Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Diana,


Ah...logic, math and love only exist in our minds?

You're kidding right?


Proof logic exists outside your mind.
'It is raining in Paris' OR 'It is not raining in Paris' is absolutely true. Regardless of your awareness of it.
'That man is married' AND 'That man is a bachelor' is absolutely false. Regardless of your awareness of it.
Just because we perceive these with our minds does not mean they are only in our mind.

Proof math exists outside your mind.
Hop in your car, set the odometer to 0. Head 3 miles north, turn and head 4 miles east, then drive straight back to your house. If the odometer says '12' then math exists outside your mind.


Proof love exists outside your mind.
Kill yourself. The number of people who show up at your funeral are the number of instances in which love exists outside your mind.




Egads...next you'll be saying physical laws don't actually exist.



Thoughts and comments welcomed,



Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

diana

Please take a moment to address the order of events.

It's simple, Albert:

FIRST, we experience something unique via our senses.
THEN, we label that experience. The label applies to and categorizes our experience. In effect, the label represents a concept.

You have not addressed how your experience of anything that you believe comes from a God you can't experience is analagous to this in the least.

You haven't either, SOMMS.

Please do so now.

As far as pain being a concept, I have not denied that I experience it via something external to me. My categorization of that experience, however, is a concept that I have labeled "pain."

Let's say I'm a child experimenting with the world around me.

1. I see a thorn.
2. I touch it, and the nerves in my finger relay to me that it hurts.
3. I call this sensation "pain."

There's a clear chain of events, cause and effect.

To make such a thing analogous to your experience of God (or what God does)--which is essentially what the argument "you have no evidence of love, pain, whatever but you believe in them!" asserts--your experience must happen in an analagous order:

1. You see God.
2. You touch/smell/taste/see/hear something clearly related to the being God.
3. You call this sensation God.

Instead, the typical "analogous" chain of events for Christians experiencing something they connect to God seems to work more like this:

1. You have no experience of God.
2. Something happens that makes you feel good.
3. You call this sensation agape of God (a being you still have no experience of).
4. Based on your pleasant sensation and your labeling of it, you reason that this God (which you have no experience of) must exist as more than your own concept.

In my case:

observation --> experience --> label of that experience.

In your case:

experience --> label of that experience --> speculation of the unseen cause --> argument that the reality of your experience means your speculated CAUSE is real. I want to say you're Affirming the Consequent, but I don't think that's quite right, either.

The two are not parallel by any stretch of the imagination.

(I'm probably not putting this clearly still, and I apologize for beating the dead horse, but I can't get past the distinct impression that you have the cart on top of him.)

In the case of SOMMS list, these things are all concepts that we have labeled. No one is claiming that math is a being or that music died for our sins--unlike God. We don't claim these things have any force or power of their own--unlike God. They are intangibles. Ideas.

OK. I'll bite. What's a hyper-critter, Albert?

I suspect it's Albert so desperate to call people names that he'll make up his own euphemism. I also suspect you'll set me straight if I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong, that's just pathetic.

d

Calzaer

Sitting in the fireproof lockbox in the closet along with all the rest of his documentation. He died last Tuesday. I've got his death certificate, too. And pictures.

So when I kill myself, LOVE will show up at my funeral? Or will a bunch of people who felt love IN THEIR MINDS show up at my funeral?

Are you saying that if I feel love for someone else, they must feel love for me since love exists exterior to our minds?

It's still infinitely more proof than anyone has for God's existence. And it displays your complete misunderstanding of what "DNA" is.

When I can dig up God's body, test his omni-DNA and his omni-dental records, and have him positively ID'd as "God", you might have an analogy.

One piece of documentation.
How odd that every other God in existence has just as much (or more!) documentation, but you don't believe in THEM. Why is your documentation better than The Illiad or the Vedas? How do you, mr-suddenly-skeptical, determine which are true and which are false when all you have to go on is self-reference within the same book?

So you've met God?
Or are you talking about your "documentation" again? That's not "first-hand". Do you know what "first-hand" means?

So you've met God? He's spoken to you? You've sat around the dinner table and talked about your life?

Or maybe you've knelt at the foot of your bed and clasped your hands together and whined to the silent heavens, and then counted that as a "personal relationship".

Albert Cipriani

My Dearest D,
You got my number: You are not wrong. Ergo, I am pathetic.

In fact, where I worked, I’d started “The Pathetic Club,” which quickly grew into and remains till this day a club of two. Out of 600 employees, only one other wage slave was found to be more pathetic than me. So he advanced immediately to the CEO-ship of the club and I, the founder, was demoted to mere member status. The closest we came to getting another member was the day a truly pathetic excuse of a person asked me if there was some sort of application form to fill out. I immediately made him an honorary member -- which he was not pathetic enough to accept. Till this day, that episode qualifies us as having had 2.5 members, our high-water mark. Dilbert is our mascot. Our theme song is Tchaikovsky’s 6th Sympathy, “La Pathetique.” The CEO still hates it, which made it the perfect choice.

Yes, “hyper-critter” is just my pathetic euphemistic attempt to circumvent your circumscription of my use of the word “hypocrite.” To my shame, I find such things terrible funny. Such silliness helps me keep my sanity around this place.

Actually, your prior post summed up our differences perfectly:Suffice it to say, that I understand your position and that I’ve failed to make my position understandable. My subjective judgments are an independent reality to me, whereas to you they are mere semantic constructions, a “labeling” as you say. What I feel is meaningful, really is full of meaning. And even if I felt it wasn’t, it still would be. For the subjective realm is like a parallel universe that goes on with us or without us and holds us subject to its laws whether we recognize them or not. God is the law-giver in that realm and we must recognize Him before we can recognize His laws.

I apologize for these bald-faced un-argued assertions. They are my way of folding up my tent and stealing into the night away from this thread. In other words, I believe I’m out of words. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Wyz_sub10

Perception - seeing it, touching it, hearing it (if you will) is all irrelevent to the fact that the finger was burned. I have an idea where you are going with this - trying to establish that something beyond perception can be real?

In any case, my burnt finger can be perceived, measured, validated in a number of ways (beyond my knowing so). Ceraintly, though, if it could not be perceived, measured or validated in any way by anyone, then there'd be reason to doubt it occured. (Otherwise, what reason could you possibly have for thinking it did occur?)

How about your organs? Or Bob's or Sue's.

A commatose person with a burnt finger still has a burnt finger, despite being unaware of it. I can be aware of it. So can you.

As I said above, if no one could validate the burnt finger, then there would be no question as to whether it happened, because no one would have reason to even address this question in the first place. (What an odd statement it would be for you to say my finger was burnt although no one, including you, could furnish any evidence for this)

I assumed above that I saw where you were headed. Maybe you can just tell me and I'll avoid going down the worng path with this.

Wyz_sub10

Ummm....I believe grandfather was your choice of example, not mine. (Maybe your robot voice is deceiving you) What exactly is "atheistic reasoning"? I hear that a lot, but I have no idea what it means (primarily because it seems to be used as little more than "reasoning that questions my theism".

Besides, I also substituted grandfather for Jesus.

Wow. That is the worst hand-waving response I've seen in a while. What if we did 1,000 tests? What about the DNA + dental records? What if you picked the geneticist to do the interpretation? What if (assuming you’re an honest man and had the proper training) you did it yourself?

It is also interesting that you treat this evidence as a separate issue from everything listed below. You should realize that this evidence would be used to corroborate other evidence. It's the accumulation of all these bodies that reduces the uncertainty and increases the likelihood of my claim.

I think you know this, but you're trying to dismiss it by saying that there could always be some measure of doubt.

What on earth are you talking about? Spare me "amateur comedy night" and address the points. What is biased about this? Who said that I had to produce the evidence? You could do it. A neutral third party could do it.

You are purposely obscuring the point by saying that I would create bias. I need not be involved.

Furthermore, what exactly is unscientific about this? You make this assertion but I fail to see why this is so.

You could develop a list of evidence.
You could establish the parametres for validating the evidence.
You could choose the experts to validate the evidence.
You could repeat this with several different groups of you choosing.

Where's the bias?
Where's the absence of rigor?

One piece of evidence that corroborates with others thereby reducing the uncertainty and increasing the likelihood of my claim.

(I can repeat this as often as you need to hear it in order to understand)

BTW, if I had no such grandfather, who would this be an “imposter” of? Just a guy? What if I had 100 photos – with different people I knew, in different places I lived, at different moments of my life? We could create an endless web of corroboration, but at what point is enough evidence enough?

I’m guessing you do not apply even a measure of the same rigor in determining the weather outside, or whether your dinner has been poisoned.

Why would a bank teller, for instance, have a delusion about my grandfather? What is “blind belief” in a person, anyway? What about is doctor? School teachers? Bus driver, who has never known him by name?

Also, this is one piece of evidence that corroborates with others thereby reducing the uncertainty and increasing the likelihood of my claim.

Well, you could do further test between multiple signed documents. You can assume his employers have some bizarre motive for forging documents (remember, I need not be involved in you research). You could check a variety of facts to see if the ‘Joe Smith’ at the factory is the ‘Joe Smith’ in question.

Also, this is one piece of evidence that corroborates with others thereby reducing the uncertainty and increasing the likelihood of my claim.

Where did you “address” this? You haven’t addressed a thing, except to conclude that everyone possibly involved, even in the most obscure way, with my grandfather’s life is delusional, lying, or has some secret to protect.

This is beyond silly in terms of a response.

You seem to forget that this is one piece of evidence that corroborates with others thereby reducing the uncertainty and increasing the likelihood of my claim.

I’ve conceded limited documentation, but nothing every remotely close to the examples I have given here.

Really? Give me one example.

Does he drop by for tea? Let me guess – it’s an immeasurable, intangible relationship that no one but you can detect?

I think my relationship examples are just a little more concrete and supportive than that.

Incidentally, SOMMS, if you apply your own rigor to your own beliefs, you must conclude you are delusion or the victim of a mass conspiracy. After all, if my evidence – all far more tangible than yours – is preposterous in your eyes, where does that leave yours?

Of course I haven’t. It’s no concern of mine whether you accept my grandfather’s existence or not (and exhuming a body these days isn’t as easy as it used to be). But the evidence for my grandfather can be pulled together if need be…say, if I was asking someone to abandon rationality and follow the anachronistic teachings of my mythos.

Jet Grind

Never heard a convincing argument. If I ever did, I'd be a theist.

diana

Hi, SOMMS.

Only about the yeast infection.

I'm trying here to pinpoint exactly what is wrong with the "you believe in love, don't you?" argument for God. It seems to center on the idea that one intangible is equivalent, as far as truth is concerned, to the next intangible.

I think why I'm having such a hard time pointing out what's wrong with this argument is because it manages to incorporate all sorts of flawed reasoning. The argument seems to go something like this:

P1: I believe in love (we'll say, just for the sake of argument).
P2: Love is intangible, and as such, is unprovable.
P3: God is intangible, and as such, is unprovable.
(Therefore, God is no different from love.)
Therefore,
C2: I should believe in God.

Even if you don't take the position that God is no different from love (or math, or music, or...fill in the blank with your favorite intangible noun), P4 is necessarily implied in this line of thinking.

The argument invariably challenges the atheist with an implied "What's the difference?" The parallel is drawn between the intangible of choice and God, as though belief in one is just as reasonable as belief in another. This implies there is no noteworthy difference.

An argument that demonstrates the silliness of this line of reasoning might be:
P1: My father is a man.
P2: The president is a man.
Therefore,
C: My father is the president.

Just because two things have a common characteristic does not make them equally believable. If they were, you'd find this argument convincing:

P1: You believe in love (we'll say, just for the sake of argument).
P2: Love is intangible, and as such, is unprovable.
P3: Athena is intangible, and as such, is unprovable.
(Therefore, Athena is no different from love.)
Therefore,
C2: You should believe in Athena.

But the problems go deeper than that. Why do I believe in love? Because I've experienced that incredible rush of adrenaline and fear, fascination and obsession. It makes my world a wonderful place, where the sun shines and my house is safe and I don't mind doing silly things, so long as I can be with the object of my affection. I call these sensations "love." It's a word we apply to a mental state we can or do experience.

In order for your argument for God to be equivalent, you'd have to start with the experience of God, then apply the label. After all, we don't start with the concept of love then look for evidence to support our belief in it; we experience it, then apply the label to our experience.

Logic is also a mental construct, as is math. We use them to make sense of the world around us.

The logical proof "If A is true, then ~A cannot also be true" is a concept. The fact that it is true whether you realize it or not makes it no less a concept.

I perceive my keyboard with the data relayed to me by my eyes, fingertips and ears, but this doesn't mean it's only in my mind. Ideas, however, are intangible. As such, if they exist at all, they exist only in our minds.

The representation of mathematical concepts exist outside our heads, of course. But math is something we have conceived to explain an observed truth.

But not outside theirs.

I haven't said any of these things don't exist. I have, instead, taken pains to explain that their intangible natures mean that they exist only as concepts--labels we have given to experiences and rules whereby we explain the world around us.

d

Lobstrosity

I think this type of "logic" is what I hate most about theists, by far. When they resort to this sort of arguing tactic, I just have to walk away. Because their beliefs are so poorly supported by tenable evidence, they turn "uncertainty" into a boolean quantity. When the hell will they get it through their heads that there can be varying degrees of uncertainty! Believing in God does not require the same "amount" of faith as believing that my chair will hold me up if I sit on it. They all know this and yet there are those that selectively ignore it so as to feel better about their own beliefs. :banghead:

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. Please, continue.

diana

I think it's a form of the Avalanche Fallacy, but that isn't descriptive enough for me.

I call it the Alcoholic's Fallacy: the argument that the person who has one beer has no room to criticize the person who drinks a case.

d