hinduwoman

No. As I said this is a negative proof of a negative propostion.

Besides if this is ignorance, I am willing to see how theists can enlighten us --- without resorting to their subjective experiences.

Albert Cipriani

Dear D, Not as in Dog,
My life is in contingent relationships with more entities than your dog’s life, that’s why. A stone is only in relationship with the earth upon which it rests and is therefore relatively less meaningful. Were I to use that stone to beat off your attacking dog, my life (and hopefully your dog’s life!) would suddenly be contingent upon that stone and it would for a time, therefore, be quite meaningful to us both.

You’re not even trying when you say: Well then, if your loaded-dice criterion is to make assumptions that allow you to be “free of the need for positing a god,” assume away. I’ve delineated why importance and meaning are as far apart from each other as is the east from the west. You, on the other foot, are content to assert what “seems.” Seem on, by any and all means. But such intellectual laxity is unseemly.

I think? Not at all. You have not thought. You’ve asserted that Z self-evidently leads to X. With such lax standards, God only knows why you don’t just as easily avow a belief in a god-of-the-gaps. Z = you don’t know where life came from. X = this leads you to believe life must have come from a living God.

If you’re arguing, then I’m a pirouetting ballerina!

Yeah, and our universe may be no bigger than a wart on a rhino’s butt in some other universe. Anything may be. What’s possible is exceedingly boring. What’s more probable than not is what’s worth thinking about and potentially interesting. – Sincerely Bored, Albert the Traditional Catholic

diana

Hi, Albert.

Just a couple of comments up front. I don't presume to know whether our lives have "meaning" or not. This is why I qualify my comments with terms like "I think" and "it seems to me." My post was, I thought, quite polite, stating my position as clearly as I knew how, and why I doubt your position. Your nasty reply suggests to me that you're annoyed that I didn't state anything outright as a given fact--like you do regularly--that you could leap on as an assertion. For example, I have not said, "Our lives have no meaning"; I have merely stated that I don't see the need to assume such.

All your invective aside, you are the one making the assertion that our lives do have meaning. Same old song with the worn-out chorus applies: the burden of proof is yours.

All I must do, by the rules of polite argument, is point out the weak points of your position and ask you for further support. You have responded, thus far, with your opinion that I have not thought and that I have lax standards. If your argument was really all that, Albert, I doubt you'd feel the urge to poison the well.

I'm merely being honest in my questions. Why do they threaten you so?

We began by discussing what I thought was Ultimate Meaning. At least, that's what I drew from your "finger food" and this closing comment: "Since Nature is so good at satisfying our questions with answers, we may, by analogy, hope that our inferred supernatural reality likewise satisfies our existential condition with meaning."

Now you're talking about the "meaningfulness" of a stone to you when my dog attacks you? WTFrick?

It's a simple application of Occham's Razor. Why does it prick you so? Despite your verbose objection, you have not addressed what is wrong with my idea. I'm interested in why you think your own self-importance (and self-awareness) does not provoke you to seek "meaning" where none may exist.

Please address why you think your own self-importance has no effect on your idea of your own "meaning."

Punny. Nice.

We seem to have different standards for "intellectual laxity," Albert. In my view, it is intellectually lax to make bald statements as though they are fact and, when pressed for your support, to respond with fuzzy definitions and insults. In contrast, I have admitted up front that I'm merely speculating. I'm not pretending to know where I do not.

If there was any honest rebuttal in that, I missed it.

In order for me to argue the above, I need only point out that your position rests upon assumptions and assertions and inadequate premises and/or fuzzy definitions. I've done so.

But you're awful cute in that tutu.

Of course, the point of my comment was that, sans evidence, it's irrational to read anything more into our lives than simply being. It's clear we both find this worth thinking about and potentially interesting. Is there a more pressing question, even, than "Do our lives have meaning?"

One more thing, Albert. Try Midol for that condition. It's a wonder drug.

d

Jobar

But you're awful cute in that tutu.


I'd like to address a problem with this thread which I've seen from the beginning; to wit, when someone says 'proof' or 'disproof' we inevitably think of the mathematical connotations of these words, where proof or disproof can be absolute.

In the physical universe, we cannot prove anything absolutely. Heisenberg forbids. The best we can do is a very (very!) precise approximation.

If we are seeking certainty, we won't find it. So in that sense, what Hinduwoman calls a proof, is not an absolute proof; I think philosophers on both sides of the God question will agree we cannot *absolutely* prove or disprove his existence or nonexistence.

What Hinduwoman provides us is not an absolute proof; we do not have here reason to say we now *know* there is no God. What we *do* have here is a very strong reason to disbelieve in God; that is, she shows that any God who we could all agree is indeed a God, would be more obviously existent than a hotdog.

As diana and others have often pointed out, theism or atheism are statements of belief or disbelief, not knowledge or ignorance. The confusion of belief with knowledge, and disbelief with ignorance, is a constant problem in this thread- indeed, in all of this forum, and in all of the universe of discourse!

Albert Cipriani

Dear Jobar and D,
Talking about egocentric! Yesterday, in the “When Science and Church Disagree” thread, the Christian was told he has “a diseased mind” and ought to bug out because his post contained too many smiley faces. That sits well with you guys while it is I who stand accused of “poisoning the well” with a “nasty” post full of “invective”… and I didn’t even use a single smiley face!

I’m the nasty one for having told D that her non-argumentative post bored me. Still, she confidently persists in her clairvoyant ways, telling me what I feel and think despite my posts to the contrary: I feel I’m in the Monty Python skit where the guy pays $5 for an argument, but steps into the wrong office and gets verbally abused, then steps into the right office but only gets flat-footed contradictions. Must I bring out a dictionary definition of an argument as the Monty Python character did? Suffice it to say that saying “’Taint so” or “Prove it,” does not an argument make. But this is precisely what D doesn’t seem to understand:

No, D, that’s not all you have to do. That’s the dialectic equivalent of a football team whose sole objective is to “Block that kick! Block that kick!” As Jobar said: Ergo, both our sides will always be able to find chinks in each other’s armor. “Pointing out the weak points” of theistic or atheistic arguments may arouse the heartbeat of accountants, but not people who dare to think that arguments might actually lead to conclusions and the truth.

But what the hell, if all I can get are chink detector experts in these parts, like the Monty Python character, I guess I’ll just have to pony up another $5 and try to flush out a real argument in the process of calibrating the chink detectors:

Meaning is meaning. If a stone was all that stood in the way of saving your life, it would be meaningful to you. You say you thought I was discussing something you call “ultimate meaning.” Sorry to disappoint you. What’s meaningful about a stone or a stone god or the real thing is all piece of the same fabric.

Not if meaning derives from our dependency upon another entity and importance derives from another entity’s dependency upon us. That’s how I define these terms. They’re antithetical, like fire and water. Ergo, one cannot spark the other.

Since you don’t get my definition of terms or explications thereof, I’ll simply illustrate, not explain, my idea.

If I were the ruler of the universe and every creature depended upon me, that is, if my self-importance was virtually infinite and I were immortal to boot, I do believe that I necessarily would become bored enough to commit suicide. Why? Because self-importance is counterfeit meaning, a pale substitute for and distraction from meaning.

But if I were the strap of the sandal worn by such an entity, were I utterly dependent upon Him for my every walk through the garden in the cool of the morning, I imagine that my gratitude and awe (byproducts of what’s meaningful) could keep me buckled up as that unimportant strap without end.

If you wish to be taken seriously, please supply a single philosophical position that does not rest upon “assumptions and assertions.” Show me a premise that is unassailably adequate or a definition that, like a some freakish peach, is without fuzz.

I don’t think so. Tho most people haven’t got a clue as to what meaning means. I think that any investigation into what constitutes meaning leads to non-naturalistic answers. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Demigawd

Actually, if you're going to use my post as an example of moderator double standard, you really ought to get it right. I said "multiple smilie-faces is a sure sign of a diseased mind", a take-off on Terry Pratchett's observation that multiple exclamation marks are a sign of the same condition. In retrospect, it was a poor joke, but Mad was making his fluff far too cute with all those smilies.

And I did tell Mad to "bug out". I informed him that if he had nothing other than Christian mythology to offer, he was wasting all of our time.

So, please stop making shit up to deflect attention from your own lack of civility.

Demigawd

Er, that should be "didn't tell Mad", not "did".

sandlewood

Pictures, please!!

I don’t think I agree with your belief. As you say, a rock picked up from the ground may not have any meaning. But if it happened to be a rock given to me by my child as a gift, it would have more meaning. My mother has meaning to me, but she hasn’t much meaning to you, because you don’t even know her. Things and people don’t have intrinsic meaning. They have meaning to people.

So (I think) the notion of “having” a meaning is a case of careless use. In one sense of the word, to say that your life has meaning, what you are really saying is that your life has meaning to someone or to yourself. There isn’t any reason to think that that someone must be a god and couldn’t be a human. Especially since we have evidence that humans exist and none that gods exist.

In another sense the word, “meaning” is akin to “purpose”. To say your life has meaning is to say it has purpose. But the word purpose is already loaded, as it implies there is some conscious entity that has a purpose for it. Again, that conscious entity can be you.

I didn’t really see anything in your argument that says why there needs to be a god for all this except the claim that what humans want must come from outside themselves. I don’t see any reason for thinking that. Nature has not provided the means to fly; nature provided the desire. Man figured out how to fly on his own.

Regarding humility, I guess I have a different point of view there also. It looks to me like Christians are the more egocentric. They believe that God created the universe for them, and that they are the central and most important thing in the universe to God. Perhaps they wanted to think of themselves as the most important thing in the universe, so they invented a being that they are the most important thing to.

theophilus

Actually, Albert's original post was correct and it's too bad this thread didn't end there. This is an ignorant post and what has followed is not much better.

It is impossible to prove a universal negative argument. Further,. all propositions are not proven/disproven in the same way: the absense of an apple may be grounds for believing that there is no apple "in front" of you (BTW it does not prove that no apple exists - which would be the real comparison) but not seeing any "supernatural powers" does not prove their non-existence (it does not follow that their absense disproves the existence of God).

Moreover, you may have a reasonable idea of an apple, but how do you know what suppernatural powers would "look" like.

Demigawd's original post is nothing but question begging and supposition. It also perpetuates (as many following do also) the discredited "myth" that ancients were a bunch of ignorant boobs. It is well documented that they were both technically "aware," if not advanced and had a reasonable grasp of the "nature" of things.

On the divine right of kings; it was the Reformation, not the Enlightenment that put an end to that.

theophilus

It would really help if people would not insist on posting prejudice rather than fact. If you want to talk about "Christians" then find out what we believe.
Christians do NOT believe:
1. God created the Universe for "them." He created it for Himself.
2. They are the central and most important "thing" in the universe to God. God created man to display his holiness (justice and mercy) and the universe is the stage upon which that "drama" is being accomplished.
3. The last sentence is incomprehensible and a grammatical nightmare; s/b "..so they invented a being to whom they are the most important thing.

Regarding "humility," it only matters if Christians are correct. There is no merit to humility or any other quality if atheists are correct.