The difficulty of talking to Atheist

[Loudmouth]

Speaking not at the macro level, I'm saying that I see a similarity between the observable order of water-related processes and the observable order of man-programmed processes.

I think that invalidates your opinion on the matter.

It is not avoidance of the observations. The composite of the observations leads to the conclusion, not the other way around. Life fits into a nested hierarchy because that is how the system is programmed.

Again, this is an empty assertion based on nothing more than belief. It is certainly not an explanation.

It is a conclusion based on observation.

It is a belief based on bias.

They were not designed to, were they?
They would if they were build to fit into a nested hierarchy.

Why would any designer force designs into a nested hierarchy?

I believe that God (whom I consider a natural being, in the sphere of His order) programmed (for lack of a better term) the universe to function as it does. A tree is a tree, for example, because the natural order was designed to bring about a tree, under conditions conducive to such. Etc.

What evidence do you have for this claim?

 

[Belk]

The point is, it does not stand to reason (to borrow your phrase) that an orderly system will arise from something non-programmed, particularly something as massive and complex as the universe.

Why not? What experience do you have with universes that you can make claims about how they arise and their expected functioning? The only experience you or I have is from inside a universe that has already formed. It is rather difficult for us to make claims of what we should expect.

I would just as soon expect that throwing an octovigintillion characters into a bowl, shaking them up and pouring them out in a line would result in a functional computer program containing just as many functional sub-processes and sub-sub-processes and sub-sub-sub-processes, etc. Possible? Surely. Plausible? To me, not even.

This is an argument from ignorance. While you may not expect it we lack the requisite knowledge to say what makes sense. To the human mind quantum physics does not make sense but it still continues to function despite that.

But it's not natural selection or evolution that is the issue. The scientific community favors chance as the engine of evolution, where programming is an infinitely far more likely engine. Perhaps the implications are simply too risky for science to embrace, although that makes no sense, considering the mind-boggling odds against what it does embrace.

It is? What evidence or reasoning do you have to support this? That you personally find it more reasonable I have no doubt but many a man has gone astray following what he felt was reasonable.

Evolution by chance is testable. Why is evolution by programming not testable?

How would you test it? How would you falsify it? Until you come up with a test it is not addressable by science.

One is far more plausible in my mind, and it's not the one getting attention. Using the same argument as you used, how do scientists differentiate between a programmed, organic process and one that "just happened"? How can they tell the difference if they don't know, definitively, how to tell one from the other?

As far as I am aware they don't differentiate and do not try to. If you feel there is a need then perhaps you can devise a test? Otherwise "Random mutations" is the best we have since we see no mechanism behind when and how something mutates.

Again, I believe that science is addressing the issue, but from the opposite angle.

That only lends more credibility to my hypothesis. It stands to reason that order follows organization, not chaos. And yet science favors chaos, which is the least likely cause.

As far as we are able to tell order does indeed naturally arise from chaos. Look at fractal patterns or the quantum foam.

Also I do not think science favors chaos. Random is not the same thing as chaotic.

 

[Colter]

....."Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to expand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to water the garden of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowledge. Forms are valueless when lessons are learned. No chick may be had without the shell, and no shell is of any worth after the chick is hatched. But sometimes error is so great that its rectification by revelation would be fatal to those slowly emerging truths which are essential to its experiential overthrow. When children have their ideals, do not dislodge them; let them grow. And while you are learning to think as men, you should also be learning to pray as children.

Law is life itself and not the rules of its conduct. Evil is a transgression of law, not a violation of the rules of conduct pertaining to life, which is the law. Falsehood is not a matter of narration technique but something premeditated as a perversion of truth. The creation of new pictures out of old facts, the restatement of parental life in the lives of offspring — these are the artistic triumphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turning, premeditated for an untrue purpose, the slightest twisting or perversion of that which is principle — these constitute falseness. But the fetish of factualized truth, fossilized truth, the iron band of so-called unchanging truth, holds one blindly in a closed circle of cold fact. One can be technically right as to fact and everlastingly wrong in the truth." UB 1955​

 

[PsychoSarah]

....."Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to expand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to water the garden of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowledge. Forms are valueless when lessons are learned. No chick may be had without the shell, and no shell is of any worth after the chick is hatched. But sometimes error is so great that its rectification by revelation would be fatal to those slowly emerging truths which are essential to its experiential overthrow. When children have their ideals, do not dislodge them; let them grow. And while you are learning to think as men, you should also be learning to pray as children.

Law is life itself and not the rules of its conduct. Evil is a transgression of law, not a violation of the rules of conduct pertaining to life, which is the law. Falsehood is not a matter of narration technique but something premeditated as a perversion of truth. The creation of new pictures out of old facts, the restatement of parental life in the lives of offspring — these are the artistic triumphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turning, premeditated for an untrue purpose, the slightest twisting or perversion of that which is principle — these constitute falseness. But the fetish of factualized truth, fossilized truth, the iron band of so-called unchanging truth, holds one blindly in a closed circle of cold fact. One can be technically right as to fact and everlastingly wrong in the truth." UB 1955​

How about using your own words instead of copying and pasting?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

How about using your own words instead of copying and pasting?

When I asked him to do that he responded to the effect of "You can't handle the truth!" He took great umbrage at my suggestion that we actually have a meaningful conversation, and even went as far as accusing me of being insincere. Let him copy-and-paste his book in lieu of conversation. When he realises how unproductive the exercise is he will come around.

 

[Belk]

When I asked him to do that he responded to the effect of "You can't handle the truth!" He took great umbrage at my suggestion that we actually have a meaningful conversation, and even went as far as accusing me of being insincere. Let him copy-and-paste his book in lieu of conversation. When he realises how unproductive the exercise is he will come around.

Apparently his thread title is not an accusation but an admittance of his own difficulty in communicating.

 

[Colter]

How about using your own words instead of copying and pasting?

How about responding to the material instead of using the excuse that, because I quote something instead of putting it in my words, you can ignore it? And if you don't want to read my posts then don't reply and I wont respond to people who just want to nag instead of open up their mind to other ideas.

People who are familiar with the Jesus story will recall how the Jews would do that to Jesus, he would say or do some remarkable things but the nags could only point out something trivial like "he doesn't wash his hands before he eats."

I post the UB because to me it has some really great spiritual and philosophical content that addresses the topics raised in the thread. I'm not comfortable rewording the concepts and ideas and presenting them as if I thought of them nor should I need to. If it requires to much effort to read a few paragraphs then don't waste time responding.

 

[Loudmouth]

How about responding to the material instead of using the excuse that, because I quote something instead of putting it in my words, you can ignore it?

Why don't you discuss it instead of copy pasta?

 

[Colter]

Why don't you discuss it instead of copy pasta?

errrrm, Loudmouth? You are obviously an intelligent person, so consider this.....I post IT so we can talk about IT. Is that really that unreasonable?

 

[Loudmouth]

errrrm, Loudmouth? You are obviously an intelligent person, so consider this.....I post IT so we can talk about IT. Is that really that unreasonable?

You didn't discuss IT. Your post contains just the quote, and no discussion of IT.

 

[PsychoSarah]

How about responding to the material instead of using the excuse that, because I quote something instead of putting it in my words, you can ignore it? And if you don't want to read my posts then don't reply and I wont respond to people who just want to nag instead of open up their mind to other ideas.

People who are familiar with the Jesus story will recall how the Jews would do that to Jesus, he would say or do some remarkable things but the nags could only point out something trivial like "he doesn't wash his hands before he eats."

I post the UB because to me it has some really great spiritual and philosophical content that addresses the topics raised in the thread. I'm not comfortable rewording the concepts and ideas and presenting them as if I thought of them nor should I need to. If it requires to much effort to read a few paragraphs then don't waste time responding.

It just feels impersonal to respond that way is all. Plus, we won't interpret that material the same way as each other, so it would be more clear to post how you interpret it than the direct source alone.

 

[Colter]

You didn't discuss IT. Your post contains just the quote, and no discussion of IT.

Read it then discuss it is what I was thinking as opposed to discussing it then reading it.


But we could try it your way, so ok, how did you like that paragraph on the Trinitarian escape from primacy?

 

[Loudmouth]

Read it then discuss it is what I was thinking as opposed to discussing it then reading it.

If that is what you were thinking, then do just that. Discuss it. Show how it fits into the discussion.

 

[Colter]

If that is what you were thinking, then do just that. Discuss it. Show how it fits into the discussion.

When I post clips in our discussion I am fitting it into the discussion. What's happening is the atheists and Humanists here don't like the content so they change the subject, making it about me posting rather than addressing the truths presented.

 

[Colter]

"The confusion about the experience of the certainty of God arises out of the dissimilar interpretations and relations of that experience by separate individuals and by different races of men. The experiencing of God may be wholly valid, but the discourse about God, being intellectual and philosophical, is divergent and oftentimes confusingly fallacious.

A good and noble man may be consummately in love with his wife but utterly unable to pass a satisfactory written examination on the psychology of marital love. Another man, having little or no love for his spouse, might pass such an examination most acceptably. The imperfection of the lover’s insight into the true nature of the beloved does not in the least invalidate either the reality or sincerity of his love."UB​

Having talked with and debated many Atheist and former Atheist over the years, it occurred to me that one of the unanticipated dilemmas for the believer is one, the spiritual experience or rebirth is not the culmination of following a path of logic that can be retraced, and two, we aren't even equipped with words to describe an experience which passes all understanding. So it's very easy to get all tangled up in the worldly weeds of intellectualism when presented with what I call "the doctrines of doubt".

Maybe we should revive this thread as a continuation of the locked threads being that it's a more appropriate, non opoligetics kind of topic.

 

[GoldenBoy89]

Have you experienced Love? If you can't define love then the Atheist parallel argument would be that Love doesn't exist.

I know the presence of God, but my experience with God can't be defined in the same way that Love can't be defined in a logical way. Other people who experience God know what I mean without having to define it.

That must be why everybody who believes in God agrees with each other.

 

[True Scotsman]

It's true for the religionists, but by the same token the disparity of the unbelieving materialist may be true for them but foreign to the believer.

This statement is a prime example of the primacy of consciousness. What's true for one person isn't necessarily true for another. That's fine when talking about ones personal preferences but lethal when talking about the fundamental nature of the universe. Let me ask you then, is your God's existence true because you want it to be true?

 

[Colter]

This statement is a prime example of the primacy of consciousness. What's true for one person isn't necessarily true for another. That's fine when talking about ones personal preferences but lethal when talking about the fundamental nature of the universe. Let me ask you then, is your God's existence true because you want it to be true?

Not anymore that you are you children's father because they want you to be. But one could go off the reservation and deny that you are their father or that anyone is their father, that wouldn't make it true, just a denial of reality.

Personality is a level of deified reality.

 

[GrimKingGrim]

See I'm pretty sure this is getting close to inb4L

 

[nonbeliever314]

Have you experienced Love? If you can't define love then the Atheist parallel argument would be that Love doesn't exist.

I know the presence of God, but my experience with God can't be defined in the same way that Love can't be defined in a logical way. Other people who experience God know what I mean without having to define it.

"Love" is something we are biologically programmed to experience, so that we want to reproduce. Or should I say, a stronger urge to reproduce. Life has one main function, to survive. Survive as an individual and as a whole. That's basically it.