Hello Rainbow Walking,
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Rw: Excellent. You accept as true that the existence of god has not been verified to be a fact of reality. But that is not the note upon which you end this discussion as you claim “god exists” as a true statement. Obviously you hold contradictory standards for differentiating fact from fiction.
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David: God is a fact beyond reality. The reality that we know and understand is purely physical and altogether transitory, God is neither physical nor transitory.
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That’s not the issue. The point of my argument revolves around the fact that their knowledge and equipment to practice medicine was acquired via methodological naturalistic techniques rather than religious rites and rituals. Thus I have successfully established that conclusions about reality are not IMPOSSIBLE to verify from my worldview. In doing so I have negated your claim that they are.
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David: You've proved that theism is not medical science. That's not such a great accomplishment as it seems. In response, I will say: Atheism is not medical science.
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Rw: You see, this is why it isn’t a good idea to deluge the mind with fantasies of invisible deities David. It has a tendency to spill over into other areas of mental activity. No matter how many times I read and re-read your argument above I find no clear example of a doctor or group of doctors doing the things you claim for theistic reasons and saving the lives of millions. A bonafide example generally includes a few pertinent facts like names, dates, brief descriptions of the places visited and people treated. Your unsupported assertion is not a valid example.
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David: The Catholic church and the denominations are well known for sending medical missionaries to help the sick and the dying in foreign lands worldwide. The reliigous precedent for such acts is the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
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Rw: David you seem confused and disoriented tonight. Have you forgotten the subject of our discussion? We were discussing the value of truth in relation to beliefs? How did we get to an implied accusation of equivocating atheism with medicine, technology or science?
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David: I thought that we were discussing atheism and its relative merits compared to theism. Now you tell me that you are not discussing atheism ... well, I guess that means that the subject of Medicine, technology and science are just diversions.
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The point going un-contested here is that naturalistic methodologies have more than proven man’s ability to derive truth-value from his observations of nature, rendering your claim that conclusions about reality being impossible to verify, fallacious.
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David: Naturalistic techniques are effective at deriving truth-value about naturalistic things. That is why medicine, technology and science are effective. The success of these naturalistic techniques relative to natural things does not guarantee any success of the same techniques when applied to supernaturalistic things.
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One of the major reasons atheists question your claims of a deity is the fact that those claims are indeed impossible to verify. The atheist looks at the verifiability derived from naturalistic methodologies and compares them to the impossibility of verification of claims made by theological methodologies and chooses accordingly.
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David: What is the naturalistic explanation for the Universe's existence? What is the naturalistic explanation for your own existence? What is the naturalistic explanation for your own opposition to the God-concept?
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The atheist’s rejection of your claims doesn’t leave him floundering around with nothing to justify his rejection because he has the reliable verifiable evidence of natural science to supply him with enough explanatory knowledge that doesn’t require irrational belief for support. Medicine, technology and science are not atheism, (something I never claimed anyway) but they were definitely not derived by faith in deities. Their success renders your claims superfluous.
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David: If atheism is dependent upon natural science to supply {I]rational[/I] explanations for all that exists, I suppose that atheists are hoping that such naturalistic explanations are found. At the present moment, they do not exist. Under these circumstances, it appears that you are {I]not{/I] rational.
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Rw: Atheism describes the default condition of a mind before it’s infected with irrational fantasies about invisible deities. It isn’t a religion or a belief system. It is the rejection of same. It sets a person free to fill their mind with knowledge consistent to reality.
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David: What is this "knowledge consistent with reality" that you are filling your mind with? Who told you that that knowledge actually is consistent with reality?
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Theism’s lack of any substantiation of its claims renders it superfluous. It is neither positive nor negative. It is irrational.
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David: Theism is more positive than atheism because theism declares that God exist, while atheism says nothing. Theism is more rational than atheism because theism attempts to explain the Universe's existence as a creative act of God while atheism doesn't attempt to explain anything at all.
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If everyone were as reasonable about their beliefs as you are David, I’d have nothing to say on the matter and would adopt your attitude of live and let live. But we have too much historical precedence establishing these irrational beliefs as a ready-made vehicle for violence and intolerance to just ignore. Religion, by its very nature, places a man’s mind at the disposal of other men whose primary goal is control and manipulation. This may not apply to you. Maybe you’re intelligent enough to smell a rat when it becomes a reality, but many, many folks aren’t David. They take these beliefs as gospel and are easily worked up into a frenzied blood lust when one of their venerable teachers invokes a real or imagined threat based on other people holding different or no such beliefs. Religion must be exposed and abolished. Not by force but by reason.
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David: Thank you for describing me so kindly.
I think that your description of religion is not accurate. There are billions of religious people in the world, if they all were worked up into a "frenzied blood lust" the September 11th attack would be ordinary rather than extraordinary. The rarity of such religious acts of violence is what makes the event so newsworthy.
I believe that the majority of religious people are not violent, they are not any more violent than either you or I. That is why stable civilizations are able to persist for centuries. Otherwise the world would be filled the perpetual anarchy.
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I opine that the loss of human life, caused by people manipulating minds that cling to these irrational beliefs, has not become personal enough to you yet. Let you lose a son or daughter or a parent to some crazed religious fanatic and I wager you would begin to march to a different drum beat. It behooves us, as a family of men and women, to not only identify the irrationality of these beliefs but to make a determined effort to communicate their detrimental effects BEFORE they bring death to one of our own family members.
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David: The Soviet Union was officially atheistic and even repressed religion and religious expression in its dominion, but that did not prevent the Soviets from engaging in war, threatening war, and building a massive nuclear arsenal sufficient to kill billions of people.
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Rw: My death, your death, death of all humans. Death is our common enemy.
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David: You are fighting against death even though such an effort is absolutely futile and success actually would be detrimental to human health (birth would continue even after death ceased, leading to excessive overpopulation). Why not just accept death and make the most of the time that you have?
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Rw: Then you are not consistent to the standard theistic worldview. The manual(?) or bible most theists ascribe to for the content of their worldview has many clear cases of healings effected by prophets, god, Jesus or apostles. None, that I’m aware of, by doctors or natural humanly derived methods. In addition there are many currently active denominations who practice and believe in prayer, prayer cloths, anointing oils and holy water to effect healing.
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David: You are mistaken. Have you read the Parable of the Good Samaritan?
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My worldview, though not exhaustively so, is supported by verifiable facts and truth.
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David: What is your worldview and what verifiable facts and truth verifies it?
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Yours must borrow from the labors and successes of mine to remain meaningful. Your worldview has had to be continually revised to account for the explanations verified by the methodology employed by my worldview. Your worldview begins with god as the final explanation and has been forced to back-track as the methodologies employed by my worldview continually nibble away at the ready-made explanations expounded under yours. You have built your house on sand and the methodologies of my worldview is the wind and rain that is vastly eroding your foundation.
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David: I think that almost all of the original scientists were theists, and that even today a significant percentage of scientists remain theists. I think that the original motivation for science was an attempt to understand and appreciate the mind of God as revealed by the creation.
Science is not atheism, the advance of science is not the advance of atheism.
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Rw: God and or gods can only be verified to exist as an incomprehensible concept in the minds of men. I begin with what I do know. What I don’t know, is why people are willing to assign special value to the incomprehensible in a world where so many previously incomprehensible experiences have been investigated and factually explained. What I do know is that an intricate aspect of man’s nature is his inability to live with in-explicable experiences, thus his penchant for assigning irrational explanations until better ones present themselves. This observation is factually supported by the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology that have found artifacts pre-dating, by a thousand years, the writings of your manual. Men have always assigned special pleading where no other explanation is available. What you call man’s “universal religious tendency” is factually explainable as a product of his nature that makes it uncomfortable for him to live in a world without some type of explanation.
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David: In constrast with the universal tendency of humankind to search for an explanation, you are content to live in a Universe without explanation?
It seems to me that your atheism contains a lot of incomprehensible elements. As such, your approach to reality is no better than theism.
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Rw: Why is incomprehensibility a necessity? From my perspective it is an enemy of reason. Would you attempt to operate a piece of heavy equipment on a construction site, surrounded by hundreds of men, by instructions written in a foreign language, such that you weren’t clear as to how it could be safely operated? I seriously doubt it.
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David: The incomprehensible element is common to both theism and atheism.
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Rw: Really? Because I lack a belief in a god or gods this automatically makes the universe incomprehensible to me? The universe, from my perspective, is a mechanism that exists as an end in itself and not a means to a greater end. Is that what you find incomprehensible about my position?
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David: Yes, that is what is incomprehensible about your position. How do you know that the Universe is an end in itself? Who told you this? Why did you believe it?
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Are believers so devoid of self esteem they cannot find any meaning in their lives without appealing to an imaginary deity with an incomprehensible purpose? Low self esteem is one of the by-products of irrational faith.
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David: I hate to say it, but I have met atheists with low self-esteem.
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Perfection: One would have to be able to inspect a deity to determine perfection. One would also have to be AS PERFECT to adjudge the actual perfection of this deity. All we have available to inspect are this god’s alleged activities. He allegedly created the heavens and earth and claimed this creative act to be very good. A perfect being incapable of performing a perfect feat of creation? Then he allegedly floods the earth because it grieved him that he had made man. An admission of imperfection? A perfect being having regrets? We can strike this one from the list.
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David: God describes Himself in the above manners because such are meaningful to humans. If God described Himself as He is, humans would utterly fail to comprehend God.
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Omnipotent: This means all powerful. To be ALL powerful this being would have to possess all the power available. But it is obvious to me that I possess enough power to toss my computer out the back door. So this being cannot possess all the power available and hence cannot therefore be all powerful. Because I possess some limited power he lacks some power and is therefore not omnipotent.
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David: God remains all powerful specifically because God could prevent you from throwing your computer out the back door. The only reason why you are able to do this act is because God allows you to do it.
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Omniscient: This means all knowing. To be all knowing this being would have to be able to predict the trajectory of every single sub-atomic particle from which this vast universe is comprised. This is just plain incomprehensible.
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David: God can predict the trajectory of every sub-atomic particle in this vast Universe, and He could flip them all over if He wished. God could shuffle your proteins without your knowledge, and God could even play solitaire with your brain cells. God could cause you die, God can even raise you back to life again. That's Strong Theism, there, and it is a lot stronger than any Strong Atheism.
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Originator of the universe: Now this one I can understand. Of course, a being that does not exist cannot possibly originate anything.
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David: Of course, a being that does not exist could not originate anything. God does exist, so God can explain everything.
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Ruler of the universe: According to verified theory this universe is a mechanism that is regulated by forces inherent in matter. These forces are inherent in matter. They don’t exist independent of it. What’s to rule? Since this alleged deity has not been verified to exist in a form of matter or energy there is no comprehensible means of establishing his rulership over the forces that regulate and are inherent in the matter that has been verified to exist.
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David: God is not matter, God is not energy, God is not space; matter, energy and space are servants of God.
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Rw: Then mom and dad get no credit for your existence?
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David: Mom and Dad could not create me even if they wanted to do so, the process of reproduction requires only a little effort on the parents' part. After that little effort is finished, the woman's body follows rules and principles which are not subject to the conscious mind.
I should also note that the body's functioning is also not subject to the mind's authority. The conscious mind has only limited control over the body's operation, and the fundamental life support organs are governed by instinct rather than the intelligent mind.
What I am saying here is that you don't even have domination over your own body. Isn't that remarkable?
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Rw: God does this dictating personally or by proxy? Why do you require a dictator in your life? Are you un-able to discipline your attitudes otherwise? Your attitudes are a product of your thoughts. Has it ever occurred to you that the inability to discipline your attitudes independently of a dictator might be a product of holding irrational thoughts as factual truths?
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David: Your argument here is not meaningful because atheists on this thread have already acknowledged that their morality comes from an outside source (society, religion) and therefore it appears that atheists are in as great a need of a "dictator" as any theist.
[quote]Rw: Name one.
David: Regarding wars begun without religious motives: The Soviets invaded Afghanistan without religious motives, the Americans engaged in the Vietnam war without religious motives. Is that enough?
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ALL the atrocities ever committed can be directly or indirectly traced back to the inception of this damnable heresy pronounced against human nature.
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David: So the animals are not violent? I think that the animals are violent without any religious motive or teaching whatsoever.
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Rw: Then you tacitly approve of their acts as being justly rational? As justified by truth? As consistent to reality? I do not condone violence against my fellows except in the case of self defense.
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David: The terrorists thought that they were acting in self defense.
Sincerely,
David Mathews
06-30-2002, 06:24 PM
