Jaybees

You switched on me, answering a question never asked.

Now you are saying we don't have to understand god's "motives" in order to conclude that god is highly intelligent.

That's quite different from analyzing his mind which you claimed couldn't be done.

EarlDoherty

You mean, like God is a semantic trick to arbitrarily provide us with an agent who himself did not have to be subject to Cause and Effect?

If God operates by a morality which we cannot know because he is so much higher than ourselves, why did he instill in his creations a sense of right and wrong which his own actions have contravened? (Read the OT lately?) By way of analogy, animal rights activitists would have us not prey upon animals, not raise them for food, not use them to develop drugs against disease, considering that this is an enlightened morality humanity should aim for. Yet God supposedly chose to create a system by which some animals feed themselves by killing and tearing apart other animals.

This is only one example of why introducing a God into the picture creates difficult problems. You eliminate the difficulty by simply ignoring them, by abdicating any right to ask such questions. Your responses to my arguments are nothing less than the commission of intellectual suicide.

But let’s have no more of that old canard that we need a God and his guidance to keep us moral. I became an atheist at 19, and I have never committed a criminal act. In fact, I have a particularly overly developed conscience. Are the jails full of atheists? This is feeble-minded apologetic fundamentalism at its worst, and you ought to be ashamed of it, Ted. You rail against ‘moral relativism’. But it is a fact that morality did not exist before human minds evolved in the direction of developing of analyzing their behaviour and deciding what they should do and not do to further their own well-being within a functioning society. That evolution is still in progress.

And what is God’s morality? Is it reflected in his creation of an intelligent species which is subject to all sorts of disease and breakdown, mental illness, victimized by the capacity for evil which he has supposedly built into us, not to mention placing us in a world which is full of natural disasters which can wipe out the innocent and the guilty? Where is the morality in nature? If nature is God’s creation, should it not be seen as reflecting something of his own principles? If WE are God’s creation, should God not have created us to reflect at least some of his enlightened nature? What a cop-out to simply take refuge in saying that we cannot understand the mind of God! But that’s what your ‘argument’ boils down to. Mindless fundamentalism.

If a watch is sitting on a table, and its component parts move in certain ways, with a wind-up mechanism propelling that movement, how long will it be before the watch itself moves across the table? How about never? The parts can indeed function by a set of ‘laws’ which the watch as a whole does not follow.

Earl Doherty

spin

You admit that you have no way of knowing whether you are "delusional" regarding this god stuff. How would you normally deal with people you think give existence to what seem to be imaginary entities?

This is true, but reasonable claims about directly untestable realities are those that lead to the opportunity of testability, which leads to a well-known scientific notion of falsifiability. Untestable claims made about things are not reasonable claims. When you, TedM, make testable claims you are being reasonable.

If the claims are not testable....

You continue this utterly confused nonsense. You can't fly, so birds are more intelligent than you. You can't hear the range of things many animals can, so they are more intelligent than you. This logic of yours is absurd.

You work with primitive myths about creation to invest your theoretical god with primitive notions of superpower, which you in turn develop in a more intelligence minded world as being super intelligent. Again, you are creating crass untestable notions that govern your interpretation of the world. You aren't that different from the millions of sorry specimens who are ruled in one way or another by fanciful leaps of bizarre logic.

Yes, yes, you can't walk on water like some birds so you aren't as intelligent as those birds. We get that.

You posit a theoretical creator then you posit that that creator must be more intelligent than us and so you leave reality a further step into the wilds of fantasy.

You would do well in taking a scientific course on cosmological developments from the big bang to the emergence of human beings. It would help you overcome your fallacy of anthropocentrism. Looking at the cosmos from the here and now distorts one's vision of it. We are not the apex of cosmological developments. We only see a selection of the realities available on this planet and assume life as we know it here. We cannot make assumptions about necessary causes from what has eventuated, ie what we see now. We need testable tools for investigation to know more about the cosmos. We cannot claim from within anything about the inevitability of what we see. We just see the signs of what has happened in the cosmos. We understand the cosmos through observation, testing and confirmation. (If a test doesn't work, it tends to confirm errors in the theory behind the test.)

However, we don't like not knowing, which leads to adopting untested (and sometimes untestable) hypotheses. This is where many of your comments come in.

Have you not read science books over the last fifty years? Your utter inability to make sense of the cosmos points in that direction.

We may have inherited the primitive notion of a god responsible for the way things are in this world, but science has consistently shown that self-organization explains the world, the way quarks interact dictate the emergence of protons and neutrons, which in turn dictate the structure of the earliest atoms, prior states and genetic drift explains the diversity of life in this world.... Where is the necessity of a god here? A mediaeval English scholar called William of Occam enunciated an idea: fewer presuppositions lead to more likely explanations. Einstein had a variation: "make things as simple as possible, but not simpler." Positing god explains very little about the world. That seems too simple. We can explain world through ordinary means of self-organization, so including god in the explanation is unnecessary.

We find ways of testing our constructs of the world. Think of Galileo up the tower of Pisa or think of the large hadron collider. We accept what we can test. It shows that over vast periods of time self-organization consistently explains the world.

Books aren't proof of anything much. You need access to a god to test its intelligence. Your fanciful assumptions don't make the grade.

When you walk you are not supposed to block your progress by putting one foot behind the other. That just leads to you falling over yourself, as you are doing here, by continuing to build on what you don't know. Your constructions just end up in nonsensical heaps. All you've been doing is plowing on like Nash, filling out your reports that you leave for Parcher and assuming all that you are doing is fine and dandy. You know that if you take the Nash test, you won't be able to demonstrate to yourself that god exists. This god appears to be of the same stuff as William Parcher. Nash didn't know Parcher's reasons for doing or not doing things, just as you don't know your god's reasons. You have no way of knowing what you are talking about. Your lips move but what comes out seems to be logorrheic.

The logical positivist would say that your statements together are semantically void of content. I tend to agree. Can you know the mind of your local sewage outlet? I assume of course for argument's sake that it has a consciousness. Sewage outlets have a mind of their own, they sometimes back up for no accountable reason....

Just look at how rich and fruitful Nash's fantasy was. The richness of the fantasy doesn't translate it into reality. It hints at you wasting too much of your time and thought on nonsense.

What's it like living in a pre-scientific mind? Does it suffer culture shock every time you use a computer? Computers are strictly based on science and its handmaiden technology. The car you drive, the television, your phone, your dishwasher, DVD player, almost everything you use is viciously dictated by science. The world you live in is just as viciously dictated by science, as consistently shown in physical, geological, chemical, biological and genetic studies. It seems you are living in a mental ghetto, like living in a Palestinian village and working in an Israeli settlement. You go from the pits to the glitz, primitive living to the good life, gods and crucifixions to facebooking.

Regarding his existence it comes down to your willful disregard for reality. Nash chose to live as best he could trying to keep to reality, once he learns that what he thought was real could not be confirmed.

Your arbitrary suspension of testing and confirmation should be a warning to you that you are putting yourself in danger leaving reality for la-la-land. Shake hands with William Parcher on the way.

TedM

You may want to go back about 100 posts to see that you are miscategorizing me, and adjust your reactions accordingly.

TedM

I didn't switch. You just misunderstood my original meaning. That's why I clarified it for you. I see it didn't take.

EarlDoherty

I have a feeling your God likes to tear wings off butterflies.

We chose to use the abilities he gave us? Did he not give us the illnesses and debilities in the first place which we then had to come up with our own solutions for? Did we choose to endure millennia of misery before we chose to come up with the solutions? Did we choose to labor under our ignorance and misinterpretation of the world around us for millions of years before we decided to choose to discover what its nature really was? How many generations did human beings suffer the pains and shortened lives due to diseases which God created for us, before we were able to use our God-given abilities to start discovering cures? Especially when religion, with its world-denying neuroses, impeded us every step of the way?

Did God sit up in heaven, entertained over the centuries by the labors of that long, ongoing struggle? Did he warm his hands over the burning stakes bearing women accused of witchcraft causing disease and misfortunes, or 'heretics' who held mistaken beliefs about God which God did not see fit to correct? Did heaven have a pool on how long it would take to develop penicillin? You say God is more highly intelligent than we are. Perhaps he's an "evil genius". Would you accept that possibility, since evidence of God's "goodness" is hard to come by?

Your argument is utterly laughable, Ted, and illustrates the depths of the ridiculous to which God-defenders must sink in order to provide any response at all. Theodicy has always been a joke. It's just that believers don't get it.

Earl Doherty

spin

:hysterical:

stephan huller

But just for arguments sake one could - like Celsus - make the arguments that there is a God but he is indifferent to the plight of humans or other species. The Christian tradition certainly develops its anthropomorphic interest from Judaism. Maybe God likes cockroaches or squirrels or domesticated pets. For instance, one could develop a thesis that God assigned human beings to be mere 'custodians' of cats and dogs, their servants and that we are all judged on how we treat our pets.

The 'greatest commandment' וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמֹ֑וךָ אֲנִ֖י יְהוָֽה

TedM

Good question though I must point out what we already know, that the OT need not reflect the true Creator's actions.


You, as everybody else here, have misunderstood what I'm saying. First, I'll say that the kinds of problems you mention bother me greatly too. They cause me to question the morality of the Creator, if there is one also. I don't ignore them. I don't advocate ignoring them either. What I advocate is being careful to not trust too greatly in your judgements against the things you can't fully understand. Pain and suffering for the furtherance of life may have a positive moral purpose that we don't fully understand. If life is the ultimate 'good' then perhaps any price paid to further it is also good. Perhaps lives that end don't really end, so what we interpret negatively may actually be positive. Then there is always the angle that there's nothing like the absence of goodness to appreciate it. There are possible explanations that exist that we may never be able to fully appreciate because we don't know enough about life and death and suffering and God.



I was talking about the people that don't do wrong even when they can get away with it because of fear of punishment from God. That's a good thing, right?

It didn't as far as man was concerned. But, we don't know that it all wasn't part of God's plan for man to become more like him over time.



I think we perhaps do. Perhaps that's what our morality does. I share the same outrage at suffering, but I also notice that those who suffer often don't feel near the sadness and anger that those who witness it do. Some of the poorest people in the world, living in filth are quite happy. I see children dying of cancer who the parents say were remarkably strong and optimistic. I know that will outrage some of you, but it is true. I don't advocate not trying to help them, or to ignore their plight. But I do think I've been guilty of ASSUMING things about their happiness that aren't factual. As such, our condemnation of God when we do that may also be misguided.


You are comparing a watch that is the product of intelligence (ie created) with the universe, in order provide evidence for a universe that was not created? That's ironic.
In any case, if the wind-up mechanism is moving, the watch is moving, though imperceptibly, so the principle of cause and effect is still valid and your example fails.

TedM

Depends. Theism is hardly considered delusional. Your categorization of it is highly extremist.


IF I claim somebody who died in an auto accident had told me to 'have a nice day' 15 minutes prior to her death, that would be not be considered unreasonable, even though it is untestable.


It isn't about physical ability. It's about intellectual ability, which is required in order to create something out of nothing.

I don't know why you bring this up. I allow for plenty of other forms of life and universes, etc.. The fact that we don't know of any is curious though, given the size of our universe and the fact that there is no reason to think we have evolved more quickly than other forms of life. In fact, it seems likely that at least one other world out there would have produced life 1 billion years before earth did. If so, then it is not unreasonable to postulate a species that is 1 billion years of evolution ahead of us humans. Why haven't they visited us?

I don't know much about this but it reminds me of all the scientific writings in the last 20 years or so that attempt to explain our behavior and feelings in terms of the chemistry of our brains, as though all behavior is deterministic. They seem to fail to consider that we can change our own brain chemistry through our willful thinking. Just as there is more to our human makeup than simple brain chemistry, there well may be more to our universe than random chemistry that has 'somehow' organized itself. Why does it organize itself at all spin? Why do we initiate thoughts at all? Why do the particles of matter contain quarks, elements, protons, electrons, etc that even allow for the production of life--and life that can become intelligent--in the first place?

None of the science has come close to answering the WHY? HOW or WHAT isn't the same as WHY.




The atheist willfully disregards the reality too that we have no scientific support for an unending universe. My belief in a first cause of the universe is more scientific, and more logical. If people have a commitment to only going where the evidence leads, why don't they conclude that there must be a first cause of all that makes up the physical universe since everything we know about anything that has to do with that universe requires a first cause? Why make an exception about the universe 'as a whole', and blindly put faith in something they can't even conceive (ie a universe that has always existed)?