Tabula_rasa

Follow on to Mageths response...

yguy, your statement in no way answers whether or not humans have instincts. The reality is, we do. Would you like to claim otherwise?

Tabula_rasa

yguy

What you're talking about is learning, not enlightenment. Show me the cat that wonders why it's here, and we'll have something.

yguy

No, but it doesn't affect my position, because, being part spirit and part animal, we have both instincts and intuition.

Tabula_rasa

yguy, forget about the cat. Show us that you are enlightened and we might have something. There is overwhelming evidence, in the form of your posts, to support the contrary position.

Tabula_rasa

Tabula_rasa

Actually, it does affect your position. You have yet to provide any evidence of said 'spirit.'

Tabula_rasa

Mageth

yguy:

What you're talking about is learning, not enlightenment. Show me the cat that wonders why it's here, and we'll have something.

Well, if I'd have had a camera that night, I could show you a picture of a cat that wondered why it was there.

Anyway, cats are maybe not the best example of "enlightenment". Behavioral research on the Great Apes, esp. some of the language research using chimps and gorillas, have shown evidence that some chimps and gorillas may indeed have latent "enlightenment", and may ask or think such "why" questions.

Anyways, what we perceive as "enlightenment" is evidence of, or emerges from, our bigger brains/intellects, not evidence of a "higher source of knowledge within us." Unless that "higher source of knowledge within us" is our higher intellectual development, which differentiates us from animals.

A three-year-old child, about the intellectual equivalent of your average chimp, doesn't exhibit much "enlightenment". Even less so a one-year-old child, about equivalent to my cat. We develop the "enlightenment" as our brains and intellects mature. And social conditioning is a major part of that.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by yguy :

It's a rule about interpreting evidence. If you have a better rule, or a reason to reject that rule, please present it. Unnecessary entities are simply added explanatory suppositions that aren't required to explain the observation. As such, they're rather easy to identify.

Your definition of morality probably entails it's immoral for God to allow gratuitous suffering. Or does it?

It's a fairly common term in philosophy of religion; I apologize for assuming you were familiar with it. Suffering x is gratuitous iff x is not logically or metaphysically required for greater good y to obtain.

A good y is greater than an evil x iff a world in which y and x exist is better than a world in which neither x nor y exists. A good y is not as great as an evil x iff a world in which y and x exist is worse than a world in which neither y nor x exists.

In a debate, the way one gets taken seriously is by providing some reason to believe one's assertions. The assertion itself won't cut it. You said that the use of "probably" produced holes big enough through which to drive a battleship. I'm challenging you to give me some reason to believe that.

Huh? Here's what you said:

Now I'd say if God created us with the ability to handle more truth than we can now, and created a world in which less intense suffering existed, that world would be better than the current world because there'd be less intense suffering. Why wouldn't it?

Mageth

No, but it doesn't affect my position, because, being part spirit and part animal, we have both instincts and intuition.

And show that at least some animals don't also exhibit intuition, which I think they do.

yguy

Such as? And under what circumstances? How to we know they aren't just regurgitating what they've heard from humans?

Then how come so many people with high-powered intellects are such idiots?

yguy

I have never suggested that you accept that assertion. Better you not pass judgment on it one way or the other.

Not my responsibility. I don't know why the hell you people keep demanding that I prove something I've said is impossible to prove from the beginning.