madmax2976

<strong> As you have seen fit not to defend your claims, I'll not belabor this much longer.

You don't appear to be claiming that I or others are bound for hell for not believing in the deity you believe in. You apparently have no intention of supporting your claim that the bible God Yahweh exists, that we should believe it exists, or that its going to save us from something or that it gives you some meaning for your life or that atheism is "empty" as I've read you to say. You apparently have no intention of supporting any claim that heaven or hell or souls exist. You apparently have no intention of supporting any of the claims you've made in your essays regarding atheists and atheism.

The question is whether I should spend my time arguing why it would be more logical for you not to believe in your deity. But this is very difficult since I don't know why you believe in your deity or why you believe in your claims concerning it. Its at least possible you do have some factual reasons through which you could support your position, your just unwilling to tell us what they are.

It appears all I can do is leave you to your beliefs, for whatever reasons you hold them.

[ June 29, 2002: Message edited by: madmax2976 ]</p>

Philosoft

That depends. Is my motivation the creation of an allegedly freely worshipful life-form?

<strong> Your appeal to mortality is rather underhanded. But it's also entirely silly. Dismissed.

<strong> For starters I would have made the axons of the rods and cones exit from the back of the retina, thereby eliminating the need for the brain to subconsciously fill in my blind spot. Any particular reason why God gave the better sensory neuron design to the squid?

<strong> Nonsense. Roddenberry's beings were merely very powerful. None of them created beings, planets, stars, universes, etc. I even recall an episode of the original series (somebody help me out here with the name of it) in which the Enterprise destroyed the alleged god (which was a big anthropomorphic rock) of a rather primitive race.

Theli

David...

I've been reading alot of posts on this thread, but I can't figure out your motives for being on this board.
Your philosophy seems to be:
"I don't know anything, and I don't want to know anything. Choosing a belief is a roll of a dice. All beliefs are equal, because noone knows anything."

You tend to honk your horn alot from what I read on your webpage, but you also seem reluctant to defend your position/claims. I wonder if you are being honest.

What are your motives for being on this board?
Are you willing to discuss the grounds for your beliefs at all?

wordsmyth

I don't recall that episode. However, the 5th movie (The Final Frontier) was all about the search for God. What they discovered instead was a powerful alien being that had been imprisoned on a planet at the center of the galaxy. This being had the ability to appear has any of the gods that the different alien races had envisioned.

Star Trek was Roddenberry's idea of a nearly utopic future for the Earth and you will notice there is very little if any mention of religion or religious practices until the spinoff series Deep Space Nine in which the Beijorans&lt;sp?&gt; believe that worm-hole aliens are their gods(the prophets).

rainbow walking

Hello Rainbow Walking,

Hi David,

David: True.

Rw: Excellent. You accept as true that the existence of god has not been verified to be a fact of reality. But that is not the note upon which you end this discussion as you claim “god exists” as a true statement. Obviously you hold contradictory standards for differentiating fact from fiction.

David: You speak about medical science as if it excludes theism. You are mistaken, the majority of those doctors who saved so many millions of lives were theists.

Rw: This is a classic straw man argument David. Sometimes a straw man works to distract your opponent from the original intent of his argument but in this case it’s just too obvious. One of the inherent dangers in a straw man argument is, when you get caught, it leaves your opponents argument standing un-contested and makes it appear as if you have no valid rebuttal. It makes no difference if the majority of doctors are theistic, atheistic or even cannibalistic David. That’s not the issue. The point of my argument revolves around the fact that their knowledge and equipment to practice medicine was acquired via methodological naturalistic techniques rather than religious rites and rituals. Thus I have successfully established that conclusions about reality are not IMPOSSIBLE to verify from my worldview. In doing so I have negated your claim that they are.

David: There are numerous examples of doctors who have travelled the world placing their life in danger and preventing themselves from earning wealth because of their devotion to God and love for their fellow humans.

Rw: Then you should provide a few such examples and demonstrate their motives were devotion to god.

David: I suppose that these examples of sacrifice demonstrate that theism has in fact saved millions of human lives.

Rw: You see, this is why it isn’t a good idea to deluge the mind with fantasies of invisible deities David. It has a tendency to spill over into other areas of mental activity. No matter how many times I read and re-read your argument above I find no clear example of a doctor or group of doctors doing the things you claim for theistic reasons and saving the lives of millions. A bonafide example generally includes a few pertinent facts like names, dates, brief descriptions of the places visited and people treated. Your unsupported assertion is not a valid example.

David: True, but we should all keep in mind that Medicine is not atheism, technology is not atheism, and science is not atheism. Atheism is not medicine, technology or science.

Rw: David you seem confused and disoriented tonight. Have you forgotten the subject of our discussion? We were discussing the value of truth in relation to beliefs? How did we get to an implied accusation of equivocating atheism with medicine, technology or science?

The point going un-contested here is that naturalistic methodologies have more than proven man’s ability to derive truth-value from his observations of nature, rendering your claim that conclusions about reality being impossible to verify, fallacious.

One of the major reasons atheists question your claims of a deity is the fact that those claims are indeed impossible to verify. The atheist looks at the verifiability derived from naturalistic methodologies and compares them to the impossibility of verification of claims made by theological methodologies and chooses accordingly.

The atheist’s rejection of your claims doesn’t leave him floundering around with nothing to justify his rejection because he has the reliable verifiable evidence of natural science to supply him with enough explanatory knowledge that doesn’t require irrational belief for support. Medicine, technology and science are not atheism, (something I never claimed anyway) but they were definitely not derived by faith in deities. Their success renders your claims superfluous.


David: Atheism lacks any positive content whatsoever; medicine, technology and science are filled with positive content.

Rw: Atheism describes the default condition of a mind before it’s infected with irrational fantasies about invisible deities. It isn’t a religion or a belief system. It is the rejection of same. It sets a person free to fill their mind with knowledge consistent to reality.
Theism’s lack of any substantiation of its claims renders it superfluous. It is neither positive nor negative. It is irrational.

David: This is merely an opinion of yours. You cannot empirically verify that theism is contrary to resolve and dedication to this life.

Rw: 9-11 is all the empirical verification needed. The perpetrators of this atrocity were acting on the belief that their martyrdom and murder of innocent people would ensure them a place in the bosom of Allah. If everyone were as reasonable about their beliefs as you are David, I’d have nothing to say on the matter and would adopt your attitude of live and let live. But we have too much historical precedence establishing these irrational beliefs as a ready-made vehicle for violence and intolerance to just ignore. Religion, by its very nature, places a man’s mind at the disposal of other men whose primary goal is control and manipulation. This may not apply to you. Maybe you’re intelligent enough to smell a rat when it becomes a reality, but many, many folks aren’t David. They take these beliefs as gospel and are easily worked up into a frenzied blood lust when one of their venerable teachers invokes a real or imagined threat based on other people holding different or no such beliefs. Religion must be exposed and abolished. Not by force but by reason.

If you had six children with a small front yard and tacitly agreed to let them play in the street because it was rarely traveled and you lost one of those children one day to a car that just happened to be passing by, you’d immediately forbid then from ever playing in the street again regardless of their pleas and cries and complaints of nowhere else to play. You wouldn’t be able to wipe from your memory the smile of that lost child or the pain of the loss. Would you wait until you lost three or four children before you concluded that the street was not a safe place to play? I opine that the loss of human life, caused by people manipulating minds that cling to these irrational beliefs, has not become personal enough to you yet. Let you lose a son or daughter or a parent to some crazed religious fanatic and I wager you would begin to march to a different drum beat. It behooves us, as a family of men and women, to not only identify the irrationality of these beliefs but to make a determined effort to communicate their detrimental effects BEFORE they bring death to one of our own family members.

David: Are you fighting against your own death or against the death of other humans?

Rw: My death, your death, death of all humans. Death is our common enemy.

David: I don't know where you found this principle in my worldview. Did you find it in the manual?

My worldview is that the mothers of sick children ought to take them to doctors trained and equipped to help them in their illness.

Rw: Then you are not consistent to the standard theistic worldview. The manual(?) or bible most theists ascribe to for the content of their worldview has many clear cases of healings effected by prophets, god, Jesus or apostles. None, that I’m aware of, by doctors or natural humanly derived methods. In addition there are many currently active denominations who practice and believe in prayer, prayer cloths, anointing oils and holy water to effect healing.

David: Please clarify. I tried to sort out what you were saying in the above paragraph and failed.

Rw: The above paragraph is in reference to this statement made by you:

David: The idealism that I am speaking about here applies to both believers and unbelievrs. Ultimately both groups reach conclusions about reality which are impossible to verify.

rw: Basically I am demonstrating that there is no equality of impossibility between our respective worldviews. My worldview, though not exhaustively so, is supported by verifiable facts and truth. Yours is not. Yours must borrow from the labors and successes of mine to remain meaningful. Your worldview has had to be continually revised to account for the explanations verified by the methodology employed by my worldview. Your worldview begins with god as the final explanation and has been forced to back-track as the methodologies employed by my worldview continually nibble away at the ready-made explanations expounded under yours. You have built your house on sand and the methodologies of my worldview is the wind and rain that is vastly eroding your foundation.


David: That's good. Regarding the question of God's existence, do you admit that you do not know?

Rw: God and or gods can only be verified to exist as an incomprehensible concept in the minds of men. I begin with what I do know. What I don’t know, is why people are willing to assign special value to the incomprehensible in a world where so many previously incomprehensible experiences have been investigated and factually explained. What I do know is that an intricate aspect of man’s nature is his inability to live with in-explicable experiences, thus his penchant for assigning irrational explanations until better ones present themselves. This observation is factually supported by the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology that have found artifacts pre-dating, by a thousand years, the writings of your manual. Men have always assigned special pleading where no other explanation is available. What you call man’s “universal religious tendency” is factually explainable as a product of his nature that makes it uncomfortable for him to live in a world without some type of explanation.

David: The edifice must of necessity rest upon an incomprehensible foundation.

Rw: Why is incomprehensibility a necessity? From my perspective it is an enemy of reason. Would you attempt to operate a piece of heavy equipment on a construction site, surrounded by hundreds of men, by instructions written in a foreign language, such that you weren’t clear as to how it could be safely operated? I seriously doubt it.

David: This principle applies with equal force to theism and atheism as both rest upon incomprehensible foundations. For the theist God is incomprehensible, for the atheist the Universe is incomprehensible.

Rw: Really? Because I lack a belief in a god or gods this automatically makes the universe incomprehensible to me? The universe, from my perspective, is a mechanism that exists as an end in itself and not a means to a greater end. Is that what you find incomprehensible about my position? Are believers so devoid of self esteem they cannot find any meaning in their lives without appealing to an imaginary deity with an incomprehensible purpose? Low self esteem is one of the by-products of irrational faith.

David: "God" is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as "A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of te universe, the principle object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions."

Rw: Frankly David I am perplexed by this definition. The conclusion of the concept does not follow from the terms of the premises. They are either incorrect or incomprehensible.

Perfection: One would have to be able to inspect a deity to determine perfection. One would also have to be AS PERFECT to adjudge the actual perfection of this deity. All we have available to inspect are this god’s alleged activities. He allegedly created the heavens and earth and claimed this creative act to be very good. A perfect being incapable of performing a perfect feat of creation? Then he allegedly floods the earth because it grieved him that he had made man. An admission of imperfection? A perfect being having regrets? We can strike this one from the list.

Omnipotent: This means all powerful. To be ALL powerful this being would have to possess all the power available. But it is obvious to me that I possess enough power to toss my computer out the back door. So this being cannot possess all the power available and hence cannot therefore be all powerful. Because I possess some limited power he lacks some power and is therefore not omnipotent.

Omniscient: This means all knowing. To be all knowing this being would have to be able to predict the trajectory of every single sub-atomic particle from which this vast universe is comprised. This is just plain incomprehensible.
Originator of the universe: Now this one I can understand. Of course, a being that does not exist cannot possibly originate anything.

Ruler of the universe: According to verified theory this universe is a mechanism that is regulated by forces inherent in matter. These forces are inherent in matter. They don’t exist independent of it. What’s to rule? Since this alleged deity has not been verified to exist in a form of matter or energy there is no comprehensible means of establishing his rulership over the forces that regulate and are inherent in the matter that has been verified to exist.

The only set of terms in that entire definition that is comprehensible and accurate are the last: the principle object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions."

This dictionary definition of god leaves me no richer in understanding than before. What or who is this being capable of such incomprehensible and contradictory attributes and activities? The American Heritage Dictionary has failed to fulfill its mission in this instance.

David: The factual knowledge is primarily my own existence,

Rw: Then mom and dad get no credit for your existence?

David: secondarily the existence of the Universe

Rw: Argument from incredulity

David: and finally the universal reliigous urgency of humanity.

Rw: Ad populum fallacy. Universal religious urgency is your opinion…nothing more.

David: God doesn't wake me up in the morning, God doesn't make me fall asleep at night. What God does it dictate my attitude and behavior towards all the people that I meet in the course of a day.

Rw: God does this dictating personally or by proxy? Why do you require a dictator in your life? Are you un-able to discipline your attitudes otherwise? Your attitudes are a product of your thoughts. Has it ever occurred to you that the inability to discipline your attitudes independently of a dictator might be a product of holding irrational thoughts as factual truths?

David: Religious fanaticism has motivated humans to commit many atrocities and engage in bloody warfare. Yet humankind has committed many atrocities and engaged in many wars without religious motivators.

Rw: Name one.

David: I suppose that the common factor in all of this violence is not religion, rather it is humanity. Humans commit violent acts, humans are intolerant, humans act genocidal, humans engage in war, humans hate.
If you search the history of humanity you will find that atheists and non-religious societies have committed all of the evils that you attribute to religion. The problem of evil is a universal attribute of human character, not merely a byproduct of religious belief.

Rw: I submit it is the direct product of religious belief imposed upon human character. Teach men consistently from their primitive state that they are evil, their natures are depraved, and see if it doesn’t produce these atrocities. You see religion and god as the resolution because that is what you’ve been programmed to see. These religious edicts damning man have been around longer than you can imagine. ALL the atrocities ever committed can be directly or indirectly traced back to the inception of this damnable heresy pronounced against human nature. Examine all the various religions around the world, from shamanism to Hinduism to christianity and see if they aren’t constructed from the same basic cloth damning their constituents as being flawed and in need of guidance. Note how they prescribe behavior deficiencies with the implied or explicit message that their constituents are incapable of prescribing their own behavior. Note how they all revolve around an incomprehensible example of perfection while surreptitiously chaining the minds of their constituents to the will of their teachers, priests, shamans, mullahs, masters. Note how they damn man as incapable of finding his own way. Is it any wonder the world is filled with violence? That men are incapable of climbing up out of the muck of these damnable treacherous suppositions to find the self esteem to define their own purpose for existence? It’s all unmitigated crap invented by men to make his fellows malleable under the whip of his voice. Ancient and manipulative.

David: The Muslims were rational in their own minds. People judge their own rationality according to their own concepts of truth and reality. You do the same, you are no different from anyone else.

Rw: Then you tacitly approve of their acts as being justly rational? As justified by truth? As consistent to reality? I do not condone violence against my fellows except in the case of self defense.

David: That is as far as you can go and that is as far as I would like for you to go.

Rw: And this doesn’t respond to my statement that the beliefs and convictions people assert are true just because they believe and assert them. Assertions that establish a man’s perspective on his world aught to be true and not just believed to be true in spite of the evidence against their truth-value; in spite of the evidence of their detrimental effect and malleability in the hands of despots.

David: The statement "God exist" is a true statement.

Rw: Then David, the burden and obligation resides in your court to demonstrate the truth of it.

HelenM

God might send someone to hell because they think they ought to go to hell?

*sigh*

What sort of reason is that?

love
Helen

DRFseven

I never understand arguments by both believers and non-believers that an alleged "God" wouldn't do something that is argued as being unjust or illogical. I mean, he's God, right? If he says it's just, it's just; that's one of the biggest perks of being God! If he wants to send people to hell for thinking there are six circles there instead of seven, then fine. Killing babies to punish their parents? Fine, also, because we're not the one who decides what is good and what is bad. That is in the job description of the absolute good and bad inventor and if we accept the idea as valid (even if we don't think it exists), we gotta accept the consequences.

Autonemesis

[ June 30, 2002: Message edited by: Kind Bud ]</p>

Autonemesis

Actually, Bender, your pugnaciousness is far more off-putting than Mathews' liberal views. If there was such a thing as an afterlife, I know who I'd rather meet there. Think about how successful you have been at turning people away from The Word simply because you're such a dickhead.

But I know that little jab will make no difference in how you perceive yourself. I've read the "mirroring" thread.

DRFseven

I never understand arguments by both believers and non-believers that an alleged "God" wouldn't do something that is argued as being unjust or illogical. I mean, he's God, right? If he says it's just, it's just; that's one of the biggest perks of being God! If he wants to send people to hell for thinking there are six circles there instead of seven, then fine. Killing babies to punish their parents? Fine, also, because we're not the one who decides what is good and what is bad. That is in the job description of the absolute good and bad inventor and if we accept the idea as valid (even if we don't think it exists), we gotta accept the consequences.