Answerer

[quote]Originally posted by David Mathews:
<strong>Hello Answerer,

Sorry David, but it is plain obvious that you are not answering my questions instead you are giving me some philosophical talks. Well, I ask that question not because I'm afraid of death(anyway I see death as a natural process and nothing to be feared of), rather I'm curious about the unjust nature of God, punishing us for something that we have not done. So, back to the question:
Why do God make all future generations of humankind mortal for sins that was commited by Adam and Eve and got nothing to do with them at all?

AtlanticCitySlave

please delete

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: AtlanticCitySlave ]</p>

AtlanticCitySlave

“David: Faith is at least as rational as atheism.”


-Perhaps you have explained how this makes sense somewhere else, but I am unaware of any such attempt. It seems apparent to me this is complete nonsense. Atheism is a belief (or lack of one) based on using rational principles (reasoning, empirical evidence, simplicity, scope, fruitfulness), etc., to arrive at a conclusion; normally that one is justified in lacking a belief in God, although many people (Drange, Martin, people in these forums, etc.) hold that the evidence/arguments show that there is no god (strong atheism). To be rational assumes to be logical, since logic is the tool of rationality. It would be absurd for an empiricist to say “that dog is both all white and not all white at this time and place”. Simply put, atheism assumes rationality, which further assumes logic.
How you can infer faith is as rational as atheism makes no sense to me. It would seem better for you to sa “Faith is at least as rational as rational principles”, since we’re talking about the foundation of both our overall belief systems. While there are atheists who have faith (I imagine) in certain things, the majority of us, it seems, do not. Faith means to have a belief without reason and often in spite of reason. While many view this as a positive (ex: Swinburne tries not to make his arguments too good so there will be room for faith), obviously the majority of us think it’s an irrational position to hold. The reason for this, at least for me, should be obvious. Faith is, be definition, irrational, or at the very least non-rational. In order for faith to have any weight with many of us, it would have to be shown that faith is a foundational principle/belief/etc., which cannot be reasoned about (i.e. nonrational), but considering it obviously isn’t a foundational principle, nor does anyone argue it is, we’re safe in placing faith in the irrational category, since it goes against reason. To believe something without reason and in spite of reason is irrational. Or do you not agree?

“What sort of reasoning and rationality are associated with atheism? If you have some objective argument on behalf of atheism, let's hear it. “

-Based on previous posts I’m not sure what you mean by “objective argument”, so I can’t really answer your question. If you took the time to read any books concerning atheism (particularly Martin’s Atheism or Drange’s Nonbelief and Evil”, or even subscribe to an issue of Philo or some other journal concerning religious topics) you would easily see the reasoning and rationality associated with atheism. Atheism, as you constantly ignore, also has two types: negative and positive. Why you refuse to see this basic aspect is beyond me. If you feel there are no good arguments for atheism (assuming you can actually read about them without ignoring them), I would suggest you read some of the writings of the Modern Library and browse the bookstore on the Secular Web under “atheism”. Or, you can always just go to Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com and type in “atheism” there.

“David: You atheists are the ones who make the boast of objective evidence, rationality, reasoning, logic and science. I am only asking you to do what you already claim to do.”

-And that is what they have done. You simply refuse to acknowledge their arguments without twisting them around. You’re intellectually dishonest in other words.

“David: Perhaps you are not aware of the mysteries of the brain such as revealed by medicine, neuroscience and psychology.”


-I am well aware of the mysteries associated with the brain. However, there are many (especially complex) arguments in the philosophy of mind dealing with all areas of how we should view the brain (physicalist, etc.). So far a materialistic view has taken the cake, both in philosophical writings and in empirical investigations. In case you haven’t noticed, the people who do respond do so concerning current research and knowledge of the brain, which you, again, aptly ignore. If anything, it seems you are not aware of the mysteries, or at least of being reasonable, by claiming there is a soul (with no proof, argumentation, etc.) that interacts with the mind (somehow which you can’t say), and on and on and on. You have NO evidence for any of this. You simply believe it on faith.

“David: Atheism is also an argument from ignorance: I am not aware of God, therefore God cannot exist. or ... I cannot perceive God, therefore God does not exist. or ... I cannot comprehend God, therefore God does not exist.
All of these are arguments from ignorance.”


-I am glad you admit your argument one from ignorance with the use of “also”. Thus, if I show you are incorrect, you would be sitting alone with your argument from ignorance. An atheist arguing that since they are not aware of God, then he doesn’t exist, is pretty rare. Even so, one could do it by arguing that God is the type of being that, if he existed, he would make it known to us. Since it hasn’t come to be known by us, we can conclude that one does not exist. There is no argument from ignorance here. All of your arguments are ones that are commonly not used. But again, even so, they can all be constructed in a way that shows they are not arguments from ignorance.
The problem as well is that you refuse to see the difference between an negative an positive atheist. Under what you wrote, a negative atheist could use all of those to justify his/her lack of belief in God. After all, a negative atheist is simply one who lacks a belief in God do to lack of evidence. If you cannot give any good evidence, then they are justified in continuing to lack that belief, just like they are justified in lacking belief in Santa, Zeus, the man on the moon, etc.


“David: It sounds very much like you are contradicting yourself about atheism's positive attributes: Atheism has positive attributes but it doesn't need positive attributes.
These contradictions are a common feature of all belief systems, including your own.”


-This isn’t that hard to understand David. What I said was that while atheism does have positive attributes, it doesn’t need to. In fact, it can have no positive attributes concerning our lives. It could make us all depressed, suicidal, murderous, etc., and it wouldn’t matter because the truth or falsity of atheism does not rest on how beneficial (or again, the number of positives we get) it is. It’s also not a contradiction to say “X has positive attributes but X doesn’t need them”. A contradiction would be “X has positive attributes and doesn’t have positive attributes”. It is not necessary that atheism have positive attributes. All that is necessary is that it is well supported.

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: AtlanticCitySlave ]

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: AtlanticCitySlave ]</p>

Ted Hoffman

David: I read the document in question and must say that it served to affirm that atheism doesn't offer anything positive whatsoever.

If any of those twenty-four reasons are convincing to you, please present them on this thread so that I can refute them.
I don't think I need to bother. I am glad that you read it. Thank you for your time.

Helen
hi IntenSity
Could you give us the link for that document again please? This is a long thread...I'd like to read it and it's not gonna be easy to find the URL buried back in the previous pages...


<a href="http://atheist.8k.com/twodozen.html" target="_blank">Here it is</a>

John Page

No, I don't. IYO does this make me not an atheist?

Do Christians seek arguments and debates because:

a) They want to be converted?
b) They want to convert others?

Whichever answer you choose, what is your reason for believing this? Because god told you to? What do you think about the neurological discoveries that have narrowed down the source of god-like considerations to specific areas of the brain? How do you know your evangelical urges are nothing more than a predisposition to certain types of social behavior - influence mongering?

Do you admit the possibility that your perception of god may be just a slightly more sophisticated version of mythical spirits used to explain phenomena we don't yet understand?

I'd be very interested in your responses to the above issues. Please don't bother with any "and how does that make you feel" stuff like you posted to my previous questions. IMO it takes serious inquiry to understand one's motivational desires and take them for what they are.

Cheers, John

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]</p>

Typhon

I'm afraid this just points to your own limitations of imagination and ability, not rather the possibility of the task.

I'm able to determine that I don't believe in any gods. Other atheists whom I have queried, do not believe in any gods. I can take a lie-detector test or any other similar battery of physiological tests if necessary, to show what I already know, that I indeed have no belief in god or gods. You can follow me around from day to day, month after month, and see that my behavior is very much in accordance with what we'd expect from someone with no god-beliefs. I'm consistent, testable, and as verifiable as any personal affirmation can be said to be. It would be more than enough to hold up in a court of law for example.

Nonsense, please show how. Simply stating that orange is actually the color blue, does not make it so. This is all that you have done here with your completely unsupported and spurious claim.

Atheism is a lack of belief in god. Belief in such an extraordinary claim as god requires, based upon principles of objectivity and scientific rationality, extraordinary evidence. No credible evidence for the existence of god or gods have yet been discovered or seems likely to be discovered, by verifiable, reputable, scientific means. Therefore it is extremely rational and logical to have no belief in god or gods as there is no evidence or support for such a belief.

To hold belief in the face of this, is illogical and irrational.

I just did, and not for the first time either. I'm personally curious when you're going to do the same with your claims and beliefs, if at all or anytime soon.

.T.

Bible Humper

Hello David,

There seems to have been some sort of mistake with this answer, because it is not a "yes or no" question. Please clarify.

I was not critiquing religion here at all! I was critiquing the "god in the gaps" argument alone, and the dark ages is just particularly relevant because of the sheer quantity of phenomena that was presented in those days as "obvious" manifestations of the supernatural. I am well aware that your theology is much different than the theology of a dark age theist, but you are relying on the same "God in the gaps" argument that served your dark age counterpart so poorly!!

I was also showing how a dark age skeptic would be at a complete loss to explain rain, disease, insanity, stars, etc., simply because he didn't have the slightest idea how such phenomena could indeed be natural. The dark age skeptic has been vindicated nonetheless.

It is difficult to even imagine an equally unreliable line of agrumentation as "God in the gaps", because this line of argumentation has a notorious track record of never, in its tens of thousands of years of regular use by billions upon billions of believers, of being right even once when the mysteries of the phenomenon in question were at last unraveled.

Everywhere knowledge goes, religion recoils from.

It would be less of a gamble to give away my house tonight for free based on the chance that I am going to win the lottery later this week than to base a worldview upon a line of argument that has utterly failed literally trillions of times without even a single success.

If you disagree that "God in the gaps" is all that theism has in the way of anything even remotely resembling empirical evidence, I would like to hear what it is.

Having explored the viewpoints of all these myriad faiths, did you never wonder about the believers who have as much faith as you do in their completely incompatible "truths", and what this implies about the reliablility of "faith" and "intuition"? I know you don't believe that one religion holds a monopoly on theistic "truth", but when you see something like UFO cults, doesn't the unreliability of "faith" and "intuition" as being sufficient means of discerning what is true become painfully apparent?

Since faith, intuition, and "God in the gaps" are all woefully unreliable, a belief that has nothing more than these is no more grounded that Brain-In-A-Laboratoryism. Explore why you feel confident in rejecting B.I.A.Lism as truth despite the fact that it is not falsifiable, and you will discover that the same reasons for this rejection apply to your theism equally.

We can only speculate on what can and can't be ultimately proved empirically, imagine the amazement of a dark age barbarian regarding the current state of science if he could be brought to the present!

My point still stands in any case, there is not a single piece of evidence that suggests that human consciousness, abiogenesis, nor the origin of universe will prove to be supernatural phenomena.

The theistic claim that these are supernatural phenomena are as groundless as the B.I.A.List claim that these phenomena will prove that we are living in a virtual reality.

Whether or not scientists will be able to unravel all of these mysteries has nothing to do with my question.

If abiogenesis, human consciousness, and the origin of the universe were all proven to be naturalistic phenomena tomorrow, it would not be proven that God does not exist anyway. What evidence suggests that these phenomena are supernatural?

There is no evidence at all that actually suggests this, but the theist wants to find something, anything, that is evidence of the truth of his beliefs, so he points somewhere just beyond the borders of what is currently known about reality and asserts that the proof "must" be there, because there "must" be proof somewhere or other, even if it is totally imperceptible to man, because he has already presupposed what the "truth" is. "God in the gaps" is the only hope for the theist, despite its notorious record of 100% complete and utter failure, of convincing himself or others that there is indeed evidence of his assertions, if only we could unravel the mysteries where this evidence lies, and thus ultimately prove that his religious belief is more than pure fantasy based on the efforts of primitive man to explain and influence the unknown.

If your belief that human consciousness, abiogenesis, and the origin of the universe being supernatural phenomena is based on evidence that suggests that the answers to the mysteries of these phenomena are indeed supernatural, please present your evidence!

You do indeed need and believe in "God in the gaps" arguments, because if there was anything else atheism would not exist!

You have already asserted many times in this thread that your God lies beyond the known, and perhaps even beyond the knowable. This is indeed reliance upon "God in the gaps", that argument most notorious for complete and utter failure.

Please David, tell me exactly why you don't accept B.I.A.Lism, since it cannot be refuted. It will be instructive to us both.

Religious people have never questioned the fundamental "answers". The existence of supernature in general, and their deity in particular, are the "answers that may never be questioned".

There is no way to arrive at the conclusion that the "answer" = Yahweh unless it is accepted as the answer before you even look at the "questions".

A "naturalistic explanation of the universe" is an explanation that does not invoke magic to "fill in the gaps".

Through discovering the underlying physics, I would think, and making naturalistic predictions about the universe that prove to be true by looking at the theory and saying "If this theory is true, if we test 'x', we will find that 'y' is true", and then verifying it.

You missed the point here, the point was to discover what facts lead you to believe that there isn't a naturalistic answer to the origin to the universe.

I am in fact eager to explore the relevance that B.I.A.Lism has to theism. I have indeed "started the ball rolling" up above in this post, and you are, of course, welcome and encouraged to present me with your own view of the relevance between theism/atheism and B.I.A.Lism.

You might like to know that this months issue of Scientific American has "the brain and consciousness" as its theme.

I have no clue how the brain works, beyond the basics, so I can't answer this until perhaps I read this months Scientific American, though even then I won't know even close to everything because the premier neurologists of the world don't even know everything about it!

My point is that there is nothing that suggests that consciousness is a trait of a "soul", and much that suggests that it is a phenomena of the brain. Even though many of the mysteries of the brain are yet to be unraveled, you have come to the conclusion somehow that consciousness is a supernatural phenomenon.

I'm asking what leads you to believe that consciousness is a supernatural phenomenon, since consciousness is a mystery as yet not fully unraveled, and nothing of what has been unraveled points to the supernatural.

Well, I have yet to see a scientist assert that consciousness is a phenomenon of anything other than the brain, so I fail to see how my toe lacking consciousness is evidence against naturalism of any kind.

Indeed, if our consciousness is independant of our brain, a phenomenon of a "soul", a cadaver should still be conscious if it loses its head but the rest of the body is sustained artificially. If not, why not?

Maybe, maybe not. Is your belief that consciousness cannot be a naturalistic phenomenon grounded in the hope that you cannot be proved wrong in your lifetime?

Are "god in the gaps" arguments a crutch to prop up a perhaps waning faith?

This seems to confirm my last statement. It isn't relevant to you what naturalism accomplishes after your death, because you will no longer need a crutch to prop up a groundless faith, and there will no longer be any danger of that faith collapsing without one of its vital crutches.

Throw away all of the "God in the gaps" crutches you have that prop up that dead old thing that is your faith, and we would see it waver and fall!

I do not pretend to solve even many of the questions related to the nature of consciousness. All I know is that it seems to be a phenomena of the brain, rather than a "soul".

Ahha! So the members of UFO cults, who hold beliefs irreconcilable with yours, not to mention the myriad christians that have a faith as strong as yours but who disagree wholeheartedly with most of your theology, are animated in their belief by a "religious impulse" rather than the truth since they cannot all be true at the same time!

There are almost as many beliefs as there are believers, thus you can agree that almost all of them are dead wrong about many of the beliefs they hold because most of them believe, for example, in the exclusive truth of their particular religion. Since you see so much error all around you from those who are animated by the "religious impulse" to trust their intuition and faith as vehicles for discerning truth, you better be sure that your own intuition and faith has lead you true!

Looking at your faith though, I see a sick old man who must place his crutches deep beyond the known and knowable, because there is no room to place his crutches within the known, and if he doesn't place crutches somewhere, he would be sure to fall with much wheezing and gasping!

I see an island that is "God in the gaps", surrounded by the energetic waves of inquiry, and the inexorable tides of knowledge. This island used to be gigantic, with plenty of space for its inhabitants, but over time the waves and tides have shriveled this island to a fraction of it's former size.

The inhabitants of this island are sick old men who are all named "Faith", each one of them incapable of standing without his crutches firmly upon the island known as "God in the gaps". None of these sick old men dare suggest that the crutches be fashioned into a raft, and thus allow a glorious exodus into the sea and unto new lands, for they are terrified of the sea, and have forgotten how to sail.

"The island shall never be washed into the sea!" they exclaim, even as the waves of inquiry break off yet another yard, and the tide of knowledge washes away a few more of the sick old men.

"Back from the coast, back!" they exclaim to those sick old men who had braced their crutches too close to the edge of the island.

"Alas, we have lost some of our neighbors!" they lament, for with every tide that inundates the island, those who cannot shuffle out of its path lose their crutches. The sick old men of the island who lose their crutches cannot stand on their own, and thus fall headlong into the sea and are lost.

"A curse upon the sea, a curse!" squawk those who for a terrifying moment found the piece of the island where they braced their crutches sinking.

"Come further inland!" shout their fellows, as the refugees of the inundation teeter along looking for somewhere new to brace their crutches.

"Let us toss away our crutches!" shouts a bold one "that we need not fear them becoming washed away, surely we may stand upon our own two legs!"
This bold one is jeered, but still he continues.

"My name is Faith, as is all yours, my neighbors, and I declare that I can stand, upon my own two legs!"

"Aye, so can we, that is indeed what we're doing!" they howl "there are no crutches to hold us up, what accusation is this?"

"I see them now with my own eyes!" exclaims the bold one "and I shall toss mine away!"

The bold one throws his crutches aside, and a great howl of freedom escapes from his throat.

"I stand upon the island of 'God in the gaps', I stand upon my own legs!" he shouts, even as he tumbles into the sea.

"There are no crutches to prop us!" they exclaim, as they shuffle and wheeze "the bold one was wrong." even as they brace their crutches, and look fearfully at the sea.

I would prefer social factors to play no role at all in judging the truth of theistic assertions. I would not then turn around and copy theistic methods of indoctrinating children in order to propagate atheism.

Let the truth stand upon its own two legs, and do not cripple the children so that they ever after need crutches!

The truth of a belief is not a fine wine. It neither improves nor degrades with age.

Atheism has no positive assertions whatsoever.

Positive qualities are a different matter indeed.

I don't think that the outcome is doubtful at all. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Yahweh exists, if all belief and knowledge of him vanished tomorrow, how would knowledge and belief in him redevelop?

Remarkable, thus whether or not Yahweh exists in this reality is imperceptible. Exactly what would be expected if he didn't actually exist.

So there is nothing other than "faith and intuition", which no believer can rationally deny is woefully inadequate because of the plethora of beliefs that have irreconcilable differences with one another, and propped up on crutches grounded in "God of the gaps".

Is this not a fair description of your belief?

Please elaborate on what you mean by "transcendant matters".

Actually, not at all. Naturalistic origin scenarios can easily be refuted by the discovery of evidence that doesn't match the scenario.

B.I.A.Lism and your theism are irrefutable because they both posit that all naturalistic discoveries are consistent with their "truth", while their "ultimate truths" are beyond the ability of humans to perceive or even comprehend.

A single piece of evidence that is not of the "God in the gaps" or "B.I.A.Lism in the gaps" type, would refute naturalism in its entirety completely, utterly and irrevocably.

Mysteriously, this single piece of evidence is always claimed to be "just over the horizon of what is now known", or "somewhere within the realm of the unknowable".

HelenM

Thank you!

love
Helen

David Mathews

Hello Everyone involved in the Welcome David Mathews thread:

Now that this discussion has reached 20 pages and is approaching 500 posts, I believe that it has become unmanageable. I appreciate everyone's comments and involvement in the present discussion.

If anyone would like to discuss issues mentioned in the present thread, please begin a new thread.

Thanks,

David Mathews

John Page

It would be a help if you actually answered the questions rather than avoiding them.