TomboyMom

And by walking I mean flying and by horse I mean potato and by me I mean "the young Elizabeth Taylor."

Evoken

TomboyMom, I was just narrowing things out as to avoid confusion. Or did you find my specifications confusing?

lotus

Ye, the difficulty with Existence/Not Existence. I think in this case the good old joke is appropriate
"There are 10 types of people in the world, those that understand binary, and those that don't."

Any of the these theists' statements go around in the same circle, some just increase the size of the circle.

Gawdzila

Really? I think it's plenty to justify it. Especially when you consider that,
in many cases, animals are very much like us. Do you know much about Koko
the gorilla? She was taught to use sign language, and she became quite
fluent. At least as much as you would expect a 5-year-old to be. She even,
without prompting, harnessed an understanding of such things as insults,
and communicated her emotional states quite well. Exactly what is it about
humans that Koko is lacking? Certainly her skills and abstraction abilities are
not the equal of ours, but I don't see a lot of significant skills that are lacking
completely.

A couple of million years ago, the brain size of hominids increased by more
than triple without any increase in body size. If you consider that a gorilla
has approximately the same brain size as hominids did before their sudden
brain-growth, I think the extra 1000cc's of grey matter is more than enough
to account for the increased complexity of our thinking.

Evoken

Yeah I have seen Koko play around and stuff, but still I don't think that just the extra capacity can account for that, specially our longing for that which trascends reality and nature. Also like I said the fact that only we are like this, sure the other animals can learn stuff if we teach them but as a species they have not really done anything.

Lemur

"Image of God" is pretty vague. We need something that can be directly falsified. Please list specific qualities of the "Image of God". If I were to make a list, it would contain things like:

-clear knowledge of right and wrong which is constant among all men. If God is unique, and we were all made in the image of this one God, then we should all have an identical sense of morality.

-immediate knowledge of its divine origin. I can't imagine being a divine creature and not immediately grasping this fact.

-inability to do evil. If God can't do evil, and I'm made in God's image, then I shouldn't be able to do evil.

-inability to lose any of the above qualities. Can God become not-God? Can he make himself unperfect? No. Then neither can something made in his image.

This would be a part of my list, but of course the real world man doesn't correspond to what I see on this list (original sin is impossible by the fourth attribute). So I would like to see some of your list so I have a specific idea what I'm looking for.

There must be some other way to have errancy other than self-contradiction -- some way to show that the content itself of the teaching is in error, without relation to the other parts. Otherwise you would have to conclude that a self-consistent Satanist is just as inerrant in matters of faith and morals as the Catholic Church is.

I'm also unclear as to how self-contradiction would even be possible, at least with regards papal infallibility. The dogma of infallibility says that if the pope speaks in such-and-such a context on this-and-that particular subject matter then you must give your assent, end of story. The dogma itself implies that it cannot be contradicted. If self-consistency is axiomatically assumed, then it can never be proven wrong no matter what happens since axioms can never be disproven.

p.s. thank you in advance for continuing to consider my silly questions

Jeremy_the _Atheist

I, personally, am unaware of anyway inwhich man does not behave like other animals. Beavers build damns, chimpanzees use tools and tactics for catching monkeys (one group will chase a monkey through the trees into another group of champanzees). Human structures might be a bit more complex but, otherwise, does not significantly differ from that of other animals.

Or it could more simply be that we've figured out that with the right tools, we can have some amount of control over our enviroment. Again, chimps use simple tools for the same purpose. We are basically just behaving like smarter chimps.

Or, much more likely, the reason that only humans are this way is because humans were the first and so took control of the environment enough to ensure that there wasn't a second to eliminate the added competition for survival.

It is more than enough to explain the real contrast even if it isn't enough to explain the imagined contrast that you think exists but doesnt.

I would like to hear some of the other things. With this, you have made no case at all.

Our brains are big enough so that we can imagine a better world. It's only natural that we'd want to live in that better world instead of the one we have. Most mammals are not really very different. For example, if you treat a dog well and then give it away, it might percieve life with you to be the better world and will often long to return. This is evidenced by the fact that dogs quite often break away from their new owners and return to the house were their previous owners live(d). The only real difference between the dog and a person is that the dog isn't start enough to imagine a better world, but they can remember and long for a world that once was.

Humans are smart enough but the world they imagine is just an improved version of this world, not really a different world. For example, angels look like beautiful people, etc. I have yet to hear or read an original idea of paradise from anywhere. Everything that I have encountered concerning this is really just improved versions of what we already have in this world.

So it seems that it isn't something that 'transcends reality and nature' at all that we longer for. Instead, it's an improvement, a perfection of the reality inwhich we live.

Stephen T-B

IAsimisI says that if we were not made in the Image of God, we would behave like animals.

But we do behave like animals, very often. We are certainly driven by the same impulses to eat, reproduce, seek security and protect our territory.
These, unfortunately, conflict on occasion with the requirements imposed on us by our socialisation and that crucial part played in our survival as a species - co-operation.
At almost every turn our most basic instincts require us to look after Number One and our immediate off-spring, yet we have learned that unless curtailed, these same instincts corrode the very societies in which we live and on which we have come to depend.
Christianity, and specifically the Roman Catholic Church through its doctrine of Original Sin, casts our primitive instincts as "Sin" - making us guilt-ridden for our natural, animal natures, and promising us salavation through the mediation of one of its deities (Jesus Christ).
Hence IAsimisI's "...Original Sin ... is a lack of Sanctifying Grace in ourselves and our fallen nature which creates our constant longing for that which we can't find in nature..."

He thinks this longing "drives us in constant development and towards a solution to the problems that we face and those that we create ourselves."

Not all human societies are driven towards "constant development." In fact, I would say that the majority aren't. Among the (quite) rare exceptions are those which have been created by the Indo-European peoples, and it has brought them something close to world domination.
The same goes for "...drives us...towards a solution to the problems that we face..." In cultures all over the world, the problems to which solutions are sought are very simple ones of day-to-day survival; most are handed down from generation to generation, and there is a complete absence of innovation.

He goes on: "... I think that the fact that only humans are this way speaks in favor of the Christian God. And also the mere fact that we developed larger brains is really to me not enough to justify the contrast between ourselves and animals." Which is pure wishful thinking - as is the belief that some super-powerful, supernatural entity has a particular concern for lil' old ME, who in every respect is neither very remarkable nor very assured (or, if remarkable and / or assured, is not very happy and / or contented).
Big brains have enhancedd our self-awareness - and to think we are the only species on the planet to possess self-awareness reflects, I think, on how little we know about our fellow animals. My own view is that self-awareness exists, in simplified form, in a very large number of other species in which "computation" by the brain surplants the kind of mechanical instinct exihibited when a spider makes a web, or when bees perform their "dance."

We have, I think, a great deal to learn - and especially about the sort of complexities which religious beliefs encourage people to think are explained by "magic."

Evoken

This list is interesting but made in God's Image does not means equal to God but in that we are called to a supernatural destiny by God and we can(do) respond to that call. What you are trying to describe is the state of man before The Fall(Original Sin) which in this case would mean that he was in a state of holiness which however did not include the "inability to do evil" (since he did sin and fell). As far as clear knowledge of right and wrong, I would say that we do have it albeit in a distorted manner due to the fall, to me the fact that we can find the Golden Rule(for example) in many other religions and philosophies attest to this.

I am not sure about coming up with a list really, I see it more in a holistic manner.

No, the Pope is not unrestricted to say anything he wants when speaking infallibly, he cannot contradict previous infallibly defined dogmas, that is what infallibility implies. The Church cannot err in matters of faith and morals because whenever she defines a dogma infallibly she cannot fall into error or contradiction.

As far as something else than self-contradiction, I am not sure what to think about. To me The Church cannot be tested by a standard other than it's own like for example a Protestant grabbing a Bible and saying that he finds no evidence for the Immaculate Conception of Mary, to me that is just begging the question (yeah I am a sort of Presuppositional/TAG proponent in this).

As far as Satanism goes, I was one (LaVeyan) for a while and foudn it to be contradictory in the sense that you are supposed to be your own God(or God) yet you have to adhere to what the Satanic Bible said and what the other books of LaVey said in order to be considered a Satanist. You are supposed to be free yet you are still following the same herd mentality that Satanism claims to be against and liberate you from.

Evoken

Beavers build the same damns over and over and never do any sort of improvement like humans do, the same with the basic behavior of the monkeys, these are just basic things. Again humans while sharing biological traits with animals stand in a distinct category which sets them above the rest, you say it is just the larger brain I say it is because man is made in the Image of God one way or the other the exceptionality of human nature stands.

The issue is that we do behave like "smarter chimps" and we do not see any sort of significant progress in other animals nor do we make business with the society of the fox or anything of the sort.

Nobody is stopping other animals from building or progressing into anything, even when we were in a lower state they could have developed with no problem. It is only now with our misuse of the environment and all of our industries and the like that we are really deteriorating other animals.

Well that is certainly an opinion to which you are entitled.

The dog longs for what he once had, so do we when we miss something. But like I said, in contrast to the dog who always behaves the same and is always satisfied with the same routine, we are not.

It is an "improvement" to what we long for which "transcends reality and nature" because it what we had once and fell from it.