The difficulty of talking to Atheist

True Scotsman · Sep 17, 2014

Colter said:
Finite lonesomeness, your philosophy sets the parameters for existence to the exclusion of any cause or any other effect potential. It's a benign closed minded philosophy. Your premise is that existence is unqualified. It comes from nothing, means nothing and goes nowhere. Its like Dawkins sad conclusion, the universe is really cool, then you die. Rands philosophy is a perpetual God denier machine.

This from someone who denies that existence exists?

Colter · Sep 17, 2014

Archaeopteryx said:
That's nice, but it doesn't actually answer my question. Your question to Eight Foot Manchild, about how he knows that you do not know God, implied that you wished to hold him to some sort of epistemic standard. My question is simply why? Why when he could claim, like you, to have ascertained this knowledge from the spiritual realm? Shouldn't that be enough?

Yes, I suppose it could be enough, but the man child claims there is no spiritual realm, that I could not know God, that I'm imagining things. I was asking by what technique of his scientific realm does he claim to know that I do not know?

Archaeopteryx · Sep 17, 2014

Colter said:
Yes, I suppose it could be enough, but the man child claims there is no spiritual realm, that I could not know God, that I'm imagining things. I was asking by what technique of his scientific realm does he claim to know that I do not know?

But you just admitted he requires no technique. None is necessary. He can merely claim that it is so, and it is so. You can't exempt yourself from epistemic standards and then expect others to play by the rules when it suits you.

Chany · Sep 17, 2014

Colter said:
Yes, I suppose it could be enough, but the man child claims there is no spiritual realm, that I could not know God, that I'm imagining things. I was asking by what technique of his scientific realm does he claim to know that I do not know?

How can you differentiate between the delusion of divinity and actual divinity on a personal level? On a public level?

If you cannot answer these questions, then you have not met any burden of proof.

Colter · Sep 17, 2014

True Scotsman said:
This from someone who denies that existence exists?

I have not denied that existence exists, just that the statement is redundant and unqualified.

"Mankind is slow to perceive that, in all that is personal, matter is the skeleton of morontia, and that both are the reflected shadow of enduring spirit reality. How long before you will regard time as the moving image of eternity and space as the fleeting shadow of Paradise realities?" UB

Colter · Sep 17, 2014

Chany said:
How can you differentiate between the delusion of divinity and actual divinity on a personal level? On a public level?

If you cannot answer these questions, then you have not met any burden of proof.

This says it better then I can:

"Divine truth is a spirit-discerned and living reality. Truth exists only on high spiritual levels of the realization of divinity and the consciousness of communion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can experience the growth of truth in the soul and enjoy the liberty of its enlightenment in the mind, but you cannot imprison truth in formulas, codes, creeds, or intellectual patterns of human conduct. When you undertake the human formulation of divine truth, it speedily dies. The post-mortem salvage of imprisoned truth, even at best, can eventuate only in the realization of a peculiar form of intellectualized glorified wisdom. Static truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a theory. Living truth is dynamic and can enjoy only an experiential existence in the human mind.

Intelligence grows out of a material existence which is illuminated by the presence of the cosmic mind. Wisdom comprises the consciousness of knowledge elevated to new levels of meaning and activated by the presence of the universe endowment of the adjutant of wisdom. Truth is a spiritual reality value experienced only by spirit-endowed beings who function upon supermaterial levels of universe consciousness, and who, after the realization of truth, permit its spirit of activation to live and reign within their souls.

The true child of universe insight looks for the living Spirit of Truth in every wise saying. The God-knowing individual is constantly elevating wisdom to the living-truth levels of divine attainment; the spiritually unprogressive soul is all the while dragging the living truth down to the dead levels of wisdom and to the domain of mere exalted knowledge." UB

Eight Foot Manchild · Sep 17, 2014

Colter said:
Yes, I suppose it could be enough, but the man child claims there is no spiritual realm,

No I don't. You are the positive claimant, the burden of proof is yours. You haven't met it, so I don't accept your assertion.

That is not the same as claiming there is no 'spiritual realm'.

Colter said:
that I could not know God,

No I don't. You are the positive claimant, the burden of proof is yours. You haven't met it, so I don't accept your assertion.

That is not the same as claiming 'you cannot know god'.

Colter said:
that I'm imagining things.

No I don't. What I actually said was you have no means of distinguishing your 'spiritual' experiences from something you may merely be imagining, and neither does anyone else.

Colter said:
I was asking by what technique of his scientific realm does he claim to know that I do not know?

I make no such claim, and there is no need for me to delve into the 'scientific realm'. I asked you to provide a means by which 'spiritual' truth is gleaned, and differentiated from imagination.

In other words, I asked you to substantiate your assertions. That is as rudimentary a request as it is possible to ask of someone who is making a claim, and you seem utterly incapable of doing it.

Eight Foot Manchild · Sep 17, 2014

Colter said:
This says it better then I can

No it doesn't. All it does is rephrase the exact same assertion you've already made - that there are 'spiritual truths'. That is the precise point under contention. It answers absolutely nothing.

Colter · Sep 17, 2014

"The pursuit of mere knowledge, without the attendant interpretation of wisdom and the spiritual insight of religious experience, eventually leads to pessimism and human despair. A little knowledge is truly disconcerting.

*

Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative experience, as regards man’s life on earth. Science deals with phenomena; religion, with origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation of physical phenomena is to confess ignorance of ultimates and in the end only leads the scientist straight back to the first great cause — the Universal Father of Paradise.

*

Science may be physical, but the mind of the truth-discerning scientist is at once supermaterial. Matter knows not truth, neither can it love mercy nor delight in spiritual realities. Moral convictions based on spiritual enlightenment and rooted in human experience are just as real and certain as mathematical deductions based on physical observations, but on another and higher level.

*

The fact of the absolute mechanism of Paradise at the center of the universe of universes, in the presence of the unqualified volition of the Second Source and Center, makes forever certain that determiners are not the exclusive law of the cosmos. Materialism is there, but it is not exclusive; mechanism is there, but it is not unqualified; determinism is there, but it is not alone.

*

The finite universe of matter would eventually become uniform and deterministic but for the combined presence of mind and spirit. The influence of the cosmic mind constantly injects spontaneity into even the material worlds." UB 1955

essentialsaltes · Sep 17, 2014

Colter said:
This says it better then I can:

"Living truth is dynamic and can enjoy only an experiential existence in the human mind."

I think that's what we call subjective. I experience the beauty of death metal in my mind. Other minds do not necessarily experience that beauty.

Colter · Sep 17, 2014

essentialsaltes said:
I think that's what we call subjective. I experience the beauty of death metal in my mind. Other minds do not necessarily experience that beauty.

True, depending on my mood I might be cranking Metallica or contemplating with Erik Satie "Gnossienne " in the background.

Religionists enjoy communion with the prepersonal indwelling spirit yet we aren't all in unison about the experience. Unity not uniformity.

Colter · Sep 17, 2014

Mark 3:21 "And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying "He is out of his mind.

Chany · Sep 17, 2014

Colter said:
Mark 3:21 "And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying "He is out of his mind.

Kind of the point.

Colter · Sep 17, 2014

Isn't this true of all of us? The Atheist and the religionist?

"The evolving soul of a human being is difficult of description and more difficult of demonstration because it is not discoverable by the methods of either material investigation or spiritual proving. Material science cannot demonstrate the existence of a soul, neither can pure spirit-testing. Notwithstanding the failure of both material science and spiritual standards to discover the existence of the human soul, every morally conscious mortal knows of the existence of his soul as a real and actual personal experience.”UB 1955

Eight Foot Manchild · Sep 17, 2014

Colter said:
Isn't this true of all of us? The Atheist and the religionist?

"The evolving soul of a human being is difficult of description and more difficult of demonstration because it is not discoverable by the methods of either material investigation or spiritual proving. Material science cannot demonstrate the existence of a soul, neither can pure spirit-testing. Notwithstanding the failure of both material science and spiritual standards to discover the existence of the human soul, every morally conscious mortal knows of the existence of his soul as a real and actual personal experience.UB 1955

No.

I have no reason whatsoever to suspect that 'souls' exist.

Aldebaran · Sep 17, 2014

Eight Foot Manchild said:
No.

I have no reason whatsoever to suspect that 'souls' exist.

Pity. Denying reality doesn't make it go away.

Tinker Grey · Sep 17, 2014

There is no evidence that souls are part of reality.

Chany · Sep 17, 2014

Aldebaran said:
Pity. Denying reality doesn't make it go away.

And simply asserting that something exists when there is literally nothing besides arguments from ignorance and credulity to back it up doesn't change reality.

Aldebaran · Sep 17, 2014

Chany said:
And simply asserting that something exists when there is literally nothing besides arguments from ignorance and credulity to back it up doesn't change reality.

Frustrating, isn't it? Atheists keep using ignorance and credulity against Christians and there's just no way of combating it except to use common sense, which ends up going nowhere.

Colter · Sep 17, 2014

Aldebaran said:
Frustrating, isn't it? Atheists keep using ignorance and credulity against Christians and there's just no way of combating it except to use common sense, which ends up going nowhere.

There is no evidence that common sense exist.....

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