Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Jobar · 02-11-2003, 01:18 PM

Sigh.

Albert, plug in Allah. All your requirements have been met then- and since you believe in a triune God, Allah *is not* Yahweh!

Now I think we can all agree that Muslims have certainly filled your four points. WHY DO YOU NOT BELIEVE IN ALLAH?

Neither you nor a devout Muslim can give an open-minded and honest skeptic any logical reason for believing in one God, but not the other.

Until you can come up with a unique reason or reasons why we should believe in your concept of God and none other, then why is it sensible to believe in any God at all?

Albert Cipriani · 02-11-2003, 05:27 PM

Jobar mistakenly asserts:

Quote:

I think we can all agree that Muslims have certainly filled your four points. WHY DO YOU NOT BELIEVE IN ALLAH?

You forget the operative term in my four points: "MY fathers." I am Italian. My patronage is the cradle of Roman Catholicism. On the basis of piety alone, I would therefore choose the Catholic God, not the Muslim God.

It�s interesting, tho, that you�d pitch Islam. The smartest man I know, a software programmer who after 17 years of arguing with me now considers himself a �mystical atheist� (when we met he was just your garden variety atheist) told me that if he ever saw his way clear to be simply a mystic, he�d be a Muslim mystic. Why? Because both of his now-dead parents were devout Muslims. My point precisely. Shows the man has pious proclivities.

Jobar says:

Quote:

Until you can come up with a unique reason or reasons why we should believe in your concept of God and none other, then why is it sensible to believe in any God at all?

Sigh. God, by definition, renders all concepts of Him NECESSARILY deficient and virtually false. Ergo, our concepts of God are irrelevant to the point of meaninglessness. But our sophisticated or imbecilic concepts of Him have nothing to do with whether or not we believe in Him. And Sab�s belief is what is on the table here.

Concept and belief are not two sides of the same coin, but more like a dollar bill and a lotto ticket. Belief has more to do with hope and infinite potential possibilities than the peculiar and particular concept that�s the vehicle for that belief (e.g., Islam, Catholicism, polytheism).

I could come up with intellectual justifications for the Catholic concept of God as you bait me to� but not in this thread. This thread is about Sab�s BELIEF, remember. It�s not about his Santa Clause notions of God but whether or not his disbelief in God is intellectually justifiable. As Sab�s defender Philosoft put it:

Quote:

I'm not trying to prove a proposition. I'm trying to JUSTIFY A BELIEF.

-- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic 2/11/03
Albert Rants

diana · 02-11-2003, 06:38 PM

Quote:

It is an obvious condition of human nature to be religious.

I think you meant "superstitious" instead of "religious."

Quote:

Point is, in matters that cannot be known, such as what happens after death, there is no such thing as lies. Lies are operative only where truths may be found out.

That's your rule. Here's mine: when you don't know what the truth is, you admit you don't know what the truth is. To imply, by any means or for any reason, that you know what will happen when you do not, is a lie.

Quote:

Science is the only tool man knows to learn about reality.

Science taught us for the longest time that man�s ability to talk was what �really� made us different than all the other animals. Ergo, speech is a real thing. But if, as you say, science is the only tool we have for learning real things, how did you ever learn how to talk? Certainly not through the "tool" of science.

Learning about reality = learning facts...not abilities, as you have cleverly equivocated.

You know better. Stop playing logic games, Albert. Considering your obvious intellect, I wonder that you don't experience cognitive dissonance when you make arguments such as this.

d

Philosoft · 02-11-2003, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Albert Cipriani

This thread is about Sab�s BELIEF, remember. It�s not about his Santa Clause notions of God but whether or not his disbelief in God is intellectually justifiable.

{emphasis mine}

Remember those words, Albert. Because I'll be sure to remind you if you again juxtapose them with "logical soundness."

Jobar · 02-11-2003, 07:40 PM

Quote:

God, by definition, renders all concepts of Him NECESSARILY deficient and virtually false. Ergo, our concepts of God are irrelevant to the point of meaninglessness. But our sophisticated or imbecilic concepts of Him have nothing to do with whether or not we believe in Him.

From that statement, Albert, may we presume you are a fideist?

Now IIRC, you and I have danced that particular measure before. You then stated you are *not* a fideist- that you do not consider blind and unproveable faith to be the only way men can relate to God. That means you must think that there is some way that God can be shown- that there is a way to link God with the universe of observation and discourse.

So, either you have changed your mind and now espouse fideism, or else you are caught in a contradiction. Which is it? (Maybe you have become a noncognitivist/igtheist, and say that God is a word without meaning?)

Albert Cipriani · 02-11-2003, 08:29 PM

Aw Shucks, D,
You gonna begrudge a fella a little �cognitive dissonance�? It�s cheaper than drugs and it don�t give me no hangovers. What�s the harm in it?

They say that truth is the first casualty of war. I say that cognitive dissonance is the first fruit of the vine of a mind change. Like a touch of vertigo before a fall, cognitive dissonance is an early warning indicator at the commencement of the neuron war that constitutes a mind change.

You know what I think is happening? This moderator thing is going to your head. First you�re a moderator, then an immoderate moderator and before you know it, bingo, we�ve got an imprimatur on the loose! It�s the old slippery slope argument. First you guys stamp out cognitive dissonance, then cognition itself. Before you know it the thought police will have turned this free-thinking site into a gaggle of gospel-stomping, commonsense-censoring, storm-troopers!

Ha. I�m just joking. I hope you don�t mind. I couldn�t resist.

You�re right about the equivocation, wrong about the cognitive dissonance. In all sincerity, I didn�t get a whiff of my fallacy, wasn�t keen enough to sense even the scent of any cognitive dissonance when falling face-first into that equivocation.

I appreciate you pointing it out to me. I will always happily admit when I am wrong. Being wrong is a refreshingly different experience for me; so it�s only natural for me to be appreciative.

Now that I�ve sobered up... You say:

Quote:

When you don't know what the truth is, you admit you don't know what the truth is. To imply, by any means or for any reason, that you know what will happen [like when we die] when you do not, is a lie.

I admit it! I admit it! No more truth serum! You�re right: I don�t know what the truth is!!!

Just because I argue emphatically for what I believe to be the truth does not mean that I know it is the truth. Believe it or not, I am willing to die for Catholicism. But, believe it or not, that doesn�t mean that I know that Catholicism is true, or even that God exists. I can only believe such things as you can only disbelieve them. What we know is nothing but our overdressed opinions.

We must hold our reins lightly. That�s a trick I learned as a kid when working on a ranch in the Rocky Mountains. It�s how the old time wagon masters could drive a six-horse-team. I hold to my truth that way. So should you. � Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic 2/11/03

Peter Soderqvist · 02-12-2003, 01:15 AM

TO SABALSEED

Quote:

Originally posted by sabalseed
I definately do NOT believe it.My interest lies in understanding reasons why people would,since there are accounts of people who said Ron Hubbard mentioned starting a religion years before Scientology.It is very obvious that Hubbard couldnt be God,or a prophet for that matter.He was a science fiction writer,and Ive always liked sci fi.Im also interested because his group has nearly taken over the city of Clearwater Fla,where my mother grew up.I remember visiting there in the early 60s and would like to know what changes Scientology has caused there.

I recommend Operation clambake in general, and this is a quote from Hubbard and Clearwater! http://www.xenu.net/

At the end of 1975 the Scientology founder and a self-proclaimed "Commodore" L. Ron Hubbard moved from sea to land. Together with his Sea Org-staff of the "Flag Ship Org" and "Flag Bureaux", which were located on the Flagship "Apollo", he found a new place at the Fort Harrison in the city of Clearwater, Florida. Hubbard called his new headquarters "United States Base" (USB), which were later renamed as "Flag Land Base" (FLB). One major sub-organization of the FLB became the "Flag Service Organization" (FSO), which was designed to serve the "public" Scientologists with "Advanced Courses" and had to make a lot of money.

Although hiding from the FBI by staying in safe houses in Dunedin, Florida, and later La Quinta, California, Hubbard kept a tight grip on the FSO. Ignoring his self-made management-structure of Scientology, Hubbard pressured the FSO-executives continously with telex-orders until 1982. Most of these LRH-Orders (also called LRH-Advices) were later shredded to conceal Hubbard's control of the Scientology-network from FBI. O.K. enough talk! Here are some samples of those LRH-Orders which offer you quite a different picture of Hubbard compared to his usual philosopher - and humanitarian - profile.
http://www.xenu.net/archive/hubbandcw/

Peter Soderqvist · 02-12-2003, 01:56 AM

TO ALBERT CIPRIANI

Quote:

You wrote on page 1, February 10, 2003 10:31 PM: Neither a validly deduced or invalidly deduced conclusion is necessarily true or false. A true conclusion always depends upon true premises.

For example, I can validly deduce a false conclusion from a false premise:
Every plane is a tree. [FALSE]
Every polygon is a plane.
Ergo, every polygon is a tree.

Or, I can validly deduce a true conclusion from a false premise:
Every tree is carbon based.
Humans are a species of tree. [FALSE]
Ergo, humans are carbon-based.

Philosophy says that the conclusions we draw from induction, are not necessarily wrong until they are proved to be wrong:

Soderqvist1: Syllogistic proposition can only tell us if the conclusion is consistent with the premises! Every plane is a tree, or humans are a species of tree is externally false to fact, and for the same reason; your proposition is pointless! Two externally measured premises will always give use a truth foundation to draw a truth conclusion upon!

Peter Soderqvist · 02-12-2003, 03:43 AM

TO ALBERT CIPRIANI

Quote:

You wrote further on February 10, 2003 10:31 PM: Well then, what good is induction if the supposed conclusions one can draw from it can be arbitrarily overturned by events? The whole purpose of reasoning is to keep us from being tossed and turned by unpredictable events.

Soderqvist1: Reverse the order, namely, measuring first, conclusion next!

Quote:

Sab has used induction to arrive at his atheism. What will it take for you to recognize that this methodology is not a methodology at all, but rather, a conditioned reflex, a kind of autonomous behavior. Must Sab die and finds himself before the judgment seat of God, before he and you can admit that his atheistic induction was a species of non-thought?

Soderqvist1: the judgment seat of god is not externally confirmed to be real, and for the same reason, your proposition has no more merit than ordinary fairy tales have!

Quote:

By induction, I imagine that the sun will rise tomorrow. I do not dare assert that I �know� it will arise or that I even �think� it will arise. Four billion years of sunrises does not prove or even support our non-deduced belief that it will rise again tomorrow. Both you and I share the belief that it will indeed rise again tomorrow, I�m humble enough intellectually to know that that belief is without logical foundation. You and Sab apparently are not. � Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Soderqvist1: It is hard to understand your way of reasoning! :banghead:
Natural laws are only statistical, but the probability for the sun to rise again tomorrow is overwhelming, so I feel quite confident that, it will be a new day tomorrow, because my confidence is based on facts, and its probability estimation!

Albert Cipriani · 02-13-2003, 04:05 PM

Dear Jobar,
I�m more of a defeatist than a fideist. But between the rock and hard place of fideism and rationalism, I�ll take my lumps as a fideist. Not because authority is a surer guide to the truth than rationalism, but because being lead by an external authority is more beautiful than being driven by our internal processes.

If you agree with St. Aquinas that man is endowed with a social nature, then, at the very least, fideism offers a greater chance for community than rationalism. The atomization of Western society has tracked paralleled the decline of fideism and the rise of rationalism. (What a weird diagram that would make!)

You argue:

Quote:

You do not consider blind and unproveable faith to be the only way men can relate to God. That means you must think that there is some way that God can be shown.

Nah. First you draw me into getting dashed onto the hard place of fideism, and now you attempt bifurcation. Drawing and quartering is too cruel and unusual a punishment for theism.

The short answer is �yes,� God can be shown. The long answer involves what constitutes �shown.� I, as an atheist, and every atheist I�ve known since, has had too high a standard as to what qualifies as �shown.� What we are willing to admit as evidence is what forges our will to be theists or atheists.

Combing Nature and human nature as the crime scene, we will not find evidence that proves God beyond a shadow of a doubt, but we will find enough circumstantial evidence to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, a theistic conviction. And that�s just one character space away from the opposite -- atheistic conviction! � Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic
Albert's Rants

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02-11-2003, 01:18 PM	#31
Jobar Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: secularcafe.org Posts: 9,525	Sigh. Albert, plug in Allah. All your requirements have been met then- and since you believe in a triune God, Allah is not Yahweh! Now I think we can all agree that Muslims have certainly filled your four points. WHY DO YOU NOT BELIEVE IN ALLAH? Neither you nor a devout Muslim can give an open-minded and honest skeptic any logical reason for believing in one God, but not the other. Until you can come up with a unique reason or reasons why we should believe in your concept of God and none other, then why is it sensible to believe in any God at all?

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