Where's God?

[InterestedAtheist]

Because that would be against His character.

Gods character is part of His nature. He cannot go against His nature just as a dog cannot talk because dogs by nature cannot talk.

How can you prove that? You have said that goodness is God's character. Therefore, if God's character is to be inconsistent, changeable or just plain lying, inconsistency, changeability and lying are good.
The problem you are having is that you are trying to construct a logical argument to show that only God's existence can justify objective morality. It's not enough to say "I know that God is good," you have to provide a logical proof of it. Euthyphro's Dilemma is an excellent way to demonstrate the logical flaw in your argument, as I and @doubtingmerle have been showing you. And you have nothing to say except, "No, that's wrong. God is good." It's therefore becoming obvious that you are using circular logic, and your argument fails.

We come to know it is correct by experience. Our experience with God confirms His claim to goodness.

Careful, Ed - you are getting perilously close to arguing for the first branch of the dilemma, that God says things are good because they are. In which case, you are undermining your own argument by saying that it is possible to work out a system of morality without the need for God.
Euthyphro's Dilemma stands. Either accept that we do not need God to work out what is and is not moral, or accept that saying that goodness depends on God is moral relativity at its most naked, and that good means nothing at all.

No, but I have seen persons create personal communication, personal relationships, and etc.

Good. Thank you for conceding the point that you have never seen a person create a person. Therefore, your argument that the universe must have been created by a personal force because it contains personal beings, fails.

We do create persons by initiating the process by which persons come into existence, thereby proving that persons are needed to create personal beings. Either as the primary cause using secondary causes or as the primary cause itself in the production of personal relationships or personal communication.

But the persons who created the persons who created the persons (etc.) were not ultimately created by persons. They evolved from near-human forms of life, who themselves emerged from forms of life even more different from modern humans.
The personal was created by the impersonal, the blind natural force of evolution.
Your argument on this is dead. Give it up.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

No, you have not shown it is not applicable. There are many things about the Trinity that we dont know but there is nothing contradictory about it. One in essence and three in person.

I agree. It's not a good analogy. And I doubt you will come up with a way to show how it is possible to have three separate Gods who are, at the same time the same God.
Look, you can believe that logical impossibilities exist within your religion if you like. Just don't ask us to believe that they're not logically impossible.

It doesn't need to if the principles are derived from Christianity. Actually it does mention Jesus, ie Year of Our Lord. Unlike a real secular constitution from the French Revolution where they refused to even mention the year of our Lord. And the Judeo-Christian founding principles had already been mentioned in the document containing the philosophical foundation of Constitution, the Declaration of Independence.

See how weak your argument is? "The Year of our Lord" indeed! Just because the Founders didn't feel the need to invent an entire new calendar, does not mean they intended their government to favour any religion.
The fact that all you have is scrapings from the bottom of the barrel like this shows how wrong you are. Look, if the Founders had wanted the USA to have an officially Christian government, it would have been the simplest thing in the world for them to do. Read their writings, and you'll see that they obviously did not want that, and went to great lengths to ensure that it was not. And it becomes even more obvious when - as I mentioned earlier - you consider how bitterly the Constitution was opposed, both before it was ratified and long, long after - by Christians who were furious that it did not endorse the Christian religion.

No, as I stated earlier the DOI is listed in the United States Code Annotated under the heading "The Organic Laws of the United States of America". It is also referenced as part of the law of the land in multiple SCOTUS rulings. In addition many concepts in the Constitution come from the Bible. The concept called the "Law of Nations" in Article I, Section 8, Clause 10 references offenses against the Law of Nations. The founders borrowed this concept from Grotius, Pufendorf, and Vattel. They developed the concept of the Law of Nations as an extension of natural, God given law. The fact a law exists that supersedes the legislative enactments of various nations, implies a power and authority higher than man. In additon, the concept of the equality of man which comes from the bible is incorporated into the Constitution in Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8 and the 14th Amendment. And there are other principles

Again: see how weak your "proofs" are? See how many logical leaps you have to make, tying your ideas together on the flimsiest of pretexts?
Again, if the Founders had wanted a Christian Constitution they could have made one. They obviously went to very great lengths to make sure that the USA was, as it was famously put, "not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

 

[Halbhh]

It emerges from physical matter but IT is not physical matter.

A very important couple of assumptions or premises. They could possibly cover over key things to investigate (I think so).

They could both be right, both assumptions used there, or just 1 of the 2, or...even possibly neither (though this last seems unlikely to us of course, but by
'physical matter' I think you mean simply all of physics ( not just matter only), and then that opens up fields and effects and so on, and then the premise looks like quite a big leap once you notice what it is presuming (it's not reliable to presume a field goes away merely because matter changes state, etc.)).

 

[Halbhh]

Great! So, you've gone for the first branch of the dilemma. You're saying that it is possible to work out what is good in naturalistic terms. Goodness, to quote you, is what makes human lives work better, rules that result in peace and flourishing. I believe something similar myself, so we are in agreement.
Of course, that does mean that we do not, therefore, require God to exist in order for morality to exist. We can work out morality quite well without God. While I agree with you on this, this doesn't seem to be the traditional Christian point of view, which is that God is Himself the essence of goodness (as I believe EdWolf is arguing on this very thread).
But is that is what you believe, then that's fine. Good for you!

First a key thing that could help (definitely will help at some point, and probably here also).

It should always be impossible to deduce logically whether God exists. Not just sort of hard. Truly not possible. Here's why: If it were possible == that is with a proof that could stand up to intense review == then such a proof would obviate/prevent faith, since faith is specifically to believe before/without seeing (proof). Proof (too soon) would kill the whole goal of faith.

God existing (and being naturally competent by nature, able to think and such) would then most logically arrange things to prevent any possibility of some always-available proof that He exists.

He would presumably not only structure things to prevent all proofs, but even more -- He should be expected to also proactively search out and remove any strong evidence and remove any possible strong traces of that evidence, so that there is zero effective evidence (unless one takes the profound journey He specifies at least, which at some point is a leap of faith, and then the goal is already accomplished as it were).

Therefore, also, just like all other things, morality and goodness would need to be structured ahead of time in a way they cannot be used to just easily prove He exists.

Just to keep the proofs impossible.

Ergo, it's unremarkable that morality appears to arise/flow from nature, and so on. That's what we'd expect from scripture (that is all scripture as a whole, instead of only a few isolated verses out of context).

 

[doubtingmerle]

He would presumably not only structure things to prevent all proofs, but even more -- He should be expected to also proactively search out and remove any strong evidence and remove any possible strong traces of that evidence, so that there is zero effective evidence (unless one takes the profound journey He specifies at least, which at some point is a leap of faith, and then the goal is already accomplished as it were).

And God likes it when people simply accept something as true without doing an investigation?

Per my tagline, "If God did not intend I should think, why did he give me a thinker?"

 

[InterestedAtheist]

Cool argument! "I look so wrong that I must be right. Nobody could be this wrong by accident!"

It should always be impossible to deduce logically whether God exists. Not just sort of hard. Truly not possible. Here's why: If it were possible == that is with a proof that could stand up to intense review == then such a proof would obviate/prevent faith, since faith is specifically to believe before/without seeing (proof). Proof (too soon) would kill the whole goal of faith.

Since we're talking about Dan Barker, let's see what he has to say:
What about faith? Some believers agree with us atheists that the evidence for God is weak, even nonexistent. Many concur that the arguments for God are ultimately unconvincing unless you are predisposed to believe. It all comes down to faith, they say. Faith would be unnecessary, they remind us, if God’s existence were proved to be a blunt fact of reality. There would be no way to separate the (good) believers from the (bad) unbelievers. Since faith is a virtue, proof of God’s existence would deny us the opportunity to impress God with our character. If belief were easy, it would count for little in demonstrating our loyalty and trust of our Father.
But this is a huge cop out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are admitting that the assertion can’t be taken on its own merits. If something is true, we don’t invoke faith. Instead, we use reason to prove it. Faith is intellectual bankruptcy. With faith, you don’t have to put any work into proving your case or overcoming objections. You can “just believe.” Truth does not ask to be believed. It asks to be tested. Scientists do not join hands every Saturday or Sunday and sing, “Yes, gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!” If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.
Faith is actually agnosticism. Faith is what you use when you don’t have knowledge. When someone says, “The meeting is at 7:30, I believe,” they are expressing some doubt. When you tack “I believe” onto a comment, does that make it stronger? If faith is valid, then anything goes. Muslims believe in Allah by faith, so they must be right. The Hindus are right. The Greeks and Romans were right. More people claim to have seen or been healed by Elvis Presley than ever claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus. With faith, everybody is right.
Suppose an atheist, refusing to look at any religious claims, were to say, “You must have faith that there is no God. If you believe in your heart that nothing transcends nature and that humanity is the highest judge of morality, then you will know that atheism is true. That will make you a better person.” Wouldn’t the Christians snicker? Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” In other words, faith is the evidence of non-evidence. It is a free lunch, a perpetual motion machine. It’s a way to get there by not doing any work. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is.” Even the bible admits that you can’t know if God exists. You have to “believe that he is.” Abracadabra.

Barker, Dan. Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists (pp. 100-102). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

God existing (and being naturally competent by nature, able to think and such) would then most logically arrange things to prevent any possibility of some always-available proof that He exists.

Sounds like Douglas Adams' argument about the Babel Fish - the most obvious proof that God exists, which therefore means that he doesn't. Also sound very silly.

He would presumably not only structure things to prevent all proofs, but even more -- He should be expected to also proactively search out and remove any strong evidence and remove any possible strong traces of that evidence, so that there is zero effective evidence (unless one takes the profound journey He specifies at least, which at some point is a leap of faith, and then the goal is already accomplished as it were).

Wow. So God would never do something really, really obvious, like come down to Earth in person and tell everyone that He is God and perform miracles.
You can believe this nonsense if you like, but you're flying in the face of all the Christians who do tell us there is evidence of God's existence. Often in very enthusiastic "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" terms.

Therefore, also, just like all other things, morality and goodness would need to be structured ahead of time in a way they cannot be used to just easily prove He exists.

Halbhh, if you've lost an argument it's not much good saying, "Because I lost the argument, I must have won!"

Ergo, it's unremarkable that morality appears to arise/flow from nature, and so on. That's what we'd expect from scripture (that is all scripture as a whole, instead of only a few isolated verses out of context).

Great.
So, as I said, you're going for the first branch of the dilemma, and we don't need God to have a moral sense.
Good for you. We agree.

 

[Ed1wolf]

↑ed: Nowhere in the Constitution does it even deal with marriage. The founders believed marriage was a state issue. In addition, even heterosexuals don't have a RIGHT to marriage as I demonstrated earlier.

ia: In so stating, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. You want to argue that heterosexuals have no right to get married? Be my guest. But you're arguing with a strawman. The question is, do two people who love each other and wish to get married have the right to do so? Of course they do.

Not according to the Constitution, there is no federally guaranteed right to marry for heterosexuals and certainly not a right to the made up institution of gay marriage. There is nothing in the Constitution about love either.
↑

ed: No, good is not what God says, the good is what God is. Good is the nature of God.

ia: You're still stuck on the dilemma. You claim that God provides a standard against which we can measure goodness? Okay, fine. Prove it logically. So far, you've said nothing but "He just is." You said you weren't going to give us circular reasoning, then you did.
So, good is the nature of God, you say? Fine. So what does it mean when you say God’s nature is good? Is God’s nature good because it measures up to some external standard, or is good itself defined by whatever way God’s nature is? I imagine you'll go for the latter, but all that means is that goodness is now meaningless; whatever God's nature said was good is good. If God's nature said that raping children, stealing from old ladies and kicking puppies was good, it would be. Would you object? On what grounds could you do so? God told you otherwise? So what? Maybe His nature is to change His mind.

No, His nature cannot change just like a leopard cannot change his spots. That is the nature of a leopard. The intrinsic nature of God is goodness so it cannot change. And we confirm His goodness when we have a relationship with Him so that our experience confirms that He is good just as He has claimed.

ia: Don't you see, saying that goodness is God's nature, with no external standard, renders goodness completely meaningless. By your logic, there is no way that we can say what is good. If you want to dispute this, please try to do so by providing a rational argument.

How does God being the good render goodness meaningless? We have a written revelation of laws that reflect the nature of His goodness. That is the meaning of goodness which is based on His objective moral character, so there is no meaninglessness. We have the meaning right in front of us. Only if there is no moral God is morality meaningless because then it can mean anything as I demonstrated with your Webster definition of love, it fit Hitlers actions and feelings perfectly. Love becomes meaningless.

↑

ed: I did not make it up, it is a biological fact, look it up.

ia: That you need a man and a woman to have a baby? Of course that's true.

No, that only a man and woman can unite two persons into a single reproductive unit thereby reinforcing their personhood. Homosexual behavior cannot do this.

ia: The question is, why should that prevent two homosexual people from marrying? All you're doing is asserting that this inability should disqualify them, without any grounds. You're trying to give yourself grounds by making up some pretext about marriage being a mystical union that can only take place along with insemination, but that's nonsense. The mystical union is simply called love, and homosexuals are just as capable of it as heterosexuals - no matter what your religion claims.

No, the union is not mystical it is biological.
↑

ed: How do you that?

ia: Take a look at what you next said:
↑
The state has a right to protect the health of the people of the society.
How do you do that?
You do that the same way I did. It makes sense. When I say "All people have the right to act as they see fit, unless there is good reason to prohibit that act in the overriding interests of society" and you say "The state has a right to protect the health of the people of the society" we're both saying much the same thing.
The only thing is, your statement is irrational in this case. You're missing the key part, the part that I said: unless there is a good reason to prohibit that act in the overriding interests of society. You will need a very good reason to ban gay marriage, and you don't have one.
You think that gay sex is harmful? Well, all sex is potentially harmful. Have you never heard of STDs? Following your own logic, the state should ban not just gay sex, but all sex, except under strictly monitored and vetted conditions. That would solve the crises of abortion, diseases, unwanted pregnancies, loose moral conduct and so on, wouldn't it?

I have never said gay sex should be banned, only discouraged just like we discourage smoking and drinking and driving and for the same reasons, none of it is good for you. And we should also discourage promiscuous sex outside marriage because that is one of the main causes of STDs.

ia: Of course, there are very good reasons why the state doesn't do this, not least that it would be a monstrous violation of the rights of the individual. A violation you are only too happy to see happen, but only in the case of people you have a religious objection to - homosexuals.
As we're seen in this whole, long thread - follow your arguments logically, and they wind up refuting themselves, often by showing that what they would lead to is a hell on earth.

There was no hell on earth 30 years ago when homosexual behavior was not encouraged.
↑

ed: Dealt with earlier.

ia: In fact, "You say gay people can't have children. Well, so what?" is very much the main theme of this argument, and far from having dealt with it you still have yet to make a reasonable point about it. do you mean to invalidate every marriage that can't produce children? The infertile, the disabled, the marriages of people too old, marriages between people who have firmly stated that they do not wish to ever have children? No? Then, once again, you are guilty of the fallacy of special pleading.

No, I never said any of that. But the government should especially encourage marriages that provide the optimum environment for the producing and raising of children, which is only heterosexual marriage. It should it encourage it for the continuing survival of the society itself. Sociological studies have shown that ones that condone homosexual behavior do not flourish and survive.

↑

ed: Because it cannot unite persons, it is a depersonalizing behavior.

ia: Nonsense. Two homosexual people expressing their love for each other through physical intimacy, a personalizing experience? What on earth are you talking about?

See above about the biological facts.
↑

ed; No, other oppressed peoples have not had these issues.

ia; Of course they have. Black people suffer from racism, Jewish people suffer from anti-semitism, and it is well-documented how gay people suffer from homophobia.

But there is no evidence that oppression of blacks and jews resulted in higher rates of mental and physical illnesses as it has with gays. Therefore, it is likely that higher rates of mental and physical illnesses are the results of engaging in homosexual behavior itself. Since the study that has shown this
↑was conducted in a nation that is very open and accepting of gays.

ed: Adolf Hitler had a strong affection for the Aryan race out of kinship and personal ties and felt that the jews would destroy them so he tried to destroy the jews before they could destroy his people. So since that fits your definition of love, do you agree that Hitler was engaging in loving behavior when he started the holocaust?

ia: Of course not. He loved the Aryan people (a thoroughly misleading simplification, but let's go with it for now) and his love led him to do hateful things to people he perceived as his enemies. Simple.

But your perception of him doing hateful things to his enemies is just based on your personal feelings, ie chemical reactions in your brain. Just like Hitlers feelings and behavior was just based on the chemical reactions in his brain. So ultimately your source of morality is identical, what rational basis do you have for condemning someone just because his brain chemicals make him act differently from you? How can condemn someone just because his chemicals are slightly different from yours?
↑

ed: Read Matthew 11:21-24.

ia: "You evil people! Boy, you've really got it coming."
Hmmm. Doesn't seem very helpful in proving there are "different levels of hell," especially the ones such as you imagined in your colourful story about families choosing to go to hell forever.

No, He plainly says that one city would be judged more harshly on Judgement Day than another city because of their actions. Obviously since cities are made up of people it applies to people as well.
↑

ed: 2 Peter 3:13.

ia: New heavens and a new earth, it says. You told me you had proof that God was going to create a parallel universe for people to suffer in.

Yes, there will be a new universe for us to dwell forever with God, so also there is Hell, where the rebellious will dwell forever without God. This is taught in several places in the bible. Hell is that parallel universe for the unrepentant.

ia: Not that I mind if that's what your religion says, but that's the point: you're just making things up to suit your own arguments.

No, I didnt make it up, it is a rational extrapolation from the texts.
↑

ed: No, it has to be eternal because your sin can affect others negatively for eternity. And you are rebelling against the eternal good.

ia: So, because I stole a pencil when I was five years old, I deserve to be roasted over a barbecue for umpteen trillion years? That's what your logic leads to. It's a good thing we have a superior human sense of justice that sees such punishments as abhorrent. Punishment should fit the crime. Christian punishment doesn't - cannot, by definition. No crime can be so terrible that it must be punished forever. That would be answering wrong with an infinitely greater wrong.

No, generally most humans have not reached the age of accountability where they can understand good and evil at five years old. Most people dont reach accountability till about 7-10 years old. You can only go to hell after you can judge between good and evil, ie the age of moral accountability. We learn this from Gods other book Nature.
↑

ed: True it does not go into a great deal of detail and reference to fire is plainly Hebrew rabbinic hyperbole but it plainly teaches there are different levels of treatment in hell as I demonstrated above.

ia: No, it doesn't go into a great deal of detail, does it? In fact, hardly any at all. All that you're demonstrating is that you're happy to make your own religion up.

No, I am not making anything up, everything I have said can be demonstrated from the texts though not always explicitly.
↑

ed: No, it is not unbiblical, maybe a slightly unorthodox interpretation, but nowhere in the bible is the concept disproven.

ia: You could say that about an awful lot of things.

No, not really.

ia: It's clear that you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. On the one hand, you think that hell mustn't be too bad, because you have to defend your idea that people might, of their own free will, choose to go there. On the other hand, you cannot escape your Christian notions that hell is a terrible punishment, made infinitely bad by its infinite nature. This is a problem that has bedevilled, no pun intended, Christians since the concept of hell first came into being, and I'm afraid you're no closer to solving it.

No, for the extremely evil it is a terrible place for all eternity. There is nothing to solve, Christianity provides justice for evil doers, in the atheist world, the evil doers often get away with their evil deeds. If there is no God, Hitler basically got away with what he did with no justice being served for his victims. But if the Christian God exists, then Hitler got his just deserts.

 

[Jok]

Just because you experience something, does not mean you understand it, or know about it.

Experience itself is an understanding. There’s even the cliche “It’s an experience.” Matter of fact we drastically overrate our ability to know things by how we verbally describe them, in reality it’s a convenient shortcut via “Relating to people” because those people have the same experiences that we do. We even have the luxury of saying to someone “It’s sort of like...” followed by an example of a certain shared experience that comes close. We have no such luxury for knowing what it’s like to be a bat for example, even if we had exhaustive knowledge of bat anatomy, bat behavior, etc.

Every single living human before Isaac Newton experienced gravity, and many of them saw apples fall off trees. But it was not until a mathematical genius came along that we could say we could begin to understand gravity.

Why would a mathematical understanding of something be the only way of understanding that something? If we follow this logic out then people don’t have the slightest idea of what weather is if they are totally ignorant of temperature readings, barometric pressure, wind velocities, humidity, precipitation, etc.

In the same way, while we are all conscious, we have only begun to understand consciousness since the advent of science, and particularly our recent understanding of the brain and how it works.

It’s all knowledge about the precursor to consciousness. That’s the intriguing thing about it, you can’t empirically touch that which emerges from that 3 pound glob of squishy matter called a brain

Second, physical consciousness may be an oxymoron, but it also makes perfect sense - in that consciousness is something that arises from the physical. Do you have any proof that any type of consciousness exists without a material base of some kind to produce it? Do you have evidence that any disembodied intelligences actually exist?

No. I believe that consciousness needs a very precise and sophisticated platform to emerge from. At least in this realm, which is the only realm that we have empirical access to.

 

[Jok]

A very important couple of assumptions or premises. They could possibly cover over key things to investigate (I think so).

I am no stranger to admitting to having certain assumptions, and also saying that it’s impossible for anyone to not have them, but I don’t know which assumptions you’re referring to in this case. I don’t know of any way whatsoever that empirical tools can show us consciousness.

by ‘physical matter' I think you mean simply all of physics ( not just matter only)

Yes, everything empirical is what I mean, my language gets lazy sometimes. Matter, energy, potential energy, etc, all tools available from physics.

and then that opens up fields and effects and so on, and then the premise looks like quite a big leap once you notice what it is presuming (it's not reliable to presume a field goes away merely because matter changes state, etc.)).

Physical fields are empirically detectable. Consciousness goes away at death but there’s no consciousness field that I know of that collapses at death.

The entire task of “Empirically pointing to consciousness” is a nonsensical enterprise IMO. It’s the wrong tool, it’s similar to walking a beach all day with a metal detector trying to detect why people think that beaches are beautiful. However even that analogy falls short of trying to empirically detect consciousness because you can at least empirically point to the material that makes up the beach & ocean. The emergence of consciousness is the proof that ultimate reality consists of more than that of physics.

That which emerges from something is not the same thing as that which it emerged from. We can’t conflate “Something that emerges/arises from something” with “Something that IS something.” “B emerges from A” is a different claim than “B is A.” Anyone who claims that “Brain state #12 IS the same exact thing as the phenomenon of feeling cold” is not making a logical statement about emergence, they are saying something like “My generator that’s full of diesel is the same exact thing as the electricity that it produces.”

With emergence either we get a new higher level property arising from lower level properties in such a way that you couldn’t predict the higher level property from the lower level properties. Or a more loose form of emergence (like the generator example) would be an effect arising out of the totality of its causes.

Ok so the way that I see it is that we have three different types of emergence situations...two of the situations results in the emergent property being empirically detectable, and the third situation results in an emergent property that is blind to empirical detection. So situation #1 is an emergent effect where both the cause and the effect are distinct things, and they are both empirically detectable, such as “Combustion and piston movement that caused my axels to turn...emerged from the fine mist of gasoline spraying through my spark plugs.”

Situation #2 is where in a sense you are talking about the same exact thing but the distinction is that you are analyzing that thing at both lower and higher levels. There’s the famous example of my scientific table vs my everyday table. At lower levels my table is a bunch of atomic particles, it’s not solid, and it’s mostly empty space. But if we back away from it enough we reach the emergent higher level properties such as energy fields that cause solidness, a smooth wooden texture, the ability to bounce tennis balls off of it, etc. Once again we have a situation where both that which emerged (my everyday table) and that which it emerged from (my atomic level scientific table) are totally detectable to empirical investigation.

But now situation #3 presents the curious case where that which something emerged from IS empirically detectable (brain state #12), yet that which emerged from it is NOT (the phenomenon of feeling cold). In this case I can’t empirically detect any emergent effects like I can in the case of piston motion from gasoline & spark plugs, and like I can from backing farther away from it like I did to my atomic scientific table. I simply can’t point to brain state #12’s emergent properties physically.

Consciousness is the foundation stone of our ultimate reality, it’s our PRIMARY access to reality for it is literally our lens to view reality, therefore the most primary & immediate aspect of all reality also happens to be that part of reality that is non-physical. If the cornerstone of my reality is non-physical I’m definitely willing to conclude that physics does not exhaustively explain reality. That’s not much of a leap of faith for me.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

Experience itself is an understanding. There’s even the cliche “It’s an experience.” Matter of fact we drastically overrate our ability to know things by how we verbally describe them, in reality it’s a convenient shortcut via “Relating to people” because those people have the same experiences that we do. We even have the luxury of saying to someone “It’s sort of like...” followed by an example of a certain shared experience that comes close. We have no such luxury for knowing what it’s like to be a bat for example, even if we had exhaustive knowledge of bat anatomy, bat behavior, etc.

I'm not sure how this is of relevance to our discussion.

Why would a mathematical understanding of something be the only way of understanding that something?

Can you think of another way to understand the phenomenon of gravity? Apart from "It's something I can feel pulling me towards the ground"?
The point I'm making is that you're wrong - very, very wrong - to say that just because we experience things we understand them. Right now I'm experiencing operating on a computer. But I have very little understanding of how a computer works. For you to say that we understand consciousness just because we experience it doesn't follow at all.

If we follow this logic out then people don’t have the slightest idea of what weather is if they are totally ignorant of temperature readings, barometric pressure, wind velocities, humidity, precipitation, etc.

Not in the slightest. I am saying that you can have an idea of what the weather is without knowing about barometric pressure, etc. etc.

It’s all knowledge about the precursor to consciousness. That’s the intriguing thing about it, you can’t empirically touch that which emerges from that 3 pound glob of squishy matter called a brain

Again, not sure what point you're making here.

No. I believe that consciousness needs a very precise and sophisticated platform to emerge from. At least in this realm, which is the only realm that we have empirical access to.

Good. I agree with you. A mind needs a brain to exist, because a mind - and consciousness - is an effect of a brain thinking.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

Not according to the Constitution, there is no federally guaranteed right to marry for heterosexuals and certainly not a right to the made up institution of gay marriage. There is nothing in the Constitution about love either.

It looks like you're just fighting with yourself here. If you want to argue that straight people do not have a right to marry, go for it.

No, His nature cannot change just like a leopard cannot change his spots. That is the nature of a leopard. The intrinsic nature of God is goodness so it cannot change

You're really doing very badly at making a logical argument. You keep making these claims, and then when we say, "How do you know?" your argument comes down to "It just is!"
Look. You've already said that the foundation for objective morality is the nature of God Himself. Fine, you've chosen that branch of Euthyphro's Dilemma - God does not say things are good because they are good, things are good because God says they are. But in doing so, you have stepped into a logical trap you are now quite unable to get out of: if goodness is what God says it is, then God could say anything was good, and it would be.
I and others have pointed this out to you a number of times now. What if God declared that murder was good, or child abuse, or lying? Then it would be, because anything God says is good, is.
And your response to this is "God would never do that!" But this is an empty argument. Why wouldn't He? What is there to stop Him? You cannot say God would never do evil, because if He does it, it is good.
Your reply to this is to say "But God has said what is good and evil, and he would never change." But why not? If God says that change is good, that going back on your word is good, that saying something completely different to what you originally said is good, who are you to argue?
Don't you see, you're caught in a logical trap, with no means of escape.

And we confirm His goodness when we have a relationship with Him so that our experience confirms that He is good just as He has claimed.

Careful, there, Ed. You said that God's nature is what determines good. Now it looks like you're going back on your word, and saying that you determine what is good by looking at it. So how is it that you know what is good or not? Do you judge it for yourself? I imagine you will say it is some gift from God that allows you to discern good from evil; in which case, we are back to the same puzzle as before - who helped you to discern good from evil? Presumably, God, and we've already established that saying "Goodness is God's nature" is a meaningless statement.

How does God being the good render goodness meaningless? We have a written revelation of laws that reflect the nature of His goodness. That is the meaning of goodness which is based on His objective moral character, so there is no meaninglessness. We have the meaning right in front of us. Only if there is no moral God is morality meaningless because then it can mean anything as I demonstrated with your Webster definition of love, it fit Hitlers actions and feelings perfectly. Love becomes meaningless.

Good being good does not render goodness meaningless. But God being the good means that anything God does is good. Therefore, if God were to do something bad, it would be good. Therefore, he would not have been doing something bad in the first place. He can't. You can't say "God would never do something bad," because if God were to do something bad, you would have to call it good.
"Ah," you say, but "His nature cannot change just like a leopard cannot change his spots. That is the nature of a leopard. The intrinsic nature of God is goodness so it cannot change."
So what you're saying is, it would be bad of God to change His intrinsic nature? But we've just agreed He cannot do bad. So if He were to change His intrinsic nature, then that would be a good act. Besides which, who says He is changing it? Perhaps He just lied to you about what goodness is. And if God lies, then that means lying is good, because anything God does is good.

No, that only a man and woman can unite two persons into a single reproductive unit thereby reinforcing their personhood. Homosexual behavior cannot do this.

So what? You keep saying this, and I keep wondering why you think it matters. Why should it matter if a loving couple are incapable of having babies?

No, the union is not mystical it is biological.

In that case: so what? Why do you think that matters?

I have never said gay sex should be banned, only discouraged just like we discourage smoking and drinking and driving and for the same reasons, none of it is good for you. And we should also discourage promiscuous sex outside marriage because that is one of the main causes of STDs.

You've never said gay sex should be banned, but you do think that gay marriage should be banned. Why banned, why not just discouraged? Not that this would be much better, but your logic is inconsistent.

There was no hell on earth 30 years ago when homosexual behavior was not encouraged.

I think you misread what I said. I said:
"Of course, there are very good reasons why the state doesn't do this, not least that it would be a monstrous violation of the rights of the individual. A violation you are only too happy to see happen, but only in the case of people you have a religious objection to - homosexuals.
As we're seen in this whole, long thread - follow your arguments logically, and they wind up refuting themselves, often by showing that what they would lead to is a hell on earth."
And this is perfectly true. You think that the state should act to ensure an optimum society. You say that families should have babies, and so homosexuals shouldn't marry, because they can't have babies.
But why stop there? If the state is actually concerned with families having more babies (it isn't, at least not enough to interfere with families' lives) and if you were actually concerned about gay marriage because it doesn't produce babies (and I doubt you are)...
Then you would both be recommending that all families unable to have babies should be forbidden from marrying. Which, of course, neither you nor the state is doing.

No, I never said any of that. But the government should especially encourage marriages that provide the optimum environment for the producing and raising of children, which is only heterosexual marriage. It should it encourage it for the continuing survival of the society itself. Sociological studies have shown that ones that condone homosexual behavior do not flourish and survive.

Accepting that, for the moment, let me point out that this is not what you are saying. You are not saying that homosexual marriage should be discouraged, you are saying it should be banned.
Don't you think you should be honest, and just admit that your prejudice against homosexuals is entirely religious? It would save a lot of time.

See above about the biological facts.

The "above biological facts" are nothing more than homosexuals can't have babies together.
So what? Again, how is loving gay sex in any way a depersonalising experience?

But there is no evidence that oppression of blacks and jews resulted in higher rates of mental and physical illnesses as it has with gays. Therefore, it is likely that higher rates of mental and physical illnesses are the results of engaging in homosexual behavior itself. Since the study that has shown this was conducted in a nation that is very open and accepting of gays.

You're taking a very big logical leap there. The nation itself may have been very open and accepting of gays, compared to other nations, but that doesn't at all show that gays did not feel the victims of bigotry, either because of the world they lived in or the society they grew up in.
Also, there are huge amounts of evidence that gay people do experience appalling abuse, and even the ones who aren't abused suffer from the general, background level homophobia.

But your perception of him doing hateful things to his enemies is just based on your personal feelings, ie chemical reactions in your brain. Just like Hitlers feelings and behavior was just based on the chemical reactions in his brain. So ultimately your source of morality is identical, what rational basis do you have for condemning someone just because his brain chemicals make him act differently from you? How can condemn someone just because his chemicals are slightly different from yours?

Did your mother never teach you the golden rule when you were growing up? Did she never say, when you bullied other children, "How would you like it if they did that to you?"
Morality can be a complicated subject. It can have great difficulties. It can be a complex thing to work out. But at root, it's simple enough. We're all humans. We all have empathy. We can all see that if we treat another person badly, they might treat us badly in return.

No, He plainly says that one city would be judged more harshly on Judgement Day than another city because of their actions. Obviously since cities are made up of people it applies to people as well.

I should hope so, too. It would be a terrible thing if all people were to be given the same terrible punishment. Why, that would be as unjust as saying that anyone who committed a crime, no matter how big or how small, should be sent to hell forever. Can you imagine?

Yes, there will be a new universe for us to dwell forever with God, so also there is Hell, where the rebellious will dwell forever without God. This is taught in several places in the bible. Hell is that parallel universe for the unrepentant.

Again: according to you.

No, I didnt make it up, it is a rational extrapolation from the texts.

I'm not disagreeing with you. It's just that saying "this is a rational extrapolation" does not mean it is the only possible answer. It's not a ridiculous idea, but when it comes to religion, who says ridiculous ideas are out of bounds? Why, I've even heard there are some people who think that God is three separate gods while at the same time still being one God!

No, generally most humans have not reached the age of accountability where they can understand good and evil at five years old. Most people dont reach accountability till about 7-10 years old. You can only go to hell after you can judge between good and evil, ie the age of moral accountability. We learn this from Gods other book Nature.

In other words: you made it up. Oh, sorry - it's a rational extrapolation, except that Christians all disagree with each other about it.

No, I am not making anything up, everything I have said can be demonstrated from the texts though not always explicitly.

That's quite the understatement. Saying "you're just making it up" is the plain way of putting it.

Ed: No, it is not unbiblical, maybe a slightly unorthodox interpretation, but nowhere in the bible is the concept disproven.
IA: You could say that about an awful lot of things.
Ed: No, not really.

Yes - really. Your slightly unorthodox interpretations would get you burned at the stake in times gone by. In today's world, let's just note that we can ask ten different Christians the same questions and get ten different answers.
It's honest of you to admit that not everyone agrees with your ideas, but the truth is more than that: plenty of people disagree with them, and none of you have any better reason to say you're right than the others.

No, for the extremely evil it is a terrible place for all eternity. There is nothing to solve, Christianity provides justice for evil doers, in the atheist world, the evil doers often get away with their evil deeds. If there is no God, Hitler basically got away with what he did with no justice being served for his victims. But if the Christian God exists, then Hitler got his just deserts.

You're right. If there is no God, Hitler was never punished. This is not ideal, but the atheist never said it was an ideal world.
If it was an ideal world, Hitler would have been caught, tried for the world to see, and punished for his crimes, presumably by life imprisonment or execution.
But in the Christian's ideal world, Hitler was sent to a torture chamber, and kept there forever and ever and ever. It's good to think that the children (above the age of ten, I'm sure!) who stole a packet of candy were not there with them. But think of it mathematically. Any punishment must be infinitely terrible, if it is continued for an infinite length of time.
Also, I have to point out again, your idea that there are different levels of hell is based on the loosest, flimsiest evidence imaginable, helped along by a generous dollop of imagination. Maybe in one level the pokers are red hot and in the other they're white hot? Who knows?
What I do know is that Christians believe hell to be a place of unimaginable suffering that goes on forever. And that is just plain barbaric.

 

[Jok]

I'm not sure how this is of relevance to our discussion.

John Connor understands why people cry. The Terminator didn’t. When he asked John “Why do people cry?” John realized in that moment that his crutch of common experience (in order to convey understanding of something) was gone. There are things that you know that you can’t teach unless your target student has the potential inside of them to grasp such knowledge. There is some knowledge that a dolphin has that a marine biologist can never have unless she became a dolphin.

Can you think of another way to understand the phenomenon of gravity? Apart from "It's something I can feel pulling me towards the ground"?

Doesn’t the average 7 year old understand gravity extremely well? They seem to know why they shouldn’t bump glasses off of tables, that paper falls off the table differently and won’t chip the flooring or hurt their toe. They know that a thrown baseball will go farther before falling than a light foam nerf ball will, they get a feel for weight and air resistance as related to gravity. They know that things hit the ground with more force when higher up so that it’s ok if they jump off the shed stairs but dangerous if they jump off the shed roof. The ancients knew a lot too, enough to manipulate it to improve their lives.

There are types of understanding. Levels of understanding. You seem to want to place some type of strange knowledge monopoly on mathematics. You can know about something in many different ways.

The point I'm making is that you're wrong - very, very wrong - to say that just because we experience things we understand them.

Ok then so I will place you in the same category with the Terminator and a rock as those that don’t understand what it is to have emotions.

Right now I'm experiencing operating on a computer. But I have very little understanding of how a computer works.

You seem to always want to place the word “Fully” in front of “Understand.” Should we really discuss how much more you know about your computer than an infant?

For you to say that we understand consciousness just because we experience it doesn't follow at all.

It doesn’t follow for you that I understand consciousness but a rock doesn’t? We also don’t have to be talking about humans we can also talk about consciousness of lower life forms.

Knowing what something is like, and the neuroscience of brain activity are different types of understanding.

Not in the slightest. I am saying that you can have an idea of what the weather is without knowing about barometric pressure, etc. etc.

Exactly

 

[Halbhh]

And God likes it when people simply accept something as true without doing an investigation?

Per my tagline, "If God did not intend I should think, why did he give me a thinker?"

Faith means to trust, basically. One cannot trust in what one doens't even know though. But, if you hear the words spoken by Christ, then you are starting to know something, and then you could have a chance to at some point -- even years later -- trust something. Now, I did not trust that all of Christ's words were necessarily true, but tested, and tested, and tested, often doing a new test of the same thing after it worked, because I wondered if somehow I'd gotten lucky or caused it somehow myself. I'd change the conditions, situation, actions, and test the proposition again, trying to see if it would fail in the new circumstance. When it worked over and over I began to accept that it was a strong or valid proposition: something good. After many propositions proved out to work, then I finally had to accept the reality that in fact Christ said many true things ('true' means an answer or such that works better than all competing answers). So, I tested more things He said, new things. See? Now, at some point, finally, after like 10 years of such testing, I finally tried praying with faith, which itself is a leap of faith (or can be for an individual). That was a key moment, because I did the trusting God wants us to have. He seems to not want people in his own personal estate forever that don't trust Him. When you consider that, it's very sensible, right.

 

[Halbhh]

Cool argument! "I look so wrong that I must be right. Nobody could be this wrong by accident!"


Since we're talking about Dan Barker, let's see what he has to say:
What about faith? Some believers agree with us atheists that the evidence for God is weak, even nonexistent. Many concur that the arguments for God are ultimately unconvincing unless you are predisposed to believe. It all comes down to faith, they say. Faith would be unnecessary, they remind us, if God’s existence were proved to be a blunt fact of reality. There would be no way to separate the (good) believers from the (bad) unbelievers. Since faith is a virtue, proof of God’s existence would deny us the opportunity to impress God with our character. If belief were easy, it would count for little in demonstrating our loyalty and trust of our Father.
But this is a huge cop out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are admitting that the assertion can’t be taken on its own merits. If something is true, we don’t invoke faith. Instead, we use reason to prove it. Faith is intellectual bankruptcy. With faith, you don’t have to put any work into proving your case or overcoming objections. You can “just believe.” Truth does not ask to be believed. It asks to be tested. Scientists do not join hands every Saturday or Sunday and sing, “Yes, gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!” If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.
Faith is actually agnosticism. Faith is what you use when you don’t have knowledge. When someone says, “The meeting is at 7:30, I believe,” they are expressing some doubt. When you tack “I believe” onto a comment, does that make it stronger? If faith is valid, then anything goes. Muslims believe in Allah by faith, so they must be right. The Hindus are right. The Greeks and Romans were right. More people claim to have seen or been healed by Elvis Presley than ever claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus. With faith, everybody is right.
Suppose an atheist, refusing to look at any religious claims, were to say, “You must have faith that there is no God. If you believe in your heart that nothing transcends nature and that humanity is the highest judge of morality, then you will know that atheism is true. That will make you a better person.” Wouldn’t the Christians snicker? Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” In other words, faith is the evidence of non-evidence. It is a free lunch, a perpetual motion machine. It’s a way to get there by not doing any work. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is.” Even the bible admits that you can’t know if God exists. You have to “believe that he is.” Abracadabra.

Barker, Dan. Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists (pp. 100-102). Ulysses Press. Kindle Edition.

Sounds like Douglas Adams' argument about the Babel Fish - the most obvious proof that God exists, which therefore means that he doesn't. Also sound very silly.

Wow. So God would never do something really, really obvious, like come down to Earth in person and tell everyone that He is God and perform miracles.
You can believe this nonsense if you like, but you're flying in the face of all the Christians who do tell us there is evidence of God's existence. Often in very enthusiastic "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" terms.

Halbhh, if you've lost an argument it's not much good saying, "Because I lost the argument, I must have won!"

Great.
So, as I said, you're going for the first branch of the dilemma, and we don't need God to have a moral sense.
Good for you. We agree.

Never heard of that individual, nor that argument, which has flaws the way you present it. See post #514 if you wish to understand better what I'm saying. It's not about our virtue, but about something more basic to relationship, to trust.

Consider a hypothetical contrasting situation to trust --

--> If some non believer individual totally distrusted me, then they would misunderstand pretty much anything I say -- they could hardly help themselves but to misconstrue things I say in some negative way, adding various incorrect harmful attributes/assumptions.

So, without some trust, even basic communication fails.

 

[Halbhh]

Physical fields are empirically detectable.

Certainly we do know how to detect some kinds of fields. In theoretical physics of course are speculative theories about other types of field which might exist, which haven't yet been detected.

I am no stranger to admitting to having certain assumptions, and also saying that it’s impossible for anyone to not have them, but I don’t know which assumptions you’re referring to in this case. I don’t know of any way whatsoever that empirical tools can show us consciousness.

Yes, everything empirical is what I mean, my language gets lazy sometimes. Matter, energy, potential energy, etc, all tools available from physics.

Physical fields are empirically detectable. Consciousness goes away at death but there’s no consciousness field that I know of that collapses at death.

The entire task of “Empirically pointing to consciousness” is a nonsensical enterprise IMO. It’s the wrong tool, it’s similar to walking a beach all day with a metal detector trying to detect why people think that beaches are beautiful. However even that analogy falls short of trying to empirically detect consciousness because you can at least empirically point to the material that makes up the beach & ocean. The emergence of consciousness is the proof that ultimate reality consists of more than that of physics.

That which emerges from something is not the same thing as that which it emerged from. We can’t conflate “Something that emerges/arises from something” with “Something that IS something.” “B emerges from A” is a different claim than “B is A.” Anyone who claims that “Brain state #12 IS the same exact thing as the phenomenon of feeling cold” is not making a logical statement about emergence, they are saying something like “My generator that’s full of diesel is the same exact thing as the electricity that it produces.”

With emergence either we get a new higher level property arising from lower level properties in such a way that you couldn’t predict the higher level property from the lower level properties. Or a more loose form of emergence (like the generator example) would be an effect arising out of the totality of its causes.

Ok so the way that I see it is that we have three different types of emergence situations...two of the situations results in the emergent property being empirically detectable, and the third situation results in an emergent property that is blind to empirical detection. So situation #1 is an emergent effect where both the cause and the effect are distinct things, and they are both empirically detectable, such as “Combustion and piston movement that caused my axels to turn...emerged from the fine mist of gasoline spraying through my spark plugs.”

Situation #2 is where in a sense you are talking about the same exact thing but the distinction is that you are analyzing that thing at both lower and higher levels. There’s the famous example of my scientific table vs my everyday table. At lower levels my table is a bunch of atomic particles, it’s not solid, and it’s mostly empty space. But if we back away from it enough we reach the emergent higher level properties such as energy fields that cause solidness, a smooth wooden texture, the ability to bounce tennis balls off of it, etc. Once again we have a situation where both that which emerged (my everyday table) and that which it emerged from (my atomic level scientific table) are totally detectable to empirical investigation.

But now situation #3 presents the curious case where that which something emerged from IS empirically detectable (brain state #12), yet that which emerged from it is NOT (the phenomenon of feeling cold). In this case I can’t empirically detect any emergent effects like I can in the case of piston motion from gasoline & spark plugs, and like I can from backing farther away from it like I did to my atomic scientific table. I simply can’t point to brain state #12’s emergent properties physically.

Consciousness is the foundation stone of our ultimate reality, it’s our PRIMARY access to reality for it is literally our lens to view reality, therefore the most primary & immediate aspect of all reality also happens to be that part of reality that is non-physical. If the cornerstone of my reality is non-physical I’m definitely willing to conclude that physics does not exhaustively explain reality. That’s not much of a leap of faith for me.

In general, science only knows some limited amount about consciousness (quite a lot of observations, but limited understanding). Myself, I don't assume this thing we call consciousness is entirely (only) physical, but it might be, and either way would be fine with me. My attitude towards consciousness is one of curiosity, and even after I have 100 observations, I'm quite aware they barely scratch the surface. It's a wonderful intriguing thing.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

Never heard of that individual, nor that argument, which has flaws the way you present it. See post #514 if you wish to understand better what I'm saying. It's not about our virtue, but about something more basic to relationship, to trust.

Have you really not encountered Douglas Adams' book, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Let me thoroughly recommend it. I am sure many Christians would agree with me that it's a classic of sci-fi comedy, and has something of a cult following.

Anyway, it seems to me as if, confronted by Euthyphro's Dilemma, you are taking the rather unusual (for a Christian) step of choosing the first path, saying that we don't need God to have a moral sense.
In which case, good for you. We are in agreement.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

John Connor understands why people cry. The Terminator didn’t. When he asked John “Why do people cry?” John realized in that moment that his crutch of common experience (in order to convey understanding of something) was gone. There are things that you know that you can’t teach unless your target student has the potential inside of them to grasp such knowledge. There is some knowledge that a dolphin has that a marine biologist can never have unless she became a dolphin.

Doesn’t the average 7 year old understand gravity extremely well? They seem to know why they shouldn’t bump glasses off of tables, that paper falls off the table differently and won’t chip the flooring or hurt their toe. They know that a thrown baseball will go farther before falling than a light foam nerf ball will, they get a feel for weight and air resistance as related to gravity. They know that things hit the ground with more force when higher up so that it’s ok if they jump off the shed stairs but dangerous if they jump off the shed roof. The ancients knew a lot too, enough to manipulate it to improve their lives.

There are types of understanding. Levels of understanding. You seem to want to place some type of strange knowledge monopoly on mathematics. You can know about something in many different ways.

Ok then so I will place you in the same category with the Terminator and a rock as those that don’t understand what it is to have emotions.

You seem to always want to place the word “Fully” in front of “Understand.” Should we really discuss how much more you know about your computer than an infant?

It doesn’t follow for you that I understand consciousness but a rock doesn’t? We also don’t have to be talking about humans we can also talk about consciousness of lower life forms.

Knowing what something is like, and the neuroscience of brain activity are different types of understanding.

Exactly

Thank you, Jok. I found that post interesting and insightful, on the whole. Not sure how much I like being compared to a rock, but we'll leave that.

I think you're right when you say that there are many levels of understanding. And indeed, the word "understand" can mean many different things in different contexts. Take your example of gravity. Does a child really understand what gravity is? They may have a considerable experience of it. But do they comprehend that it works, or just know many of the situations and recognise the feeling of it acting upon them?

I'd say that a physicist "understands" gravity a lot more than I do. I just know that gravity is the force between any two objects, and it grows stronger the more mass an object has. And of course, that's probably a lot more than a seven-year old child, whose understanding of gravity is probably that "it pulls me to the floor."

You say you understand a computer? Okay. Build one. You can do that? then you probably have a degree in it, or a lot of experience. As for me, I understand how to operate a computer, but I can;t honestly say I understand how it works, because I really don't.

Now, as for consciousness: yes, in one sense I understand my own consciousness more than anyone else ever can, because I can experience it, and nobody else can. But that doesn't mean I understand an awful lot about it, does it? Nor do any of us. Of course, we have started to gain greater understanding through scientific research, which is kind of the whole point I'm making.

And now, to get back to what I see as the point of all of this: we may not understand consciousness, but we do believe that it is an effect produced by the operation of a material brain. Without a brain, consciousness does not exist. Agreed?

 

[Ed1wolf]

There's nothing inherently wrong with caring about yourself or seeking pleasure. Those are only problems if they come at the expense of others.

That is what I am referring to.

 

[Ed1wolf]

I was never taught this as a Lutheran. God cannot be separated from himself. He experienced desolation, but that's not the same thing as God being ripped into pieces. Rather, it means that God took the experience of desolation, or even "atheism", into himself.

Unless you are claiming omniscience, you dont know that He cannot be separated from Himself. Since we dont have exhaustive knowledge of God, He very well may be able to separate Himself, at least temporarily and that is what this was temporarily. He probably also experienced desolation. He also experienced the Fathers wrath because He took everyone's sin on Himself.

 

[doubtingmerle]

Unless you are claiming omniscience, you dont know that He cannot be separated from Himself. Since we dont have exhaustive knowledge of God, He very well may be able to separate Himself, at least temporarily and that is what this was temporarily.

And yet your whole point is that you can know all about God's morality. Just as FireDragon76 can not know for sure if God can be separated from himself, you cannot be sure that God is the source of real morality.

There are three things wrong with saying that whatever God says is moral (or whatever God is) then that is moral. First, you have no reliable way of knowing what God says is moral (or what he is). And even if you did have a reliable way of knowing what he says (and is), you would not know if he is telling you the truth. And even if you did have his words with absolute certainty, and knew he was telling the truth with absolute certainty, you would have no way of proving that it is better to follow the morality that he says (or is) than following any other morality.