Current Poll (Religion)

[Haunted]

Quoting novium from 13:25, 18th Aug 2007

Well you didn't answer any of my questions and I get the whole 'assumption' thing really.

There are assumptions you just have to make (i.e. your senses). You've started off with an assumption about a wierd internal 'knowledge' of some sort of supernatural intelligence (which one!?). On the surface, you can claim that there is nothing inferior about this assumption compared to my one. I say there is. Strictly speaking there is noabsolute authority of what is 'better' or whatever (except god of course). However, I can check my senses work, I see others have senses that work as well, they have a biological purpose, for lack of a better way of putting it; it is just blindingly obvious what they are and what they tell us. You can't test your one.

God exists is a factual claim and can be proven (star thingy). God could prove his existence at any moment, one would think it was in his interests to do so?
Also, since your talking about dualism; at what stage in our evolutionary development did we aquire this dualism? Single celled prokaryote stage?
Monism fits the evidence so neatly (which doesn't intrinsically make it correct of course, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence).

If I cut open your brain and mess around with your neo-cortex, I can dramatically change your personality. Am I tinkering with your 'soul'? Is your real soul still somewhere in there, which one will survive your death?

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Now with 100% more corn

[fat bastard]

just out of curiosity could you not use the same arguments with which you seek to disprove religion to disprove a lot of other things, love being the most obvious one that leaps to my mind.

[Haunted]

Love has a physical manifestation that we can observe (and experiment on, though this is perhaps a bit of a moral grey area).

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[fat bastard]

Quoting Haunted from 14:38, 20th Aug 2007
Love has a physical manifestation that we can observe

No it doesn't. more than faith?

you could use all the same arguments - social conditioning, 'simple' response to pointlessness of life, etc etc

[Haunted]

Quoting fat bastard from 15:11, 20th Aug 2007
No it doesn't. more than faith?

Yes, brain chemistry. Increases in sex hormones, pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin, etc.

And anyway, I'm not argueing against faith I'm argueing against god (and all supernatural shiz). Faith exists, people have faith.

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Now with 100% more corn

[Gubbins]

Ah, back again.

"God exists is a factual claim" is only true depending on your definition of "exists". From the OED:

exist, v.
1. To have place in the domain of reality, have objective being.
2. To have being in a specified place or under specified conditions. With advb. phrase or as; formerly with simple complement. Of relations, circumstances, etc.: To subsist, be found, occur.
3. To have life or animation; to live.
4. To continue in being, maintain an existence.

Now most of us are using definitions (1) and, more specifically, (2). Others seem to be using (3) and are doing so in a more abstract sense (can God be considered to be "alive"?).

One thing that hasn't yet been fully addressed is why those with faith choose one god over another. Is this entirely down to social exposure governing what one "feels" is right, or do people have other reasons?

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...then again, that is only my opinion.

[munchingfoo]

Quoting Gubbins from 15:46, 20th Aug 2007
Ah, back again.

"God exists is a factual claim" is only true depending on your definition of "exists". From the OED:

Why? Surely if he/she/it meets one of those definitions then they exist, otherwise they don't. It doesn't matter which definition we chose, and for the sake of argument we could take all of them.

"God exists" is a factual statement that is either true or false. Whether or not we can prove it one way or another is a different matter.

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Tired Freudian references aside - your mother played my mighty skin flute like a surf crowned sea nymph trying to rouse Poseidon from his watery slumber!

[Gubbins]

Quoting munchingfoo from 17:14, 20th Aug 2007
"God exists" is a factual statement that is either true or false. Whether or not we can prove it one way or another is a different matter.

Sorry, yes - that's what I meant, but not what I said (I blame this on having to walk back from the train station for half the night because the train was late and the bus wasn't). "God exists" is a factual statement, but is only provable if (s)he/it exists under definitions (1) or (2).

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...then again, that is only my opinion.

[Haunted]

Quoting Gubbins from 20:56, 20th Aug 2007
"God exists" is a factual statement, but is only provable if (s)he/it exists under definitions (1) or (2).

God must exist under definition (1) in order to be real.

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Now with 100% more corn

[novium]

but then you're back to "what is reality"... (i.e. materialist?) which brings you right back around to having to take a philosophical position, which cannot be proved.

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Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[Queeg]

Quoting novium from 13:23, 21st Aug 2007
but then you're back to "what is reality"... (i.e. materialist?) which brings you right back around to having to take a philosophical position, which cannot be proved.

But surely it is a far less absurd position to take. A materialist approach is not only rational, but it is constructive. Can the same be said for the logical loopholes, exceptions and axioms which you are using? As a "teapot agnostic", I am willing to accept that pure atheism cannot be proven 100%. However, trusting your own senses (i.e. materialism) must be the rational position to take.

I'm also a little disappointed in your pride in "skim reading". How can you properly understand the points put forward by the book if you're only skipping to the bits you think you want to read. Surely the passages you select are influenced by your own opinions and/or prejudices? Reading these sorts of books isn't so much about "quote mining" or looking for ammunition for debate as trying to understand the views and points being explained.

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Mea navicula pendens anguillarum plena est.

[Haunted]

Quoting novium from 13:23, 21st Aug 2007
but then you're back to "what is reality"... (i.e. materialist?) which brings you right back around to having to take a philosophical position, which cannot be proved.

The logical loophole, the perfect place to hide a god.

Please (if you don't mind that is) answer my questions from the top of this page.

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Now with 100% more corn

[novium]

Look: I don't have any more time to waste on this thread. I have to completely rewrite my dissertation in a week, so his will be my last post on it. I was not going to even respond at all except for the criticism of skim reading.
One) I didn't take pride in it. It's a fact of life.
2)it's called an introduction. It's where people usually set out what they are going to try to accomplish. That's how you know what points they're going to try to make.
Also, these things are usually broken down into chapters, which, optimally, develop seperate (if related) ideas.
3)No one said anything about quote mining. It's about getting the feel for something. Back to the minoan example, if I can see that the same major failure in scholarship runs through their main arguments, I don't need to read the entire book to see know that their main arguments are flawed. I'd be a pretty lousy scholar if I did. I can then know that I can put the book back, because it's not what I need.

Quoting Queeg from 14:46, 21st Aug 2007
I'm also a little disappointed in your pride in "skim reading". How can you properly understand the points put forward by the book if you're only skipping to the bits you think you want to read. Surely the passages you select are influenced by your own opinions and/or prejudices? Reading these sorts of books isn't so much about "quote mining" or looking for ammunition for debate as trying to understand the views and points being explained.

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Mea navicula pendens anguillarum plena est.

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Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[Haunted]

Quoting novium from 16:05, 21st Aug 2007
One) I didn't take pride in it. It's a fact of life.
2)it's called an introduction. It's where people usually set out what they are going to try to accomplish. That's how you know what points they're going to try to make.
Also, these things are usually broken down into chapters, which, optimally, develop seperate (if related) ideas.
3)No one said anything about quote mining. It's about getting the feel for something. Back to the minoan example, if I can see that the same major failure in scholarship runs through their main arguments, I don't need to read the entire book to see know that their main arguments are flawed. I'd be a pretty lousy scholar if I did. I can then know that I can put the book back, because it's not what I need.

So you just read the introduction?
And you haven't actually mentioned what you believe his "major failure in scholarship" was. Apart from some trivial theology issues, but like someone said 'argueing about theology in a book about atheism is like arguing about the emporers wardrobe whilst claiming that the man is naked'.
A few ad hominens about his arrogance too. Nothing special really.

Since you don't have time I'm not anticipating a reply. I'm disappointed that you have not answered my questions, though a dissertation is indeed more important. Perhaps some other theist would like to wade in?

Lets throw in some meat to this bumfight. Acceptance of evolution is acceptance that christianity is wrong.
We have a perfectly natural phenomenon that shows that man was in no way, shape or form "created". Theistic evolution is absurd. Human beings are not the 'goal' of evolution, they (we) are simply the result. Run the experiment again and the result will be different (perhaps ridiculously so).

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Now with 100% more corn

[Gubbins]

Quoting Haunted from 17:32, 21st Aug 2007
Lets throw in some meat to this bumfight. Acceptance of evolution is acceptance that christianity is wrong.
We have a perfectly natural phenomenon that shows that man was in no way, shape or form "created". Theistic evolution is absurd. Human beings are not the 'goal' of evolution, they (we) are simply the result. Run the experiment again and the result will be different (perhaps ridiculously so).

Acceptance of evolution is acceptance that some of Christianity is wrong. Things don't need to be so black and white.

Theistic `evolution' (by which I assume you mean intelligent design) is not absurd per se, but (scientifically) the facts aren't there to back it up (see, e.g. New Scientist, 11 Aug 2007, pp. 36-39).

Human beings are presently the dominant species on the planet, and our evolution has been decided for us on a chemical level, which is in turn controlled quantum mechanically: a process that presently appears* to be random.

(* New Scientist, 4 Aug 2007, pp. 10-11 may go some why to explaining my inclusion of this phrase - no prizes for guessing what our department has subscribed to)

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...then again, that is only my opinion.

[Haunted]

Quoting Gubbins from 18:13, 21st Aug 2007
Acceptance of evolution is acceptance that some of Christianity is wrong. Things don't need to be so black and white.

True but this is a pretty big 'some'

Theistic `evolution' (by which I assume you mean intelligent design)

Actually no. Theistic evolution is the belief that evolution is true, its just that god 'guided' it to humanity.
EDIT: I should probably make the differences clearer.
Intelligent design works by saying some biological systems are too complex to happen without some intervention. Theistic evolution doesn't state the too complex issue (also known as irreducible complexity, wiki Michael Behe) but still asserts that it was gods will that drove it

Human beings are presently the dominant species on the planet, and our evolution has been decided for us on a chemical level, which is in turn controlled quantum mechanically: a process that presently appears* to be random.

Yes theres some interesting ideas about qm not being as random as first thought. However evolution isn't random. The mutations are random, but natural selection is definitely not random.

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[Gubbins]

Quoting Haunted from 18:28, 21st Aug 2007

Quoting Gubbins from 18:13, 21st Aug 2007
Acceptance of evolution is acceptance that some of Christianity is wrong. Things don't need to be so black and white.

True but this is a pretty big 'some'

Is it? A basic belief in evolution invalidates the first chapter of Genesis, and that's about it. Belief in accepted geological history invalidates the theory of a worldwide flood, but again, that's about it. Evolution, to the best of my knowledge, isn't at odds with anything else in Christianity.

Theistic evolution is the belief that evolution is true, its just that god 'guided' it to humanity.

In which case, it is even less absurd. Taking this in isolation, there is no physical reason this cannot be the case (and speaking "materialistically" even logically it can only be determined to be 'unlikely' at some level).

Yes theres some interesting ideas about qm not being as random as first thought. However evolution isn't random. The mutations are random, but natural selection is definitely not random.

True. I was referring to the "run the experiment again" comment: if QM is random, a repeated experiment with the same starting conditions would not necessarily produce something resembling humanity.

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...then again, that is only my opinion.

[Senethro]

Yes theres some interesting ideas about qm not being as random as first thought. However evolution isn't random. The mutations are random, but natural selection is definitely not random.

True. I was referring to the "run the experiment again" comment: if QM is random, a repeated experiment with the same starting conditions would not necessarily produce something resembling humanity.

Non-random selection of random factors.

Compare: Sharks and dolphins.
Compare: Eyes across the animal kingdom.
Compare: Warm bloodedness in vertebrates. (phyla?)

[Haunted]

Quoting Gubbins from 19:13, 21st Aug 2007
Evolution, to the best of my knowledge, isn't at odds with anything else in Christianity.

Proof that god did not create man is surely a difficult pill to swallow for a religion that claims he did.

In which case, it is even less absurd. Taking this in isolation, there is no physical reason this cannot be the case (and speaking "materialistically" even logically it can only be determined to be 'unlikely' at some level).

Of course it's not as ridiculous as ID (ID tried to be scientific). But it's back to the same old problem of absolute knowledge and proving negatives. Of course there can be no 100% disproof. But look a little deeper. Here we have a perfectly natural system that explains the ascent of man and it works perfectly fine without any supernatural interference. Why didn't god just snap his fingers and do it? Or is it all another test?

EDIT: It's analogous to me dropping an apple and saying "god made that apple fall". Or shooting someone and saying "god killed that man".

True. I was referring to the "run the experiment again" comment: if QM is random, a repeated experiment with the same starting conditions would not necessarily produce something resembling humanity.

Yes this was my point. Running the experiment again would almost certainly result in something different.

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...then again, that is only my opinion.[/quote]

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Now with 100% more corn

[Haunted]

No one biting then?

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Now with 100% more corn