Omniscience and quantum mechanics

[Chesterton]

You learn fast, young padawan. To me, atheism is a lack of belief in the existence of deities. As such, there is nothing ridiculous about it, because it doesn't claim anything.

But it does claim something.

Quantum mechanics (my secret love) was called ridiculous, but only because it made ridiculous claims.

So atheism cannot be ridiculous, because it's the logical default (a discussion for another time, perhaps)

I just ridiculed atheism, yet you baldly claim atheism cannot be ridiculous. Either you're wrong, or we have a paradox.

Indeed. Double standards are what the FSM is all about. That an noodles.

So pasta is effective in "scrutinizing" the idea of a creative Being, but not effective in scrutinizing the idea of self-creating matter? Now there's a double standard.

I disagree. I don't think atheism undermines the validity of reason, if only because it is logical to presume our own ability to reason.

You can say it feels logical to presume, or I hope it's logical, but I don't think you can simply declare it's logical.

It's like Descartes' Demon: yes, technically, it's possible that I'm a brain in a vat and none of this exists.

Both of those ideas are just restatements of the Judeo-Christian idea: "In the beginning, God created..." Christians don't believe this reality is the reality.

But it is highly improbably, and it's simply pragmatic and useful to assume it's false (or, at least, cease considering it). Likewise, while we could assume that our ability to reason is unfounded and ultimately arbitrary, where would that get us? We could assume that we're insane, but just don't know it, and any semblance of sanity is an illusion concocted by our insanity.
But again, where would that get us?

If you stop at just saying it's pragmatic and useful, then I agree. But then so is Santa Claus. (He causes some kids to behave, at least for a little while, up until...the rude awakening.)

This isn't a problem of just atheism, this is a problem of the human mind itself. It's one of this inherent epistemological limitations I was talking about.

But theism provides the solution to the problem.

So you lament atheism for it, but you've obviously overcome it (or simply not considered it) yourself. Thus I submit it back to you .

It's not my problem. You're the one claiming that "it's physics (turtles) all the way down". I also presume our ability to reason, but I posit something to base my presumption on - a divine intelligence and reason. You however are basing your presumption on atoms in thin air.

Oh, and determinism was shot out the window by quantum mechanics - leading us neatly back to the OP.

I understand nothing of QM, so correct me if you need to, but I assume you're referring to "uncertainty"? I do know that uncertainty or chance doesn't matter when it comes to past events. Before an event happens there may or may not be many possible outcomes, but after the event, there is only one - the one which happened. If other outcomes occurred in some parallel universes, well, good for them. But whatever I'm going to have for lunch next Tuesday in this universe, after lunch happens, it will have been determined by the Big Bang.

Ah, but why do we want to live? You get back to a root cause which is fundamentally unjustifiable. What's so good about living? Mars gets along just fine without us, thank you very much.

Where are you when I need you; when I try and make this exact point to atheists? When I question how we can have morality with God, they tell me everything we are and do has been "programmed" for overall (not individual) survival in obedience to some inherent, mysterious "will to live". I ask them if they're isolated this "will to live" in a laboratory, and they look at me funny. They say even bacteria are moral because they will sacrifice themselves for other bacteria, then I ask "why don't those heroic bacteria have a 'will to live' like all the others?"

To answer your question "why do we want to live?", I refer again to Judeo-Christianity and note that God created life, and said "it is good". We are created in the image of a good God, so it is good that we "are".

But in an atheistic universe, I agree with you. Existing versus not existing is of no consequence and is a non-issue. I might result in children or even great-grandchildren, but eventually, after all of them, I will be forgotten forever. There's no one to even notice if the entire planet Earth disappeared, which it in fact will do someday. So I submit the question back to you, the atheist: "Why do we want to live?"

Our hunger pangs evolved for obvious reasons, whereas other sociological traits are a little more complicated to understand (altruism and homosexuality, say require the introduction of kin selection and an less-than-obvious understanding of what constitutes a selection pressure).

Behavioral traits are fine to talk about in the lower animals, but evolution went too far and created a Frankenstein. Birds may or may not have to build nests, but I know I don't have to do anything. Evolution gave me reason and free will, and I can use those to defy the "morals" which evolution legislated.

Ah, but that presupposes a sort of internal, objective morality. What people 'really know in their hearts' is just a poor excuse for explaining why people do terrible things. At the end of the day, you really have no idea what they 'know in their hearts'.

That's why I don't put much truck in objective morality. Even if it did exist, we wouldn't know about it, so we may as well act as if it doesn't.

If we don't agree in our hearts, why do we make excuses for doing the "wrong" thing? Whenever anyone accuses you Wiccan, of something wrong, you will in one way or another appeal to the objective standard you say you don't believe in. We have two words for people who claim not to appeal to the external standard: sociopath and psychopath, i.e., we consider them defective humans.

Well, that statement would be a metaphor. Obviously he wasn't 'truth', since truth is a property, not a thing.

It may be a metaphor also, but we don't think it's wholly a metaphor. We think Truth is a Person.

But facetious talk aside, are you saying that claims have different standards of proof? That moral claims ("This man is guilty of theft"), scientific claims ("The Higgs boson exists"), metaphorical claims ("I am the Way, the Truth, the Life"), etc, should be held to different benchmarks of proof?

I'm just saying that in real life, they in fact are. I would guess that as a scientist you probably don't recognize (and perhaps even find repugnant) the idea of "a preponderance of the evidence", which in law (in my State anyway) means a thing is effectively proved if it's found to be at least 51% likely to be true. Even within one courtroom, offhand I can think of three different standards of proof for three different types of things.

Optimism and pessimism, you mean? I've never heard of Heaven and Hell being the same place; after all, wouldn't we all experience this place in the same way?

We would experience the same thing, but the effect or reaction would not be the same. Coal reacts wonderfully to pressure, sometimes producing things of rare beauty; most other things don't react so well.

Physical sensations don't care about your outlook on life.

It's not about outlook, but about what type of thing you are. Different things interact with other things differently.

Well, yes, exactly: reason can only go so far. Reason can prove that "1 + 1 = 2" is true, but it can only substantiate that evolution is true. The certainty with which we know a statement is true is always maximised by using reason. I can't even think of anything other than reason by which we can determine a statement's truth or falsehood.

If you insist on this I can't really argue it, except to remind you not to fall into scientism, in the derogatory sense of the word. The reality you're in does not consist of a lot of individual statements to be considered. Aren't you a man first, and a scientist second? It's great to think about and study reality, but the important thing is you have to react to it and live it somehow, and if you choose "nothing", then that's your choice. I know that some modern atheists like to think they are "normal", i.e., that their's is the default position, but there is no normal; there is no default.

Aww, I was well up for a fruitless debate on semantics and arbitrary definitions .

I'm sure we'll get around to that eventually.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

For their genuine Love of the Good to the point of seeking for it with all their hearts, mind, souls, and spirits--even if, due to circumstances, they are seeking in what we would term "the wrong places." God rewards all who seek Him! For example, i fully expect many many Sufis will one day be united with "The Beloved."

Interesting. I wonder how deep this rabbit hole goes...

So a person is rewarded for seeking God, but not necessarily for finding God? How do reconcile that with John 14:6 ("Jesus saith unto him ... no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.")?
Also, does a person's morality factor in at any point? It seems you yourself have put Hitler on par with Mother Teresa!

That is correct. The "No True Scotsman Fallacy" is in no way applicable when dealing with the word Christian, the most obvious reason being that Christian means "Christ-like" and, given our Lord's Heart is clearly and concretely laid bare in Scriptures as our model--a primary reason, of course, why God became incarnate in the first place--anything less cannot claim the name "Christian."

There are, and can be, absolutely no "de-converted "christians" because in the process of Santification, the individual is changed into "a new creation" as St. Paul describes the process, and one can no more "de-convert" from this new being--AS IF ANYONE WOULD WANT TO!--than a pickle and revert to being a cucumber. ¡No es posible!

Then I guess we disagree on what it means to be a Christian. If what you say is true, then yes, it's impossible to deconvert. But I have my doubts that that's what happens.

There are, however, may God be praised!, a multitude of de-converted atheists. i suggest you join them.

I would gladly join them, if only I had any reason to. As far as I can see, I have no more reason to become Christian than I do Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Jew.

Unfortunately "dabblers" are a great offense to God, as He said, "So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth."(Revelation 3:16)

The best "place to start" is to single-mindedly with maximum possible focus, seek God with the exact same fervency, determination, and desperation as a starving man would seek food--which, in fact, spiritually speaking, is your exact situation.

How does one seek God?

A "smart world"--now there's an oxymoron! That was the basic big mistake in the Garden--seeking the "knowledge of good and evil" outside of the guidance of our Lord, God, and Creator. The turning back to God of the majority is the first sign of "human intellegence" (another oxymoron) in thousands of years. i, for one, am cautiously optimistic.

I'm sure every other religion would disagree .

Understood, but the "first steps" in a thousand mile journey do not provide a glimpse of the ultimate destination.

Perhaps, but how else do you expect people to become Christian without becoming disillusioned?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

But it does claim something.

Really? Like what?

I think you're going to say "God doesn't exist", or something similar.

I just ridiculed atheism, yet you baldly claim atheism cannot be ridiculous. Either you're wrong, or we have a paradox.

Hah, you've got me there. I was thinking more about how atheism can't be ridiculed in the same way the FSM ridicules religion (and, in general, a belief in the unjustified).

So pasta is effective in "scrutinizing" the idea of a creative Being, but not effective in scrutinizing the idea of self-creating matter? Now there's a double standard.

Hardly: it scrutinises unjustified beliefs or assertions. It can be the most crazy thing in the world, but if it's justified, then Pastafarianism doesn't care.

You can say it feels logical to presume, or I hope it's logical, but I don't think you can simply declare it's logical.

Actually, I can, because that's the whole point of logic. We can say, with absolute certainty, that something is the logical course of action, or belief, or whatnot, in a given scenario As long as we can justify the claim, we can say with it with absolute certainty.

The problem, of course, is in justifying the more qualitative aspects of human life: politics, religion, morality, etc.

Both of those ideas are just restatements of the Judeo-Christian idea: "In the beginning, God created..." Christians don't believe this reality is the reality.

So they don't believe that the chair they're sitting on actually exists? What, then, is it?

If you stop at just saying it's pragmatic and useful, then I agree. But then so is Santa Claus. (He causes some kids to behave, at least for a little while, up until...the rude awakening.)

True, which is why we still use him to control our kids.

But theism provides the solution to the problem.

Sure, and homoeopaths provide a solution to cancer. But the question is: does it work? I could submit a solution to one of the Millennium Problems, but I'd only get my prize money if I could justify the solution.

It's not my problem. You're the one claiming that "it's physics (turtles) all the way down". I also presume our ability to reason, but I posit something to base my presumption on - a divine intelligence and reason. You however are basing your presumption on atoms in thin air.

I base my belief on our reasoning abilities because it is reasonable. Either I am using reason to try to justify my ability to use reason and therefore do indeed have such an ability, or I don't have an ability to use reason and so my ponderings on the matter are irrelevant: though I think I'm using reason, I'm actually not, so my search is pointless.

It's like fre will: either we have it or we don't. So we may as well act as if we do, because the alternative means we have no choice in the matter.

I understand nothing of QM, so correct me if you need to, but I assume you're referring to "uncertainty"? I do know that uncertainty or chance doesn't matter when it comes to past events. Before an event happens there may or may not be many possible outcomes, but after the event, there is only one - the one which happened. If other outcomes occurred in some parallel universes, well, good for them. But whatever I'm going to have for lunch next Tuesday in this universe, after lunch happens, it will have been determined by the Big Bang.

Not even then. Quantum mechanics says that there are phenomena (like radioactive decay) which are fundamentally probabilistic, and as such cannot be predicted. I can say how likely a given event is, but I can't say when it's actually going to occur.

On the other hand, the volume in which the particle has a 99% chance of being for the next bazillion years is so absolutely tiny that we may as well treat it classically. So, under that approximation, we can indeed predict that the Sun will rise tomorrow.

However, on the third hand, there are macroscopic phenomena that only occur due to quantum indeterminism: the Sun would be several orders of magnitude cooler without quantum tunnelling, for instance.

Where are you when I need you; when I try and make this exact point to atheists? When I question how we can have morality with God, they tell me everything we are and do has been "programmed" for overall (not individual) survival in obedience to some inherent, mysterious "will to live". I ask them if they're isolated this "will to live" in a laboratory, and they look at me funny. They say even bacteria are moral because they will sacrifice themselves for other bacteria, then I ask "why don't those heroic bacteria have a 'will to live' like all the others?"

To answer your question "why do we want to live?", I refer again to Judeo-Christianity and note that God created life, and said "it is good". We are created in the image of a good God, so it is good that we "are".

I contend that even that is not a reason to live. Yes, God created us and called us 'good', but so what?

Yes, I'm an existential nihilist .

But in an atheistic universe, I agree with you. Existing versus not existing is of no consequence and is a non-issue. I might result in children or even great-grandchildren, but eventually, after all of them, I will be forgotten forever. There's no one to even notice if the entire planet Earth disappeared, which it in fact will do someday. So I submit the question back to you, the atheist: "Why do we want to live?"

We want to live because we are the descendants of 3.5 billion years worth of survivors. Instincts that promote self-preservation are obviously going to be preferred to instincts that promote risk and danger.

That said, evolution has thrown up some quirks: there exist organisms which are altruistic. We want to live, but we would die for our children.

There's no objective reason to. I want to live for the same reason I want to have sex: it is pleasurable, and my neuroendocrinology demands it.

Reason be damned .

Behavioral traits are fine to talk about in the lower animals, but evolution went too far and created a Frankenstein. Birds may or may not have to build nests, but I know I don't have to do anything. Evolution gave me reason and free will, and I can use those to defy the "morals" which evolution legislated.

Indeed, which is why we're such an interesting species.

If we don't agree in our hearts, why do we make excuses for doing the "wrong" thing? Whenever anyone accuses you Wiccan, of something wrong, you will in one way or another appeal to the objective standard you say you don't believe in. We have two words for people who claim not to appeal to the external standard: sociopath and psychopath, i.e., we consider them defective humans.

Indeed, because it's a form of evolution: those societies which encourage sociopathy are literally creating the instruments of their own destruction. Only by cooperating, encouraging friendly behaviour, and expunging the destructive, can a society survive.

There are exceptions, of course, but these exist mostly as parasites feeding on other, more self-correcting, societies.

But then again, the objective standard we hold people to is not as objective as you make it out to be: what is shocking to us is seen as perfectly moral to others in different cultures and eras, such as the stoning to death of a homosexual.

It may be a metaphor also, but we don't think it's wholly a metaphor. We think Truth is a Person.

Which seems to be a paradox. But then, Christianity embraces the logically incoherent: the Catchesm of the Catholic Church hangs a lampshade on the fact that the Trinity is, to us, an illogical concept.

I'm just saying that in real life, they in fact are. I would guess that as a scientist you probably don't recognize (and perhaps even find repugnant) the idea of "a preponderance of the evidence", which in law (in my State anyway) means a thing is effectively proved if it's found to be at least 51% likely to be true. Even within one courtroom, offhand I can think of three different standards of proof for three different types of things.

I suppose so, yes. As a mathematician, I settle for nothing less than an absolute and rigorous proof. As a scientist, I'll settle for just proof beyond reasonable doubt. As a friend, I can give my unconditional trust.

Which begs the question: to what standard should we hold religious claims? Personally, I think the scientific one is best suited.

We would experience the same thing, but the effect or reaction would not be the same. Coal reacts wonderfully to pressure, sometimes producing things of rare beauty; most other things don't react so well.

That makes sense.

If you insist on this I can't really argue it, except to remind you not to fall into scientism, in the derogatory sense of the word. The reality you're in does not consist of a lot of individual statements to be considered. Aren't you a man first, and a scientist second? It's great to think about and study reality, but the important thing is you have to react to it and live it somehow, and if you choose "nothing", then that's your choice. I know that some modern atheists like to think they are "normal", i.e., that their's is the default position, but there is no normal; there is no default.

Oh, absolutely. I don't wear my scientist hat all day, every day. But I'm talking solely about our ability to evaluate a statement's truth, to which I think reason is by far the best (and possibly only) way.

I think we dealt (or will deal) with the 'default' issue in a previous point, so I'll leave that.

 

[ephraimanesti]

Interesting. I wonder how deep this rabbit hole goes...

Rabbit hole? Are we playing Trivial Pursuit or something?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Rabbit hole? Are we playing Trivial Pursuit or something?

I'm just surprised how much your beliefs seem to deviate from those other Christians I've talked to, and I want to see just how much you differ from them. Nothing as sinister as Trivial Pursuit .

 

[ephraimanesti]

I'm just surprised how much your beliefs seem to deviate from those other Christians I've talked to, and I want to see just how much you differ from them. Nothing as sinister as Trivial Pursuit .

May our Lord grant that the "deviations" you appear to see are semantical rather than actual!--especially in a venue such as this.

Perhaps i should stay on the beaten path rather than wandering about in the land of personal conjectures which can neither be confirmed or denied--disproven or defended.

Going in public beyond what is clearly written is often the beginning of heresy and "deviating from beliefs of other Christians" is a first symptom. May God keep me on the narrow way and forgive any wandering to the left or to the right!

ephraim

 

[ephraimanesti]

Interesting. I wonder how deep this rabbit hole goes...

Its depth is irrelevant--it is its Truth which is of concern. This is especially true when dealing with old fools who are also wishful thinkers. May our Lord guide and bless! . . . .

So a person is rewarded for seeking God, but not necessarily for finding God?

Our Loving Compassionate God has promised us, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."(Luke 11:9, 10)

If one is truly seeking--with all their heart, mind, soul, and spirit--the ultimate source of Life, Truth, and Love, i believe that our God will not allow them to be disappointed and come up empty handed due to circumstances beyond their control--time, place, culture, etc. "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek him."(Hebrews 11:6)

How do reconcile that with John 14:6 ("Jesus saith unto him ... no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.")?

Scripture tells us that our Lord died for ALL mankind--"For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again."(II Corinthians 5:14-15)--and, in addition, "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built."(I Peter 3:18-20)

Based on these and other Scriptures, it seems to me that those who, in this life, are not exposed to the Truth of the Gospel--that Jesus is Lord and died that their sins be forgiven--due to circumstances beyond their control--just like those who died in Old Testament times well before the birth of Jesus the Christ, for example--will be given an opportunity to hear the Gospel preached after death and be given an opportunity to accept or reject the Salvation which our Lord gained for them with His death and Resurrection. Those who were seeking God with all their inner resources during their lives will, of course, accept; those who chose darkness and evil will, of course, reject--the same, in both cases, as if they had heard the Gospel preached during their lifetimes.

Also, does a person's morality factor in at any point? It seems you yourself have put Hitler on par with Mother Teresa!

i'm not understanding your reasoning here. Morality is a factor and consequence of connectedness with God through the Holy Spirit in which, because of that connectedness, one chooses the GOOD and avoids the EVIL. It would seem to me to be crystal clear which choices both parties made and the reason why. How can you possibly say i have placed "Hitler on a par with Mother Teresa"?

Then I guess we disagree on what it means to be a Christian. If what you say is true, then yes, it's impossible to deconvert. But I have my doubts that that's what happens.

My brother, not to be offensive, but how can you, not believing in the Truth of the Scriptures, not believing in Jesus as being who He claimed to be, not even believing in the existence of God, pontificate on what it means to be a Christian?

I would gladly join them, if only I had any reason to. As far as I can see, I have no more reason to become Christian than I do Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Jew.

More's the pity!

How does one seek God?

Humbly; fervently; with complete honesty and openness; and as a little child.

I'm sure every other religion would disagree .

No--i think this is one area where all religions would agree.

Perhaps, but how else do you expect people to become Christian without becoming disillusioned?

i think i am misunderstanding your question, but the whole purpose of becoming Christian is precisely to become dis-illusioned--to lose one's illusions and begin to live in complete accord with reality.

Oh how God is praised--both by self and significant others--when this point is reached in one's life! May your journey be shortened!

A BOND-SLAVE/FRIEND/BROTHER OF OUR LORD/GOD/SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST,
ephraim

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Our Loving Compassionate God has promised us, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."(Luke 11:9, 10)

If one is truly seeking--with all their heart, mind, soul, and spirit--the ultimate source of Life, Truth, and Love, i believe that our God will not allow them to be disappointed and come up empty handed due to circumstances beyond their control--time, place, culture, etc. "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek him."(Hebrews 11:6)

Scripture tells us that our Lord died for ALL mankind--"For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again."(II Corinthians 5:14-15)--and, in addition, "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built."(I Peter 3:18-20)

Based on these and other Scriptures, it seems to me that those who, in this life, are not exposed to the Truth of the Gospel--that Jesus is Lord and died that their sins be forgiven--due to circumstances beyond their control--just like those who died in Old Testament times well before the birth of Jesus the Christ, for example--will be given an opportunity to hear the Gospel preached after death and be given an opportunity to accept or reject the Salvation which our Lord gained for them with His death and Resurrection. Those who were seeking God with all their inner resources during their lives will, of course, accept; those who chose darkness and evil will, of course, reject--the same, in both cases, as if they had heard the Gospel preached during their lifetimes.

Makes sense to me.

i'm not understanding your reasoning here. Morality is a factor and consequence of connectedness with God through the Holy Spirit in which, because of that connectedness, one chooses the GOOD and avoids the EVIL. It would seem to me to be crystal clear which choices both parties made and the reason why. How can you possibly say i have placed "Hitler on a par with Mother Teresa"?

Because it seems to me that you believe that seeking God is sufficient. Thus, since both Hitler and Teresa sought God, they are on par in terms of their salvation. That one is the quintessential Evil Doer seems irrelevant. No?

My brother, not to be offensive, but how can you, not believing in the Truth of the Scriptures, not believing in Jesus as being who He claimed to be, not even believing in the existence of God, pontificate on what it means to be a Christian?

The same way a Christian can debate atheism. To me, a Christian is one who is professes that they are a Christian. After all, who am I to tell them otherwise?
Typically though, such people have some belief in Biblical spirituality (that is, they believe the Bible's teachings on all things spiritual are, to a degree, true), specifically the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Bible has its own thoughts (for want of a better word) on what it means to be a Christian (Matthew 7:16, and all that), on what happens to a person when they become a Christian, and even what (if anything) distinguishes a self-professed Christian from a True Christian™.

But like you said, I don't believe in the Bible, so I don't put much truck in what it says Christians should be.

So I consider Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses to be Christians, if only because they claim to be Christian. I also consider those who follow 'Christian Wicca' to be Christians, though I do so with some hesitation.

Anyway, enough about me .

Humbly; fervently; with complete honesty and openness; and as a little child.

Indeed. But how, exactly? I've been told enough times that one has to be honest and genuine in one's search, but just how does one search? For these past 21 years, I believe I've been searching with an honest and open heart, but I've found nothing but an uncaring universe bereft of (an) overarching intelligence(s). Am I doing something wrong?

i think i am misunderstanding your question, but the whole purpose of becoming Christian is precisely to become dis-illusioned--to lose one's illusions and begin to live in complete accord with reality.

Ah, no, 'disillusioned' means 'disillusionment - A feeling that arises from the discovery that something is not what it was anticipated to be, commonly held to be stronger than disappointment especially when a belief central to one’s identity is shown to be false; The act of freeing from an illusion, or the state of being freed therefrom'.

Oh how God is praised--both by self and significant others--when this point is reached in one's life! May your journey be shortened!

I look forward to the day .

 

[ephraimanesti]

Because it seems to me that you believe that seeking God is sufficient. Thus, since both Hitler and Teresa sought God, they are on par in terms of their salvation. That one is the quintessential Evil Doer seems irrelevant. No?

MY DEAR BROTHER,

Where in the world did you get the idea that Hitler at any point "sought God." He was, it is true, born Catholic but he quickly evolved into a full-blooded pagan, and, when gaining the power and opportunity to do so, persecuted Christians almost as rabidly as he did Jews. He stated, "It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity," he confided in 1933, "because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood." His countrymen would have to choose, he said: "One is either a Christian or a German. You can't be both." He was not worried about the outcome of this choice-making, "Do you really believe the masses will ever be Christian again?" he wondered in mock seriousness. "Nonsense. Never again. The tale is finished . . . but we can hasten matters. The parsons will be made to dig their own graves"--and thousands did indeed do so in the death camps.

There are many books out regarding Hitler's dealings with the Christian Church. Two of the best are THE NAZI PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCHES by J.S. Conway and HITLER, THE WAR, AND THE POPE by Ronald J. Rychlak.

The same way a Christian can debate atheism. To me, a Christian is one who is professes that they are a Christian. After all, who am I to tell them otherwise?
Typically though, such people have some belief in Biblical spirituality (that is, they believe the Bible's teachings on all things spiritual are, to a degree, true), specifically the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

No, they accept bits and pieces of Jesus' life and teachings, twisting and perverting them to justify their evil ends. Such "christians" have used--or rather abused--the Bible to justify racism, "holy" wars, torture as a "conversion" tool, the killing of those who interpret Christianity differently--i.e., "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland where murderers on both sides claimed to be "christian"--the pillaging of the environment and other cultures, the bombing of abortion clinics and murder of abortionists, etc.

When judging whether a person or group is indeed "Christian", one must look at the fruit and judge whether it be Christ-like or not. As our Lord said, "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."(Matthew 7:16-21)

The "No Proper Scotsman Fallacy" does not apply to the designation "Christians"!

The Bible has its own thoughts (for want of a better word) on what it means to be a Christian (Matthew 7:16, and all that), on what happens to a person when they become a Christian, and even what (if anything) distinguishes a self-professed Christian from a True Christian™.

But like you said, I don't believe in the Bible, so I don't put much truck in what it says Christians should be.

So you think it fair to uncritically accept a person/group's pronouncement that they are "christian" and then judge all Christians--and even the existence of God--by their perverse beliefs, practices, and negative effect on the world around them?

Indeed. But how, exactly? I've been told enough times that one has to be honest and genuine in one's search, but just how does one search? For these past 21 years, I believe I've been searching with an honest and open heart, but I've found nothing but an uncaring universe bereft of (an) overarching intelligence(s). Am I doing something wrong?

My brother, i don't know what to say to you in this regard. From my point of view and personal experience, i have to believe there is a missing piece somewhere in your search; from your point of view, of course, you believe that you covered all the bases. Who am i to say? Given the disparate numbers between those making contact with God and those reporting an inability to do so, i have problems believing the difficulty lies with God, of Whom it is reliably reported in regard to His desire to be found, "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, NOT WANTING ANYONE TO PERISH, but EVERYONE to come to repentance."(II Peter 3:8, 9)

God Himself states, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with ALL your heart."(Jeremiah 29:13)Were/are you willing to pay the asking price for finding God--EVERYTHING. Nine times out of ten herein lies the glitch in the process of seeking and finding our Lord. Note what is required in our Lord's parables regarding finding the Kingdom of God in Matthew:13:44-45--"he goes and sells ALL THAT HE HAS and buys that field" and "went and sold ALL THAT HE HAD and bought it."

Count the cost!

Ah, no, 'disillusioned' means 'disillusionment - A feeling that arises from the discovery that something is not what it was anticipated to be, commonly held to be stronger than disappointment especially when a belief central to one’s identity is shown to be false; The act of freeing from an illusion, or the state of being freed therefrom'.

"DIS"--"to exclude or expell from"
"ILLUSIONED"--"The state or fact of being intellectually deceived or deluded;"
i like mine better!

I look forward to the day .

Amen. Maranatha!

A BOND-SLAVE/FRIEND/BROTHER OF OUR LORD/GOD/SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST,
ephraim

 

[Chesterton]

Really? Like what?

I think you're going to say "God doesn't exist", or something similar.

Yes, it claims "God doesn't exist", and in so doing it claims "mindless nature is all there is". And there are secondary implications which arise from that.

Hah, you've got me there. I was thinking more about how atheism can't be ridiculed in the same way the FSM ridicules religion (and, in general, a belief in the unjustified).

I thought I did ridicule it in the same way; I don't see the difference. How is the existence of the singularity justified? How is it's expansion justified?

Actually, I can, because that's the whole point of logic. We can say, with absolute certainty, that something is the logical course of action, or belief, or whatnot, in a given scenario As long as we can justify the claim, we can say with it with absolute certainty.

The problem, of course, is in justifying the more qualitative aspects of human life: politics, religion, morality, etc.

The whole point of logic is to declare itself valid? Then it's no good.

So they don't believe that the chair they're sitting on actually exists? What, then, is it?

It exists, and it's real, but I think it's real in the way a stage prop is real - real but artificial. The cosmos is an artifact of God. The chair, made by man, is an artifact once removed.

Sure, and homoeopaths provide a solution to cancer. But the question is: does it work? I could submit a solution to one of the Millennium Problems, but I'd only get my prize money if I could justify the solution.

It absolutely works theoretically, and in practice. But your position could be described by the old joke - "Sure, it works great in practice, but how's it work in theory?"

I base my belief on our reasoning abilities because it is reasonable. Either I am using reason to try to justify my ability to use reason and therefore do indeed have such an ability, or I don't have an ability to use reason and so my ponderings on the matter are irrelevant: though I think I'm using reason, I'm actually not, so my search is pointless.

It's like fre will: either we have it or we don't. So we may as well act as if we do, because the alternative means we have no choice in the matter.

I agree of course, and it's very pragmatic, but not at all infomative. If your reasoning ability leads to an idea of the universe which doesn't allow for your reasoning ability to be valid, then you can have no confidence in your idea of the universe. You can only be right by a magnificiently improbable fluke. But it seems as if that's what atheism requires: fluke upon fluke upon fluke, until all ridiculous improbabilites pile into some critical mass of impossibility, at which point you resort to a fatal leap of illogic: "Well, planets and rain and babies and love appear to occur without any divine intelligence, so why not the atoms and laws which comprise them?"

Theism provides a hypothesis which works; it makes sense of making sense, whereas any other hypothesis leaves us hanging in doubt. And as you note, we don't doubt our reason, we couldn't function if we did. I know that doesn't prove anything, but I'd be reluctant to toss out the only idea which really causes every idea make sense.

Not even then. Quantum mechanics says that there are phenomena (like radioactive decay) which are fundamentally probabilistic, and as such cannot be predicted. I can say how likely a given event is, but I can't say when it's actually going to occur.

On the other hand, the volume in which the particle has a 99% chance of being for the next bazillion years is so absolutely tiny that we may as well treat it classically. So, under that approximation, we can indeed predict that the Sun will rise tomorrow.

However, on the third hand, there are macroscopic phenomena that only occur due to quantum indeterminism: the Sun would be several orders of magnitude cooler without quantum tunnelling, for instance.

But after the fact, obviously, prediction doesn't enter into it. Whether we're talking about your next thought, or the Battle of Hastings, or the temperature of the Sun at a given time, there will for all time be one result and not another.

A question: does QM indicate that fundamental nature is lawless?

I contend that even that is not a reason to live. Yes, God created us and called us 'good', but so what?

Yes, I'm an existential nihilist .

Okay, God allowed you the liberty to disagree with Him. He's a good God that way.

We want to live because we are the descendants of 3.5 billion years worth of survivors.

Why did they want to live? Why did the first thing want to live?

Instincts that promote self-preservation are obviously going to be preferred to instincts that promote risk and danger.

What is an instinct?

(I was going to start a thread once to ask if anyone could describe natural selection without using any anthropomorphic metaphors like "promote" and "preferred". I wonder if it's possible? I mean the word "selection" is bad enough.)

That said, evolution has thrown up some quirks: there exist organisms which are altruistic. We want to live, but we would die for our children.

That evolution is a clever fellow.

There's no objective reason to. I want to live for the same reason I want to have sex: it is pleasurable, and my neuroendocrinology demands it.

Reason be damned .

You spend all theses posts extolling the supremacy of reason, then toss it out for a roll in the hay, huh? Well you're just 21, you're forgiven (at least by me).

Indeed, which is why we're such an interesting species.

Isn't there a kind of contradiction? For instance, if everything evolution did was geared toward survival, how could that eventually result in a creature that was so smart it was willing to invent suicide for the sake of suicide?

Indeed, because it's a form of evolution: those societies which encourage sociopathy are literally creating the instruments of their own destruction. Only by cooperating, encouraging friendly behaviour, and expunging the destructive, can a society survive.

There are exceptions, of course, but these exist mostly as parasites feeding on other, more self-correcting, societies.

But then again, the objective standard we hold people to is not as objective as you make it out to be: what is shocking to us is seen as perfectly moral to others in different cultures and eras, such as the stoning to death of a homosexual.

That just doesn't explain it, because making society the end of morality would mean that killing off the aged, the disabled, the unproductive (you could include homosexuals) would be a positive good. And there's nothing far-fetched here; not long ago we had to fight a war against a society which believed such things.

If you say morality is evolved, you're saying that what we call moral actions have no real moral quality, it's just that evolution has made me feel a certain way about certain actions, right? But I perceive that when I make a moral judgment, I'm saying something about something besides just my feelings. If I pass by a burning building and people are screaming that someone's trapped inside, I know I would have two opposing feelings: a strong desire to do nothing and avoid risk to myself, and another feeling (though I certainly can't call it a desire) that I should face risk to help the trapped person. Unless you're truly a full-blown nihilist (and have divorced yourself from fellow humanity), you'll agree that the second feeling is superior to, better and higher than to the first.

So how can there be agreement on feelings? If I said "I feel sad", you could say "I agree, you feel sad" only if you trusted my statement about my internal feeling. But if I said "I should do the right thing" you'd say, "I agree, you should" even if you didn't trust my statement about my internal feeling. I think this shows that your agreement with the second "I should" statement requires an external standard.

Which seems to be a paradox. But then, Christianity embraces the logically incoherent: the Catchesm of the Catholic Church hangs a lampshade on the fact that the Trinity is, to us, an illogical concept.

The Church is just being honest; saying we believe this but it's a mystery, not unlike how scientists speak of what goes on inside black holes. If there were a God, wouldn't He pretty much have to be somewhat bigger than what our logic can allow for, since He's the basis of it? I'm sure you have other reasons for not believing in God, but honestly, this one is just strange to me. No offense intended, but it really seems small-minded and arrogant to think the Creator has to be comprehendible to me, or else He can't exist. Besides, if the Christian God were somehow completely logical and anthropomorphic, I think you'd use that as evidence against Him too. He really can't win.

I suppose so, yes. As a mathematician, I settle for nothing less than an absolute and rigorous proof. As a scientist, I'll settle for just proof beyond reasonable doubt. As a friend, I can give my unconditional trust.

Which begs the question: to what standard should we hold religious claims? Personally, I think the scientific one is best suited.

Why would you hold an un-scientific claim to a scientific standard? A scientist is a man trapped inside a windowless house, and is investigating the inside of the house. If he's precluded from ever empirically experiencing a bird, how would he ever deduce that there were such things as birds outside the house? Reason can't see though walls, and science can't test outside the reality it's given.

Oh, absolutely. I don't wear my scientist hat all day, every day. But I'm talking solely about our ability to evaluate a statement's truth, to which I think reason is by far the best (and possibly only) way.

I think whatever I would say will just sound inner-fuzzy. I was trying to think of an old expression, I can't remember but it was something like "the mind sees but the heart perceives". The stars look fuzzy to us, but they're real.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Yes, it claims "God doesn't exist", and in so doing it claims "mindless nature is all there is". And there are secondary implications which arise from that.

True, but I disagree that that's why atheism means. The vast majority of atheists would say they don't affirm the existence of deities, not that they do affirm the non-existence of deities (or something to that effect). It's also more etymologically correct to say that atheism is the conjugate of theism.

I also reckon that what you call atheism, I call strong atheism, and what you call agnosticism, I call weak atheism.

I thought I did ridicule it in the same way; I don't see the difference. How is the existence of the singularity justified? How is it's expansion justified?

Are you talking about the Big Bang? I'm not sure how that fits into our discussion, but it's justified by cosmological evidence (red-shift, the CMBR, correlation of the universe's age with other lines of evidence, etc).

The whole point of logic is to declare itself valid? Then it's no good.

Of course not. Logic tells us whether or not the truth of one proposition implies the truth of another, whether the inference of A from B is valid. By extension, it tells us when something isn't logical.

It exists, and it's real, but I think it's real in the way a stage prop is real - real but artificial. The cosmos is an artifact of God. The chair, made by man, is an artifact once removed.

But it's nonetheless real though, right?

It absolutely works theoretically, and in practice. But your position could be described by the old joke - "Sure, it works great in practice, but how's it work in theory?"

True, and that's where the justification comes in. You can say it works in practice till the cows come home, but so could I. Where's the objective analysis? The rigorous testing? The demonstrable proof?

You say theism provides a solution to the epistemological problem of reasoning (namely, how can we know if we're really using reason without presupposing our own ability to reason?), but how do you know it's a solution without using your own ability to reason? Either you came up with a solution, in which case you can reason, or you came up with a false solution, in which case you can't. It doesn't matter what your solution is, but rather only that you came up with one.

Which leads to the kicker: how do you know if you have indeed come up with one?

We can't even comment on the possibility of God being a solution, because that requires reason, and, since we're not presupposing our ability to reason, we're stuck.

I agree of course, and it's very pragmatic, but not at all infomative. If your reasoning ability leads to an idea of the universe which doesn't allow for your reasoning ability to be valid, then you can have no confidence in your idea of the universe. You can only be right by a magnificiently improbable fluke. But it seems as if that's what atheism requires: fluke upon fluke upon fluke, until all ridiculous improbabilites pile into some critical mass of impossibility, at which point you resort to a fatal leap of illogic: "Well, planets and rain and babies and love appear to occur without any divine intelligence, so why not the atoms and laws which comprise them?"

Which is, ironically, the fatal flaw of theists everywhere: my watch is complex and was designed, so therefore the universe, which is bigger and more complex, has a bigger and more complex designer. Namely, God.

Theism provides a hypothesis which works; it makes sense of making sense, whereas any other hypothesis leaves us hanging in doubt. And as you note, we don't doubt our reason, we couldn't function if we did. I know that doesn't prove anything, but I'd be reluctant to toss out the only idea which really causes every idea make sense.

I'm not convinced that theism provides a solution, nor that it provides the only solution. We could have the ability to reason simply because it provides an evolutionary advantage. Predicting the future, pattern recognition, understanding ever more complex language, all would require the ability to correctly use logic and reason. Babies learn to speak by hearing people around them and deducing the rules themselves; a two-year-old has no idea what an infinitive is, but it can use them like a pro.

We can make sense of things because we need to. Notice that we can't make sense (in an easy, conceptual way) of the weird quantum and relativistic phenomena, nor can we conceive the vast scales of space and time with the ease that we can conceive, say, the size of our thumb.
To shamelessly quote Richard Dawkins: "We never evolved to navigate in the world of atoms... we operate in a middle world — perceiving a reality somewhere between the atomic world and the cosmic world."

At least, that's how I make sense of making sense.

But after the fact, obviously, prediction doesn't enter into it. Whether we're talking about your next thought, or the Battle of Hastings, or the temperature of the Sun at a given time, there will for all time be one result and not another.

After the fact, yes. That's what's called wavefunction collapse: before, it could have many values, represented by a plethora of wavefunctions. After, it can only be one, represented by a few wavefunctions. Thus, the set of possible wavefunctions collapses from many to a few.

Once the wavefunction has collapsed, any further measurements can only be that value previously measured.

A question: does QM indicate that fundamental nature is lawless?

No. It indicates that it's less lawful than we'd like, but not completely lawless. Particles must still obey the laws of quantum mechanics, but, compared to classical mechanics, they have more freedom, in a sense.

Okay, God allowed you the liberty to disagree with Him. He's a good God that way.

He also leaves me to burn in Hell if I disagree with him, or even lack belief in him .

Why did they want to live? Why did the first thing want to live?

It didn't. It simply lived. Chemicals don't undergo reactions because they want to, they do it because they are electrically compelled to.

What is an instinct?

A behaviour, activity, urge, or desire, hard-wired into the brain (or the equivalent thereof). This is different to a reflex, which is uncontrollable.

We know that, when hungry, we must eat: it is instinct. We know how to swallow, defecate, breathe, blink, etc, without ever being taught: it's instinct.

The brain grows synaptic pathways in utero such that the body already knows what to do and how to do it.

(I was going to start a thread once to ask if anyone could describe natural selection without using any anthropomorphic metaphors like "promote" and "preferred". I wonder if it's possible? I mean the word "selection" is bad enough.)

Whether an organism's genetic variations are beneficial or detrimental to its reproductive success is dependant on the environment in which it finds itself. The environment is such that allele frequency changes follow a trend towards survivability: those alleles which aid a creature's survival (or, in general, the survival of its genes) are more likely to survive themselves.

And there's nothing wrong with a bit of anthropomorphism .

That evolution is a clever fellow.

Don't you know that evolution is a woman? Tsk, so sexist of you.

You spend all theses posts extolling the supremacy of reason, then toss it out for a roll in the hay, huh? Well you're just 21, you're forgiven (at least by me).

Ah, but I didn't toss it out: I simply acknowledge that our morals are irrational, but we follow them anyway. We could use reason to justify this or that, but, at the end of the day, our gut tells us otherwise.

Isn't there a kind of contradiction? For instance, if everything evolution did was geared toward survival, how could that eventually result in a creature that was so smart it was willing to invent suicide for the sake of suicide?

Maybe it's a neurological fail-safe to eliminate suicidal individuals from an otherwise harmonious society. But I think that it's a by-product of our ever-advancing intelligence and emotions; we experience such strong emotions that we'd rather die than go on experiencing them.

That just doesn't explain it, because making society the end of morality would mean that killing off the aged, the disabled, the unproductive (you could include homosexuals) would be a positive good. And there's nothing far-fetched here; not long ago we had to fight a war against a society which believed such things.

If you say morality is evolved, you're saying that what we call moral actions have no real moral quality, it's just that evolution has made me feel a certain way about certain actions, right? But I perceive that when I make a moral judgment, I'm saying something about something besides just my feelings. If I pass by a burning building and people are screaming that someone's trapped inside, I know I would have two opposing feelings: a strong desire to do nothing and avoid risk to myself, and another feeling (though I certainly can't call it a desire) that I should face risk to help the trapped person. Unless you're truly a full-blown nihilist (and have divorced yourself from fellow humanity), you'll agree that the second feeling is superior to, better and higher than to the first.

Indeed: altruism is seen as 'better' than selfishness. But, if morality evolved, then this too is this feeling: we prefer altruistic behaviour to selfish behaviour because altruism is a better survival strategy than selfishness. Not for the individual, mind you, but to the genes which now survive an otherwise fatal situation.

So how can there be agreement on feelings? If I said "I feel sad", you could say "I agree, you feel sad" only if you trusted my statement about my internal feeling. But if I said "I should do the right thing" you'd say, "I agree, you should" even if you didn't trust my statement about my internal feeling. I think this shows that your agreement with the second "I should" statement requires an external standard.

It shows that, while we may not agree on what the 'right thing' actually is, we agree that it should be done.

The Church is just being honest; saying we believe this but it's a mystery, not unlike how scientists speak of what goes on inside black holes. If there were a God, wouldn't He pretty much have to be somewhat bigger than what our logic can allow for, since He's the basis of it? I'm sure you have other reasons for not believing in God, but honestly, this one is just strange to me. No offense intended, but it really seems small-minded and arrogant to think the Creator has to be comprehendible to me, or else He can't exist.

I agree. Incomprehensibility doesn't faze scientists, as the wide-spread belief in quantum mechanics and relativity shows. It's to the logically impossible we should shake our heads.

Besides, if the Christian God were somehow completely logical and anthropomorphic, I think you'd use that as evidence against Him too. He really can't win.

If he's completely logical, I wouldn't have a problem. If he's anthropomorphic, well, yes, that is a problem. Is it not equally as arrogant to imagine the Creator of the Universe himself is human or human-like? If he is incomprehensible, then in what way is he anthropomorphic?

Why would you hold an un-scientific claim to a scientific standard?

Exactly, which should tell you I consider it a scientific claim. Science may not have the tools to tackle it yet, but that doesn't mean it never will.

A scientist is a man trapped inside a windowless house, and is investigating the inside of the house. If he's precluded from ever empirically experiencing a bird, how would he ever deduce that there were such things as birds outside the house? Reason can't see though walls, and science can't test outside the reality it's given.

Then why lament science's inability to see God? As I've always said, reason has limits. There are some things which may exist, but we can never demonstrate or justify their existence. And if their existence cannot be justified, why believe in them?

I think whatever I would say will just sound inner-fuzzy. I was trying to think of an old expression, I can't remember but it was something like "the mind sees but the heart perceives". The stars look fuzzy to us, but they're real.

I accept that the inner fuzz is real, I just doubt it's at all reliable. It's nice, but that's pretty much it.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

MY DEAR BROTHER,

Where in the world did you get the idea that Hitler at any point "sought God." He was, it is true, born Catholic but he quickly evolved into a full-blooded pagan, and, when gaining the power and opportunity to do so, persecuted Christians almost as rabidly as he did Jews. He stated, "It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity," he confided in 1933, "because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood."

...

He was not worried about the outcome of this choice-making, "Do you really believe the masses will ever be Christian again?" he wondered in mock seriousness. "Nonsense. Never again. The tale is finished . . . but we can hasten matters. The parsons will be made to dig their own graves"--and thousands did indeed do so in the death camps.

There are many books out regarding Hitler's dealings with the Christian Church. Two of the best are THE NAZI PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCHES by J.S. Conway and HITLER, THE WAR, AND THE POPE by Ronald J. Rychlak.

Where, exactly, did he say these? I've had a look around and I can't find any citations or sources. The trail for the former, for instance, appears to come to a dead end at William Donohue's 1999 press release as Catholic League President. Since he doesn't cite any sources or references, and given the vast amount of false Hitler quotes, I have my doubts.

His countrymen would have to choose, he said: "One is either a Christian or a German. You can't be both."

Actually, I believe this one was said by Hermann Rauschning.

No, they accept bits and pieces of Jesus' life and teachings, twisting and perverting them to justify their evil ends. Such "christians" have used--or rather abused--the Bible to justify racism, "holy" wars, torture as a "conversion" tool, the killing of those who interpret Christianity differently--i.e., "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland where murderers on both sides claimed to be "christian"--the pillaging of the environment and other cultures, the bombing of abortion clinics and murder of abortionists, etc.

When judging whether a person or group is indeed "Christian", one must look at the fruit and judge whether it be Christ-like or not. As our Lord said, "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."(Matthew 7:16-21)

This only applies when one limits the word 'Christian' to those who the Bible calls 'Christian'. Since I don't go by the Biblical definition, it's neither here nor there.

The "No Proper Scotsman Fallacy" does not apply to the designation "Christians"!

It applies spectacularly well, as our discussion shows.

So you think it fair to uncritically accept a person/group's pronouncement that they are "christian" and then judge all Christians--and even the existence of God--by their perverse beliefs, practices, and negative effect on the world around them?

No. I don't (or, at least, try my best not to) prejudge all Christians based on a particular minority. It's not too hard to see that the vast majority of self-professed Christians recoil in horror at the actions of Westboro Baptist Church and the like. I try my best to judge everyone on their own merits.

My brother, i don't know what to say to you in this regard. From my point of view and personal experience, i have to believe there is a missing piece somewhere in your search; from your point of view, of course, you believe that you covered all the bases. Who am i to say? Given the disparate numbers between those making contact with God and those reporting an inability to do so, i have problems believing the difficulty lies with God, of Whom it is reliably reported in regard to His desire to be found, "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, NOT WANTING ANYONE TO PERISH, but EVERYONE to come to repentance."(II Peter 3:8, 9)

God Himself states, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with ALL your heart."(Jeremiah 29:13)Were/are you willing to pay the asking price for finding God--EVERYTHING. Nine times out of ten herein lies the glitch in the process of seeking and finding our Lord. Note what is required in our Lord's parables regarding finding the Kingdom of God in Matthew:13:44-45--"he goes and sells ALL THAT HE HAS and buys that field" and "went and sold ALL THAT HE HAD and bought it."

Count the cost!

I believe I did, which is why I have my doubts the process works at all.

 

[Chesterton]

The vast majority of atheists would say they don't affirm the existence of deities, not that they do affirm the non-existence of deities (or something to that effect).

I also reckon that what you call atheism, I call strong atheism, and what you call agnosticism, I call weak atheism.

They don't affirm "A", and they don't affirm "not A"? That's saying "No comment on the question." I think our American Atheists group should call itself the American No-Commenters.

Are you talking about the Big Bang? I'm not sure how that fits into our discussion, but it's justified by cosmological evidence (red-shift, the CMBR, correlation of the universe's age with other lines of evidence, etc).

Those are evidences of something happening, but not evidences of something happening naturally of it's own accord. So I posit a dense noodle, since a noodle is as capable of acting creatively of it's own accord as any other matter is.

Of course not. Logic tells us whether or not the truth of one proposition implies the truth of another, whether the inference of A from B is valid. By extension, it tells us when something isn't logical.

Reason is a recent development, right? (At least in our part of the galaxy.) At one time all life was sub-rational; there are creatures whose "thinking" can only exist as responses to stimuli. So how could the power to see that a truth must be a truth arise through natural selection? To be preserved, a trait must be useful, but we would have evolved useful reasoning without the separate idea that we can "see" an inference is true.

I wonder what would happen if I raised a dog from birth, and everyday for years, while he wasn't looking, I placed a bowl of food in a certain corner of the room, and then rang a bell. We know the dog would engage in association and expectation, but would it ever come to make a true inference - "Logically, food must follow bell"? There's no reason it would need to for the expectation to be biologically useful. And if it did make the inference, it would be wrong (and what an epistemological shock to the poor mutt the first time I ring the bell and don't put food out!)

But it's nonetheless real though, right?

Yes, I say it's real. But you're the physicist, you should tell me. It's 99.99% space, right? What would Dawkins say? If he holds that the atomic world is real, and we're sensing it through a filter not designed to sense it (a consciousness in middle world), wouldn't he have to say the chair is an illusion? Isn't that what the "middle world" idea says - the we perceive reality incorrectly because it suits our needs?

True, and that's where the justification comes in. You can say it works in practice till the cows come home, but so could I. Where's the objective analysis? The rigorous testing?

Well neither of us has that. Despite what we've been saying, we both agree we do function, and have to function, on the assumption that our reasoning is valid. (And that is how we feel, for what it's worth.)

You say theism provides a solution to the epistemological problem of reasoning (namely, how can we know if we're really using reason without presupposing our own ability to reason?), but how do you know it's a solution without using your own ability to reason? Either you came up with a solution, in which case you can reason, or you came up with a false solution, in which case you can't. It doesn't matter what your solution is, but rather only that you came up with one.

I know it's a solution, but I can't prove it's the solution. I claim God imparted some of His reason to me, so it's like saying "John has a new football. How did he get it?" It's obvious that one possible solution is "someone gave it to him".

So it's a loophole for declaring reason valid, but without the loophole, I can't conceive of another way for reason to be valid. A chain of mindless cause and effect with no outside interference doesn't permit the luxury of any loophole. A caused thing, like a galaxy or a horse, cannot be true or false, but thoughts can be. Plus, thoughts are uniquely outside the chain of nature, in that thoughts can be "about" nature. A galaxy and a horse are not "about" anything.

Which leads to the kicker: how do you know if you have indeed come up with one?

I can't know to the extent of proving, but maybe Occam's Razor applies? If I see a ball at a distance suspended in mid-air, I might assume that there's a thin string suspending it from something, and I'll see the string when I get closer. A string is the simplest, most likely explanation. I think God is the simplest explanation for reality.

We can't even comment on the possibility of God being a solution, because that requires reason, and, since we're not presupposing our ability to reason, we're stuck.

But my presupposition includes a supposition which allows for the presupposition to be really true, so we can at least comment. We're not stuck if we allow for the loophole of divine reason as a gift to us.

Which is, ironically, the fatal flaw of theists everywhere: my watch is complex and was designed, so therefore the universe, which is bigger and more complex, has a bigger and more complex designer. Namely, God.

Okay. But still, if people want to refute the design argument by saying everything can be accounted for by nature, it would seem only decent of them to tell me what accounts for nature.

I'm not convinced that theism provides a solution, nor that it provides the only solution. We could have the ability to reason simply because it provides an evolutionary advantage. Predicting the future, pattern recognition, understanding ever more complex language, all would require the ability to correctly use logic and reason. Babies learn to speak by hearing people around them and deducing the rules themselves; a two-year-old has no idea what an infinitive is, but it can use them like a pro.

We can make sense of things because we need to. Notice that we can't make sense (in an easy, conceptual way) of the weird quantum and relativistic phenomena, nor can we conceive the vast scales of space and time with the ease that we can conceive, say, the size of our thumb.
To shamelessly quote Richard Dawkins: "We never evolved to navigate in the world of atoms... we operate in a middle world — perceiving a reality somewhere between the atomic world and the cosmic world."

At least, that's how I make sense of making sense.

But we would never need to perceive that anything is true in order to survive, only that it works uniformly. We don't accept the truth of axioms due to experience; we simply perceive that they must be true.

No. It indicates that it's less lawful than we'd like, but not completely lawless. Particles must still obey the laws of quantum mechanics, but, compared to classical mechanics, they have more freedom, in a sense.

Maybe God, by fiat, is telling particles what to do. If they act according to fiat, you wouldn't be able to predict them. A possible solution to your OP?

He also leaves me to burn in Hell if I disagree with him, or even lack belief in him .

But you reject God in favor of our humble little human logic. God is the source and maintenance of our eternal lives. Christ said that he is living water. If you reject him you risk starving and thirsting. We were made for our eternal lives to be derived from God perhaps as our lives now are derived from water. You can't reject water and live now; and you can't reject God and live eternally. There's no way around it. His omnipotence ends where your will begins.

Whether an organism's genetic variations are beneficial or detrimental to its reproductive success is dependant on the environment in which it finds itself. The environment is such that allele frequency changes follow a trend towards survivability: those alleles which aid a creature's survival (or, in general, the survival of its genes) are more likely to survive themselves.

Bravo. Maybe not perfect, but very well done.

Maybe it's a neurological fail-safe to eliminate suicidal individuals from an otherwise harmonious society.

Suicide eliminates suicidal people? Can't argue with that.

But I think that it's a by-product of our ever-advancing intelligence and emotions; we experience such strong emotions that we'd rather die than go on experiencing them.

Evolutionists mention "by-products". What's the difference between a "product" and a "by-product"? It would seem to be intention or deliberateness. I know they don't mean to imply that, so what does "by-product" mean? Everything in nature is a by-product if it's not intended. On that view, my instinct or urge to hate my neighbor is no more or less inherently valuable than my urge (if any) to love my neighbor.

Indeed: altruism is seen as 'better' than selfishness. But, if morality evolved, then this too is this feeling: we prefer altruistic behaviour to selfish behaviour because altruism is a better survival strategy than selfishness. Not for the individual, mind you, but to the genes which now survive an otherwise fatal situation.

You did such a nice job removing intelligence from natural selection, and now you speak of "strategy"? Altruism is not a better survival strategy; I disagree that it's a survival strategy at all. The genes in the burning building are less important than mine (because they're not mine). The best and only strategy for my genes is to avoid risk to myself.

It shows that, while we may not agree on what the 'right thing' actually is, we agree that it should be done.

I declare a right thing: society should eliminate homosexuals. Do you agree, or do you declare that my idea of "right" is wrong? If you say my idea of right is wrong, are you saying we disagree the way two people might disagree over the taste of beer vs. stout, or are you saying my idea is wrong according to a standard external to both of us?

I agree. Incomprehensibility doesn't faze scientists, as the wide-spread belief in quantum mechanics and relativity shows. It's to the logically impossible we should shake our heads.

Okay, I guess we disagree as to how far our human logic must extend. It's like we're both looking out at an ocean; I'm thinking "it must go as far as it goes" and you're thinking "it must go forever".

Isn't your idea of logic shifty? I mean something illogical becomes logical only after you aquire new facts. For example, I've never read the theories of relativity, and wouldn't understand them if I did. I hear GR speaks of the warping of space. To me, this is flatly illogical. Space is by definition nothing, and "nothing" has no shape to warp. You say "Ah, but you're ignorant. If you knew more of the underlying facts and the math, it would become logical to you." Then why doesn't this same idea apply to you? How can your OP claim a logical contradiction exists when you don't have all facts?

If he's completely logical, I wouldn't have a problem.

I think I might.

If he's anthropomorphic, well, yes, that is a problem. Is it not equally as arrogant to imagine the Creator of the Universe himself is human or human-like? If he is incomprehensible, then in what way is he anthropomorphic?

"God created man in his own image" is what we believe, and in a way, it stands to reason. If a man creates a painting or statue of a man, it won't be a man, but it will to some extent be a likeness of a man. Which is to say, we believe God is not an abstract artist. As a traditional artist makes a painting of a man look like a man by giving it recognizable characertistics of a man, so God gave us characteristics of Himself (such as consciousness, will, reason and life itself).

Exactly, which should tell you I consider it a scientific claim. Science may not have the tools to tackle it yet, but that doesn't mean it never will.

Science is the study of nature, but God is not a feature of nature.

Then why lament science's inability to see God? As I've always said, reason has limits. There are some things which may exist, but we can never demonstrate or justify their existence. And if their existence cannot be justified, why believe in them?

I just don't think science or even strict logic is the key to understanding all of life.

I accept that the inner fuzz is real, I just doubt it's at all reliable. It's nice, but that's pretty much it.

I think you have it backwards; I think logic is just nice. Why did humanity not get around to science until it did? Men were serious about art, myth, literature, music, etc. long before they got serious about science. It's no good to say they were ignorant, because science is the cure for ignorance; the men who started science had to be ignorant themselves or else they wouldn't have started science to stop being ignorant. And men could have begun science much earlier, and I'm sure they would've, but apparently they didn't think it important enough. Honestly, don't you think the technical specifications of how we exist are secondary to the question of why we exist?

Science has done things like raise the quality of life and extend it awhile, and travel in space, which are nice, but not critical. And what types of things does science promise for the future? More of the same. And too much of a good thing can be bad. Extending life a little while is nice; extending it indefinitely would be nightmare. Should we colonize planets so we can take our hate and war where there are now only rocks? Should we create dangerous artificial intelligence when we already have dangerous natural intelligence? I don't mean to sound anti-science, but seriously I think "nice" is the highest compliment science merits, and I suspect if I were to live long enough I might even have to recall the compliment.

There's an old science fiction cliche of the advanced race of aliens, who have such complete knowledge and wisdom that they've eliminated things like war, injustice and hate. But no amount of technical knowledge will automatically change a race's moral state. If life really is just cold biological competition as evolution describes, and morality is just a way to keep the inmates in line, I don't think live is worth living. People talk of Nietzsche's love of "will", but they often forget it was his third choice. His first choice was unattainable: to never have existed, and his second best option was "to die soon". If he was right about God, I think he was right about that too.

 

[ephraimanesti]

Where, exactly, did he say these? I've had a look around and I can't find any citations or sources. The trail for the former, for instance, appears to come to a dead end at William Donohue's 1999 press release as Catholic League President. Since he doesn't cite any sources or references, and given the vast amount of false Hitler quotes, I have my doubts.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Check out The Nazi Persecution of the Churches by J. S. Conway and also Hitler, the War and the Pope by Ronald J. Rychlak. Most of the quotes used come from these two sources as quoted in the chapter "Christianity and the Third Reich" in CHRISTIANITY ON TRIAL by Vincent Carroll & David Shiflett. However, i have found many other quotes on-line making exactly the same statements, so i have no reason to doubt the quotes' validity.

What i have noticed in my study of Hitler and the Third Reich is that atheists always use quotes from Hitler's early stages in his climb to power to "prove" that he was a Christian--or at least a fellow traveler. If you take the time to study his rise to power, you will note that in Mein Kampf and elsewhere in his early writings and speechs, he does indeed toss around "christian"-sounding phrases and express seemingly "christian" sentiments.

The reason for this tactic, of course, was to lull the Church and Christians in Germany into a false sense of security, enticing them to support him due to his seeming "christian" persona or, at least, not unite to fight against him politically. However, once power was achieved the worm turned and, exercising his growing absolute power, he added anti-christian to his already anti-jewish and anti-communist set of scapegoats and turned the Third Reich into a pagan kingdom, quickly tearing down its ersatz-"christian" facade. Looking at the horrors the Third Reich unleashed upon the world, i really find it impossible to believe that any honest person would actually consider Hitler a "christian" in any way, shape, or form. Such a pronouncement boggles the mind--especially if you know anything about Jesus' life and teaching--let alone the reasons for his death and Resurrection.

Actually, I believe this one was said by Hermann Rauschning.

i believe that he was either quoting the fuhrer or expressing der fuhrer's sentiments. He certainly wasn't speaking on his own!

This only applies when one limits the word 'Christian' to those who the Bible calls 'Christian'. Since I don't go by the Biblical definition, it's neither here nor there.

i'm sorry, my brother, that that is a really really silly statement! Do you REALLY consider yourself, as an atheist, more qualified to define who is a Christian that the God-inspired Scriptures written for exactly that purpose.

What you are saying, in effect, is how dare one "limit" the word "Christian" to those who actually follow Christ and thus meet Christ's own definition of Christian?--"If you love Me, you will keep My Commandments."(John 14:15) This seems to indicate that you are suffering from a terminally advanced case of hubris! i well understand the benefits to you of using your own definition in that by doing so you can, with a "clear conscience" include, under the rubric "christian," some very unchristian and detestable individuals--Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, murderers of abortionists, Jim Jones, televangelists, participants in the Inquisition and the Crusades, the fratricidal combatants in Northern Ireland and Ruwanda, etc.--to the end that Christianity can be safely dismissed as a ludicrous delusion--at least in your own mind--due to the ungodly misdeeds of so-called "christians."

i understand that the use of straw men is convenient and comforting--but it is also highly dishonest. Not a good sign for one claiming to be seeking the "truth"--but i suppose you have made up your own personal definition for that, also. In all honesty, based on our previous chats, i would have expected better from you.

It applies spectacularly well, as our discussion shows.

Only in your own mind--a mind in which you feel free to make up your own personal definitions for what you don't understand and/or refuse to accept. Very very very dishonest. The statement "No proper Christian" is, rather than a fallacy, God's Eternal Truth.

No. I don't (or, at least, try my best not to) prejudge all Christians based on a particular minority. It's not too hard to see that the vast majority of self-professed Christians recoil in horror at the actions of Westboro Baptist Church and the like. I try my best to judge everyone on their own merits.

The point is that the Westboro Baptist Church IS NOT A CHRISTIAN MINORITY--IT IS NOT REMOTELY CHRISTIAN AT ALL, considering that its beliefs, pronouncements, and actions are diametrically opposed to those of the God they claim to "serve" and the Lord Whose Name they defame. "Judging everone on their own merits" should entail an ability to separate the sheep from the goats. Taint rocket science, yo! Why is this so difficult to you?

I believe I did, which is why I have my doubts the process works at all.

My suggestion would be to give it another try, going back to the beginning and starting over, using God's definitions instead of your own. i can guarantee that the outcome will be much much different.

A BOND-SLAVE/FRIEND/BROTHER OF OUR LORD/GOD/SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST,
ephraim

 

[Wiccan_Child]

This post is long, so I had to, er, trim it a little .

They don't affirm "A", and they don't affirm "not A"? That's saying "No comment on the question." I think our American Atheists group should call itself the American No-Commenters.

Well, I'm sure they much to comment on. But, 'officially', they neither affirm nor deny the existence of deities.

Do you affirm or deny the existence of James Poole? He could be a friend of mine, or he could be someone I just made up. In the absence of evidence, which, if any, do you choose?

Those are evidences of something happening, but not evidences of something happening naturally of it's own accord. So I posit a dense noodle, since a noodle is as capable of acting creatively of it's own accord as any other matter is.

You'll notice that science doesn't comment on how or why the Big Bang is occurring, simply because there is no evidence that tells us either which way. However, that doesn't change the fact that it is occurring. We can make speculations, but until our theories are capable of describing what went on back then, we can't do much more.

Reason is a recent development, right? (At least in our part of the galaxy.) At one time all life was sub-rational; there are creatures whose "thinking" can only exist as responses to stimuli. So how could the power to see that a truth must be a truth arise through natural selection? To be preserved, a trait must be useful, but we would have evolved useful reasoning without the separate idea that we can "see" an inference is true.

I disagree. The ability to deduce the truth of a statement is an extension (or abstraction) of our pattern-recognising ability. By recognising that those types of trees often have nice, healthy fruit, we have taken the first steps of logic: A implies B; A; therefore, B. Naturally, we're rubbish at it, but we've made the first step.

Thereafter, it's just a matter of time as our reasoning ability gets better and better. After all, the better your reasoning ability, the better you are at correctly identifying food, prey, predators, etc.

That's my take on it, at least.

I can't know to the extent of proving, but maybe Occam's Razor applies? If I see a ball at a distance suspended in mid-air, I might assume that there's a thin string suspending it from something, and I'll see the string when I get closer. A string is the simplest, most likely explanation. I think God is the simplest explanation for reality.

In what way is God the simplest explanation? To me, it's explaining the ball's apparent levitation by saying "Oh, there must be an explanation". That's obviously not an explanation, let alone the simplest one.

Indeed, your explanation can be attacked by saying you arbitrarily ascribe intelligence and personhood to God, when all you need to do is posit the existence of some entity which fulfils the task you require of it (in this case, explaining reality).

But my presupposition includes a supposition which allows for the presupposition to be really true, so we can at least comment. We're not stuck if we allow for the loophole of divine reason as a gift to us.

But we can't allow for that loophole, because such an allowance would end up as circular.

"We can reason"
"How do you know?"
"Because God gave us the ability to reason"
"How do you know that?"
"Because I can reason"
"How do you know you?"
"Because God gave us the ability to reason"

Ad infinitum.

Okay. But still, if people want to refute the design argument by saying everything can be accounted for by nature, it would seem only decent of them to tell me what accounts for nature.

One could say that, since everything has thus far been explaining by natural causes, it's only probable that nature itself has a probable cause.
Or, one could say that nature doesn't need to be accounted for.
Or, one could turn the question around: if you're going to posit a Designer, it's only fair for the theist to account for that Designer.

Now, I don't attack the teleological argument by appealing to naturalism, because that's no better than saying "I know God didn't do it because the FSM told me so!". I don't know of anyone who does that.

But we would never need to perceive that anything is true in order to survive, only that it works uniformly. We don't accept the truth of axioms due to experience; we simply perceive that they must be true.

Indeed, which is why the axioms we base our life on routinely change (which puts doubt on just how axiomatic they are in the first place...).

However, experience is a good teacher, and our axioms better reflect the reality we're in. After all, false axioms rarely help us (except, perhaps, those of classical mechanics).

Maybe God, by fiat, is telling particles what to do. If they act according to fiat, you wouldn't be able to predict them. A possible solution to your OP?

Ah, unfortunately, no. It's a very clever response to the problem, but it turns out that such a 'hidden variable' is fundamentally incompatible with quantum mechanics. It turns out that you can't posit the existence of some unknown variable or quantity (or deity ) that is influencing the particle.

I myself used to wonder whether a radioactive particle's seemingly random decay was in fact due to something that had happened in its past: it had collided with another particle, this made it slightly more unstable, and that hastened its decay.

Turns out that quantum randomness is real randomness. Even positing the Hand of God doesn't work, since it violates some criterion or other.

But you reject God in favor of our humble little human logic. God is the source and maintenance of our eternal lives. Christ said that he is living water. If you reject him you risk starving and thirsting. We were made for our eternal lives to be derived from God perhaps as our lives now are derived from water. You can't reject water and live now; and you can't reject God and live eternally. There's no way around it. His omnipotence ends where your will begins.

On the contrary, if I reject God, I go to Hell. Forever. Is that not an eternal life?

Moreover, how does my rejection of God (by which I assume you mean my disbelief in his existence) stop me from having an eternal life? If he is the source of our eternal lives, why do my personal religious beliefs change that fact?

Evolutionists mention "by-products". What's the difference between a "product" and a "by-product"? It would seem to be intention or deliberateness. I know they don't mean to imply that, so what does "by-product" mean? Everything in nature is a by-product if it's not intended. On that view, my instinct or urge to hate my neighbor is no more or less inherently valuable than my urge (if any) to love my neighbor.

Valuable to whom? One urge is beneficial, the other detrimental. That's why they're selected out (or in): sociopathy is detrimental to society, so it effectively breeds itself out of society. Sure, we get a sociopath now and then, but they are fantastically rare. Why don't we have urges to slaughter our neighbours?

As for the term 'by-product'... yes, it can get a little confusing. There's no real distinction between a product and a by-product, except time-scale (a by-product is a recent 'misuse' of an older product) and detriment (a by-product rarely has any benefit, and is often detrimental). By-products can, of course, become products in their own right. All novel traits start out as mini experiments, if you like; small modifications of pre-existing traits, whereafter the good ones survive and the bad ones are bred out.

You did such a nice job removing intelligence from natural selection, and now you speak of "strategy"? Altruism is not a better survival strategy; I disagree that it's a survival strategy at all. The genes in the burning building are less important than mine (because they're not mine). The best and only strategy for my genes is to avoid risk to myself.

On the contrary, the genes in the building are yours: in a society, those individuals around you are likely to be your kin, and therefore share your genetics much more closely than a distant relative who you might never meet. Therefore, by sacrificing yourself for their survival, you aid your gene's survival: they survive in your kin.

This is especially true when we consider our children. The urge to protect one's own is so much stronger in parents for their kids than, say, I for a stranger.

I declare a right thing: society should eliminate homosexuals. Do you agree, or do you declare that my idea of "right" is wrong? If you say my idea of right is wrong, are you saying we disagree the way two people might disagree over the taste of beer vs. stout, or are you saying my idea is wrong according to a standard external to both of us?

The former. I'd be saying your idea of 'right' is wrong inasmuch as I have my own ideas about what's 'right'. The question becomes: whose idea should we listen to? To what objective standard do we hold moral codes?

Isn't your idea of logic shifty? I mean something illogical becomes logical only after you aquire new facts. For example, I've never read the theories of relativity, and wouldn't understand them if I did. I hear GR speaks of the warping of space. To me, this is flatly illogical. Space is by definition nothing, and "nothing" has no shape to warp. You say "Ah, but you're ignorant. If you knew more of the underlying facts and the math, it would become logical to you." Then why doesn't this same idea apply to you? How can your OP claim a logical contradiction exists when you don't have all facts?

It does apply to me: you're right and logical inasmuch as, so long as your premises are true, your objection is valid. But your premises aren't true, so your objection is moot.

You say that the warping of space is illogical because space, being defined as nothingness, cannot be 'warped'. It's not that it's incomprehensible, but that it's impossible. It's like saying 1 + 1 = 3.
Well, yes, that would be illogical. But the point is we don't define space as nothingness. The whole point about GR is that space (or rather, spacetime) is an entity unto itself: it's a physical thing in which other things are suspended.
Or something like that.
But it's not an absence, it's an objectively extant thing.
So it can be warped.

So yes, I would say "Ah, but you're ignorant. If you knew more of the underlying facts and the math, it would become logical to you", but only because I'm giving you different premises with which to apply your logic.

Ostensibly, it doesn't stop being illogical. It just turns out to be a(n unintentional) straw man, so the illogic of the straw man is not a comment on the illogic of the actual theory.

Now, my OP doesn't fall into that trap because I've specifically asked if such a redefinition is the case (or I think I have; maybe that was in another thread...). My OP asks whether my objection is based on a misrepresentation of omniscience; it could very well be that when a Christian says God is 'omniscient', they mean something very different to what I mean.
But since I've catered for that possibility, it's all fine.

I think I might.

Why?

Science is the study of nature, but God is not a feature of nature.

I think we disagree on just what constitutes 'nature'. I see no meaningful distinction between 'natural' and 'supernatural', 'physical' and 'spiritual', etc. There is simply 'that which exists' and 'that which doesn't exist'. How do you define 'nature'?

I just don't think science or even strict logic is the key to understanding all of life.

That depends on what you want to understand. Science can't say what our purpose is, but it can shed light on whether we have a purpose at all.

Honestly, don't you think the technical specifications of how we exist are secondary to the question of why we exist?

No, because I don't believe there is a 'why' to our existence. We simply exist.
Ironically, it was those secondary, technical specifications that lead me to that conclusion.

Science has done things like raise the quality of life and extend it awhile, and travel in space, which are nice, but not critical. ... I don't mean to sound anti-science, but seriously I think "nice" is the highest compliment science merits, and I suspect if I were to live long enough I might even have to recall the compliment.

Well, science isn't in it to be nice. It's in it to find the truth. And the truth hurts.

If life really is just cold biological competition as evolution describes, and morality is just a way to keep the inmates in line, I don't think live is worth living.

Unfortunately, that has no bearing on whether it's right. Obviously it'd be nice to have some divine father to give us purpose and meaning in our lives, but that doesn't mean one has to exist. Just because our theories about the world paint a bleak and dismal state of affairs doesn't mean we should chuck them out as false. We need to just acknowledge that the world isn't full of sunshine and lollipops.
Maybe then we can grow up.

 

[Chesterton]

This post is long...

Yes, I'll try to ramble less but I'm having to snip stuff also.

Do you affirm or deny the existence of James Poole?

Affirm and deny are incorrect words to describe states of belief; the correct words are "believe" and "disbelieve". I'm agnostic regarding Mr. Poole. I don't know whether to believe in him, just as I used to be about God. Now I believe there's a God, so I label myself a theist. I'd label myself an atheist if I didn't believe there's a God. It's very simple, but I think some atheists want to deny the fact that they hold a belief. Holding a belief puts them on the same level as religious men, where they in fact are. Atheists prefer to say "we're scientific, we're rational, we just go by facts", when in fact, they are just believing something (that there is no God)

You'll notice that science doesn't comment on how or why the Big Bang is occurring, simply because there is no evidence that tells us either which way. However, that doesn't change the fact that it is occurring. We can make speculations, but until our theories are capable of describing what went on back then, we can't do much more.

Okay, but later in your post you say that science led you to a conclusion that "we just exist". So either science makes that comment (or leans toward making that comment) or it doesn't. What specific scientific findings led to your conclusion, if you don't mind me asking?

I disagree. The ability to deduce the truth of a statement is an extension (or abstraction) of our pattern-recognising ability.

It seems more of a quantum leap than an extension or abstraction.

By recognising that those types of trees often have nice, healthy fruit, we have taken the first steps of logic: A implies B; A; therefore, B. Naturally, we're rubbish at it, but we've made the first step.

I don't think logic is involved in associating two things and having expectations based on the associations. You haven't inferred a logical connection between trees and fruit, and wouldn't need to.

Thereafter, it's just a matter of time as our reasoning ability gets better and better. After all, the better your reasoning ability, the better you are at correctly identifying food, prey, predators, etc.

That's my take on it, at least.

But getting better at identifying things would just be a function of better sense perception, wouldn't it? And I don't see how reasoning can get better; it seems you either have reason or you don't - you can't make half an inference.

In what way is God the simplest explanation? To me, it's explaining the ball's apparent levitation by saying "Oh, there must be an explanation". That's obviously not an explanation, let alone the simplest one.

Indeed, your explanation can be attacked by saying you arbitrarily ascribe intelligence and personhood to God, when all you need to do is posit the existence of some entity which fulfils the task you require of it (in this case, explaining reality).

I'm not sure how that attacks my explanation. Can you reword that?

But we can't allow for that loophole, because such an allowance would end up as circular.

I only mention it as this if/then statement: If our reason is supernatural (derived from a higher reason), then that's a possible way our reason can make sense in and of irrational nature.

Ah, unfortunately, no. It's a very clever response to the problem, but it turns out that such a 'hidden variable' is fundamentally incompatible with quantum mechanics. It turns out that you can't posit the existence of some unknown variable or quantity (or deity ) that is influencing the particle.

I myself used to wonder whether a radioactive particle's seemingly random decay was in fact due to something that had happened in its past: it had collided with another particle, this made it slightly more unstable, and that hastened its decay.

Turns out that quantum randomness is real randomness. Even positing the Hand of God doesn't work, since it violates some criterion or other.

I don't know what else to say. For all we know, the limitations of logic may just be the limitations of being human.

On the contrary, if I reject God, I go to Hell. Forever. Is that not an eternal life?

Yes, it is.

Moreover, how does my rejection of God (by which I assume you mean my disbelief in his existence) stop me from having an eternal life? If he is the source of our eternal lives, why do my personal religious beliefs change that fact?

He wants to give you Himself, but He can't give you what you will not have. And He is of a certain character, and cannot give Himself to beings with contrary characteristics (sinners). I think one's personal religious beliefs will determine what one does and what one is eventually.

Valuable to whom? One urge is beneficial, the other detrimental. That's why they're selected out (or in): sociopathy is detrimental to society, so it effectively breeds itself out of society. Sure, we get a sociopath now and then, but they are fantastically rare. Why don't we have urges to slaughter our neighbours?

Society just means other people. I see no rational reason not to benefit myself to the detriment of other people (to the extent I can get away with it). Other people are, by definition, other. You infuse the idea of "life" with some unspecified magic quality implying some brotherhood-of-DNA, but how can that be real? People are made of the same stuff as rocks and wood; we are things. Why should I not use these other things as I use rocks or lumber? If I were going to live forever, only then could you possibly make me care one iota for "society". But I live a short time, and society will go on without me, or it won't, either way, no difference to me.

(I hate making this "if-it-weren't-for-God-I'd-run-wild" argument, but it's purely rational. And it's an important point, and has to do with your above question about 'personal religious beliefs'; this is what I think Nietzsche saw clearly: that the cosmos boils down to either God, or the self. If no God, the self is all there is; the only consideration. I believe we all need Christ; but I also believe Christ can save whoever he will, atheist or Hindu or whatever, but beliefs have to involve something other than the self to focus towards, at least for a start, and the more towards God the better, and I'd go on, but /ramble. )

On the contrary, the genes in the building are yours: in a society, those individuals around you are likely to be your kin, and therefore share your genetics much more closely than a distant relative who you might never meet. Therefore, by sacrificing yourself for their survival, you aid your gene's survival: they survive in your kin.

Like Orwellian double-speak: I should destroy myself in order to save myself. Nonsense. Outside of religion/spirituality, there's no sense in which those other genes are mine. Is that a scientific idea - what could it possibly mean? It almost sounds like it has some kind of New Age overtones. My genes have no consciousness. Most animals will protect their own young, but some animals will even eat their young.

The former. I'd be saying your idea of 'right' is wrong inasmuch as I have my own ideas about what's 'right'. The question becomes: whose idea should we listen to? To what objective standard do we hold moral codes?

If that's the case, there's nothing to discuss. It's just two opposing wills. The only question is who is stronger? Whose will will prevail? Morality becomes un-reasonable. But that's not how we practice it. You wouldn't try to dissuade me from my idea by saying you don't like my idea; you would appeal to my reason, you'd want to show me how my bad idea was unreasonable.

It does apply to me: you're right and logical inasmuch as, so long as your premises are true, your objection is valid. But your premises aren't true, so your objection is moot.

You say that the warping of space is illogical because space, being defined as nothingness, cannot be 'warped'. It's not that it's incomprehensible, but that it's impossible. It's like saying 1 + 1 = 3.
Well, yes, that would be illogical. But the point is we don't define space as nothingness. The whole point about GR is that space (or rather, spacetime) is an entity unto itself: it's a physical thing in which other things are suspended.
Or something like that.
But it's not an absence, it's an objectively extant thing.
So it can be warped.

So yes, I would say "Ah, but you're ignorant. If you knew more of the underlying facts and the math, it would become logical to you", but only because I'm giving you different premises with which to apply your logic.

Ostensibly, it doesn't stop being illogical. It just turns out to be a(n unintentional) straw man, so the illogic of the straw man is not a comment on the illogic of the actual theory.

Now, my OP doesn't fall into that trap because I've specifically asked if such a redefinition is the case (or I think I have; maybe that was in another thread...).

In order to state with certainty that you're not in the same trap as I am with GR, you'd have to possess all knowledge.

My OP asks whether my objection is based on a misrepresentation of omniscience; it could very well be that when a Christian says God is 'omniscient', they mean something very different to what I mean.
But since I've catered for that possibility, it's all fine.

Yes I think we touched on that in this thread or a previous one. I don't think the word omniscient is in the bible. The Christian creeds spell out what we believe, and they don't mention anything about God having to know where quantum particles will be. I'm just trying to argue against your "worst case scenario".

Why?

He'd just be too small I guess. I'd expect a creator God's logic to comprehend and circumscribe mine, not to just be contiguous with or equal to mine.

I think we disagree on just what constitutes 'nature'. I see no meaningful distinction between 'natural' and 'supernatural', 'physical' and 'spiritual', etc. There is simply 'that which exists' and 'that which doesn't exist'. How do you define 'nature'?

I understand your idea that "everything there is is everything there is" and you'd call that everything "nature", and it makes sense, but it disagrees with the Christian view:

Think of God as Shakespeare, and think of nature (the universe) as a play he's written. Shakespeare is not a part of the play he created. From experiencing the play, you could possibly get some idea of what Shakespeare is like, but you will not find him in the play. If the story and the characters in the play strongly involve ideas of love, morality, courage, or what-not, you might conclude that those ideas are somehow important to the author also. But you won't be able to measure the author's height, or know what food he likes, etc. from reading the play.

That's childishly simplistic, and as incorrect theologically as it is scientifically, but it's all my little brain can do, and it works for representing a truth I believe - that nature is a creation of God.

That depends on what you want to understand. Science can't say what our purpose is, but it can shed light on whether we have a purpose at all.

Would you explain that last part for me - how science can shed light on whether we have a purpose?

No, because I don't believe there is a 'why' to our existence. We simply exist.
Ironically, it was those secondary, technical specifications that lead me to that conclusion.

Which for me raises the question: "what possible other types of technical specifications could have led you to conclude otherwise? What type of universe would you expect a God to produce? Would you believe in God if grass were red instead of green, or if E didn't equal MC2?

Well, science isn't in it to be nice. It's in it to find the truth. And the truth hurts.

I think scientific truth has yet to ever hurt Christianity. Maybe creationists, but not Christianity. In fact, on the rare occassions when they have anything to do with one another, science has generally supported Christian belief more often than not, e.g., the Big Bang theory, and archeological supports for the New Testament story. If creationists would only read the early Christians...oh well, another topic.

Unfortunately, that has no bearing on whether it's right. Obviously it'd be nice to have some divine father to give us purpose and meaning in our lives, but that doesn't mean one has to exist. Just because our theories about the world paint a bleak and dismal state of affairs doesn't mean we should chuck them out as false. We need to just acknowledge that the world isn't full of sunshine and lollipops.
Maybe then we can grow up.

I was talking about applied science's usefulness, so I think that's slightly off the point I was making, but since you mention it, let's distinguish between science and the philosophy of naturalism - none of your scientific theories paint a bleak state of affairs by themselves. Pure science is certainly the exact opposite of bleak: learning more and more of what God does is endlessly fascinating and colorful and full of light and life (well, at least the science magazines I read are ). It's only atheism which makes for a bleak and dismal picture of reality.

I don't want to believe in sunshine and lollipops if they're not there, but neither do I want to disbelieve them if they are there, and there is evidence for them. There's a funny double standard people sometimes use - that of attributing unpleasant emotions to hard reality, and attributing pleasant emotions to psychological fantasy. You know if you see some nature film where the lions capture and eat some poor gazelle who's desperately trying to escape, it can bring up emotions, and we tend to think "ah, that's the ugly reality of life". But presented with a beautiful landscape or a beautiful poem which also brings up emotions, but of a pleasanter kind, we're liable to tell ourselves "ah, that's just emotions getting to me, there's nothing real to it". The thing is, both sides of the coin are real, and I think the only complete, honest approach is to treat them both that way.

What you'd call growing up, I'd recognize as men abandoning their humanity; as men ceasing to be men. On the other hand, I guess that's exactly what evolution is - "change", so perhaps we won't always be men.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Affirm and deny are incorrect words to describe states of belief; the correct words are "believe" and "disbelieve". I'm agnostic regarding Mr. Poole. I don't know whether to believe in him, just as I used to be about God. Now I believe there's a God, so I label myself a theist. I'd label myself an atheist if I didn't believe there's a God. It's very simple, but I think some atheists want to deny the fact that they hold a belief. Holding a belief puts them on the same level as religious men, where they in fact are. Atheists prefer to say "we're scientific, we're rational, we just go by facts", when in fact, they are just believing something (that there is no God)

Except they don't: they don't believe that there is no God, nor do they believe there is a God. You would call them 'agnostic', but they would call themselves 'atheistic'.

Ironically, you say that, if you didn't believe there's a God, you'd be an atheist. That's just was (self-professed) atheists say! But not believing that something exists, isn't the same as believing that it doesn't exist.

And, to me, belief is about affirmation. If I believe in the truth of statement, that's just another way of saying I affirm its truth. If I say I believe in God, that's just shorthand for "I affirm the existence of God". Thus, if one affirms neither the existence nor non-existence of God, one neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of God: one 'non'-believes.

An atheist is just someone who doesn't believe in God. They may also affirm the non-existence of God (thereby becoming a strong atheist), or they can jut remain silent on whether God exists (thereby remaining a weak atheist).

Gnosticism is about whether you can know, in principle, whether deities exist or not. It's right there in the etymology.

Okay, but later in your post you say that science led you to a conclusion that "we just exist". So either science makes that comment (or leans toward making that comment) or it doesn't. What specific scientific findings led to your conclusion, if you don't mind me asking?

Because purpose implies an intent behind our existence. I see no such intent in anything that exists.

It seems more of a quantum leap than an extension or abstraction.

How so? Once you have pattern-recognition, it's easy to recognise mathematical patterns, such as that between two apples and two oranges. There, quite simple, is the start of abstraction: 'two' is an abstract concept, and once our pattern-recognising brains start recognising abstract patterns, that leads the way to further abstraction (such as 'number').

But getting better at identifying things would just be a function of better sense perception, wouldn't it? And I don't see how reasoning can get better; it seems you either have reason or you don't - you can't make half an inference.

You can make poor inferences. Your reasoning ability gets better in that you're more likely to make a correct inference instead of a false one, or can make more complex inferences instead of just rudimentary ones.

I'm not sure how that attacks my explanation. Can you reword that?

You say that God is the simplest explanation, and therefore the most likely explanation. I say that God isn't the simplest explanation: 'God' has all sorts of other properties that aren't needed, such as sapience, moral agency, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc. If 'God' is the name given to the source of reason, then that is the only property you can ascribe to it: the ability to give reason to others. That doesn't even require 'God' to be alive: it can just be the name given to a mundane phenomenon.

Yes, the Christian God can be the source of reason. But that hypothesis certainly isn't the most simple one.

Yes, it is.

Then I can reject God and have eternal life, yes?

He wants to give you Himself, but He can't give you what you will not have. And He is of a certain character, and cannot give Himself to beings with contrary characteristics (sinners). I think one's personal religious beliefs will determine what one does and what one is eventually.

I disagree: you see Christians bombing abortion clinics, and Christians volunteering at homeless shelters. Surely they are not of the same moral fibre? Even if you say "Ah, but they're not True Christians™", they still have the same religious beliefs.

Society just means other people. I see no rational reason not to benefit myself to the detriment of other people (to the extent I can get away with it). Other people are, by definition, other. You infuse the idea of "life" with some unspecified magic quality implying some brotherhood-of-DNA, but how can that be real? People are made of the same stuff as rocks and wood; we are things. Why should I not use these other things as I use rocks or lumber? If I were going to live forever, only then could you possibly make me care one iota for "society". But I live a short time, and society will go on without me, or it won't, either way, no difference to me.

Which is exactly my point: there is no rational reason to care for society, for one's kin. But we nonetheless do. Even if you personally don't, you can't deny the bond between mother and child, that parents will almost always be willing to sacrifice themselves for their kin.

There is no rational reason for it, but it exists nonetheless. Why? Because it's an evolved response: it is exceedingly beneficial for a mother to protect her progeny, even at the cost of her own life. Why? Because those genes which cause her to protect her children will survive only if her children survive.

The rationale for helping society and its members comes from the fact that, by helping, you're indirectly helping your own gene's survival. Your gene for altruism also exists in other individuals. By helping them, you're helping that gene survive. From your point of you, you just feel some urge, some impulse to help. You may rationalise it, you may not, but you feel the urge nonetheless.

Hormones and synapses. That's all it boils down to.

Like Orwellian double-speak: I should destroy myself in order to save myself. Nonsense. Outside of religion/spirituality, there's no sense in which those other genes are mine. Is that a scientific idea - what could it possibly mean?

It means that the genes exist in you and your kin. You have the genes for altruism, and so do they. Genes are just particular strings of nucleotide, and you have the same genes that your kin have. The more closely related you are to someone, the more genes you share. Thus, by protecting them, you're protecting other instances of your genes.

It almost sounds like it has some kind of New Age overtones. My genes have no consciousness. Most animals will protect their own young, but some animals will even eat their young.

Indeed: in that case, it's beneficial for them to do so. For example, a spider will eat its own eggs, but not those which have hatched. Thus, those which hatch first aren't eaten, and can survive. Thus, there exists a selection pressure that speeds up the gestation process.

What seems barbaric to us is actually quite useful to the survival of another species.

If that's the case, there's nothing to discuss. It's just two opposing wills. The only question is who is stronger? Whose will will prevail? Morality becomes un-reasonable. But that's not how we practice it. You wouldn't try to dissuade me from my idea by saying you don't like my idea; you would appeal to my reason, you'd want to show me how my bad idea was unreasonable.

Only by appealing to the sense of morality that we (hopefully) share, or by appealing to your own logic. "You wouldn't say X is wrong, but since X and Y are effectively the same, why do you say Y is wrong?"

That's how I debate anti-gay-marriage-ists (or whatever they're called nowadays). I appeal to their belief that they wouldn't dream of condemning, say, interracial marriages.

In order to state with certainty that you're not in the same trap as I am with GR, you'd have to possess all knowledge.

Not necessarily all knowledge. You're arguing against a straw-man of GR, not GR itself. It doesn't matter whether GR is true (arguably, its truth is assumed when you attempt to find flaw with it).

Yes I think we touched on that in this thread or a previous one. I don't think the word omniscient is in the bible. The Christian creeds spell out what we believe, and they don't mention anything about God having to know where quantum particles will be. I'm just trying to argue against your "worst case scenario".

Which is that God doesn't exist, or that God isn't omniscient?

He'd just be too small I guess. I'd expect a creator God's logic to comprehend and circumscribe mine, not to just be contiguous with or equal to mine.

Why? Logic is logic. "1 + 1 = 2" is true, period. It doesn't become false when you talk about God.

I understand your idea that "everything there is is everything there is" and you'd call that everything "nature", and it makes sense, but it disagrees with the Christian view:

Think of God as Shakespeare, and think of nature (the universe) as a play he's written. Shakespeare is not a part of the play he created. From experiencing the play, you could possibly get some idea of what Shakespeare is like, but you will not find him in the play. If the story and the characters in the play strongly involve ideas of love, morality, courage, or what-not, you might conclude that those ideas are somehow important to the author also. But you won't be able to measure the author's height, or know what food he likes, etc. from reading the play.

That's childishly simplistic, and as incorrect theologically as it is scientifically, but it's all my little brain can do, and it works for representing a truth I believe - that nature is a creation of God.

An interesting analogy, but it seems to boil down to special pleading. It just says "God is qualitatively different", without telling us anything about God, or even justifying that statement.
But then, it's a religious belief, so we can just leave it at that.

Would you explain that last part for me - how science can shed light on whether we have a purpose?

It's made me reconsider what it means for a thing to have a purpose. A train has a purpose in that it was specifically designed to perform a specific function. Science has shown me that humans weren't designed, that they don't have a specific function. We're just the progeny of survivors, with 3.5 billion years of evolved abilities and instincts to help our own survival. That doesn't give us purpose.

But then again, I believe that, even if there is a God who assigns each of us a part in his master plan, that doesn't constitute a 'purpose'.

Which for me raises the question: "what possible other types of technical specifications could have led you to conclude otherwise? What type of universe would you expect a God to produce? Would you believe in God if grass were red instead of green, or if E didn't equal MC2?

One without suffering? One in which God walks the Earth? One which teems with life? One which is optimised for life (as opposed to life existing on the thin skin of a single planet)? One in which giant burning letters in the sky denote morality, God's existence, the criteria for salvation, etc?

There are many things I would expect God to do. Their absence strikes me as somewhat suspicious.

I think scientific truth has yet to ever hurt Christianity. Maybe creationists, but not Christianity. In fact, on the rare occassions when they have anything to do with one another, science has generally supported Christian belief more often than not, e.g., the Big Bang theory, and archeological supports for the New Testament story. If creationists would only read the early Christians...oh well, another topic.

I think Christianity and science are compatible because the 'core' beliefs of the former aren't going to change by any scientific discovery. If it was a requirement to believe that the Earth was 6000 years old, then yes, Christianity has a problem. But as it stands, in its most general form, I don't see any contradiction between the two.

I was talking about applied science's usefulness, so I think that's slightly off the point I was making, but since you mention it, let's distinguish between science and the philosophy of naturalism - none of your scientific theories paint a bleak state of affairs by themselves. Pure science is certainly the exact opposite of bleak: learning more and more of what God does is endlessly fascinating and colorful and full of light and life (well, at least the science magazines I read are ). It's only atheism which makes for a bleak and dismal picture of reality.

I don't want to believe in sunshine and lollipops if they're not there, but neither do I want to disbelieve them if they are there, and there is evidence for them. There's a funny double standard people sometimes use - that of attributing unpleasant emotions to hard reality, and attributing pleasant emotions to psychological fantasy. You know if you see some nature film where the lions capture and eat some poor gazelle who's desperately trying to escape, it can bring up emotions, and we tend to think "ah, that's the ugly reality of life". But presented with a beautiful landscape or a beautiful poem which also brings up emotions, but of a pleasanter kind, we're liable to tell ourselves "ah, that's just emotions getting to me, there's nothing real to it". The thing is, both sides of the coin are real, and I think the only complete, honest approach is to treat them both that way.

What you'd call growing up, I'd recognize as men abandoning their humanity; as men ceasing to be men. On the other hand, I guess that's exactly what evolution is - "change", so perhaps we won't always be men.

Change is what kept our species alive. Stagnation is extinction. Doesn't Revelations teach that a New heaven and Earth are coming?

 

[Chesterton]

Except they don't: they don't believe that there is no God, nor do they believe there is a God. You would call them 'agnostic', but they would call themselves 'atheistic'.

Ironically, you say that, if you didn't believe there's a God, you'd be an atheist. That's just was (self-professed) atheists say! But not believing that something exists, isn't the same as believing that it doesn't exist.

How is it not the same? "I believe 'a' does not exist" and "I do not believe 'a' exists" are the same statement.

And, to me, belief is about affirmation. If I believe in the truth of statement, that's just another way of saying I affirm its truth. If I say I believe in God, that's just shorthand for "I affirm the existence of God". Thus, if one affirms neither the existence nor non-existence of God, one neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of God: one 'non'-believes.

An atheist is just someone who doesn't believe in God. They may also affirm the non-existence of God (thereby becoming a strong atheist), or they can jut remain silent on whether God exists (thereby remaining a weak atheist).

Seems like unnecessary wiggling around; we already have the words "atheist" and "agnostic". But if someone wants to hold an "affirmation" rather than a belief, that's fine with me. And if an atheist wants to remain silent, that's even better. (just kidding )

Gnosticism is about whether you can know, in principle, whether deities exist or not. It's right there in the etymology.

You're right, but that definition is just not useful, because by it, everyone is agnostic, from St. Paul to Richard Dawkins.

Because purpose implies an intent behind our existence. I see no such intent in anything that exists.

But I asked what specific scientific findings support your conclusion.

How so? Once you have pattern-recognition, it's easy to recognise mathematical patterns, such as that between two apples and two oranges. There, quite simple, is the start of abstraction: 'two' is an abstract concept, and once our pattern-recognising brains start recognising abstract patterns, that leads the way to further abstraction (such as 'number').

You can make poor inferences. Your reasoning ability gets better in that you're more likely to make a correct inference instead of a false one, or can make more complex inferences instead of just rudimentary ones.

Aren't you contradicting what you said earlier? Earlier you said that a cube (therefore math) does not exist in nature. But a man's mind can perceive a cube (and any other true math proposition). Therefore, isn't a man's mind perceiving something apart from or outside nature?

And wouldn't this have to hold for anything thing of which a man could say "this is true", because "true" doesn't exist in nature?

You say that God is the simplest explanation, and therefore the most likely explanation. I say that God isn't the simplest explanation: 'God' has all sorts of other properties that aren't needed, such as sapience, moral agency, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc. If 'God' is the name given to the source of reason, then that is the only property you can ascribe to it: the ability to give reason to others. That doesn't even require 'God' to be alive: it can just be the name given to a mundane phenomenon.

Yes, the Christian God can be the source of reason. But that hypothesis certainly isn't the most simple one.

That's true, my idea could describe deism or pantheism, but it couldn't describe the "mundane" in the sense of having to do with this world. Only something outside the natural chain of events can be "about" the natural chain of events, as thoughts are.

I can't engage in sex about thought, and I can't engage in eating food about thought, but I can engage in thoughts about having sex or about eating food or even in thoughts about thinking, as we're doing now.

Reason is a narrator in a story. You've probably read a book which included a first-person narration. The narrator could also be a part of the story - he or she could narrate, then step back into the story, then step out again to narrate. But, the two cannot be simultaneous - in order to narrate, the narrator must step outside the story. I believe this is what reason does, it steps outside of Nature, outside the natural chain of events of cause and effect.

Then I can reject God and have eternal life, yes?

Unfortunately, yes.

I disagree: you see Christians bombing abortion clinics, and Christians volunteering at homeless shelters. Surely they are not of the same moral fibre? Even if you say "Ah, but they're not True Christians™", they still have the same religious beliefs.

Do you think men who call themselves scientists, and who work on Creationism and Intelligent Design are True Scientists? There's two choices: either they're True Scientists, but bad ones, or else they're not True Scientists (or maybe a third choice - they're right and you're wrong). I'll leave that to you. If a person call themselves a Christian and disregards the most blatant principles of Christianity, he seems to me like a man who calls himself a scientist and disregards the most blatant principles of science.

I'll try for a QM analogy of Hell: maybe Heaven and Hell are determined by the observer. The observer determines or sets the property of that which is observed: God. In this life, God exists in a kind of superposition: "God is everywhere". Life is a wave; Death is a collapse of the wave function. Upon exiting this life, you will observe God/reality, and He/it will snap into one of many possible positions. But this life is for determining what your observation will be.

(This might also explain the problem of evil. And it will continue after this life - residents of Hell may complain of God being evil, perhaps not understanding that that's the position they've chosen for Him.)

Which is exactly my point: there is no rational reason to care for society, for one's kin. But we nonetheless do. Even if you personally don't, you can't deny the bond between mother and child, that parents will almost always be willing to sacrifice themselves for their kin.

There is no rational reason for it, but it exists nonetheless. Why? Because it's an evolved response: it is exceedingly beneficial for a mother to protect her progeny, even at the cost of her own life. Why? Because those genes which cause her to protect her children will survive only if her children survive.

The rationale for helping society and its members comes from the fact that, by helping, you're indirectly helping your own gene's survival. Your gene for altruism also exists in other individuals. By helping them, you're helping that gene survive. From your point of you, you just feel some urge, some impulse to help. You may rationalise it, you may not, but you feel the urge nonetheless.

Hormones and synapses. That's all it boils down to.

I always think back to the novel "Catch-22". If you don't know it - briefly, an American WWII pilot is tired of risking death each time he flies, and flatly says "I don't want to fly anymore. I don't want to die for my country or for anyone else." His comrades, apparently recognizing his idea as entirely rational, can't directly attack the idea, but rather respond with "What if everyone felt that way?" (The idea being, if everyone felt that way, America would lose the war.) But his very rational response is "If everyone felt that way, then I'd be a damn fool to feel any different!" (His natural feeling is entirely justified in and of itself, regardless of the majority opinion.) The upshot being, regardless of whether the majority is with him or against him, he is entirely justifed in his selfishness. And throughout the book, he doesn't offer any philosophy or reasoning to justify his selfishness; it just stands as a bald fact, as it does in our real biological life.

Just as you cannot get "this is true" out of nature, you cannot get any "I should" statement out of science.

It means that the genes exist in you and your kin. You have the genes for altruism, and so do they. Genes are just particular strings of nucleotide, and you have the same genes that your kin have. The more closely related you are to someone, the more genes you share. Thus, by protecting them, you're protecting other instances of your genes.

They may be the same chemicals but in what way are they "other instances of my genes"? Everyone else's car may be made of the exact same materials as my car, but that in no way makes other people's cars "other instances of my car". (Except from a Divine perspective, since God claims ownership of all the materials.)

Indeed: in that case, it's beneficial for them to do so. For example, a spider will eat its own eggs, but not those which have hatched. Thus, those which hatch first aren't eaten, and can survive. Thus, there exists a selection pressure that speeds up the gestation process.

What seems barbaric to us is actually quite useful to the survival of another species.

Actually, the barbaric act will always be the most useful act; in fact, in most instances, "barbaric" and "useful" will be synonyms. Any idea to the contrary is injecting extra-natural morality and romance. What selection pressure would tell me to de-select myself, under any circumstance, and on what grounds would it do so? Blind nature has no interest in my genes survival. It has no "interests" at all.

It seems you're not giving me science here, but rather a very mysterious, mystical view of life itself "wanting" life to proceed.

Only by appealing to the sense of morality that we (hopefully) share, or by appealing to your own logic. "You wouldn't say X is wrong, but since X and Y are effectively the same, why do you say Y is wrong?"

That's how I debate anti-gay-marriage-ists (or whatever they're called nowadays). I appeal to their belief that they wouldn't dream of condemning, say, interracial marriages.

If his idea is just his personal preference, there's nothing to appeal to or about, really. You might as well urge him to like the same drink you do.

Not necessarily all knowledge. You're arguing against a straw-man of GR, not GR itself. It doesn't matter whether GR is true (arguably, its truth is assumed when you attempt to find flaw with it).

True. Then how can we be certain you're not arguing against a straw-man of quantum mechanics, rather than quantum mechanics itself? If I can have a misunderstanding of what space is, you could have a misunderstanding of what a particle is. In fact, I think I'm sure (with all due respect) that you do misunderstand what a particle is, because no one does fully understand.

Which is that God doesn't exist, or that God isn't omniscient?

Your worst case scenario is the existence of a contradiction based on a strict, all-encompassing definition of "omniscience" which Christianity really makes no comment on, one way or the other. I can see where people get the idea, when Christ says something like "all of the hairs of your head are numbered", they take poetical speech and look at it scientifically and say "well, he's saying God knows absolutely everything about everything at all times", but AFAIK no traditional Christian ever interpreted it that way. You could argue John Calvin saw it that way, but then he is a late-comer and an innovator; Calvinism is trying to be scientific and rational in the way that you are, but according to orthodox Christianity, you'd both be wrong in taking that approach.

Why? Logic is logic. "1 + 1 = 2" is true, period. It doesn't become false when you talk about God.

You sound like a man who's never seen ice or steam, and so says "everyone knows H20 has to be liquid, and it can't be otherwise". I want to balance fairness and accuracy, so all I can say is "you may be right, or maybe not".

It's made me reconsider what it means for a thing to have a purpose. A train has a purpose in that it was specifically designed to perform a specific function. Science has shown me that humans weren't designed, that they don't have a specific function.

But then again, I believe that, even if there is a God who assigns each of us a part in his master plan, that doesn't constitute a 'purpose'.

1. When you say science has shown that humans weren't designed, I don't think that's necessarily true even granting the Theory of Evolution. He very well could have designed through the TOE. Even if every aspect of our being, including our consciousness and mental processes could be attributed to evolution, you'd have no reason to conclude that God did not purpose every single aspect to be what it is.

2. Even if it were true that we're not designed, that might be only true of human bodies. After all, Christianity is concerned with men's souls, and would be no different if we were quadripeds or if we looked like squid. One design, versus another design, versus no design, would not speak to the question of whether we had a purpose.

Honestly, I think you should re-reconsider, because your conclusion seems to be based on one or more red herrings.

One without suffering? One in which God walks the Earth? One which teems with life? One which is optimised for life (as opposed to life existing on the thin skin of a single planet)? One in which giant burning letters in the sky denote morality, God's existence, the criteria for salvation, etc?

You mentioned "scientific observations", so that's what I asked about; the above however, are metaphysical objections. Men knew life was difficult and mysterious long before science.

There are many things I would expect God to do. Their absence strikes me as somewhat suspicious.

For me, there was only one thing I really expected of God. I couldn't necessarily expect Him to be good or to be evil, to be nice or mean, to care or not care, or to even exist. The one thing I thought, was that if He did exist, He should reveal Himself, He should make Himself known. And I when I asked Him to make Himself known, He repeatedly pointed me to Christ.

Change is what kept our species alive.

And what prize does humanity win for staying alive? Seriously, if evolution led to science, and now science takes the baton from evolution, apparently we will soon have men in charge of nature. So what's the endgame?

Stagnation is extinction.

Trees, clams, jellyfish, cockroaches, etc. seem to be doing okay.

Doesn't Revelations teach that a New heaven and Earth are coming?

Yes, and also that there will be some lost beings and some preserved beings, just as in nature.

 

[Chesterton]

Here's a clever little (anti-) morality play which sums it up well.

"It looks to me as if I'm a pound down on the whole deal." "Are you quite sure you've got this right?"

YouTube - Merchant Banker

 

[Bono]

Ah, unfortunately, no. It's a very clever response to the problem, but it turns out that such a 'hidden variable'

is fundamentally incompatible with quantum mechanics. It turns out that you can't posit the existence of some

unknown variable or quantity (or deity ) that is influencing the particle.

I myself used to wonder whether a radioactive particle's seemingly random decay was in fact due to something that

had happened in its past: it had collided with another particle, this made it slightly more unstable, and that

hastened its decay.

Turns out that quantum randomness is real randomness. Even positing the Hand of God doesn't work, since it violates

some criterion or other.

There are several problems with your assertions.

First, God could hardly be classified as an hidden variable; God exists outside the universe, and thus cannot be a variable in physics which deal with what exists in the Universe. Since it would be an outside intervention through which God determined quantum events, it would be indistinguishable from true randomness even with all the constraints of the Copenhagen interpretation.

Second, you are misrepresenting quantum theory. The limitation on hidden variables, even physical, belonging to the universe ones, from Bell's inequality, only applies to local hidden variables. If locality is given up, hidden variables are allowed. God is Omnipresent, and thus non-local by definition.

And third, the Copenhagen interpretation itself isn't as iron-clad as you present it; there is very recent work being done on a testable alternative.

I agree that having God determining personally the outcome of every quantum meaurement is the best solution for this, even if it might involve biting some philosophical bullets.