The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission is angry.
It is time for the Christian bashing to stop and for Christians to no longer be treated like second-class citizens.
Second-class citizens who are virtually the only people who can get elected to political office, who whine piteously if anyone fails to kneel before their sacraments, who also claim that this is a Christian nation, who use their faith to justify war, corruption, oppression, greed, and who use their privileged position to deny non-Christians basic rights. Yeah, right. They’re a gang of hypocritical thugs with a persecution complex. It it time for Christian bashing to increase, I should think.
Now they’ve compiled a top ten list of Christian bashing in America for 2008, and oh, it is a pathetic thing. It is largely a list of people who mocked Christian excess: first on the list is the Proposition 8 Musical, starring Jack Black as Jesus. Bill Maher gets mentioned twice. I am in there for throwing a cracker in the trash. A sports announcer used obscenities. Come on, where are the lions? There aren’t any.
Most ridiculous of all, they have to invent slurs. Apparently, Barack Obama’s very existence is an example of Christian bashing.
According to research into President Elect Obama’s own statements about faith, and an examination of Obama’s position on moral issues, CADC has determined that by any biblical and historic Christian standard, Barack Obama is not a Christian, although he claims he is a “devout Christian.”
That’s it. Because they’ve redefined Obama’s beliefs as non-Christian, the fact that he holds those beliefs constitutes a defamation of Christianity. Poor pitiful CADC.
Went and reread several articles. Still don’t see a reference to a death threat. Could you kindly post a link to one?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,378081,00.html
learn to use google. that took 10 seconds.
No your mistake is a category error. The argument really goes that contingent entities need a cause and we have good reason to believe the universe is a contingent entity
@Crypticlife
scottb:
I suspect Kevin is fully aware of the death threats made by his cult. He’s just another Liar For Jesus™.
@Owlmirror
How are you sure God is not communicating directly and you are just the defective one who cant hear him?
Because god doesn’t exist. For people to hear him, he must interact with the real world and traces of existence would be seen. There are none. That is why hearing god is a sign of mental illness.
Steve: I google “florida student eucharist” and read through the first half dozen or so hits. I checked out the link but the video is blocked at work. I will check it out when I get home. Despite the fact that Fox news is a bastion of upstanding journalism, I would like to see the video myself.
Why don’t you know that Vishnu communicates with everyone and you’re missing the messages because you pray to the wrong god?
Facilis. You create your own self-defeating arguments. It’s funny.
Google this.
Wafer Student Death Threats
The argument really goes that contingent entities need a cause and we have good reason to believe the universe is a contingent entity – Facilis
What do you mean by “a contingent entity”, why do they need causes, and why isn’t God one?
@Wowbagger
I suggest you familiarize yourself with the definition from the Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy
And stanford encyclopaedia of hilosophy
Those are more apt
Steve_C
A half witted godbot is nothing but pure entertainment. Their hopes of anyone doing anything other than laughing due to their inconsistency is zero. And they need to put up the evidence for their imarginary god. I’m still waiting….
Facilis, atheists disbelieve in god because there is no evidence for god. You want us to consider god? Show us some physical evidence that can be confirmed by scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as of divine origin. Otherwise, we see you as a woomeister.
Facilis,
Do you really think you have the right to tell atheists what “atheism” means, you arrogant tosser?
Definitions differ.
Wikipedia says:
“Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the affirmation of the nonexistence of gods,[1] or the rejection of theism.[2] It is also[3] defined more broadly as an absence of belief in deities, or nontheism.”
There is, unfortunately, some disagreement about the definition of atheism. It is interesting to note that most of that disagreement comes from theists — atheists themselves tend to agree on what atheism means. Christians in particular dispute the definition used by atheists and insist that atheism means something very different.
About.com says:
“The broader, and more common, understanding of atheism among atheists is quite simply “not believing in any gods.” No claims or denials are made — an atheist is just a person who does not happen to be a theist. Sometimes this broader understanding is called “weak” or “implicit” atheism. Most good, complete dictionaries readily support this.”
That’s the stupidest, most disingenuous question ever.
I know that God isn’t communicating directly with me because I’m not deaf, not blind, and not stupid — and if I were “defective” it would be God’s responsibility to figure out how to adjust for the defect and initiate communication.
Human beings communicate in many ways. Besides speech and writing, we’ve invented sign language for the deaf, and Braille for the blind, and touch-signing for the deaf-blind. We’ve invented fire signals, drum signals, flag semaphores, Morse code, the Internet, and entire sciences revolving around various types of communication. We are practically defined by our ability to communicate.
You believe in a God that can create universes. If this God existed, how hard would it be for him to make air vibrate in sound waves and just fucking talk?
Oh, if you are going to compare the cracker to a book written on the skin of a deceased loved one someone already made that analogy.
Danny M @367:
We did consider and saw that there is nothing. Next.
Good for you. When you considered a creator what did you see? When you considered no creator what did you see?
We (and many others) considered a creator and saw nothing. When we consider no creator everything makes sense.
Your problem, in my opinion, is that you actually cannot consider anything non-Christian much less a world without a god-like creator.
Besides, why must this magical creator dude be your version of a Christian god? Why can’t the magical universe and all that’s in it be created by a woman or a wombat? A 10-story tall wombat with laser eyes and razor sharp claws. I want me a 100′ tall wombat god. People can still bow down to its all-powerful village smoting abilities and my wombat god can talk too so it can use its laser eyes to set bushes on fire and then talk parents into killing their sons. Fully interchangeable with your Christian god and my god can kill yours. So there.
Here’s a simple test (compliments of my mom – Hi mom!):
Spit in one hand and pray into the other. Then let us know which one filled up first.
@451:
Yes, but 500 scientists without any peer-reviewed research in the subject at hand versus 1,000 real scientists named Steve or variations on the name such as Stephen, Stephan, etc. makes the 500 folks calling themselves scientists look a couple of magnitudes incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Steve
But you are correct: science is not a democracy. Science isn’t a theocracy or a dictatorship either. So what was your point?
@455:
You must so new to the Internet that we are amazed you made it here.
In summary Danny M, you may be implying you are curious but your curiosity is being vastly overwhelmed by your attempts at witnessing to us. You may earn 0.01 martyr points from your nearest house of worship for your presence here but that’s about all. The onus is on you to learn something from outside your comfort zone and that means far, far, far away from the Discovery Institute, and Answers in Genesis, and even farther from Vox Day.
@462:
Actually, it is much simpler than that. Evolutionary scientists don’t live by Darwin and Darwin alone. What Charles had to say got things started. He has, for the most part been superseded by … (dare I say it?) … science. Real, actual, science – using the scientific method, with falsifiable hypotheses, evidence, continuous improvement and refinement over the decades, and last but not least: predictions.
I only meant my remarks on the Exasperating Habit to cover the crackers posts in this thread. I’m sorry for my gross (and ill-founded) generalization.
Danny M, please consider that there are millions of Christians who accept evolution, including nearly all scientists that are Christian. People have worked long, long hours in the laboratory and the field to establish evolution beyond any doubt, scientifically speaking.
I’m not arguing from authority here, but just want to reassure you that you don’t have to choose between evolution and your religious beliefs (whatever those are).
@KnockGoats
I go quote notable philosophical resources as to the definition of “atheism”, and you quote sites like wikipedia.
I’ve got nothing to say.
Now you finally get it.
And you keep saying it over and over like the energizer bunny.
Good. Maybe you’ll stop babbling Facilis.
@ Redhead,
OKbut before I present evidence, I’ve seen from your other posts that you believe in logic and rationality. I assume you would be using some kind of absolute standard of logic to assess my responses. This standard must be objective(independent of human minds and opinions), or else I could end the debate by saying my subjective opinion of rationality is different.This standard must be universal or else it would not necessarily apply to my arguments.
My question is, how do you account for these laws of logic within your worldview?
facilis the brainless godbot @ #505:
If your imaginary god (who you claim is all-powerful and created me) knows I am unable to hear him, and chooses not to correct this defect, then he obviously is not at all interested in actually communicating with me. If your imaginary god is not interested in communicating with me, I see no reason to listen for a message from a being I have no evidence of which he has no intent of delivering.
By the way, Facilis, how can YOU be sure Anubis, Bokonon, Coyote, Dionysius, Elvis Presley, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Ganesh, Hera, Isis, John Frum, Kali, Loki, Marduk, Nerull, Odin, Poseidon, Quetzalcoatl, Ra, Sun Myung Moon, Tiamat, Urd, Vishnu, Wee Jas, Xemnas, Yu Yevon, and Zeus are not communicating directly and YOU are just the defective one who can’t hear them?
Facilis,
Again, what’s the evidence? A universe with an intervening all-powerful being should look very different than one that doesn’t have such a being.
This standard must be objective(independent of human minds and opinions)
What stupid sophistry. “Sure, let’s talk about the existence of god. After you accept the existence of god.”
Facilis, your not producing evidence tells me you know how weak your evidence is if examined by skeptical scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers. Your quibbling about logic says you really have nothing but a philosophical argument, which is a total fail. So why don’t you just go away. Nobody is impressed with your evasions and idiotic questions.
But all these people would have to use a standard of logic and rationality to evaluate my evidence anyway so what’s the point?
Facilis, you have true physical evidence that can be confirmed, then the standard of logic used doesn’t matter. But if you have special pleading, like the god of gaps, it does. Here’s the thing. If you are honest, present your evidence and take the good and bad that comes from it. Otherwise, I detect dishonesty on your part.
OK Facilis we give up. Fine, your personal version of the Christian god created everything.
We still don’t care. Now will you go away?
But all these people would have to use a standard of logic and rationality to evaluate my evidence anyway so what’s the point?
You’re whining and making excuses instead of making an argument.
Facilis. What evidence?
Fussilis,
If you published a book, would you require people to meet certain requirements before allowing them to buy it, read it, or check it out of the library? Present the fucking evidence, already.
But Redhead, my evidence for the existence of God is he existence of logic.God’s nature is perfectly rational,immaterial, universal, objective and absolute and is the necessary pre-condition of the existence of this rational,immaterial, universal, objective and absolute standard of logic and rationality you and I appeal to in following God’s command to reason(Isaiah 1:18 ). The very fact that all of us here are sitting here trying to be logical and rational proves the existence of God, Redhead.
Logic exist, therefore god!
Damn, I never needed a deity to crank out a truth table.
Facilis@519,
I know you have nothing to say, but I have. Since your sources do not correspond to the way the word “atheism” is actually used, they’re wrong (or at least incomplete), however “notable” you may think they are: the meaning of words is determined by their use.
My disbelief in gods in general is the same as my disbelief in leprachauns: no reason whatsoever to believe they exist, but the possibility cannot be ruled out. The God of doctrinally orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, is a logical impossibility, so I know it doesn’t exist. I couldn’t give a shit whether you think that makes me an atheist or not.
Now, how about answering my #510? Notice that I’m not trying to impose definitions on you, I’m asking you to elucidate your beliefs and claims. That’s the way to pursue a substantive argument, but then you’re not interested in that, are you?
facilis,
Whenever I see a “proof” of God I think replace ‘God’ with ‘pantheon of Greek gods” and see if it makes sense.
Facilis@533,
You have not even attempted to present an argument that the existence of logic (actually, of course, there are many logics, some of which are incompatible with each other) proves the existence of God. You have simply asserted that it does. That will not do. Indeed since you think your “proof” is valid, and I think that it is not, by your own lights your premise that there is a universally agreed standard of logic and rationality is false.
Whenever I see a supposed proof for any gods, I look for the logical fallacy. In this case, looking is hardly required. When your conclusion is one of your premises, Facilis, you’re begging the question.
Even if you weren’t, unexamined, obvious facts about the world are not evidence, for any position. The simple existence of logic and humans’ ability to reason “proves” nothing other than that humans are (sometimes) capable of reason. Now, if you were remotely interested in deriving some actual evidence from the existence of human rationality (as if), then we could get into neuroscience and cognitive psychology and linguistics and talk about specifics. I realize, of course, that actually considering the empirical evidence would be directly opposed to your little apologetics project here, but I just wanted to point out how far you are from any intellectually honest engagement with even the concept of a logical argument based on evidence, much less the thing itself.
Fallacious reasoning! Assumes facts not in evidence.
Fallacious reasoning! Assumes facts not in evidence.
Your irrational and false arguments are self-refuting.
Watch out! There are bears coming for you! Big scary child-murdering bears!
Isaiah 1:18 : Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Sorry, but “Sin” is not reason; neither is sin “reversing” itself.
Actually, God hates rationality and loves stupidity.
1 Corinthians 1:19-23 : For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness
The Greek Gods aren’t immaterial or unchanging, like God (and logic) are.
God here is talking about the foolish secularist “reason” that refuses to acknowlege God as the source of rationality. God has indeed revealed to us how foolish it is in his word. It is also proven by all the atheists here unable to account for the invariant, objective ,universal laws of logic in their worldview.
Facilis, since your god exists only between your ears, he changes constantly with your mood. If god only exists using logic, he is a philosophical contruct with no meaning to the real world. Only physical evidence shows proof for a real world god. What a maroon.
A burning bush is immaterial? And how exactly did the Romans manage to nail an immaterial thing to a cross?
It is also proven by all the atheists here unable to account for the invariant, objective ,universal laws of logic in their worldview.
We’re “unable to account for” them because no “laws of logic” exist that have those attributes. And there’s nothing “immaterial” about logic, either. It’s a description of what goes on in (some of) our material brains.
Facilis you abysmal idiot. The fact that we are all sitting here proves nothing more than our parents at some point had sex.
In response to the post about AA.
You said AA and programs like it have a bad success rate. I will explain why I believe this is unfair.
1. If there is a drug that will cure a certain illness 100 percent of the time for everyone who takes it as prescribed, but only 20 percent of the people who are prescribed this perfect medicine take it as directed, then on paper it would have an 80 percent failure rate.
2. The program of AA is a hard thing for many people to go through. It requires someone to face their ‘demons’. It requires one to be rid of resentment. It requires one to have willingness. In other words, AA is not about going to meetings. I would say that 100 percent of the people who take AA as prescribed recover 100 percent of the time. This is why I think the earlier post was an unfair judgment.
@KnockGoats
Its proven by the impossibility of the contrary. Try to account for the laws of logic apart from God and I will show you.
Hmm no I said there is a universal standard of logic. Some people refuse to acknowlege it so they can suppress the truth and deny God as the true foundation of reason.
facilis, get up now. Go take your meds.
Facilis the ballless, you keep trying to get us to commit something to you so you can attempt to control the argument. Ain’t going to happen. Why don’t you just put your evidence out there like a man with balls, and see what happens.
I know what will happen. Laughter and derision, because you have nothing that we haven’t seen last week, last month, or last year. Failed then. Will fail again.
Wow. How can something so simple be turned upside down.
Either god exists or it doesn’t. If it does, there’s evidence.
Creating some sort of philosophical paradoxical catch-22 reasoning is not evidence.
Saying “Logic wouldn’t exist without a god. Logic exists and therefore god exists.”
Is FUCKING RETARDED.
Try to account for the laws of logic apart from God and I will show you.
We can’t account for something when we don’t even know what it is. Tell you what, why don’t you lay out these mysterious laws, and then we can talk about it. As it stands, you’re basically asking for someone to account for an aspect of god, without god. Surely you can see that this kind of sophistry is less than impressive.
@redhead.
I did put forth my evidence. My evidence was that God was the necessary pre-condition for the invariant,universal, immaterial and objective laws of logic, with the impossibility of the contrary. You guys have proven it by your inability to account for logic apart from God.
Facilis, explain how your idiotic claim that the existence of logic proves the existence of your imaginary god fails to work equally well for The Invisible Pink Unicorn, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Blurdiggledyflorp, or admit that your argument is a load of shit. Note that your previous dodge that the Greek gods “aren’t immaterial or unchanging” won’t work because all of MY examples ARE immaterial and unchanging, because I said so. :P
Some people here have used logic such as this. “If the universe can be explained without a God, then there is no God.” or, “You can not prove the existence of God because there is no physical proof. If He existed, then there would be evidence of His presence.”. I want to explain why this logic does not make sense to me.
1. There are a number of different ways to do certain things. I like to golf, and did golf the other week. So, one could come up with any number of posssible ways the game came out. I could have scored 100, or 75, or 80. Not only that, but I could have scored 100 in a variety of different ways. But in the end, only one way happened.
Just because one could explain how I could have finished with a score of 72, and write out how it could have happened hole by hole, that does not mean it happened like that. My example may be flawed, but if we are in a discussion then work with me, not against me.
2. More importantly however, is this. The logic assumes that we know all about the universe. a. I suggest that there are questions for which we do not have answers to. I say that we do not know yet whether He has “left a mark”. b. Also, there are questions that we do not even know exist, so right now they are impossible to even try and answer.
——————————————————-
3. My logic– “If there are questions about the universe that we do not have answers to, and if we do not even know all the questions about the universe that need to be answered, then we do not yet know if the universe can exist without a Creator.”
Facilis, do you honestly think that humans are the only species with the capacity to use logic? How do you account for problem solving in animals?
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Logic exists. There is no evidence of any god. Therefore god does not exist. Logic wins.
This is so cool
@CJO
OK let me lay it out for you.Humans reason. In order to reason they use laws of logic. These laws of logic are universal (apply to everyone), objective (not dependent on human opinion or conventions), immaterial (not made of matter) and invariant( do not change). God is universal,objective,immaterial and invariant and he is the necessary pre-condition for these laws of logic to exist. This is proven by the impossibility of the contrary. Try to account for the laws of logic apart from God and i will show you.
Facilis, total fail. No physical evidence. Hahahahahahahah. What an idiot. hahahahahahah
Yes, but so what? If you want to argue on semantics about absence of belief over disbelief, go ahead. But in effect it says a similar tale. Atheism is the stance that God doesn’t exist expressed in one way or another. There’s still no major or minor tenets, no philosophy, no moral guide, it’s a stance on the supernatural. And that is what we were trying to explain to Brute, rather than his science = atheism.
Danny, here’s my logic:
As there is not the slightest speck of evidence of any god, there is no reason whatsoever to believe in any god.
As, to date, everyone who has claimed to have evidence for a god has been delusional or lying, there is still no reason whatsoever to believe in any god.
You have a problem with that, show some damn evidence of your imaginary friend, or shut up.
God is logic. Oh for fuck’s sake.
In order to reason they use laws of logic.
Yes, I understand that this is the linchpin of your argument, such as it is. But I dispute the claim, and it’s an as yet unargued assertion. So, you’ll either have to leave it out of your premises or you’ll have to offer some justification for taking it as given.
My logic regarding logic.
We have evolved a brain that is capable of problem solving, we have also evolved a brain that is capable of speech, creating abstract concepts and storing memories. From these we have developed the capacity to use abstract concepts such as numbers in order to represent the world. The tools we have to do logic can be accounted for in the evolution of man, there’s no need to posit a god in order to explain our mental function. That would be unnecessary and superflous.
The only system of logic that is the same in every culture is math. There is no “intelligent agent” required to account for the existence of math; it simply exists.
DannyM, your fail as big as Facilis the lying idiot. God exists only between your ears. Therefore nobody else can see god the way you do. I certainly don’t. While I can respect you believing if you kept it to yourself, I can’t respect you telling me I must believe too. That is your failing.
Or, you can show some physical evidence for your imaginary god that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine origin. Only that will save your argument as far as I am concerned.
For clarity, and since Facilis is obviously hung up on this “laws of logic” business, I will offer the counter-claim in plain language.
The supposed laws you’re talking about are descriptive, that is they depend on there being tinking beings with the capacity for logical reasoning. The “laws” are derived from the activity, not vice versa; they’re a formal description of it, and the activity could proceed just fine (and presumably once did) if the “laws” had never been formalized.
Now I want to make a disclaimer before continuing. I do not believe or know that this is a mark of God. Nor do I claim anyone knows. I do believe that, assuming the existence of a Creator, His mark would be left somehow. And we have to assume that He is not 100 percent against us finding it, or this discussion is pointless.
———————————————————
It was on the history, or geo channel, something like that. It was a show about dark matter, and dark energy. That is what we call it, I mean it needs a name so we can talk about it. They do not know much about it, they just know it has to be there. You people probably know more about this subject than I do.
According to my beliefs, God is holding all things together by the power of His Word. I believe He is the one holding the universe together. Now, when we talk about God leaving His mark, assuming His existence, it would all be His mark… but that’s sunday school BS. We are talking about something more. If He is holding the universe together, I could see how the evidence of it could look like dark matter, or dark energy.
———————————————————
The main point to be taken from this is this. If dark matter and dark energy is not it, then I believe it would be something like that that we should be looking for.
I do believe there is evidence for God, there has to be. People need to stop dodging the questions about evidence, and call the scientist up and demand they look for it. I do NOT agreee that the existence of a Creator can not be proven, or have evidence found in its behalf.
If you are scared that you do not know of any physical evidence for a Creator, then go hide under your covers somewhere. I for one have the balls. Scientist, start looking with an open mind. If you keep going on under the assumption that there is no way to prove the existence of a Creator, or that there can be no physical evidence, then of course you will never find it.
I dodge no question. I say the search should be on, and you have a choice to believe what you want to believe. But so do I and I believe I have made the right decision.
danny m,
Nobody has made these arguments. The arguments are
(1) If the universe can be explained without a God then there is no good reason to believe in God, anymore than there is an invisible flying Spaghetti monster.
(2) A God REGULARLY INTERVENING IN HUMAN AFFAIRS would leave physical evidence of his/her/its presence. Why has faciliis yet to show us this physical evidence? Now if you believe in some sort of deistic God that created the universe and has done zilch since than this doesn’t apply.
See how that makes just as much sense?
The Greek Gods aren’t immaterial or unchanging, like God (and logic) are.
Facilis has as much understanding of logic as he has evidence for the existence of a god. It’s a good thing logic has never changed at all in its journey from Aristotelian essentialism to Boolean extensionalism, by way of Kant
I do not need to account for the existence of God. he simply exists. Ha Ha!!!
How do you like your “it simply exists” argument now? It seems rather stupid doesn’t it.
Logic existed before the concept of logic ever did.
But Facilis doesn’t exactly understand logic.
This would be entertaining if it weren’t so painful.
phantomreader42– apparently I am not talking to you then. If you decide to talk to me with respect, as other people on this site have done, and I am doing, then we can have a discussion.
Nerd of Redhead– appearently we have a misunderstanding. I am having a logical discussion to the best of my ability. I am trying to make it understandable with the whole– if,then of logic thing. You would not respect me if I stood by and let you drive over a busted up bridge either… I do not think you understand me and I don’t guess I blame you.
———————————————————-
I would like someone to respectfully critique my logic that I posted– 3. My logic– “If there are questions about the universe that we do not have answers to, and if we do not even know all the questions about the universe that need to be answered, then we do not yet know if the universe can exist without a Creator.” with this addition, “nor do we yet know if there is or is not any physical evidence.”.
There is no evidence for god. No need for there to be except in your mind. We aren’t dodging your question, but rather you are dodging the burden of proof. You are trying to put it upon us to prove a negative, rather than upon you to prove a positive. The burden of proof is upon you to demonstrate positive physical evidence for god. Now you go and find the evidence and report back. Welcome to science.
facilis,
Do you agree that a universe with a God regularly intervening in human affairs would look very different than a universe without such a being?
If yes, then wouldn’t there be physical evidence of that being intervening?
Except that it isn’t God talking. It’s Paul of Tarsus, and Isaiah.
Who the hell are these mere mortals to say that secularist reason is foolish? Who are you to do so?
Why does God need these people long dead, and morons like you living now, to say stupid and logically incoherent things about him? If God is real, let him speak for himself, right now.
He indeed revealed how foolish his word is. Don’t forget what Paul is talking about: Christ crucified as the source of salvation. He states that it is indeed foolish, and that God was well pleased to do something so foolish.
If the laws if logic are God, then God is not the one spoken on in Christian bible, because that God hates the laws of logic.
I posted the last one before I saw your reply : Feynmaniac
thanks for the reply
Nerd of Redhead: Apparently there is still a misunderstanding. I was not talking to atheist when I wrote about dodging the question of evidence. It is easy to assume that I suppose.
Of course it’s stupid. If God “simply exists” as a person, then, like all people, God can and should speak for himself.
If God does not exist as a person, then we have nothing to disagree over.
Facilis,
I’m enjoying watching you dance. An epic flail if you will…
Shorter facilis: ‘My god exists because I say so, and the same logic can’t apply to any other posited gods because I say it can’t.’
Yeah, that’s going to work.
Dannym @ #568:
Then where is it? Go find it and show it to us.
danny orders everyone but himself to stop dodging questions:
No, YOU quit dodging the questions about evidence, and LOOK FOR IT YOURSELF! Don’t just sit on your ass and demand scientists do it for you, get to work!
danny lies about his testicles:
If you really had the balls, you’d be doing the search yourself instead of whining and ordering other people around. You think there’s evidence of your imaginary friend? Go find it. Don’t just sit on your ass. Do something. Grow some testables, come up with a hypothesis that actually has some relevance in the real world, and test it. And if all your searching doesn’t find the slightest speck of evidence for your imaginary friend (as all searching to date has not found any such evidence), admit it. Don’t make shit up.
danny lies again:
No, on the contrary, you dodge ALL questions by demanding that other people do your work for you. YOU are the one claiming there’s a god. YOU are the one claiming there’s evidence of a god. So YOU are the one who needs to go find it. If you’re too lazy to do that, quit whining.
And what do you mean by “a Creator”? And intelligent being, or an unthinking cause?
If “creator” means “an intelligent being”, I repeat my insistence that since all intelligent beings that we know of communicate, this intelligent being should communicate as well.
If “creator” means “unthinking cause”, well, then that’s a question of cosmology, which is being hashed out by cosmologists.
Feynmaniac: (1) If the universe can be explained without a God then there is no good reason to believe in God, anymore than there is an invisible flying Spaghetti monster.
1. I do not agree that we know yet that the universe can be explained without a God. Since we do not know the answers to all questions, or even know everything that needs to be asked. There could be questions that exist that have only one working answer– Creator.
Feynmaniac: (2) ……if the universe can exist without a Creator pantheon of Greek gods.”
See how that makes just as much sense?
2. Please do not narrow this down to Christianity. Although I believe in Jesus, I am only talking about a Creator. In the future maybe we can discuss Jesus if you want to, but for now I would like to stick with Creator.
Feynmanic: (3) (1) If the universe can be explained without a God then there is no good reason to believe in God, anymore than there is an invisible flying Spaghetti monster.
3. I see a vast difference. a. First of all I am talking about searching for evidence, searching for a Creator. I am not even talking about believing or trusting in Him.
b. Second of all we are yet to know if the universe can be explained without a God.
c. Thirdly. Flying Spaghetti monster. The difference could be as great as the desire for one to look for ones parents, as opposed to looking for a fly in Florida. There is a big difference. Who cares about a Flying spaghetti monster. Can’t you see how people would be more concerned with one than the other.
————————————————————
People please re-read my posts from today with a different mindset of me. I am not attacking any one for being an atheist. Maybe if you look at it with a different attitude about me, then you could be in a better position to critique my statements of logic. Like some of you have done, and thanks for that.
phantomreader42: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not write another FU(*&ng word in my direction. You willfully ignorant sutpid person who is only on this site to fight, so much so that he does not even take the time to see that I was challenging ‘believers’ to stop dodging questions. I have tried over and over and over and over again to explain that I have nothing against you, but guess what, i was wrong. I hope that you never write another word to me you piece of crap.
feynmaniac: (1)Do you agree that a universe with a God regularly intervening in human affairs would look very different than a universe without such a being? (2)If yes, then wouldn’t there be physical evidence of that being intervening?
1. I agree that the assumption could reasonably be come by. But I can not say that.
2. I believe so yes.
danny, I’m getting confused here (busy day at work). Are you, or are you not, saying that there is evidence for god out there, and it is up to scientists to find it for you?
It might help if you used blockquotes for quoting people
[blockquote]material to be quoted[/blockquote], except use the right and left arrows (shift comma and shift period)in place of the right and left brackets.
no, i agree with (1) also. my bad i misread it. i’m posting too much, i’ll stop for a bit and give others a chance. sorry for posting so much in a row.
Looks like we have found DannyM’s kryptonite: reality.
Careful there Danny. Reality is all that confusing and obnoxious stuff going on around you while you try to justify your god(s).
Danny, you’re a liar. You aren’t searching for truth. You are searching for Truth(tm). And you are witnessing here (and FAILING). You earn 0.001 martyr points for your presence here.
P.S. The word is spelled “FUCKING” – it contains letters from the alphabet. Please use it correctly. Most of the rest of us are adults here. We can take it. You, on the other hand, appear to still be in diapers and using training wheels.
PhantomReader42 has a thrid digit in his IQ that you don’t.
There, fixed that for you. You’re welcome.
Danny M @#584:
There is a term for belief that there is a Creator, but not the Creator of any religion; sometimes even a Creator that does nothing after creating. It’s called Deism.
Is that what you want? To consider the Deist hypothesis?
In don’t think you understood Feynmaniac’s point: If it is not necessary to posit a Creator-as-a-person, we have no reason to believe that there is evidence.
If you don’t think there is evidence found yet, what do you think could be evidence that might yet be found; if it were indeed found?
The only epic flail I see here si the inability of atheists to account for rationality and logic. Its so funny because people were earlier claiming to be logical and rational.
Thank you so much Nerd of Redhead.
I am saying that, under the assumption of a Creator, then there would have to be evidence. Because I do believe He is involved. Am I saying that someone has found it, no. It is out there. I think it is important to look. And I can not even find my socks in the morning… so yes, it is up to the smart people to find it.
Owlmirror: Thank you.
I wrote earlier today about evidence, and dark matter and energy. Post 568. but please don’t get caught up on the dark matter and energy thing too much.
Fallacious offers platonism? That’s it? The simpleton clearly knows fuckall about logic, wouldn’t recognize it if it bit him on the ass, yet he claims logic is an existence proof for his infinitely simple god, arrogantly claiming victory as he dishonestly scarpers from one unanswered question in one thread to another.
And yet you still haven’t explained why logic and rationality can only exist if it was specifically Yahweh, the broader Judeo-Christian deity, who created the universe.
How is this not explained by, say, Zeus creating the universe? That would make far more sense, considering the Greeks were far more concerned with the study of formal logic than the Isralites.
the inability of atheists to account for rationality and logic.
That’s not what you’re seeing here. You’re equivocating between rationality and logic in and of themselves and your characterization of logic as immaterial, universal, and depending on transcendental laws for its existence. We’re not accounting for any of that, but then, you haven’t provided any justification for considering logic in this way, you’ve merely asserted that it is.
If by “account for” you mean “give an explanation of how these things came to exist”, then Dan Dennett’s all over it, from a purely naturalistic (and therefore atheistic, a-fairy-istic position and a-whatever-other-mythical-placeholder-istic) angle, tracking the historical development of such things.
What I’ve never seen is a theistic explanation of how rationality or logic came about. It is claimed that a god with these properties along with consciousness and even emotion simply was. I would like an account of how such a thing came to be.
Why do we have to account for the concepts of logic and rationality? They’re concepts. Fine if you want to say God is a concept too. I agree.
But that’s all god is.
DannyM @592:
How about this instead: We’ll go on about our lives (and science) using reality-based mechanisms. If perchance we bump into some god(s) or creator(s) we’ll publish a peer-reviewed paper and win a Nobel Prize and you can read about it in the newspaper or see it on the TV.
Deal?
If I win the Nobel, I’ll bring you along as my guest and give you half the money.
Does that sweeten the deal?
Danny @593:
Are you actually thinking that dark matter and/or energy might be God? (I am not sure if that is what you are saying)
Cosmologists are positing these things in the same way that earlier scientists posited atoms, or subatomic particles, or the speed of light being constant: Something to account for the physical behavior of the universe, based on the evidence.
Again, nothing found so far indicates that dark energy and/or matter, or anything else in the greater physical structure of the universe, is a person.
What do you think might be found that would?
danny m,
When Laplace met Napoleon the emperor asked him ‘M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.’ Laplace responded ‘Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.’ (‘I had no need of that hypothesis.’). To this day we have yet to need that hypothesis.
There could be a question that has only one working answer – an invisible Spaghetti monster. There’s no reason to believe that. Simply not being able to disprove things is NOT a strong argument. You could say that same thing about God, fairies, leprechauns, Aztec gods, etc. etc.
Where did I mention Jesus? All I mentioned was a God intervening in human affairs. This covers many religion – Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.
The only time I can see I alluded to Jesus was in #543 and I was talking to facilis.
People HAVE been searching for physical evidence for God for centuries. Discovering such a thing would be a theistic scientists’ wet dream. If there were indisputable physical evidence I think everyone here would change there mind. Yet this search has produced nothing.
Yes, maybe people are more concerned about one over the other, but there is just as much reason to believe in the existence of one as the other.
You are suggesting what Richard Dawkins is saying as well (and coming under much ire for doing so) that God is a testable entity in the universe. Where I see you missing the point is that scientists and non-scientists alike since the beginning of time have been searching for God.
Removing God from the scientific process does two things:
1. it protects science. It means that nowhere in the process can go the phrase “then a miracle occurs” and is just left at that. God is a non-answer, and to use God in such a manner is destroying the whole point of science.
2. It protects God. By taking God away from the testable, it means that there doesn’t have to be God’s absence explained. “The lord works in mysterious ways” simply doesn’t cut it as an explanation, so in effect God can never be proven or disproven because any results can be rationalised away as God not wanting to be tested.
Bringing God into the scientific realm makes God falsifiable, it also means that people have to be predictive about God – something that a theist cannot do. In historical science, surely we should see evidence for “miracles” such as a global flood or a sudden creation in the fossil record because the earth does preserve geological events. In that sense we can test at least the actions attributed to God – though any serious theologian these days would say that those stories in genesis or the events of exodus are allegorical. Much like many of the battles in Joshua; we’ve found the ruins of Ai for example and the archaeology didn’t match the biblical account.
Doing that though only questions the validity of the bible as an accurate account of the world, and it’s been shown that the bible is not inerrant and indeed outright wrong on many events. The infallibility of His word is not evidence against Him, only that the bible isn’t enough to provide proof of God.
This is difficult to keep up without blowing away too many brain cells so on my way out I have these addenda for DannyM:
In light of the current world economic situation there is a dire need for more funds and I think you should get cracking on changing lead into gold.
The energy shortage is causing a bit of a kerfuffle too and I think you should get to work on those perpetual motion machines.
My hair gets messed up when I fly my kite and I want a kite that I can fly into the wind and I need you to design me one. Spring will be here soon and I really need you to get started right away.
What could I possibly say that would convince you that I was speaking for Myself?
As for logic, we can account for logic through evolutionary measures, we can see the foundations required for logic in other creatures and our ability to do logic is completely explainable through natural processes. If the laws of logic were universal and given by Yahweh, why would Christian Europe have existed so long without the concept 0, and needed the Allah-worshippers to take the concept of 0 from the pantheists of India and import it into Europe? It seems like Brahman would be a better explanation for logic than Yahweh.
God @604:
Something along the lines of:
I’m God and I approve of this message.
in a large booming voice from the sky that can be heard by sane people. ;)
Well, you might, for example, provide a list of predictions of gamma-ray bursts, synchronized to GMT, for a period of about a year.
You might also provide a list of predictions of radioactive decay events in some particular radioisotope sample. Or several such lists, to several laboratories.
Closer to people’s hearts, you might predict the lottery for all states in the US that have them, and/or all countries that have one, or the MD5SUM/SHA1SUM of same (if you don’t want to skew the economy too much).
That wouldn’t demonstrate omniscience, which I still think is logically impossible, or logically impossible to demonstrate, but it would demonstrate knowledge greater than any human has or could have.
Uh……
Without faith I am nothing?
*poof*
What could I possibly say that would convince you that I was speaking for Myself?
You have to ask?
The Templeton Foundation funded study into prayer was a pretty telling experiment.
Ok, I wasn’t wrong about I thought Danny said. Danny, science is a humanistic study. It is not a theological study. Science ignores god, and will continue to ignore god. Science will not find proof for god, that must come from theologians. Saying we should looks means nothing. Whatever is out there, science will find a natural explanation for it.
Facilis is being a typical godbot, and saying we are not responding to his logic, or rather, his illogic. It is obvious to a casual observation that he never had any evidence except his belief, and an ego the size of a small house. You don’t convince people that way.
One word: evolution. Why does this argument sound awfully like the argument for love, or for consciousness, or for life itself. Atheists can’t explain love, atheists can’t explain feelings, atheists can’t explain thoughts, atheists can’t explain consciousness, atheists can’t explain X.
The logic seems to go that if atheists can’t explain it, then a mangod who died 2000 years ago must be the source.
Occasionally, we get theists who either insist that even if God came down and manifested, we would not believe, or ask what would it take to convince us that God existed.
I think I’ll point to my little list of (near)omniscience demonstrators as example criteria that I would find compelling.
Of course, there’s also Kel’s water-into-vodka request, which to date has not happened. With the vodka (assuming it only happened once), we would only have Kel’s word that it had ever been water. I think my examples would be more general, and could theoretically shown to many, many people, or even to humanity at large.
Of course, if God was willing to turn water into vodka at anyone’s request, that would be even more compelling than my examples. But that would bring us back to skewing the economy.
@ Facilis #522 + #533:
Logic doesn’t need a god to create it any more than the numbers 1, 2 etc do or the concepts of inside and outside (eg for a set). You haven’t shown any evidence that it does, let alone evidence for a particular god. You’re incompetent or dishonest or both. I think, on the basis of the evidence you’ve provided against yourself, that it’s both.
If god created logic then why are the god-believers the most logic-challenged people around? Why is it an ability demonstrably held more by atheists than theists (cf scientists)?
In reality, logic is a natural thing easily invented by both the most unintelligent entities in nature (albeit inadvertently) and the intelligent ones (who typically feel the need to be formulaic about it and develop definitions to which it applies). It’s the semi-intelligent ones who have difficulty with it. That means you, Facilis.
My test is entirely subjective, I’m the first one willing to admit that. And if my water turned to vodka, I know that I could only take it as personal validation and nothing more.
The test exists because Pilty challenged. He said that each one of us should ask God to find out for ourselves. I took his challenge up and I’d say it’s been around two months and with two separate bottles (one at my work desk, one at my home desk) and in those two months not once has the water been anything but water. Of course then Pilty admitted the test was flawed for the reason I specified above (the lord works in mysterious ways, so he’s untestable) so in effect the challenge that was thrown down was thrown down on an invalid premise. Pilty was just evangelising.
I know by no means that the water staying water is not a disproof for God. I’m running this test purely to stop Pilty saying that we aren’t asking God whether he is there.
But Bacchus might have some objection to vodka. You should open your mind to the possibility of more than one sort of alcoholic beverage transformation. Then you might be able to determine (or at least narrow down) which god has finally bothered to start existing.
I’m running the same experiment in parallel. So far no vodka in either water bottle. Pilty’s god is looking very wimpy.
No problem:
There’s nothing that could convince me that the god defined by the broader Judeo-Christian belief system exists – because that god is a logical contradiction; as far as I’m concerned it cannot, as they describe it, exist.
A god like Yahweh could exist, but I sincerely hope that it doesn’t, because that god is a monster, in all senses of the word. That god being real would be a nightmare for all living creatures.
Should any of the conditions described by the above posters be met I suspect the god we’d be dealing with would be an entirely new entity unlike that of any of the major belief systems. But I’ve never been able to reconcile the idea of a creator being that demanded worship and punished its absence – let alone one that did those things while working very hard to hide its existence from those it demanded worship from.
@God #604:
I’d be satisfied with water-to-beer.
Bad formatting there, sorry.
About post 600:
I was not saying that dark matter is God. When I think of evidence someone has been somewhere, I could look for prints. I was saying that it could be footprints. Or not. But that’s what I think we can physically find, ‘footprints’. That’s the physical evidence for a Creator that I believe is possible to find. And under the assumption that there is a Creator who is involved with us, then there would have to be ‘footprints’. And if no one has found them yet, I do not shy away. You ask for evidence, this is not me dodging, this is my answer. I’m also not talking about you having to disprove the existence of God. And for the people that are very rude on this site, this is the last sentence you will receive from me, and I am a grown up so if I want to symbol out my cuss words I will. To the other people, I’m sorry for my outburst.
Someone just sent me this on my blog.
What is science? There are several answers but the 2 below sum it up. According to encarta.msn.com/dictionary–science is:
*study of physical world: the study of the physical and natural world and phenomena, especially by using systematic observation and experiment
*something studied or performed methodically: an activity that is the object of careful study or that is carried out according to a developed method
Science derives from: French< Latin scientia< scient-, present participle of scire "know, discern" < Indo-European, "cut"] ***Encarta also offers: blind somebody with science- to confuse or overwhelm somebody by giving an impenetrable explanation using technical terms and concepts ----------------------------------------------------------- For science to find evidence for a Creator, then said Creator would have to have left footprints in our physical universe. Even if God is Spirit, He could still leave 'footprints' in the physical side. If He did not then no, science would not ever be able to investigate God. So MY desire for science to find evidence of God is dependent on Him being involved with the physical side of the universe, shich I am sure you already know. But I just saw that def. someone sent me....This really needs no comment I'm just talking.
[Demands for vodka, wine, beer, and so on]
Had I not created wheat and grapes and potatoes and barley and hops and yeast, and the laws governing biochemistry and distillation, you poor sad apes would not even know what vodka and wine and beer were.
Where’s the gratitude, I ask?
*sniff*
Kids these days, demanding proof and even higher proof….
Correct me if I’m wrong, but are not those same “laws of biochemistry” responsible for alcohol being addictive, and disabling and fatal in higher doses?
Just curious, here. I mean, You can’t blame Me for that.
You forgot apples in there. Are you trying to play that mistake down? ;-)
You’re wrong.
Your point being?
Oh, yes I can.
*sigh*
Can You blame Me for wanting to forget?
Yes, that’s right; cider. I’ve heard that it’s good.
You should know the answer to that one, too: Hell, yes.
Heh.
Danny M @ # 622/633:
But there is a very important point that those who suggest these sorts of things always miss.
We know that footprints match up to feet because we have plenty of evidence of how feet interact with the ground, and how they go about leaving those very prints in the first place!
Where are God’s feet, to leave prints? What size are they? How many toes does God have, and how are they shaped? How does his heel and arch curve? How would we know that something is a footprint of God if God does not show us his “feet”?
I’m using the same words as the analogy, but the same question can be asked more generally: Given something found in the universe, how would it be possible to know that the only way that that thing could have come into existence was from God, especially since we don’t have evidence of God in the first place?
And why ‘footprints’ anyway, rather than direct communication? Can you even begin to address that?
Danny, this is impossible. Science does not deal with god, and therefore can never find god. Period. End of story. Why do you keep trying to pretend it does? Anything science finds will be given a natural explanation without any need to invoke god. What part of this are you having trouble with?
danny m whining @#585:
Well, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE shut the fuck up! You’re the one who came in here babbling about imaginary gods and demanding other people look for evidence for you. If you want to hide from reality, this isn’t the place to do it.
I saw that you were pretending to criticize your fellow believers for dodging questions, but in the same post you tried to shift the burden of looking for answers onto others. That’s a lazy, stupid, dishonest thing to do, and you know it.
So you are cordially invited to kiss my ass.
Danny,
Something to think about – science has not only found no evidence for a creator but has found much evidence for life existing without the need for a creator; it’s not just one or the other, but both.
If a god does exist then it does not want us to know about it – we cannot ever prove that an infinitely powerful being isn’t affecting the universe and erasing its tracks; that would be impossible. However, that isn’t the god described by Judeo/Christianity; it is the god of Deism.
Should a god act in such a way that it doesn’t want to be found, it would be more than a little unreasonable for it to expect that we would treat it in the way most human religions seem to think it wants to be treated – feared, sucked-up to, worshiped etc. – and certainly wouldn’t bother itself with anything as insignificant as judging us on our behaviour, nor require any of the Messiah/crucifixion/resurrection nonsense, which is – when you think about it – the worst kind of illogical piffle.
Basically, there’s either a non-interventionist god or no god at all.
Regarding profanity:
“What’s the big fucking deal? It doesn’t hurt anybody. Fuck, fuckity, fuck fuck fuck. ” – Eric Cartman
What’s the big FCCing deal? FCC, FCCity, FCC, FCC, FCC. Cartman is a Republican.
@Kel
1)If reason is merely a platonic form , how can it govern our minds and thoughts (almost like some kind of personal agent)?
2)How can these platonic forms communicate themselves to us so we can be certain of these truths?
How is this not explained by, say, Zeus creating the universe? That would make far more sense, considering the Greeks were far more concerned with the study of formal logic than the Isralites.
I think we better stick to the beliefs each of us hold. We’ll see between theism and atheism which better account for the objective, invariant, universal ,immaterial laws of logic and reason.
facilis, #636
That was Ken Cope (#594), not Kel.
@CJO
What do you disagree with?
@Matt
I’m not talking about how humans became rational. I’m talking aout the laws of logic and reason that held long before humans.The sun was itself and not the moon (ie the logical law of identity held) long before humans existed.
Why? Just so you can play off God against nothing? God plays off against all other deities who ever have or ever will be called on to explain the universe. It’s the nature of theism. Why Yahweh and not Brahman? It would make more sense given that followers of Brahman came up with 0; a concept that had to be imported to followers of Yahweh. Wouldn’t that make the pantheon a better fit than your theist mangod?
I hold no beliefs. Remember?
You first need to justify why it is the god of your religion has a stronger claim to the things you’ve listed than any other. Until then I’ve got no more reason to accept that Yahweh is any more responsible for logic and reason than the plastic Sideshow Bob figurine that sits next to my PC.
What I’m talking aboout is the absolute, invariant, universal, immaterial laws of logic and reason. Even if you explain that humans evolved and were able to understand these laws, you still haven’t shown what the source of these laws is.
I’m not Kel, and Kel’s not me.
The sun was itself and not the moon (ie the logical law of identity held) long before humans existed.
“Millions of months passed. Then, twenty-eight days later, the Moon appeared…”
What the fuck?
So I suppose God was God so where did that identity come from?
Just think, the universe is me and the universe is you but we are not the universe. We are matter arranged into a particular order, and once we die the atoms that bind us will be cast from our current forms and some of it will be together again. For at one time I was you and you were me, but that was before me and you ceased to be you and me by the rearrangement of atoms. So while you are not me and I’m not you now, one day again in the future there will be every chance that part of you is part of me, though that will not be you and it will not be me. Going even further, if theoretical physicists are correct in the oscillating universe theorem, then we will again be each other and will be at one with the universe.
Unfortunately that means we’ll be part of facilis, but it won’t be facilis because he is not you or me.
God didn’t create logic and reason in the sense you are thinking. I hold that the laws of logic and reason are the reflection of the perfectly rational,absolute, immaterial, unnchanging,timeless nature of God.
I do hold to the view that God is the source of mathematical laws also
Inside and outside do not have an objective existence like logical and mathematical laws do. They are purely subjective, based on human points of reference.
You haven’t even accounted for reason yet. You cannot get to evidence yet.
Please account for the objective standard of morality you use to call me dishonest.
ad hominem
Okay, say we assume your god gave them to humanity. Where did he get them from? We’re talking a long time ago; it’s not like he found them going for a good price on Ebay.
Wowbagger
Account for the absolute ,immaterial, invariant,universal laws of logic and reason you used to conclude it was a contradiction
The question is, is the sun the sun? The arrangement of atoms 4.6 billion years ago would be different to the arrangement of atoms that reside in the sun today. Many hydrogen atoms have been fused into helium, it’s pushed out much of it’s energy into space, it’s taking on atoms given off by other stars, and one day the sun will die and it’s atoms will scatter. How does the law of identity hold true for it? The sun as it stands now is not the same as it will be 10 seconds from now, and in billions of years, the sun will not be the sun, rather the parts of the sun will gather maybe to form new stellar objects.
Why does it seem that we are imposing identity over non-static objects that are dependant on the context of observation?
facilis,
Why? If someone were to say “Reason proves the existence of the Greek gods” you would, I hope, realize that’s absurd and begging the question. Yet that’s the argument you made for God.
People frequently say “You can’t disprove God” as if that’s unique to God. The same can be said about the Greek gods, flying spaghetti monster, etc.
Either demonstrate that your God is more believable than a flying spaghetti monster or we will keep substitute them in place of God into your arguments to show how silly they are.
God’s nature is immaterial, timeless,unchanging, universal and rational. The laws of logic we use to reason are just reflections of his immaterial,unchanging,timeless and universal nature, that we follow so we can reason in his image.
If reason is merely a platonic form
Ask a platonist. Why is so much civility being afforded this sophomoric fuckwit?
Dammit, I really should stop hitting the post button so soon. The last paragraph in #651 should read:
Either demonstrate that your God is more believable than a flying spaghetti monster, greek Gods, etc. or we will keep substituting them in place of God into your arguments to show how silly they are.
And for that matter, how does the truism apply to the moon? An asteroid hit the earth and broke off enough off the earth to form the moon. So the moon is the earth, but it is not the earth. For the earth 4.5 billion years ago included part of the moon that the earth of today does not include. So when the asteroid hit the earth and broke off the moon, where does that leave the identity of either? For that matter, is the moon still the moon when it’s bombarded with meteorites, or is the earth still the earth when the same happens? In 5 billion years time when the sun explodes it will expand to encompass the earth, the earth and moon will be consumed under intense heat. Then the particles of the earth and the moon will be floating in space, gravity forming new objects in a new cycle of the solar system. The earth will be the moon will be the sun, will be the other planets.
And now my brain hurts.
Well, duh. That’s obvious – the plastic figurine of Sideshow Bob that sits next to my PC gave them to me.
Go ahead – prove that he didn’t.
Yes, you hold it but you have yet to even try to demonstrate it. You merely asserted it.
In which Kel and Ken discourse (whilst Ken warms up the blu-ray)
For at one time I was you and you were me, but that was before me and you ceased to be you and me by the rearrangement of atoms.
You say “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together”
And I say “I can’t pretend to be someone who pretends to be someone else, or so my pretend friends tell me.”
Why does it seem that we are imposing identity over non-static objects that are dependant on the context of observation?
“The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.”
We get define its identity by giving an ontology. I could robaly describe the sun as a hot hydrogen spherical object around which our planets revovle. Unless it loses one of these characteristics its identity is the same.
But of course this has nothing do with it it. The sun cannot be the sun and the moon at the same time, because they are mutually exclusive identities. That’s the law of identity.
One more time, for the Vedantists!
Pfft. What makes you think Sideshow Bob is bound by your puny ‘rules’? If he wants the sun to be the sun and the moon at the same time then it can. He can make it the sun, the moon, a cardboard cutout of Erik Estrada, the colour aquamarine and a six-wicket haul (including a hat-trick) in the second innings of a test match against England if he wants. All at the same time.
After all, he’s Sideshow Bob. He created the absolute, immaterial, invariant, universal laws of logic and reason.
What I don’t get about facilis’ argument is that he’s saying that the universe needs a logic giver but the logic giver doesn’t need a logic giver and that it’s simply part of the nature of the logic giver. Why can’t we just drop one step out of that and say that the universe doesn’t need a logic giver? It just seems we are making it unnecessarily complex by positing a logic giver.
the universe needs a logic giver but the logic giver doesn’t need a logic giver and that it’s simply part of the nature of the logic giver.
“You can’t fool me, young man! It’s turtles all the way down!”
What I don’t get about facilis’ argument – nah, that’ll take too long. I’d better go with what I do get about facilis’ argument: he’s making ludicrous, unsupported assertions and demanding we accept them.
Unfortunately (for him), that shit just – as they say – ain’t gonna fly.
Did I say turtle? Sorry, I meant Turtle.
The sun cannot be the sun and the moon at the same time, because they are mutually exclusive identities. That’s the law of identity.
This tells us fuckall about the difference between the Sun and the Moon. This kind of “law” is about as useful as FCCing astrology. I’ll tell you what would be useful. Some sort of teledildonic hyper-glove that can reach through the screen and slap some sense into the massive waste of brain cycles masquerading as Facilis every time he hits send on anything half as stupid as the shite he’s been spouting these past few days. There’d be people lining up just to operate it.
Thing is, the tripe facilis is dishing up at the moment is very different from what he’s posted in the past – before he was focused on the incontrovertible fact (in his mind at least) of the crucifixion; now he’s babbling on about the origins of logic.
Methinks he’s been hitting a few apologists’ websites for ideas and found this particularly nonsensical one – which the original author no doubt touted as ‘irrefutable’ – and dragged it back here imagining he’d render us dumbstruck and claim victory for Jesus.
I guess it sucks to be him.
Just out of curiosity, would you agree that God can only do that which is in his nature; that is, that which is logical and reasonable; that which is “perfectly rational”?
There’d be people lining up just to operate it.
lulz. First!
All facilis’ arguments remind me of the Euthyphro dilemma.
“Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?” Except replace moral with whatever parameter he’s trying to say the universe needs a god to explain.
Oh, Kel (are you sure your name isn’t Kem?), you’ll get the theobots besotted with VD to again claim that whatever is commanded by God is moral. If I were accused of yer classic biblical crimes against humanity, I’d want to pin the blame on something infinitely simple and complex that was also the basis of logic that made me do it so that I could be standing on the moral high ground, high-fiving the she-bears amongst the crushed skulls of the children who had called me ‘bald-pate,” or I would, if I were the sort of sociopath who doesn’t see anything wrong with that…
So in other words, God’s nature proves that God is not the God spoken of in the bible.
And yet the perfect application of reason shows that either God has no power at all, God knows nothing, or God is not good — or that, most parsimoniously, God is nonexistent.
Kem wrote:
No doubt facilis – should he darken our door once more – will, yet again, question whence you obtained the reason with which you infer his god’s impotence, ignorance, malevolence, or nonexistence.
I’m having an identity crisis here!
I’m having an identity crisis here!
But you can’t! There’s a law of identity! Our identities are mutally exclusive! As for Kem, I think that’s just a misspelling of “chem,” the Chinese (well, Japanese, really) fortune cookie baked into a golem as a sort of boot drive to define its identity.
Methinks he’s been hitting a few apologists’ websites for ideas and found this particularly nonsensical one – which the original author no doubt touted as ‘irrefutable’ – and dragged it back here
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of Jack Chick tracts tooling up Highway 101.
Heh, just caught up with this thread. Facilis is apparently borrowing from Clarkian presuppositionalism.
Facilis is apparently borrowing from Clarkian presuppositionalism.
You don’t suppose we can convince him to return it, or at least put it back in the freezer? It’s way past its sell-by date.
You don’t suppose he’s consumed any of that, do you?
Ew.
Phew, for a second there I thought I was caught in a paradox. Lucky it turned out to be a non sequitur.
Pfft. Pratchett is a good writer, but he doesn’t know languages. Or he creatively mangles them, who knows?
And that should be Hebrew fortune (Japanese???).
http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/feet-of-clay.html#p94
And actually, I’m a bear sent by God to tear facilis to pieces as punishment for mocking God’s Holy Logic.
@ Facilis #636:
Since it doesn’t govern your thoughts at all, it can’t be very good at it. I.e. not the sort of platonic form which is supposed to cause crystals to reliably take up the same habit every time (an old bogus idea pre-dating crystallography as a proper science).
That how was a sticking point for the Platonists too. But in your case, since you barely know any truths at all and are only certain that the falsehoods you prefer are “true”, it’s rather evident no such force is acting. So there’s nothing further to explain.
@ Facilis #647:
But, tellingly, you do so on the basis of mere assertion and no evidence whatsoever. You’re rubbish at this logic and reasoning stuff.
Again only by your evidence-free assertion. He certainly got pi wrong in the Bible (an error which applies to all the Abrahamic sub-versions of a god). So there’s testimony against that god being very numerate. The Egyptians with their gods were a bit smarter but still not right.
Then you can’t say that the sun is not the moon (#640) because you have no concept of an outside the sun for the moon to be!
Hoist with your own petard – as was inevitable given your mental, educational and moral retardation. When you simply make up any nonsense you want without regard for truth, you are bound to contradict other falsehoods you’ve previously drivelled. You’re a self-refuting fool (as well as one continually refuted by reality).
The remaining question is whether you are too stupid even to recognise you’ve shot yourself in the foot now that I’ve pointed it out (and/or are too dishonest to admit it). I expect many regular pharyngulites will see it though. They’re generally not as retarded as you.
Untrue in the first part (your ignoring of my doing it doesn’t make it unhappen or go away) and a false, non sequitur of a claim in the second part. You’ve shown no reason why reason needs to precede evidence – in reality it’s more the other way round (one can’t reason at all without something on which to reason, ie evidence)! And you’re the one who has failed to show either reason or evidence for your (false claims) about reason and evidence.
There is no fully objective standard of morality (eg human ones generally favour humans and wasp ones don’t) and, more importantly, no such standard is required anyway for the observation that you say things which even you know are untrue. That’s a simple matter of evidence and definition. If you weren’t so mentally, educationally and morally retarded you wouldn’t have tried that false argument.
Untrue because my point was both true and very relevant to the argument. It’s the why behind you being bad at it – as you’ve just demonstrated again. You start with false definitions (and premises) and you can barely think coherently / logically at all.
Oops – one of those brackets grabbed too much text! It should have read “your (false) claims about reason and evidence”.
Ad hominem – you’re argument is wrong because you are an idiot!
not Ad hominem – you’re argument is wrong for X, Y & Z. You are such an idiot!
Hope that’s clear.
Indeed. A genuine “ad hominem” has to be in lieu of an argument rather than additional, quite possibly significant, information tagged onto the argument.
Unlike with defamation though, for an ad hominem it isn’t actually relevant (in the definition of it) whether the “ad hominem” content is true or not. So, childishly, one could make an ad hominem attack of “You smell!” against either an unwashed or clean person (instead of making an argument against whatever they’d said).
Maybe sometime (either for amusement or instruction of the ignorant) there should be a truth-table for the various conditions on all these definitions. There might be some vacant slots in need of naming … (although it’s rather likely the most useful have already been named).
Maybe we need a logical fallacy flow chart.
Having given this a few more moments of thought while bird-watching, I think a case could be made that a name is needed for ad hominem flattery or vacuousness, rather than merely ad hominem attacks, made in lieu of an argument. Eg for when religious people have to resort to “I’ll pray for you” or similar.
Even if you explain that humans evolved and were able to understand these laws [of logic and reason], you still haven’t shown what the source of these laws is. – Facilis
You have not even attempted to argue that “laws” of logic, reason and mathematics require a source (I put “laws” in scare-quotes because these laws do not resemble either human legislation nor natural laws). You have simply asserted that they do, and that it is God. Your failure to provide an argument simply exposes your intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
It is, as I have already pointed out, simply false that even the laws of logic are universally agreed in all respects; attempts have been made, with disputed results, to frame formal logics that drop even the law of non-contradiction (these are called “paraconsistent logics” – some of their developers, known as dialetheists, claim that some contradictions are true). Logic, reason and mathematics have application only when there are beings capable of formulating propositions that can be true of false, accurate or inaccurate. If there is no God, then, these things did not exist until we, or other such beings, formulated them. Their source is our shared experience in reasoning, successfully and unsuccessfully.
I still think we need a dictionary link for words such as ‘bigot’ and ‘intolerant’ – it would have come in very handy during crackergate.
BTW, Facilis, I’m still waiting for a reply to my #510.
Facilis, If you are honestly seeking to knowledge and seriously want to know what a non-foundationalist (non-Platonist, non-divine command) account of logic, I am told than Quine is the guy to look up (I confess I have not read him myself, only the précises in reference books) . If you just wish, in the interests on godbotting, to assert that no such account could exist the kindly fuck off.
KnockGoats,
I doubt you’ll get an answer to any question that hasn’t already been asked by someone else on the blog/forum facilis is
plagiarisingappropriating his arguments from – someone, obviously, who is fond of (as John Morales pointed out) Clarkian presuppositionalism.Heck, he couldn’t deal with the assertion that my Sideshow Bob figurine was just as capable of being responsible for everything he attributed to his god; I seriously doubt he’s going to be able to cope with sensible questions like yours.
Either that or he’s pestering his ‘inspiration’ for a response that he can cut-and-paste on his return.
I see deluded Facilis is still trying to shoehorn his imaginary god in somewhere. Absolute logic? Sounds like woo without need for a god. Logic was devised by man, not god. God is not needed for anything, except to satisfy idiots like Facilis. Why is he having trouble with the concept, and why his he continuing to post here about it? Inquiring minds want to know.
Facilis babbled in #643:
Oh, and what laws are those EXACTLY? Go ahead, list, in exact detail, each and every one of these “absolute, invariant, universal, immaterial laws of logic and reason”. If there’s any disagreement, that’s proof that they’re not universal. If any follow from properties of matter, that’s proof they’re not immaterial. If any of them have a single exception, that’s proof they’re not absoulte or invariant. And if you leave any out, that’s proof you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. So go ahead, detail EXACTLY what these “absolute, invariant, universal, immaterial laws of logic and reason” say, or shut up about them.
Facilis babbled again, in #652:
Oh, so by this gobbledygook, your god is clearly nothing at all like the christian god, who engages in random atrocities (irrational acts), has wild mood swings (not unchanging and therefore also not timeless), and is said to have manifested physically (which makes one material). In fact, I can’t recall a single god of any religion of note that comes close to meeting your criteria.
So go ahead and define ALL the properties of your god EXACTLY. Don’t leave any room for weaseling. What does your god want, from whom, and why, what did it do, and when, and how do you know these things?
Of course, you’ll flee in terror from these questions, because if you define your “laws” and your “god” it will be easy to show that they are trivial, contradictory, or incompatible with reality. So you’ll just keep babbling and throwing around sophistic bullshit.
Kem @680: And that should be Hebrew fortune (Japanese???)
I was ignoring Sir Pterry’s derivation (Mezuzah?), having just watched a fun presentation by Jennifer 8. Lee on the origins of “Chinese” food.
Happy shredding!
Re: Clarkian presuppositionalism.
So that was the source of John Knight’s rabid philosophistry!
Re: Clarkian presuppositionalism.
So that was the source of John Knight’s rabid philosophistry!
I had a thought about facilis’ position on identity. If we take the Christian doctrine of the holy trinity, then that identity logic that facilis says God represents cannot apply. Denial of the trinity would have to follow with this line of arguing, and that throws who Jesus was and his role into question.
After all that weaselling by Facilis to be allowed to present a philosophical argument in place of evidence, the best he (she?)can come up with is “the existence of logic proves God.” What an anticlimax.
What gets me is that facilis doesn’t even bother to try to produce a logical argument to back it up.
@Redhead
Before humans evolved,did the laws of logic apply?
I’m not going to get baited by you guys. If I answer your questions about the Greek Gods and refute them you will probaly just posit another false God for me to refute and continue positing other Gods until I get frustrated/have to leave and then claim victory when I do so.
If you really are going to go down this route we should first agree that some kind of God does exist and atheism is false.
It also shows me that you guys are unable to defend atheism and have to posit a God for logic to make sense.
And I would also like to note to all those people who posit entities like Zeus,plastic Slideshow bob and FSM that these things are made of material (Sorry but spaghetti is necessarily made of material) and slideshow bob and Zeus came into existence at a point in time , much unlike the immaterial,invariant, eternal laws of logic.
@Kel
The laws of logic are a reflection of the consistent, absolute ,objective ,universal,invariant ,unchanging nature of God. What is so hard to get?
I love logical fallacy flowcharts because they prove the existence of the absolute,universal, immaterial, objective,invariant laws of logic and reason (which atheists cannot account for).
You cannot use reason or logic to deny God and his necessary attributes. Doing so would be like me and you debating the existence of air , while you are breating it all the time. Or a child climbing up on his father’s knee to slap him. It’s self-deception. Atheists are in denial when they claim o reject God and still be rational.You cannot deny air while breathing. You cannot reason while rejecting God.
Facilis, laws of logic are construct of man. What part of that are you having trouble understanding? You are quite dense today.
@SEF
So you admit platonists cannot account for the laws of logic and reason?
Please demonstrate this, and tell me how you account for universal truths within your worldview and how you can know these truths and why they necessarily apply to my argument.
The evidence is the impossibility of the contrary. Without God it would not be possible to account for anything.
Are you certain that he did not get the value of pi correct? Account for the absolute, universal ,invariant, abstract sandard of mathematical truths that you use to make this claim and explain why it necessarily applies to God.
But you just said that morality is subjective. In my subjective opinion everything I am doing is fine so I guess I’ll continue doing it.Unless of course there was some kind of objective standard you can appeal to that necessarily applies to me.
Accout for the universal standard of truth you are appealing to.
Account for the absolute, invariant, immaterial, universal standard of logic and reason you use to call it a contradiction and explain why it necessarily applies to my argument.Also account for this universal objective standard of truth you are appealing to in order to call my statements falsehoods.
Before humans evolved,did the laws of logic apply? –
Facilis
Apply to what?
the immaterial,invariant, eternal laws of logic.
We’re still waiting for you to post these. Also, I’m still waiting for a response to my #510.
@knockGoats
My argument is proven by the impossibility of the contrary. Posit a contrary and I will show you.
My argument is supported by the impossibility of the contrary as I have proven time and time again in this tread.Also account for the immaterial,invariant,objective laws of morality that you claim I am bankrupt of and explain why they necessarily apply to me.
.
Ah, now I see the problem. A fallacious statement for Facilis. God doesn’t exist, and that has to be the default position until god is proven. Start working on your logical proof, along with the physical evidence to back up your delusions.
@Wowbagger
Not exactly websites. The library.
That’s exactly what is happening now. See how no-one here is able to account for the absolute ,immaterial,invariant,eternal laws of logic!!
Also account for the immaterial,invariant,objective laws of morality by which you claim these things are morally wrong.
What I read was more from the Van Tillian school but these arguments go all the way back to Kant. I love this apprach because it literally shows how illogical atheism really is and you cannot argue with it. I mean everyone uses logic.
You seriously didn’t expect me to deal with that did you? If you won’t tell me how you account for logic and reason and resort to jokes I don’t see any point in debating you. You are just being illogical and proud of it.
@Redhead answer my question.
For example, do you know the law of non-contradiction?(google it if you don’t know).
Did this law hold before humans evolved?
Facilis, your either put up the information we ask for, like your definition of absolute logic (no claim, define it), or it’s time for you to shut up and go away. You are making an ass of yourself.
How is saying a magic sky daddy is the giver of logic any less absurd than a Sideshow Bob figurine?
The ‘laws’ of logic are just generalisations of the observed regularities of the universe. There doesn’t need to be anything outside to impose this, the universe is inherently regular (but complex).
@Matt
Without God it would not be possible to account for anything. – Facilis
We’re still waiting for you to attempt to argue this. Since science and mathematics make no mention of God, and account for a good deal, I’d be intrigued to know how you will go about it, if I didn’t know you won’t, because you can’t.
What is the point of simply repeating your empty assertions again and again, without attempting to support them? Do you really think that mere repetition is going to convince anyone?
Facilis, I am not the one who must answer questions. You are the one making the claim, and the burden is upon you to prove yourself right by showing all your definitions, then the logic to your end. You are not doing that, and until you do so you have nothing. You have proven nothing, merely made an assertion. Start proving.
It looks like I’ve pretty soundly refuted you guys
btw if anyone wants to see a simplified form of the argument you can visit this excellent site
http://proofthatgodexists.org/
Why does God just happen to be that way yet the universe requires a logic giver? You can’t have it both ways (do you like it both ways?) either the universe can just have the laws of logic as constants, or God can’t. You can’t have one and not the other, you are violating your own principles here.
You keep saying that, but how is it any different from a creationist saying that atheists can’t account for the origin of life therefore Goddidit? You are placing a God Of The Gaps, and a foolish one at that. You are violating the principles of your own argument. Pathetic little godbot with no substance to his argument.
Facilis the fallacious argument: I posit god exists, therefor god exits. End of argument.
You need much, much more than that, only starting without positing god.
What drugs are you on man, you haven’t even proved your point. just made idiotic assertions.
Logic supravenes God, since without logic there’s nothing that can be determined about God – not even that God is the author of logic. Therefore, you stand refuted Facilis(2).
Facilis needs to check into a doctor, he’s delusional!
@KnockGoats
Mathematics presupposes the existence of absolute, universal , objective, immaterial and invariant laws of mathemtics as well as the existence of absolute, universal , objective, immaterial and invariant laws of logic and reason as well as a standard of absolute truth and the uniformity of nature, none of which can be accounted for apart from God.
Science presupposes uniformity of nature ,induction as the existence of absolute, universal , objective, immaterial and invariant laws of logic and reason and a standard of absolute truth, which cannot be accountted for apart from God.
Do you think you can account forinduction and the uniformity of nature and induction?
Science has no need for god, either in logic or explanation. What a fool, Facilis the fallacious.
my evidence is the existence of logic.It shows that the atheists are deluded when they deny God and use his logic. Im just the psychiatrist trying to wake you guys up from your delusion
do you use logic? Account for the laws of logic and reason please
Facilis, you have proven nothing, merely made a false assertion. If that is your proof, you failed big time. Otherwise, show your work or shut up. You are embarrassing yourself with idiocy
You keep saying that, but you are not giving any reason to why the universe cannot just be. Asserting that the universe needs a logic giver but not God is like asserting that God is both moral and a giver of morality. You are violating your own principles in argument, and for someone who is basing their argument on logic, you are doing a hell of a job to misuse it.
y argument is supported by the impossibility of the contrary as I have proven time and time again in this tread.
That’s a bare-faced lie. You have proved nothing, because you have not even put forward an argument.
Also account for the immaterial,invariant,objective laws of morality that you claim I am bankrupt of and explain why they necessarily apply to me.
There are no such laws. That does not, of course, mean that morality is arbitrary: the standards we adopt have real-world consequences for others. Example: your dishonesty is annoying people.
See how no-one here is able to account for the absolute ,immaterial,invariant,eternal laws of logic!
You have not shown there are such laws. If you claim there are, you should surely be able to post them here for us to admire. You mentioned at one point the law of non-contradiction. As I’ve pointed out above, there are logics that do not include this law (paraconsistent logics). I have also accounted for the source of the laws of logic and reason that we use in various circumstances: our experience of reasoning both successfully and unsuccessfully. And I’m still waiting for a response to my #510.
Facilis, any stupid little turd can go on and on making the same ridiculous assertions, refusing to back them up with argument or even elucidate them, and ignoring points made against them and questions about them, as you have. You’re not impressing anyone but yourself.
Science presupposes uniformity of nature,
induction as the existence of absolute, universal , objective, immaterial and invariant laws of logic and reason and a standard of absolute truth, which cannot be accountted for apart from God.
No, science observes a regular universe and uses mathematics, which is a language for describing patterns and regularities, to generalise observations. This doesn’t require a god, or gods, that’s a complete non-sequitur.
@Redhead
Account for the universal, objective, invariant ,immaterial laws of logic by which you call my arguments fallacious
@Kel
If you wsh to posit that logic and reason are just constants of the universe, I can argue against it if that is what you believe about logic. But that’s only if it is what you believe.
I think facilis has watched Beetlejuice too many times. It seems he’s under the impression that if he makes the same assertion often enough that it will come true.
Facilis, you haven’t defined your terms, but it is not up to me to disprove you, but up to you to prove your assertions. Since you haven’t sufficiently defined your terms, you aren’t even up to step one
Facilis, you demonstrating your logic starts with defining your terms and postulates. So far, nothing. Then you argue to demonstrate the conclusions. So far nothing. All we have seen is your conclusions. You need to get with the program or go away.
@KnockGoats
In response to 510. “Contingent” means things that could not have been or could have been different.
The ‘laws’ of logic are abstractions. They don’t ‘exist’ in reality, only when they are instantiated in the language processing of human brains. Patterns of regular behaviour of matter exist, it’s what matter does. Those patterns can be generalised to abstract rules of logic e.g. this tree is this tree == law of identity, a rock is not a tree == law of non-contradiction. Once people worked out rules for making patterns they could generalise them and devise the language of mathematics to describe, based on arbitrary axioms, lots of arbitrary patterns. Some of those patterns turn out to be useful for describing the patterns of behaviour of matter.
None of this requires a god to accomplish.
The reason why Dawkins called his book The God Delusion is because the goddists are deluded.
That’s a belief? It seems nothing more than a parsimonious conclusion from the argument you presented. You are violating your own principles, you are making logical fallacy after logical fallacy, your position is circular and you are special pleading for the conclusions you come to. Quite simply you are offering nothing at all to even suggest I should take your deity any more seriously than Wowbagger’s Sideshow Bob Figurine. In fact, I’d be more inclined to take Wowbagger’s suggestion on reality as he can show the figurine exists.
It does not matter what I believe, and it’s odd that it’s only now after hundreds of posts that you’ve even bothered to ask. And you haven’t really asked, have you? You’ve put an ultimatum on me that either you are challenging my real beliefs or you won’t bother to provide a rationale for your own assertion. Could it simply be that I simply do not know or pretend to know answers for questions that are beyond the scope of our own reality, and that playing philosophical mindgames to maintain that certainty is mental masturbation.
So what do I believe? That humans have a limited capacity for understanding. That anyone who says they have insight into what is beyond that understanding is deluding themselves. That to play with mental constructs and then impose them on reality is misrepresenting both reality and the nature of philosophy. And that you are full of shit in your baseless assertions! So what do I believe? I believe you shouldn’t waste your time trying to prove the existence of a God that for the most part has been part of the mental mindfuck that is the holy trinity by saying that the universe represents the logic that is born with God.
What are you, some kind of Monty Python parody of theism? First with the Banana Sketch and now with The Black Knight?
Good. Then I should be able to lie as much as I want(if I wanted to)
I provided the examples of the law of non-contradiction and the law of identity.
Do you use paraconsistent logic to reason?
Can paraconsistent logics both include and exclude the law of non-contradiction? If no ,why not.
When we reasoned successful and unsuccessfully , by which absolute standard of logic and reason were we able to tell we were correct and incorrect? By what absolute standard of truth were we able to tell if we were correct? Before humans evolved, could the a dinosaur be green and not green at the same time and in the same place(law of non-contradiction)?Why or why not?
Facilis, still no formal argument. Repeating yourself is a sign of delusion. You have nothing but a circular argument: I posit god exits, therefore he exists. So I can posit god exist. Therefor…..We don’t have to prove you wrong, but you have to prove yourself right. Absolute failure to date, since we must take your word that the postulates, definitions, and logic is there. Show your work or go away.
Before humans evolved,did the laws of logic apply? –
Facilis
Apply to what?
the immaterial,invariant, eternal laws of logic.
We’re still waiting for you to post these. Also, I’m still waiting for a response to my #510.
Yes the lack of completely universal, Platonic laws of morality does indeed imply that there is no morality… to someone with very limited intelligence and imagination.
Here’s a little analogy for you – language. A language (say English) doesn’t have universal laws from above. It only has the partial rules cobbled together over centuries of people trying to communicate. This is what keeps academic linguists in business.
And yet “The cat sat on the mat” is still a grammatical sentence in English while “Sat mat cat the on” and “iugsbjku %%%%6 huhj hjjuij k” aren’t.
If these where in fact ultimately empirical (as Quine would have it) , if they where “mere” observations about what seems to be true about the relationships of things in the universe that happen to have been good observations (and upon the acceptance of which we have built most other parts of our understanding), if all this were the case how would the universe seem different to us?
Facilis@717,
I followed your link – I’ve actually seen this sophistical rubbish before. There are numerous errors, but I’ll mention only one. I followed the path I was evidently meant to follow, despite the fact that most of the choices presented were false dichotomies, and cam to the penultimate page. Here I encountered the following statement:
“Only in a universe governed by God can universal, immaterial, unchanging laws exist.”
This was just baldly asserted. No attempt was made to argue for it. It is, in fact, rather obviously false. There is nothing logically difficult about the conception of a universe consisting only of mathematical objects – say, all those the existence of which follows from a certain set of axioms and rules of inference. No God. There would be regularities in the relationships between these objects that would be universal, immaterial and unchanging – although of course there would be nothing and no-one there to notice them.
You have made the absurd claim that the proof of the statement above lies in the contradictions that follow from any alternative. Alternatives have been offered, and you have not shown the contradictions. However, let us suppose you had. You would still not have moved any way at all towards a proof, because doing so requires that you show that all possible alternatives imply contradictions.
Now present an argument with some real content, or a clarification of your claims, or a response to some of the questions you’ve been asked, or else piss off.
me @743: where->were
Nerd, I don’t actually buy this. It’s sensitive to the definition of “God” admittedly but I think it’s possible to imagine hypothetical universes which
1)based on what we’ve seen so far look like this one
2) contain something that we would reasonably say was “God” (say, it is enough like what people mean when they say “God” that, while they are wrong about the details, it is clear that out of all the things in the universe they mean that one)
3) This god can be detected by science.
For example, imagine we found a big tyrant monster living in space with a planet factory, the blue-prints for Earth and a diary explaining how he messed us about with a snake and an apple, and then got bored, fucked off and faked up a load of shit to make it look like the world didn’thave a creator. I’d say that spacedick was God.
Facilis,
Sorry it was my #511 not #510. Now, as I asked there, why do contingent things require causes, and why is God not a contingent thing?
Do you use paraconsistent logic to reason? Can paraconsistent logics both include and exclude the law of non-contradiction? If no ,why not.
I don’t use them as far as I’m aware – but logicians do. You can learn about them simply by googling “paraconsistent logics” – don’t expect me to do your research for you. The point of mentioning them is simply to demonsrtate that the law of noncontradiction is not as universal and unquestionable as you evidently believed.
When we reasoned successful and unsuccessfully , by which absolute standard of logic and reason were we able to tell we were correct and incorrect?
Not “correct” and “incorrect” but “successful” and “unsuccessful”. Those modes of reasoning that led people to conclusions that they perceived to be wrong were dropped (at least by the people who formulated laws of logic and reasoning – not by fuckwits like you).
Before humans evolved, could the a dinosaur be green and not green at the same time and in the same place(law of non-contradiction)?Why or why not?
You don’t even understand the law of non-contradiction, do you? It states that a proposition cannot be both true and false. Within a logic taking the law of non-contradiction as an axiom, or in which it can be validly derived, the statement:
“Dinosaur d was green at time t”
cannot be both true and false. Whether time t happens to be now or before humans evolved is immaterial.
It’s worth asking where Facilis’ approach would lead, if we let it. Since he has no argument for the existence of God, and indeed his ideology does not allow him to argue except on the basis that his interlocutors accept the existence of God in advance, but since people in general (and by no means just atheists) will not accept this sort of nonsense voluntarily, it ends in heresy trials, torture, and burning people alive.
Matt, I’m not saying science might not acknowledge god or an alien creator if they tripped over it. But science, as an endeavor, is not going to go and deliberately look for god, which is job of theologians. An astronomer asking NSF for money so he can buy time on the Hubble Space Telescope, would get laughed at and rejected they were going to look for god. Even if funded by say the Templeton group, they most likely wouldn’t get time on the scope since they would be lowest priority compared to all the other scientists doing real science.
Danny seems to think because he believes in god, it is up to science to show evidence for his god. That is simply the wrong idea. It is up to him to find the evidence.
@ Facilis #702:
+ #718:
No, it just shows us (again and again) how dishonest you are. When someone is as dishonest as you are they can have superpowers or have done anything they want in their imagination. It doesn’t mean they’ve really got or done what they claim.
Nerd, I know. I’m developing a slightly annoying habit of arguing over details with people with whom I basically agree. The thing is, those sorts of discussions are actually able to move understanding on slightly. Arguing big stuff is repetitve (most ideas about the big stuff have been had) and arguing details with people with whom you disagree about every detail is very time consuming.
Matt, we have too many annoying posters like Facilis and Danny who can’t seem to get the point. Personally, I sometimes take a black/white position with them that I wouldn’t with the regulars, who understand shades of gray. So I may have overstated the case a little with Danny, and I sometimes get called out on it. But, you had a valid point, and I attempted to address it. As you say, I think we are in close agreement.
Facilis,
Drinking game! Every time facilis types this or some variation of it take a shot!
Again, you keep asserting this but you haven’t shown it. Repeating it over and over is not proof.
The spaghetti of the FSM is immaterial. This is the theological principle known as transpaghettiation. Also, how did the Romans manage to nail an immaterial being to a cross?
Oh and it’s Sideshow Bob. Don’t you know your Simpsons?!
Well save time and show that ALL beings that can be postulated to be immaterial, invisible etc. are false except the Judeo-Christian God. Bet you can’t do it.
You already defended the murder of 42 children for making fun of a guy for being bald. Quite frankly, lying would be a step up.
Facilis the fallacious whined @ #731:
What “universal, objective, invariant ,immaterial laws of logic”? YOU are the one who keeps babbling about such things. But you don’t dare list the laws in question. Nor do you dare define the properties of your god. Because you know if you give up your precious weasel room and actually define your terms, even YOU will be forced to admit that your arguments are a worthless steaming pile of unsupported circular bullshit.
I predicted this in #695, that you would not dare define your terms and would simply keep blathering sophistic bullshit. You’ve proved me right, and soundly refuted yourself. It’s not just a flesh would, you’ve lost all your limbs and you just won’t admit it. Your threat to bite all our legs off is just laughable.
facilis @#542:
In addition to my refutation of this nonsense being God speaking @#578, I will show exactly how wrong this is in other ways.
First of all, Paul of Tarsus speaks of “the wisdom of the world”. The original Greek is “σοφιαν του κοσμου”; sophian tou kosmou. The wisdom of the kosmos.
What does “kosmos” mean in Greek? It doesn’t just mean “this world”; Paul could have said “aion”. “Kosmos” means order. The world considered as an orderly and rational place. And do I really need to point out that “sophian” is a grammatical form of sophos, the root of philosophy?
1 Corinth 1:21-23 :For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness
Look at the first part of 1:21 : the world by wisdom knew not God, “ουκ εγνω ο κοσμος δια της σοφιας τον θεον”; ouk egnō o kosmos dia tēs sophias ton theon. You claim this means ‘secularist reason” that refuses to acknowlege God as the source of rationality’
Little problem for you, ignoranimus. The world at the time that Paul was speaking was not secularist. In fact, it met exactly the criterion that you demand! The Greek schools of philosophy, with their sources in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, did indeed teach, via different forms of the cosmological argument that God did indeed exist, and would even have agreed with God being the source of all rationality!
Oops.
So, what the hell did Paul mean when he said that “the world by wisdom knew not God”, given that the Greek philosophers had indeed used wisdom to reason about their orderly world, and inferred that God existed and was orderly and rational?
Paul meant the bloody obvious: Since the Greeks with their wisdom had not found God in a human who incarnated himself and was killed, his God, who was incarnated and killed, was not the God of order and reason that the Greeks had found.
Paul’s God hated the Jews, despite having come from the Jews, and hated the Greeks, with their God of wisdom and reason and rationality. Paul’s God did stupid things for no reason other than to harm those who sought order and reason through wisdom; Paul’s God did things that Jews found blasphemous for no other reason than to harm the Jews.
Paul’s God — your God — was malevolent and insane.
QED
@kel
The problems with logic being in the “nature of the universe” are very much the same hat I pointed out with platonism earlier. Plus the universe by its nature is material and changes.
Facilis you are no longer even mildly amusing.
No the problem is that you view logic as something beyond a human construct in order to understand the universe, and the problem with your argument is that you are saying the universe requires something that God does not. Your entire argument is just absurd, made even more so that you are a Christian. If you were a Hindu then I’d see it being at least consistent, though I still say Sideshow Bob is a better explanation because Wowbagger can show that the figurine exists.
Oh,Patricia! When was he ever amusing?
If it’s material and changes, then why does it need the laws to begin with?
Facilis’ argument in a nutshell: “Logic exists therefore Jesus rose on the 3rd day and if you don’t believe that you will spend an eternity in torture. It sounds illogical, but it only sounds that way because logic exists.”
His stupidity amused me in the beginning…but then twirling and ginger ale amuse me too. *wicked smirk*
I did put forth my argument many times before but let me quote it here again for you-
“Humans reason. In order to reason they use laws of logic. These laws of logic and reason are universal (apply to everyone), objective (not dependent on human opinion or conventions), immaterial (not made of matter) and invariant( do not change). God is universal,objective,immaterial and invariant and he is the necessary pre-condition for these laws of logic and reason to exist. This is proven by the impossibility of the contrary. Try to account for the laws of logic apart from God and I will show you.”
Later in the thread for examples I used the law of identity and the law of non-ontradictions as examples of these laws of logic
denying logic and reason is a sign of delusion
by what standard of logic do you call my argument circular? any why are circular arguments not allowed in your worldview?
You have proven me right by your inability to account for the laws of logic apart from God.
Let me summarise what happened in this thread.
SEF-suggested platonism. However I have shown this to be wrong.
knockGoats suggested that humans invented logic. However he also believes that logic existed 65 million years ago during the time of dinosaurs( and before humans). So knockGoats refutes himself
Matt Heath-suggested that logic was an empirical proposition. This has to do more with its epistemic status than what metaphysically underpins the laws of logic and makes them hold true.However it begs the question of how he knows that the reasoning he used to form that proposition and the empirical data he used is accurate.
I have shown that people here are unable to account for the laws of logic. Thus my argument stands and I have shown atheism is illogical.
Well, ginger ale tastes good. And twirling can burn off the calories from drinking the ale. As well as providing a pleasant dizzy feeling. Dancing till my feet don’t touch the ground. I lose my mind and dance forever.
I did put forth my argument many times before but let me quote it here again for you-
“Humans reason. In order to reason they use laws of logic. These laws of logic and reason are universal (apply to everyone), objective (not dependent on human opinion or conventions), immaterial (not made of matter) and invariant( do not change). God is universal,objective,immaterial and invariant and he is the necessary pre-condition for these laws of logic and reason to exist. This is proven by the impossibility of the contrary. Try to account for the laws of logic apart from God and I will show you.”
Later in the thread for examples I used the law of identity and the law of non-ontradictions as examples of these laws of logic
denying logic and reason is a sign of delusion
by what standard of logic do you call my argument circular? any why are circular arguments not allowed in your worldview?
You have proven me right by your inability to account for the laws of logic apart from God.
Let me summarise what happened in this thread.
-suggested platonism. However I have shown this to be wrong.
suggested that humans invented logic. However he also believes that logic existed 65 million years ago during the time of dinosaurs( and before humans). So knockGoats refutes himself
-suggested that logic was an empirical proposition. This has to do more with its epistemic status than what metaphysically underpins the laws of logic and makes them hold true.However it begs the question of how he knows that the reasoning he used to form that proposition and the empirical data he used is accurate.
I have shown that people here are unable to account for the laws of logic. Thus my argument stands and I have shown atheism is illogical.
For those who didn’t get the reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
Facilis, your fallacy starts with trying to describe logic and then shoehorn god into it using similar language. You are presuming god. That makes it a fallacious argument. You can’t presume god to prove god. God shouldn’t exist or come into the argument until all other options have been explored and none have. And a natural explanation will fall out of the explorations, so no god need be invoked. Massive failure of argument at that point. Nothing further is of interest. Go back to school and learn how to put philosophical/mathematical arguments together.
You have proven me right by your inability to account for the laws of logic apart from God.
You know, you can replace the word logic with any noun and it remain just as correct.
You have proven me right by your inability to account for the laws of logic apart from Russell’s Teapot.
Therefore god/Russell’s Teapot.
suggested that humans invented logic. However he also believes that logic existed 65 million years ago during the time of dinosaurs( and before humans). So knockGoats refutes himself
I have to concede to Patricia. Now that’s comedy.
Emmet, are you going to get icky again? You’re so naughty.
Janine, watch your pretty dancing slippers! Emmet might drop something disgusting on the floor.
But you have not shown anything. You have merely repeated it.
And you have ignored arguments that demonstrate that even if it is conceded that “God” … “is universal,objective,immaterial and invariant and he is the necessary pre-condition for these laws of logic and reason to exist”, it cannot be the case that “God” is a person, because logical and rational people communicate clearly and directly, and God does not. You have ignored arguments that Christianity was founded as conceiving of a God that was directly opposed to logic and reason.
Thus, your own arguments do not stand to reason.
QED
No, I didn’t. You’re lying again. I pointed out that the Platonic stuff about which [u]you[/u] were already talking (with someone else?) had long been known to be rubbish (at least, long known to the well-educated, anyway).
How odd. I accidentally managed to flip between HTML and BBcode within the space of one short post!
Your “refutation” was this:
Yet we can reword this:
1)If reason is merely divine, how can it govern our minds and thoughts?
2)How can this divinity communicate to us so we can be certain of these truths?
Which just gets us back where we started: Your refusal or inability to demonstrate that reason is in fact from God.
facilis,
This is simply an argument from ignorance. Let’s just say for the sake of argument we can’t explain where the laws of logic comes from without God. That still doesn’t mean it cannot be explained without God.
Also, your argument is basically: “magic man done it”. Again, how is this more valid than “the Greek gods done it”?
facilis’
dodgeattempt at a response to my claim that his ‘blah, laws of logic, blah blah’ babbling is just as able to have come from my Sideshow Bob figurine as his imaginary god:I’m growing fat on the delicious irony, facilis.
And it’s far less of a joke than you are; I’ll admit it’s facetious, but that doesn’t allow you to dismiss it out of hand.
Two problems with this: a) why does the materiality of the being prevent it from acting on immaterial things, and b) why is Zeus any more ‘made of material’ than Yahweh?
So, try again. Exactly why is my claim that the Sideshow Bob figurine (or Zeus, or the FSM) is responsible for logic and reason any more illogical than your god being responsible? Until you can explain (actually explain, not just write ‘because I say so’) why you are allowed to make the claim and we’re not then, well, you lose.
The first one who mentioned platonism was Ken Cope, as any fool can see by searching this web page itself for the word “Platonism”. This is not only not rocket science, this is as simple as typing a few characters.
And facilis still misattributed the line about platonism to Kel (at first), and to SEF (later).
Facilis, if you can’t be bothered to read the words in front of you, or learn how to use web browser, you really cannot be trusted to reason about reason.
Facilis the Incompetent Bullshitter ejaculated:
The idea that a supernatural entity is a precondition for the existence of modus ponens ranks amongst the most vacuous and stupid gobbledegook that I’ve ever heard articulated by a primate with opposable thumbs.
Oook!
For those lacking fluency in Orangutan, He said “I entirely agree!”
I think the evidence that God is the opposite of reasonable is in Genesis itself, where we see that God creates light before creating the sun, and in the second chapter, does it all over again, but in a different order.
Now that was a Gnostic fire drill…
Oh, and there’s the small matter that I get the blame for every little thing that goes wrong. That isn’t reasonable, now is it?
However he also believes that logic existed 65 million years ago during the time of dinosaurs( and before humans). So knockGoats refutes himself Facilis
Look, fuckwit, try and grasp at least one point. You have to distinguish between the time a statement is made, and the time it refers to. If you make a statement now, it is assessed according to the logic that has been developed from human experience of reasoning, whether that statement is about now, about the future, or about the past – even the past before there was anyone to make statements. That’s really not too difficult, now is it? Similarly, you make it in a language that human beings have developed. To be consistent, you ought to be claiming that we can’t say anything about dinosaurs at all, because the languages we use didn’t exist at the time the dinosaurs did.
Sorry, I missed this steaming heap of bunny beans:
Equally valid. Equally obscurantist. Equally absurd.
There is no categorical difference between supernatural entities held to exist, since they cannot be differentiated by empirical means, only by make-believe properties; any such property, which can be ascribed to one supernatural entity — including the obscurantist and vacuous nonsense of having the universe be contingent upon it — can freely be ascribed to any other, since there is no grounding in reality.
It is if I say it is…
Maybe facilis is having an identity crisis too…
It couldn’t be any more disgusting than the intellectual santorum dribbling from Facilis’s tumescent frontal lobe.
Heh.
Are you sure you don’t mean “rotten Easter bunny eggs”?
Emmet Caulfield wrote:
You might be giving facilis a little too much credit there – it’s quite easy to cut and paste blocks of text without the need for thumbs.
Anyway, would is it even possible to say that ‘logic’, as such, actually doesn’t exist, other than as an abstract construct for describing or explaining how something works? Much like mathematics?
It’s not like gravity, that exists because of something (and which there can be an absence of) – it’s just the name we’ve given to how we demonstrate or analyse how something works.
To go back to the mathematics analogy: just because we call something ‘geometry’ doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before we thought of a name for it; the sum of all the degrees in triangle* will still be 180o whether we look at it or not. It doesn’t make any difference to geometry.
I’m just getting tired of facilis’ nonsensical argument, which I know is wrong but am not capable of explaining (to my own satisfaction) exactly why.
*No doubt there’s some exception to this in a branch of wacky mathematics I know nothing about; if there’s someone reading this who just has to be pedantic about it, knock yourself out.
what an utterly stupid argument this is… though hilariously enough facilis is right that “logic” and “god” are similar and related.
after all, they are both concepts that have started with concrete observations, have been incorporated into language (i.e. became symbolic rather than object-based), and have from there developed into the abstract:
everyone can see that spheres are never cubes, and cubes are never spheres –> something cannot have two contradicting traits –> Aristotle’s law of noncontradiction
when people get angry with me, they sometimes break my stuff out of spite –> a lightningbolt from heaven destroyed my house, so heaven must be angry with me –> God is real and he punishes you for disobedience!!!!!!
neither is supernatural and neither is physically real because both are mental constructs derived from real-life observations. it just so happens that “logic” is a far more sturdy and useful concept than “god” (though I wonder what shroedingers cat has to say about the law of noncontradiction :-p)
That’s religious nutters through and through: lightning-rod-less, having no grounding in reality. Liable to explode (with the shattering of strained excuses) or burst into flames at any time, damaging anything they touch.
This is probably the dumbest comment that facilis has said on here, and if one replaced the word logic with morality it would almost be a carbon copy of the same argument that John Knight made a few months ago. Basically it’s that same top-down approach where the solution is that Jesus died for our sins in order to give us eternal life.
Spheres aren’t particularly wacky and I’m sure you know something of them really, even if they didn’t immediately come to mind. You live on a world approximating to one, after all. Its spherical triangles (formed from “lines” which are actually arcs of great circles) have angles summing to amounts greater than 180°.
Having recently reread Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, I immediately thought of Vimes’ threat of torture:
Well, I know of spheres; their mathematical qualities, however, are a mystery – and will probably remain so. To cope with coming to this site as often as I do I’m having to learn more biology, philosophy and logic than I ever anticipated I would need.
[pedant]Only in plane geometry do the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. Any geometry where Euclids fifth postulate doesn’t hold, like the spherical example by SEF, the angles will not add up to 180 degrees except for very small triangles. There is also hyperbolic geometry, where the angles don’t add up to 180 degrees.[/pedant]
But how could that apply unless Jesus died on the cross so that the degrees in a triangle could change? ;)
Aw, don’t abandon maths from your self-improvement curriculum so easily. There’s even an obligatory spherical triangle bear-hunt joke/puzzle, which I was sure I’d find on the internet somewhere (though it long precedes it). Unfortunately, Google only seems to be finding me rather bad examples of it at the moment.
OK, consider a line from the North Pole to the Equator along the Prime Meridian. Now project a line at right angles at both ends eastward. The two projected lines will meet in a right angle on the equator at a longitude of 90° — you’ve just formed a triangle with three right-angles, which sum to 270°.
Gah. I did ask for it, didn’t I?
Can we go back to discussing the thing my lackluster knowledge of geometry was attempting to serve as a metaphor for? That logic exists whether or not we have a construct for communicating it?
The basic components certainly existed before and without humans. It’s just the formalisation of things invented by humans which couldn’t exist beforehand.
Electrons can enact a simple component of logic without having any apparent intelligence at all. Eg if spin is the same as that of another electron then they can’t occupy the same energy level in an atom together (an example of the Pauli Exclusion Principle). They don’t have to be able to consciously do logic in order to compare quantum number states and reach a conclusion. It comes naturally.
On a somewhat larger scale (and arising later), individual sponge cells can distinguish “same” from “other” and follow logical rules accordingly.
Yup.
It’s pretty much the same as the old koan, “If a tree falls in the forest, but nobody is there, does it make a sound?”. It is resolved by being precise about definitions. If “sound” is defined as pressure waves in air, then yes, it makes a sound; if “sound” is defined as the sensory experience of hearing, there is no such sound. Similarly, taking modus ponens as representative, if you define it as a proof-theoretical syntactic operation, then, no, it didn’t exist when dinosaurs roamed the earth, because there was nobody around to devise the notions of alphabets, well-formed formulae, sentences, and rules of inference. On the other hand, if you define it as the inferential principle that it represents, then it existed and was correct in the Cretaceous. To deny this is to maintain that adding a rock to a pile of three rocks has only made a pile of four rocks since people invented arithmetic.
Okay, so I’m on the right track with saying that we didn’t ‘invent’ logic; it’s just the name we use for describing what, for want of a better term, ‘is’. Like maths or science.
And yet facilis isn’t arguing that sponges should acknowledge the existence of his god to justify their ‘rules’; they do just fine without deities altogether, as far as we know.
If only facilis was that wise…
facilis as wise as a sponge? hmmm, he’s no Sideshow Bob figurine…
Posted by: Kel | January 11, 2009 7:33 PM
facilis as wise as a sponge? hmmm, he’s no Sideshow Bob figurine…
Why not? He keeps metaphorically stepping on rakes, thus hitting himself in the face with the handles.
Ah, but can he sing all the numbers from HMS Pinafore? That’s the real challenge.
How about a SpongeBob SquarePants? (NB I don’t really know much about that fictional character other than that he’s ugly and many children are obsessed with him.)
Can facilis beat this equivocation? “Attempted murder, now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?”
Kel, are you saying that Facilis is guilty of attempted logic?
lol, attempted is such a strong word.
Emmet…hummm. Facilis IS pretty frightful. But that duck snot plays havoc on a girls slippers.
Tis Himself – I’ve never read that story. I simply love ginger ale. Just curious, did you choose your moniker from ‘The Quiet Man’?
Sideshow Bob to facilis:
‘You want the truth! You can’t handle the truth! No truth handler you! Bah! I deride your truth handling abilities!’
An interview with Antony Flew:
HABERMAS: Tony, you recently told me that you have come to believe in the existence of God. Would you comment on that?
FLEW: Well, I don’t believe in the God of any revelatory system, although I am open to that. But it seems to me that the case for an Aristotelian God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence, is now much stronger than it ever was before. And it was from Aristotle that Aquinas drew the materials for producing his five ways of, hopefully, proving the existence of his God. Aquinas took them, reasonably enough, to prove, if they proved anything, the existence of the God of the Christian revelation. But Aristotle himself never produced a definition of the word “God,” which is a curious fact. But this concept still led to the basic outline of the five ways. It seems to me, that from the existence of Aristotle’s God, you can’t infer anything about human behaviour. So what Aristotle had to say about justice (justice, of course, as conceived by the Founding Fathers of the American republic as opposed to the “social” justice of John Rawls (9)) was very much a human idea, and he thought that this idea of justice was what ought to govern the behaviour of individual human beings in their relations with others.
HABERMAS: Once you mentioned to me that your view might be called Deism. Do you think that would be a fair designation?
FLEW: Yes, absolutely right. What Deists, such as the Mr. Jefferson who drafted the American Declaration of Independence, believed was that, while reason, mainly in the form of arguments to design, assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that God and individual human beings.
HABERMAS: Then, would you comment on your “openness” to the notion of theistic revelation?
FLEW: Yes. I am open to it, but not enthusiastic about potential revelation from God. On the positive side, for example, I am very much impressed with physicist Gerald Schroeder’s comments on Genesis 1. (10) That this biblical account might be scientifically accurate raises the possibility that it is revelation.
Antony Flew has been described as one of the most prominent atheist philosophers of the 20 th century, at one time.
Danny, found your evidence for your imaginary god yet? Don’t count on science look for figments of peoples imagination. Not our job, never will be. Talk to theologians. Oh, don’t pollute our nice site with cut/past crap like you just did. Put out your words or no words.
Don’t appeal to authority there danny m
You really don’t want to bring up what Varghese did to Flew do you?
A man in his 80’s minupulated into believing there’s evidence for god.
Nice. Classy.
Danny M,
Our Bearded Overlord (or gracious host, whichever you prefer) wrote about this back in ’07. Go have a read for the full story.
Oh, and even if what’s written about him is true, so what? Atheism isn’t dependent in any way on individuals. Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris – none of whom had anything to do with my own personal resistance to the minimal allure of dogma – could all convert to Latvian Orthdox tomorrow and it would diminish my own lack of belief not one iota.
Of course Atheism isn’t dependent in any way on individuals, what the hell kinda response was that.
danny m,
Anthony Flew : “I think we need here a fundamental distinction between the God of Aristotle or Spinoza and the Gods of the Christian and the Islamic Revelations.”
So Anthony Flew does NOT believe in the Christian God. That does, in itself, mean the Christian God doesn’t exist? No. If you have reasons show them, don’t just appeal to authority.
Danny, if you want to get our attention, present some physical evidence in support for your imaginary god that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine origin. Anything less than that will be ignored. We have seen all the arguments before, and they fall short. Just like your attempt from authority.
danny m,
It’s an appropriate response to quoting someone who used to be a prominent atheist turned deist. What was your point in doing that?
If a quote is appropriate please provide it. However, if in a discussion on the existence of God I quote you Dan Silverman,
then that doesn’t prove anything. Individuals changing their minds prove nothing. However, if you want to quote the reasons they changed their mind please do so.
There has been plenty of ‘arguments’ and ‘evidence gathering’, but you just do not accept them. If I bring anything up all you people do is scoff at them. You want me to find evidence and not depend on scientist to find it for me, hell, you people didn’t find anything, you are just depending on certain scientist and rejecting others!
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5319
http://www.leestrobel.com/index.html
http://www.biblestudymanuals.net/k02.htm#IIA2b
Ok, so you do not accept any of these following scientist. I’ll find out more about some of these people and let you refute them. Because I’m going to find out if you are just mockers or what, cause you really sound like you are just mockers.
Danny M wrote:
What you need to do is make a point of some sort to go with your cut-and-paste. Otherwise it’s just an appeal to authority. All of us are capable of finding quotes for or against our positions; what we want to hear from you are your thoughts.
By following scientist I mean ‘dissent from darwin’.
I understand the cut and paste and give my thoughts on it issue. It makes sense.
Why would we listen to any scientist who rejects evolution? It’s like asking us to listen to scientists who believe the earth is flat or that stars are the camp-fires of the gods. Do you not realise just how well-supported evolutionary theory is?
Once again I want to thank you for respectably talking with me. That’s really all I got right now. I’ll be back with something else at another time. There is some things that I want to find first before I post it as hearsay. And no more cut and paste without giving my thoughts on it.
I’m tired I just drove back from Monroe seeing my uncle get married.
Take it easy.
danny m,
Again, if you provide irrefutable proof I would change my mind and I’m sure most here would too. However, I have yet to see any from you or any other theist.
We don’t care what certain people say, we care about their reasons.
danny, none of your links show any science. at all. it’s all just cheap talk: no experiments, not hypotheses to be tested/falsified, nothing but opinion
we don’t deal in opinions here. when you have original research for us to look at, maybe we’ll listen
Every one of today’s evolutionary scientists ‘dissent from Darwin’; they have to – his original theory is 150 years old and couldn’t even come close to explaining everything. Do yourself a favour and stop sucking up to the lying, nonsensical, creationist dogma that considers Darwin to be the scientific equivalent of Jesus. It’s ridiculous, untrue and using it makes you sound like a fool
Contemporary evolutionary science is called modern synthesis and, while it includes much of what Darwin discovered and popularised, there’s a whole lot more to it than that.
Danny, we have been over the evolution/ID debate already. Evolution wins big time among profession scientists. So don’t rehash it with the same results as before. Opinions of other people will get you nowhere. You want us to doubt evolution, then get the physical evidence published into the primary scientific literature. That is journals like Science, Nature, Cell, etc. That is the only information that will change our minds. Not the religious stuff you linked to above. Religion cannot refute science any more than science can refute religion. So stop going down that path. Your problem is that science makes religion look silly. That isn’t science’s problem, but rather religion’s. They need to adjust their interpretations to fit with the facts, or get used to being laughed at.
Just put it this way:
We have seen distant galaxies that are 13 billion light years away. We have seen stars that are over 10 billion years old. Where the sun fits on the main sequence gives us an accurate gauge of it’s lifecycle and we can age it using dating techniques that show it to be 4.6 billion years old. We also see meteorites and rocks from the moon age to that timeframe as that was when the solar system formed. On earth we see rocks that age to over 4 billion years old too, the oldest material found being 4.404 billion years old.
We see a gradual progression in the fossil record, from traces of microbial life 3.5 billion years ago, to complex life about 700 million years ago, to the rapid onset of life 530 million years ago. We see fish crawl out onto land 375 million years ago, we see the first mammal-like creatures around 225 million years ago, and large mammals appear about 50 million years ago. We see the dinosaurs come and go, the majority wiped out by a meteorite but with some escaping to the trees and air.
We see in the genetic code many similarities, we see the same morphological variation echoed in the genetic code, so many markers that can only be explained by common ancestry. But most of all, we see mutation and natural selection over and over both in the lab and in nature. If you are going to base a belief on god contrary to the notion of an old universe and old world where we are one of billions of life forms to have existed all from the same process, then whatever god you are positing is wrong. It’s that simple, if you reject the old universe and evolved life, then your god is inadequate to explain what we observe in the universe.
Danny, here is a taste of the type of evidence we would require.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/chemical_replicators.php#more
At the bottom of PZ’s extended summary, notice that it was published in Science, a peer reviewed scientific journal. Any physical evidence against evolution would have to follow the same process, get published in peer reviewed journals.
Leave anything less than this level of evidence out of your arguments. It will be ignored as non-scientific.
Here’s one I prepared earlier
Emmet@800,
Well put. I think that’s pretty much equivalent to the distinction I made between the time a statement is made and the time it refers to, but seen from a very different angle. Part of Facilis’ problem (apart from a toxic combination of arrogance and stupidity seldom seen outside George W. Bush) is a complete failure to distinguish between logical or linguistic expressions on the one hand, and what they refer to on the other. In any case, he’s obviously going for “Troll of the Year, 2009”, and is well ahead so far. Keep it up Facilis – even if you don’t win the overall award – and some of our old favourites are bound to be competing – you’re a very strong contender in the “Stupidest troll” section, and even stronger in the “Most annoyingly repetitive troll” category!
Thus spake KnockGoats:
Indeed (with the minor caveat that I would add “dishonesty” in your parentheses). It actually takes considerable sophistication and effort not to confuse levels of abstraction and not to confuse syntax and semantics. Perhaps our brains are really rather good at fuzziness and bad at clarity. From the typical theist and Creationist performances here, it seems that it’s much easier to parrot woolly-brained inanities than it is to grok the scientific method.
-Humans invented Linnaean taxonomy
–Tyrannosaurus rex is a species classification under the Linnaean system
–Tyrannosaurus rex existed 65 million years ago
Wow, I just refuted paleontology!
Let’s see how Facilis holds up during the Beltane frolic. Remember, Brenda turned PZ in to the Seed Overlords, that bit of trolling will be hard to beat.
@Emmet 778
The most vacuous and stupid idea I ever heard was a worldview here people denied the necessary precondition of logic and reason while claiming their worldview was logical and rational.These peope were unable to account for the absolute ,invariant,universal, objective,immaterial laws of logic and mathematics
While werre on the topic, Hw do you account account for the absolute ,invariant,universal, objective,immaterial laws of logic and mathematics?
@835
Account for the standard of morality that says dishonesty is wrong and explain why it necessarily applies to me.
Also account for the universal standard of truth which you think I am lying about.
Emmet as you know, the scientific method is based on many assumption, such as assumptions about the uniformity of nature and induction. How do you account for induction and the uniformity of nature?
@Emmet 778
The most vacuous and stupid idea I ever heard was a worldview here people denied the necessary precondition of logic and reason while claiming their worldview was logical and rational.These peope were unable to account for the absolute ,invariant,universal, objective,immaterial laws of logic and mathematics
While werre on the topic, Hw do you account account for the absolute ,invariant,universal, objective,immaterial laws of logic and mathematics?
@835
Account for the standard of morality that says dishonesty is wrong and explain why it necessarily applies to me.
Also account for the universal standard of truth which you think I am lying about.
Emmet as you know, the scientific method is based on many assumption, such as assumptions about the uniformity of nature and induction. How do you account for induction and the uniformity of nature?
@Emmet 778
The most vacuous and stupid idea I ever heard was a worldview here people denied the necessary precondition of logic and reason while claiming their worldview was logical and rational.These peope were unable to account for the absolute ,invariant,universal, objective,immaterial laws of logic and mathematics
While werre on the topic, Hw do you account account for the absolute ,invariant,universal, objective,immaterial laws of logic and mathematics?
(sorry for the riple post- I was getting errors)
@Fey
As Dr Bahsen once said ,”that’s the problem with you atheist, you live on blind faith”. You have blind faith that somehow you can deny the source of logic and be rational because you want to suppress the truth of God. Why not accept a worldview where you can be rational and accept logic and reason? Why live on blind faith?
Facilis the fallacious, your logic is illogical. Logic is not pure and absolute. Logic is defined only by man because your imaginary god didn’t invent it. Humans did until you show otherwise, which has not been done to date. Time for you to go back to step one and define all your terms.
Come on you guys you can’t win. Why does 5+5=10 ? because of the impossibility of the contrary. If youposit that it equals 11 or 4 you will always get refuted.
In the same way, if you don’t realise logic comes from God, you get refuted.
By pointing out that you are a mixture of factually incorrect and vacuously stating the obvious.
For the latter: what sort of laws of logic and mathematics do you imagine there could be which were not immaterial?! Why stress their immateriality if it is neither surprising (ie is an inevitable part of their definition!) nor relevant? (Apart from the obvious reason of you being a dishonest incompetent of course.)
For the former: depending on what precisely you’re talking about, they’re also not absolute, invariant nor universal. Eg some bits of space have different geometries to other bits of space and hence obey slightly different mathematics.
What side comes with Refuted? Soup, salad, french fried green beans?
@Wowbagger.(776_)
Again we have established that the laws of logic are eternal, back to the time of dinosaurs, But sideshow bob hasn’t been around very long. Do you actually believe material entities can produce immaterial entities?
(787)
I acknowlege that God being perfectly rational, created the natural word so it acts in predictable fashions.On this basis I can make these kinds of conclusions by observation and my knowledge of uniformity.
So how do you know that sponges do follow these rules?
Facilis demands that we “account for the standard of morality that says dishonesty is wrong and explain why it necessarily applies to [him].” He wants us to admit that without the imaginary torture pixie he worships, whose worshippers claim will burn the bulk of humanity in an oven for eternity, nobody would know how to be moral or honest.
Pack animals know how to be honest, to work for the good of the group. To imagine that had it not been for the passion play with its bloody human sacrifice, humanity would never have considered the golden rule, or doing as you’d be done by, the basic social contract that most children have worked out by pre-school, is as ludicrously idiotic as any other claim facilis has spewed on this forum.
As far as his ignorant and dishonest claims about logic (with which he has not even a passing acquaintance) requiring some sort of Supreme Logician to exist, while demanding that we acknowledge his point before even beginning to debate, is an effort to win an argument without going to the messy bother of learning how to construct an argument in the first place. To argue so inanely and with such breathtaking cluelessness does not require religion, but it’s never so colorful as when unfounded raw assertions concerning religion are hurled at us, demanding our acquiescence.
What a maroon.
the only preconditions to logic and reason are a consistent universe, sensory perception, and language; the last two have evolved naturally, while the first is most likely the only kind of universe that can survive long enough to have intelligent live in it (that one is speculation on my part, but it’s still more sensible than your Goddidit)
i can give you a whole list of speculation that would be just as valid if not more than your Goddidit; for any one explanation to be considered correct, there needs to be proof; you have no proof of God, you’re trying to prove him by proving that he’s a requirement for logic, a theory which can only be true if god exists, which you’re trying to prove by proving that he’s a requirement for logic, a theory which can only be true if god exists, which you’re trying to prove by proving that he’s a requirement for logic, a theory which can only be true if god exists, which you’re trying to prove by proving that he’s a requirement for logic, a theory which can only be true if god exists, etc ad nauseam; that’s called a circular argument and is not useful because it doesn’t actually prove anything; either both your statements are true, or both are false; both is equally possible from a logical POW
unless you can give irrefutable proof that either god exists, or that logic and reason cannot possibly have come into existence any other way than through a diety, you have no ground to stand on
Sorry Facilis the fallacious, logic was invented by man. Period. You are refuted. End of story.
You keep presuming god exists in your logic, which makes your argument fallacious. You can’t prove god by presuming god. Your failure to see that means you have refuted yourself.
Why are you guys even bothering with trying to deal with this idiocy?
the first comes from simple observation: five apples and another five apples makes 10 apples, not 11 or 4; the second is speculation on your part, not supported by any observation, evidence, mathematical proof, etc.
also, math is self consistent only up to a point. or how do you explain that 0.99999… sometimes equals 1? It’s a human construct like language, and it is full of human-made inadequacies
Untrue. Under some situations it doesn’t. Eg relativistic velocities, rotational (ie modular maths) scenarios. Plus, trivially, in bases other than 10. The problem is that your ignorance leads to you only knowing about open-ended simple arithmetic. Otherwise you’d already be aware not to make such a stupid and fallacious argument.
In reality, rather than in your delusional imagination, you’re the one who gets refuted, over and over again. You can’t genuinely win because you’re too unintelligent and ill-educated and because your habitual dishonesty (including that towards yourself in ignoring your personal lack of ability) leads to you continually being contradicted by reality as well as by previous lies you’ve told.
all mental constructs, such as language, are immaterial, but are based on observation of the material and produced by the very material firings of material synapses in material brains.
i.e. god is a brain-fart.
Fallacious wouldn’t last a minute in a classroom concerning logic. His ploy here would be a textbook example of affirmation of the consequent, if he had the sophistication to actually phrase it in the form of an argument. Fallacious is flunking logic hard, and, in answer to Brownian, we’re paying attention because we enjoy the company of each other and everybody’s sparkling wit, while we point and laugh at the godbot.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afthecon.html provides a logical analysis of the sort of fallacius reasoning that Facilis lacks the skill to construct. How about we ask Facilis to defend the offending example offered?
Re 794:
If you want to be pedantic :) then a triangle in a curved space will not contain 180° regardless of the size of the triangle. The “only very small triangles” would apply to one’s ability to measure the deviation from 180 but “pure geometry” doesn’t concern itself with measurement anyway. </pedant>
SEF @852: The problem is that your ignorance leads to you only knowing about open-ended simple arithmetic.
Or geometry: everybody knows a five-sided face contains no ninety degree angles, unless we’re representing hyperbolic geometry.
Concerning an earlier post. I was saying that you wouldn’t even consider certain scientist. And someone said something like this. Why would we consider someone who is against evolution. It is like someone saying the world is flat.
But that is not what is being said.
“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.”
To me it does NOT seem that these people are saying that evolution on some level does not exist. It just does not account for the complexity of life.
It could be like me saying that the world being round does not account for the complexity of life. I did not just say the world was flat. You would be putting words in my mouth. The world being flat or round does not account for the complexity of life. I do believe that we as a species have evolved in certain ways. But we have always been human.
That you believe that that list of adjectives is accurate shows that you know as little about logic and mathematics as you did about ICVS.
Which laws of logic do you claim as “invariant, universal, objective, and immaterial”? There are many logics, so be specific. I would take LEM/PBC as as being about as fundamental as you can get in classical logic, yet it has been rejected by intuitionistic/constructivist logicians comparatively recently (starting in the 20th century).
I simply and entirely reject the premise that there necessarily exists a prerequisite for the “laws of logic” (whatever you mean by that), or that this premise is even meaningful. I see no reason to postulate such a prerequisite nor any reason to assume that a supernatural entity is, or could be, that prerequisite even if such prerequisite was stipulated. Even the notion of a “prerequisite” in this context is undefined, making your claim a semantically vacuous word-salad.
To the first part, I’m neither an ethicist or a moral philosopher, so in truth, I work on the culturally inculcated assumption that honesty is good except where there’s an overriding moral imperative such as prevention of harm or suffering to a person. To the second, you must’ve forgotten that it was I who exposed your naked dishonesty on the Faith hurts thread.
I don’t. I regard it (I’m assuming a meaning of “induction” which makes this effectively a single question rather than a two-parter) as a reasonable and useful assumption which has not been found wanting in its utility. To assume the opposite — that the laws of nature might change at any moment, rendering all science moot — is both useless and, in our experience, false.
Facilis is a complete loss, but I’m just embarrassed on behalf of danny m. It cannot be the responsibility of posters to such a forum to try and make up for the extent to which dear danny has failed to avail himself of the most basic education; he needs one desperately.
Danny, anybody can express an opinion. It is worth the paper it is written on. No more. It has zero effect on science.
For science to consider the opinion meaninful, the words need to get into the primary scientific literature, through someone writing a scientific paper. This requires evidence to back up the statement, and the scientific method must be used throughout the paper. Otherwise, it will fail peer review. Danny, here is a question you need to think seriously about. If it was that easy to disprove evolution, and disproving evolution would give someone the Nobel Prize, why aren’t the papers being written and published? That is because there is no evidence against evolution, just opinion.
Thus spake Brownian:
Sadomasochism?
danny, those men are skeptical because they either don’t believe in long time-scales, or don’t believe speciation happens. either way they’re wrong. evolution has already been observed to create new species in the last 150 years that we’ve known about speciation… now think how much change can happen in a timespan 4 million times as long! (and yes, it’s been proven beyond a doubt that the earth is old enough for that)
in that sense, anyone who says they’re “skeptical” of evolution being responsible for the diversity of life believes something that’s incorrect: either he thinks speciation doesn’t occur, or he thinks that the earth is very yound. both are the equivalent of a flat earth
Facilis. Epic fail. You’re turning into an absurd parody of someone who doesn’t understand logic.
You couldn’t argue yourself out of a phone booth.
Checking back to this thread. Nice to know some things never change, like the absolute, immaterial, universal, obstinate, delusional stupidity of Facilis:
In the same way, if you don’t realise logic comes from God, you get refuted.
I love the passive voice, there. It’s the accent that makes the deluded godbottery note-perfect.
Suggested rejoinder: by you and what logician?
Danny:
I do believe that we as a species have evolved in certain ways. But we have always been human.
Why? Are we special in some way? Were we… created? By whom? For what purpose? What’s up with Australopithecines and early Homo? How do you know the answers to any of these questions?
Possibly for some. However, I view it more as a bit of public service in education.
For anyone who happens across the thread and can’t immediately see for themselves what an incompetent, dishonest fool Facilis is, from the gaping holes in his “logic”, hopefully the flurry of replies, exposing the numerous cavities in various ways (with multi-disciplinary evidence as well as proper logic), should provide enough opportunity for them to follow along and learn something new.
Though not of course if they are determined to remain ignorant – as is likely to be the case with Facilis himself.
Never attribute to altruism what can be explained by SIWOTI syndrome ;o)
Is SIWOTI supposed to be equivalent to sadomasochism in this context then? Or are you proposing it as a further option?
(Besides which it isn’t full blown altruism if there’s a chance it stops some evil leaders getting into power and ruining things enough to affect me. One of those “no man is an island” things.)
I take the bait Emmet. How is it possible for you to KNOW anything for certain according to your worldview? I hold that in order to have certain knowledge you have to either have universal knowledge or have revelation from a being who has universal knowledge(as I do)?
How can you KNOW anything for certain according to atheism.
The laws of logic you use to reason. I used the laws of non-contradiction as an example.
My claim is supported by the impossibility of the contrary as shown by your inability to account for the laws of logic here.
1)So this standard does not necessarily apply to me and only to those in your culture?
2)How do you KNOW this?
3)How did you get from an is (observing society) to an ought(moral standards)? look up the is-ought problem.
How do you KNOW this?
First account for the universal standard of truth I was dishonest about.
2nd, you forgot it was I who exposed your inability to account for truth,logic and reason,morality ,induction and the uniformity of nature and the superioriy of theism.
So you admit you are unable to account for induction? I think I have done my purpose by demonstrating that atheism is bankrupt and unable to rationally account for the tools we use.Thanks for admitting defeat. Hope you don’t continue to stay in denial of God.
By what standard of reason do you call it reasonable.
How do you KNOW this?
How do you KNOW this?
By what universal standard of truth do you claim this
Laws of logic as defined by men, not a god. Failed again. God not necessary.
Your refutations have been refuted.
Neither was Jesus, in his time. Indeed, Christians were mocked for their new (at the time) and insane (permanently) religion.
Who says that Sideshow Bob (blessed be his spikes of hair and long feet), is material? Yes, the ikon that Wowbagger has is of course material. But the essence of Sideshow Bob is not material, and of course, transcends time and space.
So you have renounced the insane and malevolent God of Christianity and become a Deist?
according to science, we cannot know anything with absolute certainty, but the scientific method allows as to come ever closer and closer and closer (asymptotic approach; look it up); religion on the other hand gives us nothing new. it is worthless as a tool of learning more about our world
except that there’s Schoedinger’s Cat, and light which is both a wave and a particle; so much for universal laws of logic
1)certain standards are have wider application than others; in American mainstream culture, politeness is valued more than honesty; in German culture, honesty is valued more; in pretty much all cultures, lying is only acceptable to spare someone else; trust and empathy are essential biological requirements for herd animals like humans; thus, as long as you’re a non-psychotic member of humankind, you’re bound by the same “moral imperative” for honesty and politeness, which are weighed against each other depending on culture and personality
2)evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology etc
3)the evolutionary reason for “morals” is the improved survival of the herd, i.e. society; therefore, the rules that make a society flourish ARE its morals; whether they are or should be optimal to your or mine understanding of what is moral is a different and more complex question
4)already answered in 3)
let me quote myself: “the only preconditions to logic and reason are a consistent universe, sensory perception, and language; the last two have evolved naturally, while the first is most likely the only kind of universe that can survive long enough to have intelligent live in it”
because observation has repeatedly shown that we can rely on it; until that changes, that’s them rules of the universe, and that’s how we gonna look at it.
observed fact; it’s neither universal nor a standard, merely the state of things to date, and until that changes, that’s the answer we’ll go with
Fallacy @763:
If you have unaccounted for laws of logic then wouldn’t that also show that theism is illogical?
Unaccounted for X could be used to prove just about any Y (at least according to your imagination).
You keep saying that and we keep asking you to prove it.
Emmet Caulfield, OM @800:
Yes. Yes it does. I was once in the forest at the top of a tower (longer story) and the forest didn’t know I was there. A tree fell and I heard it.
Fallacy @843:
In my impossibility of the contrary (hexadecimal) 5 + 5 = A.
I like how Facil gets to make his own universal rules so I’m making one of my own:
In the same way, if you don’t realize logic comes from my penis, you get refuted.
Ibid @846:
(I so love making things up and spouting whatever I imagine.)
I acknowledge that Penis being perfectly rational, created the natural world so it acts in predictable fashions. Blah, blah, blah, something about conclusions based on imagination. So how do you know that sofa cushions do follow these rules?
Ken Cope @847:
I give him a light blue, at best. (yeah, I realize Bugs never said that but well, I don’t know if he warrants a maroon).
Brownian, OM @850:
Our code is in QA?
General overall assumptions:
DannyM is old and a little confused. He is new to this Internet thingy and thinks there is some new information on the tubes that we aren’t aware of – such as AnswersInGenesis.org, and ProofForGod.org. Suggestion for DannyM: Lurk a while and wait for a while to see if you have truly discovered something new.
Facilis is late 20s – early 30s. Just getting started in apologetics. Thinks his new form of logic is ground-breaking and is 100% satisfactory for proving his version of his religion’s god and trump of all trumps, his new logic also proves his new logic. Take that, scientists! ;)
I’ll make a fuller reply to Jade later but I could not resist.
[according to science, we cannot know anything with absolute certainty,]
Are you absolutely certain that the scientific method cannot know anything with absolute certainity?
[but the scientific method allows as to come ever closer and closer and closer (asymptotic approach; look it up)]
Are you certain that science is approaching the truth.
[religion on the other hand gives us nothing new. it is worthless as a tool of learning more about our world ]
Are you certain?
Posted by: Facilis | January 12, 2009
How can you KNOW anything for certain according to atheism.
I realize that I am only pulling at strings here. But this statement really bothers me. Atheism is not a way of knowing. Atheism is not a system of knowledge. Atheism is neither reason nor logic. The only thing atheism is is this, it is a lack of believe in deities.
There are different paths to being an atheist. A person could be raised with out a religion and when old enough to act on their own volition, never picks it up. It could be purely emotional, the person never feels the presence of a deity in their life. It could be revoltion, the actions of a deity is as bad or worse then the actions of the worst humans. It could be because in the facts of how the universe runs, deities are not needed to to explain the operations.
Atheism is not a singular mindset. It is not a way of knowing. It is not logic. It is not reason.
Not only is Facilis guilty of attempted logic, Facilis of mangling the meanings of words. He is also guilty of not understanding what other people have to say. This is because he has such tightly placed self imposed blinders that he cannot admit the he does not understand what others have to say.
Facilis, The only place absolute logic and god exist is between your ears. God explains nothing, and is just mental masturbation on the part of deluded people like yourself.
Science is doing an excellent job of explaining the universe without the need for a deity or absolute certainty. Science will give you a call when they feel they need a god or absolute certainty. Don’t wait by the phone. The call will never come.
Wait. You have direct revelation from a being with universal knowledge? You, personally, have had God directly tell you that he has universal knowledge?
Can you get God to tell you a few digits of a randomly generated number that I just so happen to have?
And your claim is refuted by your inability to account for God.
Because the laws of logic requiring no account are indistinguishable from the laws of logic (supposedly) requiring an undetectable thing which itself requires no account.
Parsimony demands that we accept the former rather than require the latter.
This first part was Fallacious @870 quoting me:
Failing to close the tag, Fallacious flunked the test with this:
WRONG!Try again.
I asked if you would defend the example offered, which all should agree is an example of a fallacious affirmation of the consequent, and all you did was deny that your affirmation of the consequent was fallacious, by affirming the consequent, because, well, because, that’s why, with a little stamp of the foot and a striking of the thigh and poking out of the lower lip and a big “Humph!”
Let’s pretend for the sake of argument that Facilis is actually right, and that reason and logic exists only because of a Supreme Reasoner (truth tables, part of the rules of the game of logic agreed to by people who abide by them, allow for the possibility that a conclusion is true, even when the premises are demonstrably false) By violating the rules and committing the fallacy of the consequent, presumably Facilis is demonstrating an exercise of his Free Will, which would entitle him to eschew reason and logic in order to insist that his affirmation of the consequent, in demanding we accept that God created reason and logic, before supporting that conclusion with an argument, is not fallacious at all.
no, but all evidence currently available to humankind indicates that it is so*
no, but all evidence currently available to humankind indicates that it is so*
no, but all evidence currently available to humankind indicates that it is so*
—
*as every pastafarian worth his parmesan will tell you, this is so because the FSM is right there every time someone gathers evidence, and adjusts it to make it look the way it does, when reality is actually completely different
So, Facilis The Fallacious, you still can’t actually LIST these “absolute ,invariant,universal, objective,immaterial laws of logic and mathematics” that you babble about. This is the third time I’ve asked, but you’ve hidden from this question many more times. So what are these laws, and what is this god you claim is absolutely necessary for them? You don’t dare define your terms because you know you’ve got nothing.
Either list these “laws” you keep blathering about and define this “god” you want us to believe in, or fuck off and stop making such an insufferable ass of yourself.
Well obviously the only answer is that Jesus died on the cross 2000 years ago to redeem our sins… duh
I asked a philosopher friend last night about this type of reasoning, he referred to it as “an affront to human reason.”
There’s absolutely no reason why we need a logic-giver. Either the universe is logical in which case we can derive it straight from the universe, or it is not in which case logic is an entirely human construct.
*head asplodes*
There’s the problem of induction (again, discussing this with philosopher friend last night.) Basically because science is predictive and we don’t know the future, it can be wrong. The degrees of certainty keep an open process.
Though those who normally talk in absolutes talk about absolutes in cases where they not only do not know but cannot know. It becomes again an exercise in mental masturbation and has no bearing on reality. facilis please stop wanking and actually show that your idea has merit, preferably showing that your god exists.
lol, so facilis does claim to know the unknowable…
Big sky daddy just plops it in his head. Facilis does not need to explain and we are foolish to question him for it.
Are you certain? Are you certain? Is it safe? Is it safe?
Whew. Even the casual observer has certain knowledge that you are a poor logician, f(ece)acilis.
Well, that certainly explains the mess he leaves. Facilis, you should wash afterwards. I also recommend using mental floss to remove those sticky ideas.
Well obviously the only answer is that Jesus died on the cross 2000 years ago to redeem our sins… duh
See, this works for everything.
Q: “Is knowledge knowable, and if not, how do we know this?”
A: “Jesus died on the cross 2000 years ago to redeem our sins.”
Q: Why does the universe appear to be in principle, understandable?
A: “Jesus died on the cross 2000 years ago to redeem our sins.”
Q: If “Jesus died on the cross 2000 years ago to redeem our sins” was a falsifiable claim, how would we falsify it?
A: “Jesus died on the cross 2000 years ago to redeem our sins.”
If only facilis would stop masturbating and start talking how it is he has came to know the unknowable. And if he’s using logic to derive his god, does that make the theoretical physicists who derive a self-contained multiverse a more parsimonious position? Or is there some way we can actually take the theoretical into a practical sense?
Obviously, because if Jesus didn’t die to redeem our sins, how is anything possible at all? And if you don’t follow the logic of that, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS??
Shorter Facilis: solipsism therefore Yahweh.
I have never heard any person claim that atheism enabled certain knowledge. It is a straw-man. How do you substantiate your claim to “revelation from a being who has universal knowledge”?
Methodological naturalism has generated considerable useful knowledge in just a few hundred years since the Enlightenment. On the contrary, “revelation” generated no useful knowledge in the preceding thousands of years. If we depended on revelation for generating knowledge, we’d still be throwing turnips at witches rather than using computers to communicate over a global network.
As previously explained, there are many logics that can be used to reason. What you term “the laws of non-contradiction” is (most likely) what logicians call “proof by contradiction” (PBC), which is explicitly rejected as invalid in intuitionist/constructivist logic. Any claim that PBC is universal, absolute, or any such thing proves — as if any more proof were needed — that you’re simply an ignorant fool.
No, it isn’t. In what sense must the “laws of logic” (you still haven’t coherently stated which “laws of logic” you’re talking about) be “accounted for”. I fail to see how the premise “the laws of logic must be accounted for” has any sensible meaning: it’s simply gobbledegook.
It seems that most societies have some kind of exhortation to honesty and against dishonesty. Honesty enables trust, which is essential to cooperation and collaboration, which are fundamental to the functioning of social groups, whether they are kin groups or otherwise. I consider honesty as a by-product of kin selection more plausible than “the magic sky fairy dunnit”.
You keep asking this question as if it were clever. It isn’t. It makes you look like a teenager who has just stumbled on solipsism as the ultimate enabler of any whacky bullshit that s/he dreams up. Are you claiming to know (not merely believe) that god(s) exist?
You weren’t dishonest about a universal standard of truth (if such exists), you were dishonest about your knowledge of a particular document.
In what parallel universe?
All you’ve presented here is vapid blather, bald and unsubstantiated assertions, and repeated vacuous questioning of the kind expected from an attention-seeking toddler.
Even if I stipulate that I am unable to “account for induction” (if that even means anything), how does introducing a supernatural entity advance our understanding? I say that “unicorns account for induction” is vacuous and stupid. Ditto for “God accounts for induction”.
Don’t be any more of an asshole than necessary. Your ability to perform a “Gish gallop” of vacuous stupidity does not entitle you to claim victory in anything other than a “who’s the imbecile” contest.
Sophomoric…
and again…
and again…
and again.
And if you don’t follow the logic of that, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS??
Because “colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
If only I were a stoner, I’d get so much more out of this argument with facilis.
Huh. I’m still waiting to hear how 5+5=10 is in any way dependent on the will of an invisible skydaddy as capricious and erratic as the Abrahamic God of the Bible. I also have yet to find out in what country does anyone recognize a system of logic which is invariant, universal, immaterial, rational and blah blah blah, unless we’re talking about something as basic as…5+5=10. What Facile Fallacy is really saying is that he can’t picture the universe holding any form without the invisible hand of Skydaddy there to keep it from falling apart in a mad circus of Douglas Adams fantasies. Since he can’t picture it any other way…well, then there can’t possibly BE any other way! He can’t picture a universe without God, and so God must necessarily exist, therefore he can’t picture a universe without God…and so on.
Speaking as one, no, I don’t think you would.
As I suggested upthread, facilis probably stumbled across a website with this ‘irrefutable’ (in the author’s mind) non-argument; he probably thought all his Xmases had come at once.
He, on the other hand, claims to have been reading; forgive me if I find that statement no more compelling than any of his others.
Because if he had been reading he might actually be able to answer the questions put to him – such as why, even if we do accept there is a being responsible for these so-called rules, that the being must be his god and not any other (including my Sideshow Bob figurine*) or why, as he asserts (without justification) a material being cannot create immaterial things.
No doubt the person he’s plagiarising from did exactly what facilis did – dodged the questions he couldn’t answer and kept on repeating the same ‘but how do you KNOW?’ non-response ad infinitum.
This is the problem when you steal someone else’s idea, facilis – if they haven’t thought it out fully you’re going to get caught out in exactly the same way.
*facilis, how do you KNOW my Sideshow Bob figurine is only recent? Upon what do you base that knowledge?
What Facile Fallacy is really saying is that he can’t picture the universe holding any form without the invisible hand of Skydaddy there to keep it from falling apart in a mad circus of Douglas Adams fantasies.
Exactly. It’s either that (that the Malicious Trickster is so utterly incompetent that he’s using JeebonsTM (made of equal parts unobservium and real Jesus!) to enforce divine will on every subatomic transaction, the equivalent of mystical No True Scotch Brand duct taping the entire jerry-built magilla together at all times) or that the Immaterial Immanent Omniscient Uber Parent is so mind-bogglingly efficient that the universe appears to require no divine origin or intervention whatsoever–and either claim is trotted out whenever convenient, offered as “proof” for the Facilis-patented standard-issue affirmation of the consequent, “goddidit.”
Facilis, you nearly have me convinced. Yes, your tireless
repetitionadvocacy of your thesis has me convinced… almost.However, may I advance one little quibble? It’s just a minor semantic one; I’m sure you can cope with it,
Your original assertion was:
Now, I am gladly willing to concede that there is indeed something that is universal, objective, immaterial, and invariant. And I am also willing to concede that this something is the necessary precondition for the laws of logic and reason. But… I am not so sure that this something that I have conceded exists is identical to God. The last two lines of your argument don’t count; I will gladly admit that I cannot account for the laws of logic apart from the something that I have conceded exists. But you have not yet demonstrated by either reason or evidence that this something and God are identical.
You can’t claim that God is universal, objective, immaterial, and invariant, because first of all, despite your claim above, I am certain that you have not spoken to Him directly. And more importantly, we can indeed show that, at the very least, one of those adjectives cannot be correct when applied to God: invariance. God cannot be invariant, because God is defined as the Creator. But the Creation is not invariant; it has a beginning and changes constantly. Thus, it must be the case that God has at least two states: As He was before Creating, and as He is now after having Created. It could even be argued that God must have an additional state; at the moment of Creation itself.
Thus, God cannot be invariant, and thus cannot be identified with the something which I have already conceded exists which is necessary to establish the laws of logic.
But I am quite willing to listen to counterarguments…
Well, I haven’t told him anything.
But I not sure I like the tone of Your argument. Who the Hell are You to say anything about who I Am?
Well, I haven’t told him anything.
But I not sure I like the tone of Your argument. Who the Hell are You to say anything about who I Am?
That’s what’s so funny. He sounds just like a little kid with a new magic set who’s just learning, so every time people for whom he’s responding don’t do exactly what the little book implied they would, he gets frustrated: “Pick a card…No, you have to pick from the center!…OK, you can’t look at my left hand while I do this part – you’re supposed to look over there!” and so on, increasingly exasperated at the adults’ failure to behave as expected. “You’re not doing it right! I’m not gonna show you any more tricks!”
Thus spake Satan:
A counterexample to the common Christian claim that Satan is clever, should we ever need one ;o)
That’s what’s so funny. He sounds just like a little kid with a new magic set who’s just learning, so every time people for whom he’s responding don’t do exactly what the little book implied they would, he gets frustrated: “Pick a card…No, you have to pick from the center!…OK, you can’t look at my left hand while I do this part – you’re supposed to look over there!” and so on, increasingly exasperated at the adults’ failure to behave as anticipated. “You’re not doing it right! I’m not gonna show you any more tricks!”
facilisfallacious,Best example of unconscious projection ever!
So, this is your argument facilis:
1. Let P=”Logic comes from God”
2. Assume not P
3. No one can explain where logic comes from
4. Therefore, P.
This isn’t “impossibility of the contrary”, it’s just an argument from ignorance. Let’s try this,
1. Let P=”The laws of physics comes from the Greek Gods”
2. Assume not P.
3. No one can explain where the laws of physics comes from
4. Therefore, P.
Are you honestly convinced by this sort of “reasoning”? And if you say “God is immaterial, invariant,etc.” I claim the Greek gods are immaterial, invariant, etc.
I am the one who has to listen to You blame Me for everything.
I’m starting to think that I’m Kif to Your Zapp Brannigan.
Which reminds Me: Even if everything that goes wrong (such as that double post of Yours; clearly My knotting of the Intertubes befuddled even Your Omniscience) is indeed My fault, I would not exist if it were not for You.
Thus, Your knowing Creation of Me means that everything You blame Me for is actually Your responsibility. And You can’t get out of it by claiming that I have Free Will, because it was by Your Free Will and Knowledge that You created Me.
Satan is such a good listener!
Who the Hell are You to say anything about who I Am?
Well, Satan did tell the truth to Adam and Eve about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, where you didn’t. You said if they ate it, they’d die, while Satan told them they wouldn’t die, but would become as gods, knowing good and evil. They each lived at least ten times longer than I can expect to live.
The Babel fish,” said The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly, “is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
“The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’
“‘But,’ says Man, ‘The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
“‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.
“‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
“Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best- selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloddier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
You are officially Not Allowed to use that argument.
Because I say so.
Oh, shush.
I get enough flack from God Himself. And I have to listen to Him sing in the shower (and wince at every wrong note and malapropist lyric).
Feynmaniac,
Similar attempts have been made, but facilis’ one-track mind resists derailment. He’s been asked to justify why the Greek Gods are material several occasions, by myself and others; all to no avail. He’s also been asked, more than once, to justify why materiality would be be barrier to the creation of immaterial things.
I believe he’s probably on the site he stole the idea from in the first place, asking the original author the questions we’re asking him, and getting the same response he’s giving us, i.e. stay the course, no matter how irrelevant, laughable and demonstrably flawed it is.
A Brief History of ‘The God(s) of the Gaps’ Argument
Prehistoric Times
Theists: Where does fire come from?
Rationalist: We don’t know. We’re working on it.
T: Since you cannot provide an explanation the gods must be responsible.
Medieval Times
T: What causes the Sun to rise and set?
R: We don’t know. We’re working on it.
T: Since you cannot provide an explanation
the godsGod must be responsible. Also, guards torture that man to death.Victorian Times
T: What is responsible for the diversity of life?
R: We don’t know. We’re working on it.
T: Since you cannot provide an explanation God must be responsible.
Modern Times
T: Where do the laws of physics from? How about logic?
R: We don’t know. We’re working on it. Be patient!
Wowbagger,
But SIWOTI syndrome says I must continue!
I actually think the question ‘Where does logic come from?’ is an interesting one. Or perhaps more concretely, where do the laws of physics come from? I don’t know if we’ll ever have the answers to those questions. However, I think admitting ignorance and searching for an answer is much more productive than facilis’ approach of taking solace in fallacious arguments.
Wowbagger,
But SIWOTI syndrome says I must continue!
I actually think the question ‘Where does logic come from?’ is an interesting one. Or perhaps more concretely, where do the laws of physics come from? I don’t know if we’ll ever have the answers to those questions. However, I think admitting ignorance and searching for an answer is much more productive than facilis’ approach of taking solace in fallacious arguments.
God wrote:
Assuming that we should give You credit for the products of evolution… yeah, thanks for creating a bunch of runty weeds that took centuries of selective breeding to be really useful!
Well, at least the wild forms of wheat, grapes, potatoes and barley don’t look nearly as ridiculous as teosinte (squeak!). What the fuck happened there? Were you on a deadline or did your kid make that in kindergarten?
Or God was a kid in kindergarten. This is apropos:
http://purplekoolaid.typepad.com/photos/cartoons/career1.html
Seems we’re dealing a lot with the god/s of the philisophical gaps of late – I guess everything else has been found to have completely naturalistic explanations; the godists have therefore leapt onto something they know can’t be shown, physically, to have a non-magical origin.
That eric character was heading down that path. Though he, at least, knew what he was talking about – facilis, on the other hand, is just a demented parrot – but it all came down to the idea that, because we can argue a god is possible, philisophically, then the god of the broader Judeo-Christian belief system must exist.
And, like facilis, none of them has been able to explain how that particular leap can be made. Change Yahweh to any other deity and the argument works in the same way.
I know that I, personally, might be concerned about the likelihood of a ‘one true’ god’s existence if all societies and cultures across the world had only ever worshiped the one god; one who, despite these cultures never communicating until the modern era, was described as having identical characteristics, mythology, laws and revelations.
But that’s far from the case, isn’t it? Heck, there are 38,000 plus sects of Christianity alone. So much for ‘revealed truth’.
CJO: How do YOU know any of this: because someone smarter than you told you so.
—————————–
You know, If there would have been primary literature back in Darwins day, he would not have been published. Majority rules means something in a democracy..that’s it.
Primary literature has never been in the habit of publishing minority papers.
I see some people write that you do not need to believe in God to be moral, I would agree. But what I want to say is that social evolution does not account for why we consider theft wrong. I don’t really know if social evolution is a term, so if think you know what I’m talking about, feel free to give me the right term. anyway.
I say this because ‘not stealing’ is not beneficial for our species. Because I think that personal ownership is bad for our species. If no one called things their own, but shared, then it would be impossible to steal. I think that by now, socially, we have had enough time to evolve to that state.
Actually, Darwin did publish in the equivalent of primary literature; there were scientific societies back then, which did indeed do peer-review.
His monographs on barnacles were published with the Ray Society, and the Palaeontographical Society; and of course, his and Wallace’s theory of evolution was read before the Royal Society itself, whose journals indeed still are part of the primary literature.
You don’t know much about scientific publishing, do you?
Science journals are indeed willing to publish some pretty fringe stuff — as long as it is supported by evidence and passes peer-review.
Not everything published is correct — but that’s the way things work out. Science is self-correcting because it goes with that which has the best evidence.
Thank you Owlmirror.
Danny, I don’t know where you are getting your information from, but it is unreliable. Darwin made great us of prior literature, and cited it carefully in his books. And it would have been published since he was using the scientific method. Science isn’t a democracy. But does make sure voices of dissent are heard, as long they follow the rules of science. That is why the primary literature is for the debates of science.
Again Danny, false information. The journals Science and Nature pride themselves on publishing groundbreaking papers, like the famous Watson and Crick DNA structure, that often lead to Nobel Prizes. But one has to obey the rules of science in order to get published. In the case of creationism/ID, this is impossible because they are religious ideas.
<*eyeroll*>
And Christians say that atheism leads to communism…
Although it was indeed the case that early Christians did often share property in common; Christian fundamentalists so often forget that.
As for whether it actually is the case that “personal ownership is bad for our species”, well, that’s debatable.
Even more debatable is “socially, we have had enough time to evolve to that state”. How would you know?
And consider the question of why Christians don’t share property in common anymore.
Would you be willing to share everything you own? Why or why not?
How would I know,…I said I think. I’m not talking about communism. In communism, you do not share everything. The government mandates those things in communism. Making someone share aint good either.
That’s like taxes going to help people who don’t work. We are not sharing our money. The government is taking our money and giving it to other people. Would I be willing to share everything I own… if everyone shared everything, no one would need anything. But also, no one would be able to brag and look better than someone else.
You can roll your eyes if you want to, but it is not a bad way.
We are going the way of socialism anyway. I think christians should stop crying about it and just accept it. I mean, we say God is taking care of us and then bitch about how things are not going our way, that just don’t make much sense.
I think the term you are looking for is evolutionary psychology. And on what basis do you say that stealing is wrong could not have evolved?
This raises an interesting point on behaviour, is it genetic or memetic? I would argue that either premise is adequate to explain why we consider theft wrong, that through repeated interaction on game theory a strategy of reciprocal altruism becomes a dominant strategy. We do not steal because we do not wish to get stolen from, from there it’s possible to see how a behavioural approach could be successful in repeated interactions.
Whether it’s genetic or memetic is irrelevant, the fact that we can see emergent behaviours in repeated interactions in game theory makes the carrier of the behaviour not matter. Once you have reciprocal altruism as a strategy (as seen not only in our species, but in other species as well) then there’s no reason to assume it needs a higher explanation.
Do Americans even realise just how far to the right they are on the political spectrum? Watching the presidential race and all those people winging about socialism was pathetic, it’s like they have no clue what the term even means.
You think, but based on what? A vague hunch? Wishful thinking?
Is that a “yes”, a “no”, or a “maybe”?
It hasn’t made sense for the umpty-thousand years that religion has been in existence. Usually, it’s been “explained” that things don’t go the way of believers because God is angry at them.
Except… have you read the book of Job, by any chance?
Kel, you are right, most Americans don’t have any idea of what socialism really means unless they studied it in a polysci class. Otherwise, the neocons would have people believe anything to the left of their agenda is socialism. America has a loooooooong way to go to be considered a socialist country. Having a social safety net to help people out of work, and providing health care to all citizens does not make a country socialist on their own.
Anyway, I think that when God created Adam and Eve, there was already other creatures around. I think these were more humanoid than say, a cow. Because there was creatures alive than Cain was scared of when he left the garden. He thought they would murder him.
———————————————————
The stars, which one of them is how we tell how long our day is, was not created until the middle of the creation week. So I am not even sure that the first half of the ‘creation week’ was the same length of time as the second half. So in my opinion, we do not even know how old the bible says the earth is.
So, for the people who say the bible says the earth is young, I want to know where it says that. It does speak of human history as being ‘young’. But it does not say that the earth is young. If anything, it hints to a much older earth than most church people believe.
———————————————————–
I believe that humans were always human, whatever evolving they did was within our species. Maybe those ‘links’ people have found were those ‘people’ that Cain was afraid of. The only thing I see that is conflicted with science is the evolution of humans, which I think may be explained by that. I do not think that people have examined that possibility.
The bible does not give a date for the age of the earth.
So when we see stars that are over twice as far away in light years as the age of the earth is, how does that work?
Furthest galaxy – 13 billion light years away
Age of the earth – ~4.55 billion years
Shit, the bible even says that day and night were on earth 3 days before the sun was made. Just how much more information do you need to understand that Genesis chapter 1 is by no means a historical account of creation? It doesn’t match any of the data.
No, but Bishop Ussher dated the bible beginning to 4004 BC. Nevermind that genesis contains two different creation myths, and contains myths from other cultures near the Canaanite tribes.
The bible, especially the old testament, should be looked at as book of mythology to create social cohesion for the Jews during their exile in Babylon. That is its historical context.
Owlmirror: Alright then, it depends on what side of the bed I wake up on.
Kel: Thank you. And I mean that why would it have evolved that way. For the idea of theft to exist, there has to be personal possession, which I say could be bad for us.
And just about all in office are socialistic like, even President Bush.
A date which, as Sam Harris mockingly points out, is about a thousand years after the Sumerians had invented glue.
That anyone of even minimal perception saw fit to believe such patent idiocy is a testament to the ability of religion (and those to whom a claim of adherence lends undeserved credibility) to enslave minds and dull intellects.
danny m,
Please tell me that was a joke.
The stars, which one of them is how we tell how long our day is, was not created until the middle of the creation week.
I think that, for the greater good, somebody, anybody else, could make better use of danny m’s computer than he can and should steal it from him, on the basis of how wrong he was to inflict that sentence, and others adjacent to it, on any sentient being.
“Millions of months passed. And then, twenty-eight days later, the Moon appeared…”
Please, please, please, danny m, crack a FCCing book on astronomy or biology. Genesis is not a science textbook. Treating it as one will only hurt what’s left of your brain.
What I am about to write may be a reason why you say science does not get into the religion thing.
No one thinks of Adam being created as a baby. Everyone just assumes he was an adult, that he was created with maturity. Not age, but maturity. And that is one possibility of the universe. Looking at Adam he could have looked like an average adult male but have been only 3 minutes old. The same could be said for the universe.
The senerios I present or just possibilites, that I think the bible allows for.
But, if the above is true, how the hell would science be able to prove it. Which I think may be what people mean when they say science can not get into God.
You don’t think that option has been explored? Do you think the entire world accepts evolutionary dogma and you are the only non-infected mind who has ever challenged evolution on biblical grounds?
Evidences for evolution:
Of course we can go further back and see these similarities through all life, if only you would consider that God may be able to work through the laws of nature than against it!
Ken, just Cope with it. Cause I stole it from someone else already.
Ken, I think you can cope.
Everyone just assumes he was an adult, that he was created with maturity.
No, nobody assumes that. Careful readers glean it from stupid FCCing made up story to which you refer!
What should science say about the age of Narnia’s Aslan the Lion or about the age of Pullman’s Lyra from His Dark Materials or the age of Frodo from The Lord of the Rings? No more nor less than it should say about how many tree-rings Adam had in him if you’d sliced him bilaterally (Yes, I wrote that on purpose).
Danny M,
There may be more information on the Adam-as-fully-grown thing in one of the earlier, non-English versions of the bible. You’ve got to remember that what’s around now is very, very different from how it was originally written. Translation – especially that of the bible – is an art and not a science; the writers and editors and translators all have differing ideas on what the intent of each line meant – heck, sometimes even what certain words meant. So you can’t put too much value in you’ve read.
Either way, science doesn’t need to prove it. Science tells us there’s no way a living creature can be created in the way the bible describes it. Science also tells us that humans were not created at all; rather, they evolved.
There’s no evidence – biological, archaeological, whatever – to support the sudden appearance of humans the way the bible describes it.
There you have it. Treating the Bible as dry documentary rots the brain.
Danny, science cannot prove the bible. Everything in science points to the bible being a work of fiction. Why do you keep trying to entangle science with religion? Science divorced itself from religion a couple of centuries ago. The break is permanent.
(FSTDT!)
Why a cow, of all the possible animals you might have chosen as being “more humanoid”? And for that matter, what do you even mean by humanoid?
Uh-huh. And you believe the stories of creation week, and Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel… because?
Why should scientists examine the possibility that a Semitic myth might possibly be true? Especially when we have evidence that it’s not?
So you keep coming back with things against the bible even before i started talking so much about it.
But all you can say about the existence of God is that it complicates things, therefore we don’t need a Creator.? Evolution does not say ‘no creator’. You just want it to. And you really don’t like Christianity. Even before I started writing about it.
You want science to give you an excuse to ‘believe’ that there is no Creator….but it has not given you a good one. So, since, you say, the idea of a creator complicates things…then that means you call people an idiot for believing in a creator. You are believing that there is no Creator. Science does not say that there is no Creator.
Why stop at the Big bang, why stop at the creator, why stop at the big bang… it’s circular.
It’s evolved that way for other animals too, just look at the way a dog will hide a bone.
So you are saying that God is tricking us by creating the illusion of age? This argument sounds like God is a great deceiver. When we look in our local galactic neighbourhood we see a dwarf galaxy (only 10,000,000,000 stars) called the Large Magellanic Cloud orbiting the milky way. In 1987 inside that galaxy we saw a star turn supernova, it’s known as Supernova 1987A. Anyway, the star that blew up had a ring around it, so we were able to see when the ring lit up and from there using simple mathematics we were able to calculate just how far away the LMC is: 168,000 light years away.
That means the explosion took place 168,000 years ago. So if anyone is positing space time as being less than 168,000 years then that means that not only God sent the light beams from that galaxy towards us in advance, but simulated an explosion that didn’t really happen either. Likewise in Andromeda Galaxy (2.3 million light years away) there was a supernova too. Again, the age of the universe has to get older so as God is not simply trying to create an illusion.
The other option is that we don’t look at God as a petty conjurer of tricks, that the universe is how it is – distant light comes from distant stars, old rocks date appropriately through natural causes, and the fossil record is a tale of the ever-changing pattern of life on this planet.
To say that God gives the illusion of age is about as credulous as positing Last Thursdayism – that the universe was created last Thursday as is and every Wednesday night at 10pm it resets. It’s a pointless hypothesis, one that has no evidence, and seems to exist only to serve those who want to believe an old mythology that doesn’t fit the chain of events. (or is even consistent with itself)
Danny, quite trying to define science. We scientists define science. And science divorced itself from god and religion a couple of centuries back. The two will never rejoin. What part of this do you have trouble with? Answer the question!
Science does not need a creator to explain the universe. And will never need a creator to explain the universe. Put that idea back in the shit hole it came out of.
I wouldn’t believe there was a creator with or without a scientific understanding of the world. The question is, why are you so against science while sitting at one of the marvels of the scientific method?
And you really don’t like Christianity. Even before I started writing about it.
Please danny m, whatever you do, don’t ever shut the fuck up about how much you don’t know about science.
Danny,
The reason we can exclude God for ‘complicating things’ is to include God means including an extremely complex being to explain (relatively) simple processes. If something can be explained simply (but accurately) without the addition of an extremely complex being, then we consider it unlikely the extremely complex being is required to make it happen.
For example, take a pencil and drop it – it hits the ground. We could believe that it isn’t gravity at all, but magical, undetectable, invisible elves who catch the pencil and fly with it and place it on the ground.
However, science tells us that gravity does exist, and that’s why the pencil falls. We can’t prove there aren’t magical, undetectable, invisible elves, but – here’s the important part – we don’t need to. Why? Because we have an explanation that is far simpler, and doesn’t require to understand where the fairies came from, or why they choose to be invisible.
Does that make sense?
Does that make sense?
Don’t ask danny such a complicated question. He appears to live in the perpetual amazement of the acidhead staring at his hand and seeing it, as if for the first time. Just do the responsible thing, which is to do your best to keep him from becoming a danger to himself or others.
Danny M – Go back and read your scripture. It was not animals that Cain was afraid of. And Cain spoke directly to god and god answered him.
Now ask yourself Danny, who were the people of the Earth at that moment? Who was Cain afraid of?
Another fail.
Danny M @#935:
Uh-huh. Think about what you’re attributing to God: a complete deception perpetrated on all humanity.
That really is the equivalent of a defense lawyer saying that no, the accused didn’t commit the murder, despite all of the DNA and hair and fiber and pollen evidence linking him to the crime; it was God who murdered the victim and planted every single item of evidence linking the murder to the accused.
Wowbagger @#940:
Nah. The Semites weren’t trying to create an internally consistent true-to-reality report of what went down in the garden, they were creating and passing down a myth. Or rather, a collection of myths.
Of course science doesn’t say there is no creator, it doesn’t say there is one either. Scientific understanding shows that light comes form stars, stars form into galaxies and we have seen galaxies up to 13 billion light years away. Scientific understanding shows that the earth orbits the sun, the sun orbits a giant black hole in the centre of the galaxy, and that we are on a collision course with M31. Science understanding shows quite clearly all life evolved from a single common ancestor and the process under which it happened was natural selection.
Whether a god was involved with any of that, it’s up to you to decide. Personally I don’t believe there was a god involved, though even if I did I would not reject the scientific understanding for the sake of said god because it’s putting faith in the word of ignorant men.
Danny, do you have any idea of the biggest starter for an atheist’s journey to non-belief? It is reading the bible cover to cover (I did that twice). The bible is mixed up book that bites its own tail time and time again. It revels in killing, rape, pillage, slavery, and many other things that are looked down upon by civilized people who really believe in the golden rule. It has been shown time and time again to be historically inaccurate. If the alleged holy book has all those problems, how can it be inspired by god, unless god is a sick, sadistic entity.
Once that sick bastard of a god is gone, the thinking clarifies as rationality comes pouring in. It makes life much, much easier.
Personally I don’t believe there was a god involved, though even if I did I would not reject the scientific understanding for the sake of said god because it’s putting faith in the word of ignorant and/or intellectually dishonest, self-serving and (often) flat-out lying-for-Jesus™ men.
Kel was being kind…
Sorry, you started talking about the bible as if it were all true, and your own interpretations could just be plopped down on top of what the bible says as if your interpretations were true.
It’s your own fault.
It’s given the best reason to not believe that there is: No evidence that religion is true or that a “Creator” is necessary.
Danny, if you come here and say “I believe”, we say good for you.
You come here a say “I believe, therefore you must too”, our response will be far less polite.
Which are you really doing? Be honest with yourself.
danny m,
What are you basing this on? If it’s the first chapter on Genesis then you are right. However if it’s the second one,
Genesis 2: 7
What’s not to like about it? It’s comedy gold.
CHRISTIANITY:
The belief that some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove on evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
Makes perfect sense.
Danny M, Nerd is right, reading the bible will put you right off Christianity. I chose the cherry picking version that I was brainwashed in since I was a child, I assumed it was true.
Go look again at the story of Cain. After he has his talk with gawd he toddles off to the land of Nod, and knows his wife. Who?
No look again, who is she? Where did she come from? Once again the story makes no sense at all, and falls apart completely.
I wish I could say I was stoned or someone had a gun to my head to make me believe this, what a dumbass – me.
Oh! Owlmirror you’re scary.
No need to stick the knife in too deep…
To appeal to the account of Genesis as the way it must have happened makes the question on the existence of God dependant on the inerrancy of the bible. It really should be obvious to anyone and everyone that the bible was written by man, it’s a story by men about God. By tying God’s actions to the events of the bible, one is trusting that those who wrote the bible had divine insight. That’s something that should be obviously false to even the most casual observer given that the bible is inconsistent with itself not to mention out of step with reality.
If you are going to let evolution destroy your ability to reconcile the bible, why evolution? It seems that by explaining any process by naturalistic means is taking it away from the realm of God. By explaining lightning or earthquakes as natural occurrences as opposed to God being mad that you touched yourself last night, you are killing God in the same way that explaining life kills God. i.e. by using any methodological naturalism you shrink the gap God was fit into.
Evolution didn’t kill God any more than heliocentrism did. Psalms 96:10 “The earth is stationary and can never be moved.” The objections to science are not to protect God, they are to protect biblical inerrancy. Science works, as is evidenced by so much in our society: computers, medicine, transport, telecommunications, electricity, heating, etc. Rejecting the findings is admitting that your faith is in the bible and not God.
@ several people above
> You do realise the reason it was done was because
> certain people felt that cracker was worth more
> than a man’s life, correct?
Allow me to generalize this, to be sure I understand. Feel free to correct me if I am misunderstanding.
Let us assume the existence of a set P, the population of all peoples on earth. Given a subset of this population, P’, who are acting in a completely disagreeable fashion (which I will grant you for the sake of this argument we can assume to be an objective measurement), you consider it acceptable behavior to protest the actions of P’ by performing an action ~ that the members of P’ will find offensive, regardless of whether or not ~ will also cause serious offensive to another set subset P” of P. This is further acceptable regardless of the relative population of the intersection of P’ and P”, or the cardinality of sets P’ and P”, provided that you yourself regard the action ~ as morally neutral.
Sorry, I’m afraid I must disagree. Regardless of whether or not I agree that your action is itself objectively morally neutral, to completely discount the insult provided to the members of P” (who are in effect bystanders of your social conflict) as “not relevant” because of your assessment of the weight of the original disagreeable actions of P’ is unacceptable.
Fred Phelps is a jackass, who has done (in my opinion) objectively disagreeable things. Fred Phelps claims to be a Christian. This does not give anyone the freedom to insult all Christians in the name of “protesting Fred’s jackassery”.
Germane to the original post, I agree, the Christian Anti-Defamation League is full of it.
So burning a flag is an unacceptable behaviour in that case because of all the people who hold the flag as sacred, despite what atrocities are committed in it’s image? Come off it. When someone burns an American flag in protest, it’s not trying to offend 300,000,000 people. It’s a way to protests the actions carried out under the symbol by a select few.
Posted by: Patrick Cahalan | January 13, 2009
Fred Phelps is a jackass, who has done (in my opinion) objectively disagreeable things. Fred Phelps claims to be a Christian. This does not give anyone the freedom to insult all Christians in the name of “protesting Fred’s jackassery”.
Bad example. I turned my back on christiany more than a decade before I heard of Phelps. I do not need his example to justify my disdain. I will go even farther. No matter what Phelps would believe, it could even be atheism, he would be a self justified bully. In this case, his religion happens to give his crutch for his nasty nature.
But the cracker case is that of a mainstream religion giving it’s followers a reason for thinking they were justified to bully a student.
Not merely that but also by men whose normal way of life (culture) was one of telling stories, ie lies, to each other all the time (eg rather than giving a straight answer or bothering to find out the truth about anything). Probably the most obvious example is the Jesus character in the story continually making up stories about stuff.
Hence it ought to be obvious (to anyone paying attention) that the bible is just a collection of (mutually contradictory) stories. Lies which people happened to like enough to pass down and, eventually, write down – with or without resolving the inconsistencies.
Patrick Cahalan, in your example, your simile would be more apposite if you added that P” took no umbrage (indeed, implicitly condoned) the actions of P’.
http://www.rightremedy.org/booklets/47 seems to be where Facilis is cribbing from. What’s the biblical punishment for being caught with your hand in the gobbledegook jar?
Danny, what happens to Cain after his expulsion makes a lot more sense when one is aware of the fact that the early Hebrews were polytheistic. YHWH was their protector/creator/war god. They had others too, early on. (Look up Asherah) Other tribes and peoples had their own gods which were just as real to the Hebrews as YHWH. It follows that outside of “Eden”, other gods had dominion and had their own people they’d created/ruled.
If the Jews had believed in only one god, then the first commandment would have been entirely unnecessary. It would have said “There’s just me. I want you to call me “_____” and worship me like this. Oh, and tell Ur “Ur doing it wrong.” When they fought for their god, they weren’t fighting over theological perceptions, they were fighting the forces of another, actual, real-as-theirs god. If they won, it meant that their god kicked the other god’s ass, and vice versa. If you want to accept Genesis as truth, then you have to accept that there were (are) a multitude of gods and that the Abrahamic one simply destroyed, defeated, or displaced the others of the region. I’d be kinda worried. Hindus have a bazillion gods, lots with like 12 arms and all waving swords and crap. If the fur starts to fly (and it always does with gods), they’ll win just on strength of numbers.
You might also want to look up “parsimony” and “Occam’s Razor”. Essentially, the simplest explanation that works is usually the best. If a natural process is sufficient to satisfactorily explain something (say, evolution) then invoking a supernatural one (an invisible, undetectable, omnimax being) that would require a whole new host of explanations is completely unwarranted. As Feynmaniac illustrated above, God used to do and be the answer to everything. But, as we’ve learned more and more about the world and universe that surrounds us, we’ve discovered the real processes at work. If a natural process or system of processes explains what we observe, then a super-being behind the scenes, twirling knobs and holding atoms together and making sure light’s the fastest thing around is completely extraneous and a ridiculous assumption to make in the absence of evidence for one.
Patrick Cahalan,
There is no right not to be offended. Get over it.
Religious idiocy offends me every day, but those who perform it have absolutely no obligation to stop doing so for that reason. My mockery of this idiocy may offend those performing it, but I have absolutely no obligation to stop mocking for that reason.
Ooh, we have a concern troll who is concerned. Evidently he didn’t read the 30,000+ post of crackergate to see that we have a consensus, and spewed some irrational idea to try to justify his concern. Patrick, if we offend you with our attitude, great. Your attitude offends us. So we are even according to the Golden Rule. Except your concern is wrong, and our attitude is correct.
Back in the old days, the only official method of stopping idiocy or the mockery of (sanctioned) idiocy was to petition the Pope to issue a harshly worded papal bull.
And back in the back in the old old days, that meant tying a letter to the horns of an especially hornery bull from the Pope’s personal stables, pointing it at the home of the offending party, and swatting it on the tuchas very hard.
I say this because ‘not stealing’ is not beneficial for our species. danny m
Danny, natural selection cannot take account of the good of the species. That’s a common misunderstanding. Insteead, it brings about changes in species because some members of the species do better than others at staying alive and raising young. In a social species, which our ancestors were long before they were human, natural selection could favour behaviour that approximates to the rule “Do not steal”, because it would reduce fighting within the social group (which is mostly made up of relatives). We can in fact see something close to this behaviour in many social species. Once our ancestors evolved the ability to speak, they could put this in the form of a rule and teach it to their children, which would strengthen the behaviour, reduce fighting within the group more, and so give groups with the rule an advantage over those without it.
I’m curious. If I win this debate,do I get some sort of prize like a Molly.Or probably “best debate with a Pharyngula troll” or “best argument against atheism”? I wonder
Facilis, you won’t win the debate. You lost it the first time you didn’t define your terms when challenged. Saying you can still win the debate and/or a Molly just shows how deluded you are.
We don’t give a prize for stupidest troll. If we did, you might be in the top twenty, but no the top five.
If winning is defined as having both your head and your ass handed back to you, you have just won the Super Molly with extra wiggly tentacles. Careful there, they like to wrap around the neck.
Or I could award you with the coveted Order of the *nn.
@Janine
Let me explain
Matthew 7: 24″Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Everyone’s worldview and philosophy is built something. I choose to base my worldview and philosophy on God and his revelation(the rock). Because I use God as my starting point I am able to do certain things. I am able to account for certain knowledge because, God who has univeral knowledge can reveals certain things to us so we can be certain of them. I am able to account for universal truth which is contained in God’s nature. I am able to account for the laws of logic and mathematics and morality because they are reflections of God’s immaterial, universal, objective,invariant nature.I can account for the reliability of my senses because they are gifts from God. I can account for induction because of God’s promise to uphold the uniformity of nature.
But the atheist does not build his worldview on God and instead puts it on an idol. As I showed in my discussion with emmet and Jade , Atheists are unable to have any kind of certain knowledge. When I questioned Emmet’s knowledge claims as to how he knew them to be true, he was unable to answer. this is what happens when you do not build your philosophy on the rock.Any philosophy not built on th rock ill fall.This is why I say “with the impossibility of the contrary”.They are unable to account for logic or mathematical laws. They have nothing but an appeal to majority opinion on morality. They cannot account for induction.
(You do it with all worldviews, I would do the same with Islam or Hinduism.However it only works if you know what your opponent truly believes. This is why I refuse to address the people who posit the Greek Gods or Sideshow Bob as a joke)
My duty here is to show that theism provides a solid foundation for knowledge, logic and reason,mathematics,uniformity of nature and induction and atheists cannot provide any and is not feasible. I think I’ve shown this but I will leave it to the unbiased observers.
You do know that this is a whole school of thought right?It goes back to Cornelius Van Til (perhaps even to Kant)
There is something really funny about trying to argue that atheism is a means of viewing existence by throwing scripture at me.
But the atheist does not build his worldview on God and instead puts it on an idol.
Contradiction there. No gods in our house, are there dear?
We made that clear. We made little Graham promise us he’d be a good boy.
Also, no knowledge is absolutely certain. You have proved nothing except that you have almost no idea what words mean. But some knowledge have better support than others. And you support is pure air.
How can you know the universe is consistent?
How do you account for the reliability of your senses?
How do you know words mean what they mean and that they will continue to stay the same?
How would you know?
I asked how you know this and you indicated evidence. Are you certain evidence is the best way to answer this question?
So, Facilis, if you think you’ve “won”, why do you flee in abject terror from the most basic questions? Why can’t you define your terms? Why can’t you list these supposed “objective, invariant, universal ,immaterial laws of logic and reason” that you keep babbling about? Why can’t you define the properties of your imaginary god?
I’ll tell you why. It’s because you’re full of shit. You’ve got nothing, and you know it.
Put up or shut up, asshole.
@Emmet
But the problem is that you can’t even get to solipsism. At least solipsists know that they exist. You can’t know anything for certain.
Would you like to read it? go to biblegateway.com
However as i have shown, atheists cannot even account for knowledge.
I would beg to differ. Without the ability to reason or to account for induction that God revelation gives us it would be impossible to have science.
Which logic do YOU use to reason?
You cannot account for the laws of logic you use to reason,so you steal them from theism. You’re driving a stolen car Emmet.
So morality is decided by societies and Kin selections? You haven’t yet explained why they apply to me.
It cleverly exposes the inability of atheists to substantiat their knowledge claims.
You can’t even get to solipsism.That’s what happens when you deny God.
At least unicorn believers try to account for it. Do these unicorns have some kind of REVELATION I can examine?
..The rest is just Emmet unable to substantiate his knowledge claims
Facilis… please give up. No one will be swayed, convinced or converted by your weak ass lame bullshit. You have no evidence of a god.
Evidence is the ONLY thing that would change anyone’s mind here. You have none.
Navel gazing and mental gymnastics are not evidence.
@Janine
Are you certain no knowledge is certain?
How do you KNOW what words mean?
You can’t even spell correctly and you expect us to believe that you have revealed true knowledge?
Exactly how “natural” is the idea of “don’t steal,” anyway? The condemnation of theft is an idea that societies enforce when they’re well-organized enough to keep track of how stuff changes hands. Corruption–a fancy word for taking stuff you haven’t rightly earned–runs rampant in much of the world because of high poverty rates and lousy organization. It hasn’t exactly been bred out of the human race. People steal when they can’t earn, they steal far more from strangers than friends, and they refrain from stealing when they can expect to get caught. (To simplify it to an almost criminal extent.) Create lousy economic conditions, cripple law enforcement, and kick some (apparently wealthy) outsiders into the ring, and “thou shalt not steal” goes straight out the window. What exactly are we trying to account for, again?
Eh, blockquote fail.
Substantiate your claim that the bible is in fact such a revelation.
Alas, Facilus, the neo-Platonic schmuck. No one is able to provide absolutely concrete knowledge. All of us are living in an existence that is so much larger than any of us can comprehend. There are various ways to try to make it through here.
But your insistence that there is an absolute knowledge to be had cuts you off from truly trying to learn from what is around you.
And I can assure, I have a better grasp of the meaning of word then you do. I also have a better grasp of shades of mean. You can start lecturing me about meaning as soon as you realize that as an atheist, I do not have any idols.
Neither can Christianity.
Demonstrate how your religion is different from Hinduism, Islam, or a joke.
Facilis, you cannot win by asking questions, but only by putting your proof out there for all to see. You have not done that. You haven’t even defined your terms, much less shown any logic other than “I posit god, therefore god exist, so I can posit god, therefore god exist…..”. What a loser.
Quoting the fictional bible doesn’t do anything for your credibility. The proof goes first god, then show the bible is divinely inspired and/or word of god. Then you can quote the bible to make it meaningful. You have failed step one. Ergo, the bible is a work of fiction.
@ KnockGoats, Nerd of Redhead, Kel
You’re either missing my point or being deliberately obtuse.
Of course, people can be offended for completely irrational reasons. Of course, one shouldn’t couch one’s discourse entirely under the burden of never offending anybody. It’s perfectly reasonable, in fact, to be intentionally offensive in certain cases.
What is your purpose? What is your objective? Being right? If PZ’s purpose, as he claimed, is to bring light to this poor student’s plight, how is he in any way advancing this person’s cause by his actions? He’s not drumming up sympathy for this student, you realize? If anything, he’s actually hurting the student by connecting the student’s action with his own.
If what you are trying to do is convince one other rational, reasonable, unbiased person that your stance is correct, being offensive or not is largely irrelevant. If you’re trying to win an intellectual debate, your reasoning will win out over your singular opponent. If you’re arguing in the public sphere, however, you have a huge audience that is not directly invested in your dialogue with your opponent… unless you or your opponent convince them to enter the fray.
Offending people does not lead them to joining your cause, it pushes them to the other side. As I just pointed out on another thread, science policy funding comes indirectly from the public here in the U.S. Pissing off people intentionally (right or no) does not lead them to giving two shits when they read in the paper that science education sucks in this country. It is counterproductive.
Offending people does not lead them to joining your cause, it pushes them to the other side.
Bullshit, you swanning concern troll. Take your fit of the vapors to another fainting couch. If you recover, do some research on the Overton Window. Do I offend? I don’t want any framers on my side.
My duty here is to show that theism provides a solid foundation for knowledge, logic and reason,mathematics,uniformity of nature and induction and atheists cannot provide any and is not feasible. I think I’ve shown this but I will leave it to the unbiased observers.
See my Augustine quote for danny m in post 948. All you’ve done is demonstrate to anybody with half a brain that your ability to cut and paste and disguise it with the occasional paraphrase exceeds your capacity to understand the concepts that you claim bolster your position. By all means, continue to declare victory. The only award you’re in the running for is Order of the Dismembered Black Knight, whose motto is, “It’s only a flesh wound.” What are you going to do, bleed on us?
Everybody else, watch what happens when Darth Vader dubs the Black Knight.
Facilis the fallacious, you have no duty here. That was a figment of your imagaination. You have made no claims for theism except that it is irrational, like your arguments. You can’t even define your terms. Ergo, no argument for theism. Your god doesn’t exist, and is not needed in the modern world anyway. Total fail all around. But, we expect nothing less from deluded godbots.
Your DUTY here?
The presumption, it burns.
The presumption that only a force with consciousness could create the universe, it also burns. Because we use consciousness to create things, you assume that consciousness must be at work behind everything. Hence the myth that “God created man in His own image.” I suppose it’s easier to assume that there must have been a human-like guidance behind the formation of the cosmos and the creation of life on Earth, rather than imagine how a force without consciousness could shape matter and eventually create beings with consciousness. Our ancestors found it much easier to assume that the Earth was the center of the solar system (and thus the center of everything else in the cosmos), and many of our contemporaries continue to assume that the Earth has scarcely been around for longer than human beings have been around to assert dominion over it, than to consider that the universe created the sort of consciousness that we use to understand our existence, not the other way around.
The thing is, none of us really need to “understand” how the universe came to be or how life began, any more than the universe needs to be small enough for us to comprehend. Life took a very long time to come up with us, and the Earth took a very long time to come up with life, and the universe did not put Earth in the center of anything. We are a johnny-come-lately species on a tiny planet which amounts to a speck of dust upon a speck of dust floating in a vast field of sparsely placed dust. You just won’t believe how mind-bogglingly big the universe is. It wasn’t built for us, and we are not the pet creations of the thing that built it. The thing that built it has no pet creations.
Ken,
I liked that. I am afraid that most of the nerds and geeks here have already seen this but I have a weakness for the time that Star Trek went to Camelot.
Then you have failed in your duty. You’ve also failed in your duty to put spaces after commas.
Don’t commit seppuku or anything, though. I really don’t want to meet your disembodied spirit.
PC, the concern troll is concerned. Maybe you haven’t read the front page, but PZ wants us to be rude to illogic and stupidity such as Facilis the fallacious fool has been presenting for days. He needs to understand in no uncertain terms he failed the task he laid out for himself.
We aren’t interested in converting Facilis to atheism. If he decides to make that journey, it will be on his own. If he asked, we would help him. Most of what we do here is rebuting people who come to this blog to push their ideas, be it theism, creationsim. ant-AGW, or whatever. We usually respond politely at first if the posters are polite (look at our intial responses to Danny M above for example). However, once they enter the of repetition of irrational ideas we take off the polite gloves, as happened with Danny M when he couldn’t grasp that science has nothing to do with god, and we understood more of the bible and its history than he did.
PC, your concern is noted and rejected.
Duty according to whom? Where is your evidence for this duty existing? Especially since you’re vague enough to appeal to “unbiased observers” rather than being able to name a specific judge and their criteria for measuring success and failure. Also, what’s your punishment for failure (since you have failed completely and utterly, in every part)?
What you’ve really done instead is provide another example of how theism (religion) correlates with mental, educational, moral and emotional retardation. Religion relies on that retardation and has positive feed-back into causing more of it in the afflicted believer.
SEF, that duty is embedded within the very structure of christianity. The idea that one must testify and convert non believers. Sadly for Facilus, he tried using a very garbled neo-Platonic argument and left himself open to verbal body slams and ridicule.
This lead to yet an other christian action, Facilus was able to be a martyr being mocked by the wicked. It left Facilus feeling fulfilled in his religious duties and lets us feeling better knocking about a willing idiot.
Has this been an s and M relationship? Yes. I have to admit to being a bit of a top.