jump twenty feet between tall buildings, your faith will kill you. You must have reasonable love. If you continue to love someone that is hurting you and does not love you back, you are abusing yourself and suffering from a mild psychosis.

We mustn't listen to reason alone. Force comes from faith and love, and it is by the aid of these that we scale the loftiest heights of morality or become loved in the eyes of other people. Reason may be the base and hold the helm, but these provide the motive power. As St. Anselm would say "They are the wings of the soul".

Mousy, people aren't moral and they aren't loved because they believe, despite logical contradictions and evidence to the contrary, that the universe was created by an omnipotent, omniscient, all-good creator who incarnated himself as Jesus Christ, died for our sins, and imbued us with immaterial, immortal souls.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname It will add understanding of the process, something we currently do not have.

For the nth time, no one has belittled or trivialized the workings of science or its purpose in figuring out a process. The deeper it goes the higher we climb in words, for it only adds another name to yet another function. As to the source of it, it fails. So where the measure of the visible meets the measure of the invisible, we always believe, even out of inclination, it’s not even a matter of reason.

Originally posted by loseyourname I am not confusing anything. I have never had an experience that involved no sensory perception. If you have, the least you can do is say that, and at least attempt to explain how that is even possible. In order to experience something, you must perceive it, and you can only perceive through a sense. Perhaps you have some non-physical sense that I don't have, but it is still a sense. If that is the case, just say so.

That you haven’t “heard” or haven’t “experienced” is really not anyone’s fault. Perhaps you have and you are quick to dismiss it. My “experiences” are my own and they are not something which you perceive through the senses but rather “feel”, or at least I have. I cannot put it into words. To experience something through your soul, or your “sixth sense”, as they call it, is not part of our five physical senses. Then this is what I’d call a soul.

Originally posted by loseyourname Peyote does exactly the same thing. I assure you, it is only a matter of brain state, and that is quite physical. Again, if you will not say what the experience is, then we will never know if reason can explain it. Your continued assertion that it cannot is not very convincing. Many people have claimed to have such experience that were later explained and there is no reason to believe that your experiences are any different.

Many people can have experiences, many others cannot, and many others will be able to put it through reason, and with others reason will crumble when exposed to. Reason cannot explain what faith is, for once again you are confusing the two. I didn’t make this, I simply feel this, and I feel that no sensible or reasonable argument can explain this. Do you think I chose to make it so? I did not. In fact I was an atheist, and then went on to call myself an agnostic, and now I can call myself a believer. You can explain this with reason per se, if we want to stretch it, but it will not make sense to my inner sense of self. The best I can tell you is that even in my days of sipping from the cup of atheism, and flirting with being an agnostic, deep down I desired for my lack of faith to be proven wrong. Essentially, it is a matter of faith which you are confused on for if you were not, you wouldn’t be trying to understand someone’s faith through reason. According to reason there are no miracles, there is no God, and no soul or hereafter. That is if we want to use reason to try to understand those things. We cannot, hence they are incomparable contrary to certain peoples adamance.

Originally posted by loseyourname How can a human experience something without having knowledge of it?

We all have knowledge of God, or that desire to have our feelings validated by, say, a miracle. I’m not here to tell you all the answers, but I am here to tell you that I am a superstitious nut according to reason and logic.

Originally posted by loseyourname You're getting confused here. Let me give an example of what I'm talking about. Take alcoholism, for example. Alcoholism itself is immaterial. It is an affliction, and idea that has a definition, and like any other idea, it has no physical existence. It does, however, have a physical cause. It is an alteration in brain chemistry, due to genetic and environmental factors, that cause a person to be physiologically dependent on alcohol to maintain a satisfactory state of being. Something immaterial is caused by something material. That's what I meant. A brain state itself is immaterial, something like a Platonic form, but without any tangible existence. The brain, however, which causes the brain states, is not. Consciousness, as such, is immaterial, but may be entirely a product of the brain, and as such, it may cease with the death of the brain. Only further study can determine this, and there exists a good deal of evidence to be examined for both sides. The fact that you are ignoring this and choosing to believe based simply on the fact that you believe, is not acceptable.

Alcoholism is not “immaterial” the idea of it is, but the condition of it is purely material, for we are able to see it, study it, and prove it. You yourself stated that it is an alteration in brain chemistry, due to none other than alcohol. Such things go back to what I was saying. The furthest science will go to explain consciousness is nothing more than explaining brain functions and signals. Consciousness deals with the mind, which we have no evidence of. What evidence is there for the mind or the soul? If they are immaterial then how would one assume that through explaining the material processes of the brain, that one essentially explains the immaterial? No one is denying the possibility of further study. Plato stated that these ideas were already existent and perfect, not a product of our brain, but merely revealed to us. In other words for Plato, they exist wholly outside of our brain. However, without veering off too far into forbidden territory, it remains that what is immaterial, cannot be solved by the material, hence human intelligence is finite, thus humans will never know how they got to be through material means. That is why humans believe and have had belief systems throughout. Unless man can conquer the immaterial through the material, which with aphorisms such as “Man is God” and “Man can conquer nature”, forms the basis of Marxian, Freudian, and Darwinian thought. What most of these have in common is their sole emphasis on the material world. That everything is a product of man, that man created God in his own image, not the other way around.

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, what are you talking about?

I’m saying that before man was material, there was infinity and immaterial prior to it. As the Hindu Vedas states after creating man:

[i]”He the Universal Soul, thus reflected:How can this body exist without Me?He examined himself through what extremity He could penetrate it. He said to Himself:If, without me, the World is articulated, breath exhales, and sight sees; if hearing hears, the skin feels, and the mind reflects, deglutition swallows, and the generative organ fulfills its functions, what then am I? And separating the suture of the cranium, He penetrated into man.”

And behold the great fundamental primitive truths. Matter, not eternal nor self existent, but created by a thought of God. After matter and the worlds, then man, by a like thought, and finally, after endowing him with the senses and a thinking mind, a portion, a spark, of God Himself penetrates the man, and becomes a living spirit within him.

Originally posted by loseyourname I know that three plus four equals nine. See how easy that is?

Why did you cherry pick just that quote? I was referring to knowledge of my experiences obviously.

Originally posted by loseyourname This is a discussion, Mousy, an attempt by rational minds to evaluate the evidence for and against existence of an autonomous soul. If all you have is personal conviction, why are you bothering? Your droning, off-topic, sophist nonsense is driving away people who might actually contribute to this thread in some meaningful way.

We are well aware that this is a discussion, so kindly leave the little condescending quirks to another forum, for it is arrogant on your behalf to assume that since one has faith, one has no idea that this is a discussion using reason. In fact, I perfectly understand the dichotomy between faith and reason, it appears that you are the one confused with the issue, thus you then resort to personal attacks since obviously you are not being logical, but rather appealing to ill-logic.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Why do you keep equating faith with the immaterial? If our minds are indeed immaterial, and out minds are rational, then how does reason have no place with the immaterial? You aren't making any sense, and every time I point that out, you ignore me and once again reassert, with no backing whatsoever, that reason has no place dealing with the immaterial. At least attempt to provide some refutation of my repeated demonstrations of why it does. Throw me a bone here, my man.

No one claimed that reason has no place in the immaterial. In fact we are using reason in this discussion pertaining to the immaterial. We reason when we communicate, that is self-evident. However, faith is based on the immaterial which reason cannot explain. Thus to have faith in God, and to have faith in a hereafter, or to have faith in a soul, are things which reason falls short on. I never attempted to ignore you, nor did I, and nor am I refuting you, merely trying to make you understand the distinction between faith and reason, which if you understood you wouldn’t be here arguing on how to understand the immaterial through the material. Faith requires no “backing”, what sort of “evidence” do you want? Faith has no evidence that the rules of science, reason and logic demand. You cannot “prove” God exists via logic. I have instead repeatedly affirmed the position of which you, and others of your persuasion of been arguing, that God is against logic. No one has dodged anything. If anything, it is you who has continuously denied the points I have raised.

Originally posted by loseyourname Really? We must? Why is that?

Since human intelligence is finite, humans naturally believe. It is part and parcel of human nature to believe, as faith is infused as an integral part of man. You don’t have to believe if you don’t want to, I am merely saying what man resorts to when his reason and logic fail him. No one forces you to believe in God, certainly not I, nor God itself.

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, you're arguing that because you can't stand a universe without a God, there must be one. Quit speaking in the plural first person, because you have no idea what the rest of us can or cannot stomach. I and many other people have no problem with the idea of an uncreated universe with no external authority to it. We are still moral people with plenty of noble purposes. The fact that you can't comprehend it doesn't make it impossible. I am living proof that it is.

I am sure you are living proof that there is no God, but my belief is essentially my belief. Your assertion itself is a belief. So you just exclaimed faith in the fact that the universe is uncreated by a God. You do realize that logically it is impossible to prove that God does not exist, since it is illogical to prove a negative. Thus your statement itself is based on faith, faith that there is no God. Freud knew this, that is why he didn’t try to prove that God does not exist, merely attacked it and criticized it.

Originally posted by loseyourname No, you cannot believe, and the simple fact that you cannot believe is not justification for holding a disbelief. The fact that you can't handle the truth doesn't make it less true.

The fact that you can’t handle truth doesn’t make it less true. There, I say the same thing to you. Who is right? Essentially after a certain point, man reaches nothing but faith, for man reaches a point where his reasoning and logic abandon him. No one said you have to believe. I personally had a desire to believe, and during my years as an atheist making fun of my parents and others who believed in God, in the back of my heart I had a desire to be proven wrong. I cannot explain where this desire came from, nor why it was there. Perhaps I am an insecure superstitious nut. Perhaps not. I don’t know that, neither do you. The point we have reached with this above statement is a point where reason fails. And thus you are free to believe as you wish for even the belief in a non-belief in God is itself a belief. You believe that God did not created a world and there is no purpose, you don’t know that, since like we said, one cannot logically disprove the existence of God.

Originally posted by loseyourname Earth. You talk about it like it's such a bad place. I assure you it is not.

You are indeed right, earth is a lovely place. It gives us a chance to reason and to believe. Essentially we place the knowledge of someone’s soul and character ahead of any other form of knowledge as that is the most sublime knowledge that one can achieve, through love and loving kindness, perhaps towards your significant other or friends or family. Unless you consider this to be lesser than science, then I cannot tell you anything else. I would assume that you would even attempt to pin love, and kindness, and every other trait of the soul, onto some scientific formula and try to map it, but then again maybe I’m wrong, maybe your conscience and intuition are telling you otherwise.

Originally posted by loseyourname All animal behavior is explainable through genetic expression modified by environment. If you don't believe me, read any study done on animal behavior. I assure you it is true. Human behavior is a little more complex, and obviously is not completely understood. That fact alone does not prove that it is not explainable through genetic expression, or even through conscious volition that is entirely a brain phenomenon. We just don't know. There have been many things in the past that science couldn't explain that it now can, wouldn't you say? This may be different, it may not. You have no grounds on which to say that is, and I have no grounds on which to say it is not. We aren't going to get anywhere with this.

I have no problem with your assurance. In fact I believe what you say is true. Animal behavior is all based on genetic expression modified by environment. Of course, this is an assumption really. How do we know that the animal itself doesn’t possess a soul, awareness, and thinks just like us? We like to just label it and call it “instinct” but in doing so we are doing no more than giving a name to what is again essentially our ignorance. Of course science has explained a lot that it could not have explained in the past, yet at the same time it has come no closer than it was before in explaining other things. In fact, it has gone on the opposite direct and has veered off into answer the infinite, the immaterial and how we got here. Whether it’s the physicist or the evolutionists sitting their chairs doing research and publishing books about how we got here, they are doing nothing new, essentially what man has been doing for ages. It can never satisfy man to simply confine himself to the material world. We have found that science itself has indirectly headed towards the direction of trying to answer that which religion and belief systems have been dealing with, that it is naturally in mans desire to try to answer his own creation.

Originally posted by loseyourname Previously you said there was no evidence. You're backpedalling very quickly. I never said the big bang certainly happened. In fact, I have repeatedly said that I favor another theory.

When I say no evidence, I obviously mean it in the context of being an established law. One can formulate as many educated guesses as one wants. There are some “evidences” within evolution, yet evolution is still an educated guess, not knowledge, as your standards would have us believe.

Originally posted by loseyourname Only faith that the fossil record is telling the truth, and that living organisms came to be in the past the same way they do today. That isn't exactly what I would call a leap.

You are thus placing faith in evolution. So you believe evolution occurred or do you know it occurred?

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname If the question cannot be answered, why have you answered it?

I haven’t answered it. In fact I never claimed I have. Where did I state that? Evidence? I did express faith in God though didn’t I, wholly different from trying to use science to “know”. Thus we are back to where we started. Faith, which is a faith in God, or in soul, cannot be proven. We believe God created everything. Science thus itself is a product of God, since it deals with the world that God created. Since God is infinite, and has created a finite world, thus using finite methods to know of the infinite would prove futile. Thus we have faith in things that we cannot achieve through scientific ends. Hence, people believe in God. No one asks you to believe, but we do ask you to understand the difference between what science entails and what faith entails.

Originally posted by loseyourname Having faith that something which occured in the past will occur again, based on some small amount of knowledge of a person's character, is not a big leap. Having faith in a metaphysical worldview that goes against all evidence and reason is a very large leap. There is no way you can compare the two.

“Evidence” and “reason” are confined to the material world. The material world is finite, humans are finite, therefore human knowledge via material endeavors is finite. Since those that believe in God believe God is infinite, and since our world and we ourselves are a product of God, it would is impossible to try to use reason and science to answer that which itself created reason and science. You don’t have to believe this, thus according to reason, I have repeatedly stated that according to reason God cannot exist. Whether the faith in a loved one, or the faith in God are different in degrees matters not for they are nonetheless faith, dealing with things that science cannot explain. How does science explain love? Do you, the self styled “lover not a fighter” believe that love is just a bunch of chemical reactions and brain signals zig zagging each other?

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, you are showing no knowledge of time. Time is a dimension, just the same as length and height. It is quite easy to measure. Look up international standards of weights and measures. I don't feel like providing a link. You will see that our standard measure of time is the second, and it is based on a constant rate of decay that never changes.

Methods of telling time are totally different from trying to grasp time itself. Thus time is immaterial. Your statement is tantamount to saying that science can understand and measure and map out the nature of God, which is immaterial. Since the dawn of civilization man has been trying to discover what time is. He learned early that time is a duration of consciousness or the period that mind requires to be aware of the material things in life. Mans first attempt to measure time was to measure the period of duration, or period of consciousness, such as between the rising and setting of the sun, and between the setting and the rising. In this way at ones humans started to associated time with objective manifestations, such as light and darkness, coming and going of daily events. Thus time became to man an objective element of the universe. In relation to physical standards, mind does require periods of duration, that is, intervals in which to realize certain things, but that does not mean that the things observed actually consume time in any sense. This point is easily proved by a simple analogy of ordinary experiences in our daily lives.

Lets suppose that you start out tomorrow morning from your home and walk in a normal way 3 or 4 blocks north, then turn to the right and walk another 3 or 4 blocks, and turn again and come back toward your home, and finally enter your house. In reviewing this exercise, you would say that you must have occupied or consumed about 10 mins in the “conscious” duration of that walk. In other words you would say that 10 mins of time elapsed between the moment you left home and the moment you returned.

If someone challenged that statement and said that it was only 5 mins, you’d probably say that you must have moved more rapidly than you thought you moved. But if someone tried to tell you that you had occupied only 1 minute of time in that walk, you would challenge his sstatement and say that it was impossible for you to move along the street and be “conscious” of that many blocks which you traversed, and do it all in one minute. On the other hand, the fact remains that in the dream state that same walk could be registered in all its details in your consciousness in mere seconds.

Originally posted by loseyourname So Jesus both is and is not the human incarnation of God? Way to completely ignore my question.

I did not ignore your question. How did I ignore your question? I believe that I answered your question, is why you are saying I ignored it. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Yet at the same time I act by and live by certain moral principles. The ancient pagans and Chinese have not heard of Jesus, but may have led ethical and moral lives. Thus even if people someplace else haven’t heard of Jesus may lead ethical and good lives. You have been used to the fundamentalist conception of what religion and dogma ought to be, thus I don’t’ blame people for trying to use this argument against people who adhere to one faith or another, trying to use logic to negate each others faith.

Originally posted by loseyourname What is wrong with assuming that one generation is produced by the next? Experience dictates that that is the case. If all you have to critique evolution is the fact one organism is assumed to be generated from another, that isn't much. Never in recorded history has any organism been shown to come from nothing. You are severaly misinterpreting biogenesis. Put away the dictionary and pick up a high school biology text. You will see that biogenesis is not a law that is meant to hold up regarding the first membrane-enclosed, reproducing cell that ever existed. Frankly, I'm not ready to accept chemical evolution. That theory assumes far too much. Biological evolution does not. There is nothing outrageous about assuming that complex organisms, such as dogs and cats and humans and daisies, were generated from other organisms, rather than spontaneously assembled. Such a hypothesis would be completely preposterous.

There is nothing wrong with assuming that one generation is produced by the next – nothing at all. No one claimed that organisms come from nothing. In fact, my position is clear that we all come from something ( God ), since something has a hard time coming out of nothing. Biogenesis states simply that one organism needs another to exist. It mentions nothing of organisms changing. It is evolutionists who misinterpret it to mean something that it is not. But then again, it is an assumption. If it is an assumption, it is not certain, thus it requires faith. So you don’t know evolution to have occurred, you believed it has. If you care, you can revive arvestakeds thread on evolution.

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, from where are you pulling this crap? Time is an integral dimension of our universe. To measure it in terms of a phenomenon in this universe is more than reasonable.

I already explained the arbitrariness of time above. I will not type more on that. Answer this point to my response above.

Originally posted by loseyourname And you contend that the physical world was generated from this infinite nothing? Without getting into a critique of why nothing cannot be infinite, I will ask why you continue to assert, if one world was generated from another, that it cannot have any knowledge or bearing on the other?

Let me put it this way. You contend that our souls are out consciousness apparatus, and that they are immaterial. This means the locus of consciousness, and thus thinking, exists immaterially, separate from the physical world, in this other spirit world you speak of. Why then, can our thinking not comprehend things that are of this other world that it exists in? Why can reason, which is the hallmark of our minds, not fathom the very immaterial nothingness from which it emanates?

I never contended that the physical world was made from nothing. Something cannot be made from nothing. Rather infinite is what made something, that infinite force or soul is what we believe to be God. I thought this was obvious to you since I’m a superstitious believer. Why are humans not perfected? Your question merely begs the question itself. Why can we not know how or why we got here? Science cannot answer these questions since science is limited and finite, because the material world is imperfect, one of inequalities and limitations, therefore man is imperfect, and finite and limited in his understanding of things, so what he lacks in understanding he makes up for in belief. No one forces man to believe, he naturally reverts to it. I’m not forcing you to believe in anything, I’m merely trying to show that it is natural for man, for he has the inclination to believe. He doesn’t have to, he searches and searches and ends up not knowing anymore than what he began with.

Originally posted by loseyourname The fact that you don't have any answers is precisely why you must not believe.

The fact that we don’t have answers is precisely why we must believe, since answers imply certainty and perfection, thus what we can know via reason and science is confined to the material world and is finite. One can just as well rephrase your argument the other way. It still doesn’t make it any less important to believe than to not believe.

Originally posted by loseyourname Yes, you must have reasonable faith. If reason dictates that you cannot jump more than fifteen feet, and you have faith that you can nonetheless jump twenty feet between tall buildings, your faith will kill you. You must have reasonable love. If you continue to love someone that is hurting you and does not love you back, you are abusing yourself and suffering from a mild psychosis.

I wasn’t talking about the fact that love hurts or can evolve into bad things. I was talking about the concept of love and loving, someone else, knowing someone else cares for you, etc., etc. The idea of it is comforting. When we are in love, we have faith that the person we love, loves as so as well and is faithful to us. When loves starts hurting, it is obvious one must move away from faith in that love, for then one must cultivate the faculty of reason to unshackle oneself from hurt. As far as your example of the cliff, that is clearly an example of reason outweighing faith, therefore a non-issue.

Originally posted by loseyourname Mousy, people aren't moral and they aren't loved because they believe, despite logical contradictions and evidence to the contrary, that the universe was created by an omnipotent, omniscient, all-good creator who incarnated himself as Jesus Christ, died for our sins, and imbued us with immaterial, immortal souls.

Of course that itself is a belief. It is a belief that the world has no purpose, and is not created by God. I have questioned God. I was an atheist, then went to being an agnostic. It was soon revealed to me that the denial of a conscious power which is the cause of humanity and life would not satisfy the instinctive desires of human nature, or account for the facts of the material nature. Human nature was not content with drifting aimlessly in the void inane, that man was drifting in the universe, knowing little of its whereabouts, its whence or whither, that there was no mind, no power, that knew any better, nothing that guided and directed man in the weltering waste of time. To tell someone that your heroism, your bravery, your self-denial, your sacrifice, your faithfulness, your love, your honor, your nobleness, your intellect, all come to nothing, your kindness will do you no good, you will die, and your deeds will do others no service, because there is no plan, no order in anything, and everything comes and goes by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. That did not, and never will satisfy the human mind. That is why I believe.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse No one claimed that reason has no place in the immaterial.

Read your second post again. You state at the very beginning of it that reason is confined to the material world. You have said it many times. You're backpedalling really fast now.

Since human intelligence is finite, humans naturally believe. It is part and parcel of human nature to believe, as faith is infused as an integral part of man. You don’t have to believe if you don’t want to, I am merely saying what man resorts to when his reason and logic fail him. No one forces you to believe in God, certainly not I, nor God itself.

Let us critically examine your argument here. You have one premise leading to a conclusion, something like this.

Premise - Human intelligence is finite.
Conclusion - Therefore, humans must believe.

The flaw to this argument is obvious. The premise in itself contains no imperative. There is no reason given why humans should believe, there is only the reason that they do. We are essentially forced to have faith alone if we wish to have any metaphysical beliefs regarding a soul and a god. However, there is an option you are ignoring, and that is the option that I take. I have no belief, either way, simple as that. If no positive belief is warranted, then you simply leave your mind open. This prevents you from being closed off to new ideas, such as heliocentricity, big bangs and evolution. When you close yourself up in unsubstantiated beliefs, you shut yourself down to growth. You become obstinate and intractable, refusing to consider anything that goes against your beliefs. That is something that a human has an imperative not to do. As I said, the fact that we don't know and that we can't know is precisely why we should hold no belief.

I am sure you are living proof that there is no God, but my belief is essentially my belief. Your assertion itself is a belief. So you just exclaimed faith in the fact that the universe is uncreated by a God.

I never asserted any such thing. I have no idea how the universe came to be, or why it is here, if there is any reason at all.

The fact that you can’t handle truth doesn’t make it less true. There, I say the same thing to you. Who is right? Essentially after a certain point, man reaches nothing but faith, for man reaches a point where his reasoning and logic abandon him.

Which, again, is precisely why neither of us should hold any positive belief.

Essentially we place the knowledge of someone’s soul and character ahead of any other form of knowledge as that is the most sublime knowledge that one can achieve, through love and loving kindness, perhaps towards your significant other or friends or family. Unless you consider this to be lesser than science, then I cannot tell you anything else.

Of course I don't. Science is a trade, and the knowledge gained from science is immensely useful to society. But I am more than a tool for society; I am an individual. Love and kindness, as I have noted before, are acts of self-knowledge. It cannot be scientifically proven that you love someone - you simply know it as a fact of your own being. You are the one that has continually disavowed the existence of love, calling it a tool of the state and a hallucination, so don't go getting all lovey dovey on the forum champion of love.

I have no problem with your assurance. In fact I believe what you say is true. Animal behavior is all based on genetic expression modified by environment. Of course, this is an assumption really. How do we know that the animal itself doesn’t possess a soul, awareness, and thinks just like us?

Some animals might consciously control their actions. Others quite obviously do not. Go read a couple of studies on behavioral biology and come back to me. I do not consider you qualified to take place in a meaningful discussion of gene expression and conscious volition.

When I say no evidence, I obviously mean it in the context of being an established law.

All you said was no evidence. You didn't say no proof. You can only backpedal so far.

There are some “evidences” within evolution, yet evolution is still an educated guess, not knowledge, as your standards would have us believe.

There is overwhelming evidence for evolution. If you were a biology student, and had closely studied evolutionary biology, not simply read books that you can't comprehend, you would know this. You are speaking from a position of great ignorance about this subject.

You are thus placing faith in evolution. So you believe evolution occurred or do you know it occurred?

I do not have Cartesian certainty, Mousy. This is not possible of any kind of scientific knowledge. There is always some trillion quadrillion to one chance that the laws of physics have changed, or that in the past, every time one complex organism went extinct, another simulataneously appeared from nothing. If you really believe that to be a viable option, then good for you. You are a fool. I will stick with evolution. Yes, I know it happened. Anyone who has closely examined the fossil record knows that it happened. The only areas of uncertainty lie in how it happened.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse I haven’t answered it. In fact I never claimed I have. Where did I state that? Evidence? I did express faith in God though didn’t I.

This is what I've been trying to get you to admit to all along. You have faith, not knowledge, and the two are far different from each other.

“Evidence” and “reason” are confined to the material world.

Now read your previous post, where you state that reason is not confined to the material.

The material world is finite, humans are finite, therefore human knowledge via material endeavors is finite. Since those that believe in God believe God is infinite, and since our world and we ourselves are a product of God, it would is impossible to try to use reason and science to answer that which itself created reason and science.

Exactly. And as reason and science are the only ways of obtaining knowledge of the external world, you are left with nothing.

Methods of telling time are totally different from trying to grasp time itself. Thus time is immaterial. Your statement is tantamount to saying that science can understand and measure and map out the nature of God, which is immaterial. Since the dawn of civilization man has been trying to discover what time is.

And now we know. Time is not composed of matter. It has no mass, and it does not occupy any space. However, many known particles do not occupy any space nor do they have any mass. A good example is the neutrino, or the photon. Nobody knows exactly what space/time is built of, but it does have material existence of some sort, in that it is warped by the presence of matter. Read Einstein's paper on General Relativity and you will get some idea of this. Further research being done currently involving Calabi-Yau spaces and dimensional inversion indicate that both time and space are at least theoretically capable of being torn, though we don't know if this has ever actually occured. It's fine that you don't know this. Almost nobody that doesn't have a PhD in theoretical physics or isn't a complete nerd that sits around reading all the time has any reason to know this. But I assure you that time is materially measurable.

Look at it this way. Without any talk whatsoever of mathematical or physics principles, we can analyze this in a very simple way. Let's just say that space and time are both immaterial, as they are in a broad sense of "immaterial." Now how do we measure space? We use objects that exist within space, and take up space. By the same notion, we measure time using objects, or processes, that exist within and occur within time. In the case of the second, as I noted above, we use a known fixed rate of radionuclear decay. You extend the temporal length of this process to however many seconds translate into 4.6 billion years, and you have the age of the Earth. The problem you noted above is with conscious awareness of time. Of course in a dream something may seem to occur over a span of ten minutes when it really occured in five seconds. This has no bearing on the fact that five seconds have passed. Time itself exists separately from human perception, and this is why we use objective rates of decay to measure it, not human perception.

I did not ignore your question. How did I ignore your question? I believe that I answered your question, is why you are saying I ignored it. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Yet at the same time I act by and live by certain moral principles. The ancient pagans and Chinese have not heard of Jesus, but may have led ethical and moral lives.

You just ignored my question again. Muslims and Jews have knowledge of Jesus. They do believe he existed. They do not, however, believe he was the son of God. You, and other Christians, believe he is. Both groups base this belief on faith. The cool thing about reason is that it has epistemic principles by which you can judge opposing viewpoints. Faith has no such thing. Both groups in this matter cannot be right, and yet there is no way of evaluating which group is.

If you care, you can revive arvestakeds thread on evolution.

Your arguments here are pathetic. You better believe that thread is coming back.

I already explained the arbitrariness of time above. I will not type more on that. Answer this point to my response above.

No, you explained the arbitrariness of conscious perception of time. I explained why time itself is not arbitrary. Neither are rates of radionuclear decay.

I never contended that the physical world was made from nothing. Something cannot be made from nothing. Rather infinite is what made something, that infinite force or soul is what we believe to be God. I thought this was obvious to you since I’m a superstitious believer.

You contended that something material came from something immaterial, but that knowledge of the material can not be extended to the immaterial. Why is there the separation of two things when one came from the other? What example is there in daily experience of a creation being incapable of having knowledge of its creator?

Why are humans not perfected? Your question merely begs the question itself. Why can we not know how or why we got here? Science cannot answer these questions since science is limited and finite, because the material world is imperfect, one of inequalities and limitations, therefore man is imperfect, and finite and limited in his understanding of things, so what he lacks in understanding he makes up for in belief.

Of coures. Humans believed that the earth was flat and existed at the center of the universe. Humans believed that organic matter was imbued with a life force and could not come from inorganic matter. Humans believed that the cosmos existed within a space roughly the size of the planet earth. Humans believed that thunderstorms were caused by angry deities. Guess what? Humans were wrong? Unsubstantiated belief has proven, in every case to be wrong. Belief based not on reason but rather on faith has always been wrong. Why would you have us think that your belief is somehow unique? Why would Christian belief be alone in the annals of all faith in that it is the one faith that has ever existed that is correct?

The fact that we don’t have answers is precisely why we must believe, since answers imply certainty and perfection, thus what we can know via reason and science is confined to the material world and is finite.

Thus what we believe is confined to the material world. All else is speculation.

I wasn’t talking about the fact that love hurts or can evolve into bad things. I was talking about the concept of love and loving, someone else, knowing someone else cares for you, etc., etc. The idea of it is comforting.

The fact that your belief is comforting does not make it correct. I'm glad that you are comforted. I am as well, without needing to resort to illogical, unsubstantiated metaphysical worldviews.

Of course that itself is a belief. It is a belief that the world has no purpose, and is not created by God.

No, it isn't belief. It's speculation. I never said the universe is uncreated or purposeless. I said that it could be.

I have questioned God. I was an atheist, then went to being an agnostic. It was soon revealed to me that the denial of a conscious power which is the cause of humanity and life would not satisfy the instinctive desires of human nature.

Wrong. It would not satisfy your nature. There are many who are perfectly satisfied without religious beliefs.

Human nature was not content with drifting aimlessly in the void inane, that man was drifting in the universe, knowing little of its whereabouts, its whence or whither, that there was no mind, no power, that knew any better, nothing that guided and directed man in the weltering waste of time. To tell someone that your heroism, your bravery, your self-denial, your sacrifice, your faithfulness, your love, your honor, your nobleness, your intellect, all come to nothing, your kindness will do you no good, you will die, and your deeds will do others no service, because there is no plan, no order in anything, and everything comes and goes by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. That did not, and never will satisfy the human mind. That is why I believe.

Again, it will not satisfy your mind. I do not need a God, nor do I need eternality to validate my existence. I do not need it to validate my good actions either. They are noble in themselves.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Read your second post again. You state at the very beginning of it that reason is confined to the material world. You have said it many times. You're backpedalling really fast now.

Reason is confined to the material world. My reference was in discussion about the immaterial since we are obviously communicating. Perhaps that came off wrong. And no, I'm far from backpedaling my little boy lost.

Originally posted by loseyourname Let us critically examine your argument here. You have one premise leading to a conclusion, something like this.

Premise - Human intelligence is finite.
Conclusion - Therefore, humans must believe.

The flaw to this argument is obvious. The premise in itself contains no imperative. There is no reason given why humans should believe, there is only the reason that they do. We are essentially forced to have faith alone if we wish to have any metaphysical beliefs regarding a soul and a god. However, there is an option you are ignoring, and that is the option that I take. I have no belief, either way, simple as that. If no positive belief is warranted, then you simply leave your mind open. This prevents you from being closed off to new ideas, such as heliocentricity, big bangs and evolution. When you close yourself up in unsubstantiated beliefs, you shut yourself down to growth. You become obstinate and intractable, refusing to consider anything that goes against your beliefs. That is something that a human has an imperative not to do. As I said, the fact that we don't know and that we can't know is precisely why we should hold no belief.

I'm glad that you are once again trying to use logic and reason, to try to negate faith. If you actually read all my responses point by point, I have already mentioned that it is unreasonable to believe in God or have faith, or what have you. This is a non-issue, so I don't see why youre presenting this here, perhaps to further reaffirm yourself that logic stands still. Yes, logic is still and unscathed in our material world. No one ever denied that. It is foolish per the rules of logic to believe in something that cannot be logically proven to exist or disproven for that matter. Thus "God" is a territory where reason and logic are abandoned. You can call it God or Providence, or Soul, or Grand Architect ala Freemasonry, whatever you want to call, man has for ages recognized a conscious power over him and the world. Of course you are free to roam as you wish.

Originally posted by loseyourname I never asserted any such thing. I have no idea how the universe came to be, or why it is here, if there is any reason at all.

You may have not asserted a belief, but your statement is initself a belief indirectly since you stated that you don't believe God created this universe, now changed to "I don't know". In otherwords, do you know that God didn't create this world? And if so, how do you?

Originally posted by loseyourname Which, again, is precisely why neither of us should hold any positive belief.

Why shouldn't we? I am perfectly comfortable with you not believing in God or any purpose or plan. You on the other hand are uncomfortable with me believing in God since this is lacking reason. Notice that I am not trying to convince you to believe in God, I was merely trying to get you to understand the distinction between faith and reason which is essentially what this was all about. You on the other hand have a desire to have your views reaffirmed by having people agree with you that there is no God and we shouldn't have faith thus you're bent on using "reason" to prove my "faith" to be "wrong".

Originally posted by loseyourname Of course I don't. Science is a trade, and the knowledge gained from science is immensely useful to society. But I am more than a tool for society; I am an individual. Love and kindness, as I have noted before, are acts of self-knowledge. It cannot be scientifically proven that you love someone - you simply know it as a fact of your own being. You are the one that has continually disavowed the existence of love, calling it a tool of the state and a hallucination, so don't go getting all lovey dovey on the forum champion of love.

And now we admit that there is something deeper in us that science cannot explain, a force, an awareness of our inner self and our inner needs. You simply "know it as a fact of your own being" is perfectly put. By the way, I never called love a tool of the State, that would be Marx, in fact I challenge you to offer evidence of where I said that. I may have been sardonic about love in the Love and Romance section, that is in no way my serious opinion. And no I'm the champion of post whorring, you are the champion of love on the forum, thus lover not a fighter.

Originally posted by loseyourname Some animals might consciously control their actions. Others quite obviously do not. Go read a couple of studies on behavioral biology and come back to me. I do not consider you qualified to take place in a meaningful discussion of gene expression and conscious volition.

But these are just giving names and explanations for their behavior, not how one thinks. To KNOW how an animal thinks implies that we should ourselves be animals. Thus we don't know or feel what they feel, we can only guess and assume, so how do we know that they themselves do not have an idea of awareness or being?

Originally posted by loseyourname All you said was no evidence. You didn't say no proof. You can only backpedal so far.

Since you're cherry picking single quotations and not the entire context of the passage I am having difficulty comprehending what you're saying. Suffice to say that I haven't backpedaled and I have remained by my assertion that the big bang is an 'educated guess', and that's your phrase that I have been using.

Originally posted by loseyourname There is overwhelming evidence for evolution. If you were a biology student, and had closely studied evolutionary biology, not simply read books that you can't comprehend, you would know this. You are speaking from a position of great ignorance about this subject.

Oh wise God of Evolution, do teach me where this evidence is. From what I have read and whatever classes I have taken on biology, to me there is a lack of evidence, a lack of certainty and hence why evolution is still a theory, and not a scientific law, because the rules of logic and science which you are upholding in this thread, somehow don't seem to apply to evolution. Thus you are putting greater faith in it that one should. Maybe you should raise the evolution thread since this is not the place for it.

Originally posted by loseyourname I do not have Cartesian certainty, Mousy. This is not possible of any kind of scientific knowledge. There is always some trillion quadrillion to one chance that the laws of physics have changed, or that in the past, every time one complex organism went extinct, another simulataneously appeared from nothing. If you really believe that to be a viable option, then good for you. You are a fool. I will stick with evolution. Yes, I know it happened. Anyone who has closely examined the fossil record knows that it happened. The only areas of uncertainty lie in how it happened.

Yes I am a fool, but notice that I didn't call you a fool because you don't believe in God. It was you, the unbeliever who called me a fool for not adhering to your dogma. Strange world where the logical and rational people are the exact ones to resort to lack of reason and emotions.