Check this link and see if I am responding correctly to his argument.
Offline This started out as a poetry thread, but one of my most ardent critics, at a local message board, actually gained the nads to go beyond calling me names and decided to post the old "everything has a cause" argument. YOU also see my response to this. I hope I didn't mangle the argument too bad, and any backup in this thread to clarify will help.
http://www.thesunnews.com/forums/?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3aa61ac900-dab6-4e8c-9f86-fcbcda72abcfForum%3...
You are welcome to jump in and add to it.
[mod edit] link http://is.gd/3zT3g
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
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Brian, the end of the string is not complete. It cannot end with ellipses. Please repost the entire string.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
http://www.thesunnews.com/forums/?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3aa61ac900-dab6-4e8c-9f86-fcbcda72abcfForum%3...
Try that. If that doesn't work. The website can be googled "TheSunNews.com" then click on "opinion" then on "discussion boards" then on "General " then the title of the thread "Credulous Faith" by Brian37,
Ignore BRIAN37, some dipshit trying to flood the board with a copycat name to make me look crazy.
In any case he has brought up Hawkins and claims that Hawkins is claiming a being and misquoting Hawkins and Einstein.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
I saw the thread.
I don't even want to talk to him. His first response to you was nothing but naked assertions and personal attacks, some nice projection too.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
It does make you look crazy, there are like 10 crazy threads under that name.
Link or: http://www.thesunnews.com/forums/?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3aa61ac900-dab6-4e8c-9f86-fcbcda72abcfForum%3...
Use the link, the text editor is automatically truncating the wall of text.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Your response looked pretty solid to me.
When he accused Hawking of 'bad philosophy and theology', I almost laughed out loud. Empty speculation and naked presuppositions are never going to trump evidence-based Science... See my sig.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Further, the belief that there may be some ‘universal force’ (something I’ve never heard claimed as such), if it is supported by evidence, does not somehow equate to that force being a being.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Who rather than argue the vagaries of the bible or clash with an actual fossil record, serve up a hearty dish of the crap Brian sat down to - that the
natural requires a supernatural for its existence, an assertion that goes beyond the spectrum of practical experiment and waltzes off into an alternative
'reality' where all the physical constants we can perceive or measure are set at nought. I have argued this to a stand-off with my fundy brothers a hundred times.
What hurts most is that the challenges of comprehension and the impossibility of the case thus become part of the awesome qualities of their personal friend and
saviour - an individual who despite existing outside the universe and not being a part of it any way is somehow able to use senses not of this universe to
perceive everything that happens here in our pissant existence and give one single fuck.
I hate this argument for the reasons brian obviously does - that it somehow frees the godly to sprout wings and just flap off wherever irrationality takes them.
The beauty of this position from the christian point of view is that it doesn't require any further thought - they can get back to thanking jesus for the pay rise,
getting them to work on time or just giving them a mental hug anytime their balls fail to be big enough to support the challenges of living a real life.
I'd love to work out a magic bullet response to this argument of the supernatural and it's arsehole big brother - that this great truth of the supernatural means
god is a constant in the supernatural just as the bible says he is, that he as first cause, did not need another first cause, etc, etc, etc.
It's so good when christians start speculating about the reality outside reality. It really plugs me into what actually makes them tick.
And another reality is such a wincy leap for them to make, given they blanche from the possibility of much less impossible things like...the appearance of life on earth.
Anyway - your argument makes sense to me, Brian - but I live in this universe so what the hell do I know.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Again guys, the CAPITALIZED "BRIAN37" is not me. I am under "Brian37" and the title of the thread is "Credulous Faith" in the "General" section of the board.
I would appreciate you guys commenting there as well.
I am actually impressed that "intheswamp" made the attempt to respond to me considering about a month ago he put me on ignore after months and months of ad homins. It show the fact that he is making the attempt because something is getting to him for him to take me off ignore to make this response.
The way I understand it that BOTH Hawkins and Einstein would never postulate the Christian god myth in as an answer even if they were to speculate at the cause of the universe by using that term.
I brought in Neil Tyson to also demonstrate that even if they WERE postulating a god, first off it would be closer to a deistic god like that of Jefferson, or just that "god" are merely the laws of science. But in no way did they believe in a personal god like the myth of the Abrahamic gods.
Tyson correctly points out the error by even believing scientists of filling in the gap of god in as an answer only to have that ceiling broken by future scientists.
BUT PLEASE feel free to jump in there as well.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
You have wrong way "You Lie" Joe Wilson, you have girly man Lindsey Graham, you have Mark Sanford. Also, don't they still fly the stars and bars on the capitol? Get out of the wretched state now. I loved when Joe's wife indirectly call him "the nut". That clip didn't get enough attention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfVIaP4SFGc
god -- I tried you on for size.... you were a little long in the crotch, loose in the waist, short in the length and you made my butt look extra flat. I had to take you back for an exchange.
Business as usual with these apologists. Whenever one of them invokes Einstein or Hawking, the probability of them having actually read anything by Einstein or Hawking approaches zero. When they talk about quantum mechanics or relativity, it is painfully obvious that they never even tried studying physics. I bet that bastard couldn't even solve the Schrödinger equation for the simplest of potentials, or do a Lorentz transformation into a different frame of reference. But he wants to use the concepts he doesn't even try to grasp as buzzwords for his incoherent religious nonsense? Pathetic fucker.
Oh, no no no. That would be work, see.
That's the real magic of Jesus. You don't have to do any math.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Oh, and the answer:
1) Everything that exists has a cause
2) God does not have a cause
Therefore,
3) God does not exist.
Seriously, these idiots have to stop shooting themselves in the syllogistic foot all the time.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
In a later post, I made a reference to Occam's Razor, and his response clearly indicated he didn't understand that, let alone any Science. He quoted what he presumably thought was the principle of OR, but it plainly was not correct - dunno where he got it from.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Bob, you have the patience of Job. A parrot apologists has the same capacity for reason as a chihuahua on acid.
Apologist Handbook Rule #1: There are no rules. Just go for it.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence