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PLEASE MAKE
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This is the
Kill Em
With
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PLEASE MAKE
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FOLLOW THE
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This is the
Kill Em
With
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Forum!
RULES
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
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This is the
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That's not a reply to what I wrote, you've just dropped the subject.
I still don't see a reply in there. I don't blame you for giving up defending your straw-man arguments. What I don't know is why you bother in the first place.
Also, I'm not white enough to be impressed with eastern platitudes as a consequence of liberal guilt, so you're wasting your breath.
The commenest argument? By what standard? Where do you get these qualifiers? It does reflect inconsistency, and inconsistency in an undemonstrated claim ain't good for that claim. Uncorroborated stories are less credible than mutually-supporting ones.
You assume monotheism, on what basis?
Yes, rationality sort of excludes arbitrarily plying unsupported explanations onto things.
It's not even a sentence.
Fallacy of equivocation: using belief based on evidence and belief based on nothing (faith) meanings to the word interchangably.
Ad hoc, and barely even that.
Ad hoc.
It's been described repeatedly as an emotion, which is a function of consciousness, which is a function of physiology. You are your body, your mind is a function of your brain (I'd add an insult, but it'd be redundant).
The case of Phineas Gage:
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=231
Neuroscience is going to unlock the secrets of the human mind. Even if it failed to do so, it would still be the closest thing to it. What have your people done? Make holy ash? Pull brass balls out of their mouths? Palour tricks for the illiterate. You're stealing from the benefits of technology right now just to deride it.
Just bizarre.
Don't look at me, I'm not saying anything.
[edit: I think this book would be right up your, uh, alley.]
I wonder what Broncosfan is thinking while he reads this. Is he happy to have an ally?
Almost a composition fallacy, but somehow you got even that wrong.
Those silly scientists and the progress on which our entire culture is based. LOL LOL LOL.
If there's a recall on the design, will you be working the phone bank?
Those ridiculous step-by-step explanations. I can't believe people buy into them just because they can be applied reliably to form a consistent model for reality. Who wants that?
To what? That doesn't make any sense.
That's not a theory, that's uninformed speculation; an ad hoc.
Demonstrate it. Explain it in a way that doesn't sound demented.
Desperation breeds naked assertions.
Nihilists, in other words.
The... irony... is... too... much...
Yeah, they've got nothing on religion and its contributions.
This is a stupid claim. Essentially what you're saying here is that man and his rational thinking are fallible, and therefore man can and does make mistakes, and therefore man is sometimes wrong, and therefore man should not be assumed to always be correct.
Well, yeah. So what? Just because man is fallible and can be wrong doesn't mean that he will always be wrong or that he is utterly incapable of being correct. But I'm not stopping at just that point.
A claim is either true or it is not true. There is no such thing as being true AND false. This is a fact. Either I exist, or I don't. Either the world exists, or it does not. Using my human reason, I conclude that the world exists. Are you prepared to contend that I simply have faith that the world exists rather than this being a fact of reality? Are you willing to contend that each of us only has faith (or belief) that we ourselves actually exist rather than it being a fact of reality? It's the law of contradiction. Something is or it is not.
Let me go back and quote you for a moment:
"Reason is what your mind convinces you internally to enable you to believe in something , but you call it a fact. Thus all humans including rationalists have only beliefs, that is all."
Oh, so if all humans have only beliefs and not facts based on rational reality, then I can conclude that the above is not a rational statement. It's just a belief you have, so I don't have to take it seriously if I don't want to, since I don't happen to share it.
Let's take this even further. I'm going to go as far as to believe your bolded statement for a moment. If true, then I assert that your god is a ham sandwich wrapped in tin foil.
Can you prove me wrong? You might believe that he is not a ham sandwich wrapped in tin foil, but I happen to believe that he is. We cannot even begin to discuss this disagreement until you admit that rationality and belief are not the same thing. You can't begin trying to argue that your god is not a ham sandwich unless you admit that reason and rational argument deal with logic, reality, validity, soundness, and all such properties of truth. Otherwise, your god remains a ham sandwich, and I refuse to worship a ham sandwich.
Attempting to prove through reason that reason is insufficient is a silly contradiction.
Of course, all of this can be fixed if you just stop trying to prove that human reason must necessarily be incorrect on everything. You're just trying to create a role for faith, but in doing so you contradict yourself.
As long as these arguments keep hanging themselves, the atheists will be happy to keep standing back and watching.
You can understand what is unknown by using something known.
You cannot understand what is known by using something unknown.
It takes a moment to sort out, but you can comprehend if you try.
Emphasis mine.
Thank you for admitting your agnostic stance. Welcome to atheism!
It's quite easy really. We can detect love. I can put a little wire on your brain, show you a picture of someone you love, and see the neurological mapping at work. But we don't even need neurology. We can detect it in other parts of your body like your sweat glands, your respiration, your heartbeat, and even---as they case may be---a bit of arousal.
God cannot be detected. God cannot even be defined. You've already admitted that yourself.
He cannot be detected, he cannot be defined, he cannot be known, he cannot even be conceived in.
You might as well replace the word "God" with the word "Flarpknooble" or some such nonsense. You have no idea what it means. It's completely unintelligible. It is nothing more than a combination of sounds that you make with your mouth that have no meaning whatsoever.
You've already admitted it. I've just been more honest about it.
Not only in the brain, but yes.
Or have a memory, or make them smell colors, see sounds, have an out-of-body experience, or all kinds of crazy things! It's neat!
Oh give me a break.
Happiness does not proceed the chemical, and the chemical does not proceed happiness. They are simultaneous. Do you know how you are able to feel hunger? Your body has a chemical for that to. But the feeling doesn't precede the chemical. The feeling IS the chemical. That's how you feel anything.
When you place a chocolate on your tongue, you are able to taste it because of the receptors on your tongue. You don't taste it before the chocolates meet with the receptors. You taste because the receptors on your tongue are reacting to the chemical composition of the chocolate.
Emotions aren't only chemical reactions in the brain though. There are effects all throughout the body. (But since the entire body is controlled by the brain, well... sorry. That's life.)
When all else fails, use the straw man.
I mean, I can give you points for "talking hard" or whatever, but this doesn't actually get you anywhere in the argument.
Sure he does. If something makes him happy, he keeps doing it. If it doesn't make him happy, he stops. Piece of cake.
Just because we are natural entities that don't need a supernatural explanation to account for our existence, emotions, or consciousness does not make us mindless drones. It also doesn't mean that we can't regulate our own bodies to some extent. (Ever closed your eyes and taken a deep breath while feeling nervous?)
God is just a primitive man's explanation, given to satisfy the childlike curiosity of his fellow, uneducated, illiterate, and superstitious man to ensure that they don't lapse into insanity by having no explanations for anything in the absence of discoveries beyond their time, such as neuroscience.
Too bad he couldn't design some evidence for himself.
Or make himself intelligible at that!
Daniel C. Dennett points out that there are two types of reductionism.
1) Good Reductionism - The stance that, while not every explanation requires breaking things down to lower and lower levels, doing so allows us to unite everything in one overarching understanding of reality, which is exactly what one should expect. A so-called Good Reductionist believes that everything can be explained with perfectly natural explanations, even if not all explanations are currently available.
2) Bad Reductionism - Can mean several different things. One "bad reductionism" view is that breaking things down to smaller parts is unnecessary, which is sometimes true. For example, we don't need to analyze a supreme court decision in terms of biochemistry. That would be a waste of time. But that doesn't mean that we should never use biochemistry to explain larger phenomena. The other complain---or fear, I guess---is that by reducing things down to such tiny components, you are essentially "explaining away" what you start with. That's not true at all. It's simply giving it a new explanation.
You're just being a bad reductionist. Try being a good one. It's much better.
Nope.
Haha, egoness. I'll wait for that one on Word Of The Day.
Those who aspire to be real thinkers make up absurd theories like "what if it's all just an illusion?" and "what if it's all just a conspiracy to make you THINK you understand, but it's all just a lie?" (weird that god would be dishonest like that).
It's been fun!
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
enjoying yourself, Pamela..??
Venkatrajan:
I don't post here very oftern and when I do, it usually plays out something like this.
I'll come on this site and say " I like hot summer days.
A rational responder will respond with something like " there's nothing wrong with nights" or something to that effect.
And I'll say - "I never said there was - I said I like hot summer days - read my original post to see what I said - it's right there in black and white" .
And their response is "yes - but the underlying, REAL message was that you don't like nights" to be followed up by something like "and winter is a beautiful season - with fields of white snow and cold, crisp air. It's been proven that Scandanavian people live healthy lifestyles and that's attributable to the winters in part so get your facts straight.."!
And I'll comment that I like winter as well - I never said anywhere in my post that I didn't. But the poster will say ""yeah - but if you like hot, summer days, then it must mean you dislike cold, winter days - that's been our experience with previous "weather people" like yourself you have posted here saying they like hot, summer days - you can't have it both ways - clearly you're contradicting yourself".
And then I'll get the criticism that my grammer and syntax is misleading and that my posts weren't well written and blah-blah-blah.
And, of course, their mantra will have to appear somewhere in their post;
THAT'S A STRAWMAN ARGUMENT.
And , of course, other rational responders will jump in and offer support to their brother RSS poster and weigh in with their learned and educated backgrounds and on and on it goes.
And it all started with this statement by me - "I like hot, sunny days".
And on that note, I'll shake my head - have a good chuckle - perhaps share the exchange of posts with my wife, who also has a good chuckle (and she's an atheist / physician..!!! - ) and then move on.
Seriously, the posters, who have responded to me have demonstrated time and time again that their basic reading skills are woeful.
And yet they would want to engage in a serious discussion about "something" as cerebral as the Universe and God.
They might want to start with something a little less ambitious - perhaps a lively discussion about the latest episode of "Dancing With The Stars" - and then work their way up.
I see no relevance in this post. Please stay on topic.
Furthermore, I still didn’t see any definition of the term "god". And stop saying "love" is indefinable, it was explained so many times from other users that it is definable; it can be explained etc.
Please stay on topic people.
"Religion is the opium of the people" - Karl Marx.
Do youbelieve that Jesus christ is the son of God? If so, then you think your belief which you claim no one can adequately define had offspring.
Why assign it a definable characteristic if it can't be defined?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Precisely. Furthermore, In Christianity, "god" is seen as a male. Let me elaborate on that. The "son"(Male) The "father"(Male) The "spirit"("spiritues" in Latin = Breath) So "god" in Christianity is Male, what a patriarchal "god" eh?
"Religion is the opium of the people" - Karl Marx.
There is a difference between enjoying one aspect of reality over another aspect of reality as a matter of opinion and believing what cannot be shown to be true over what can be shown to be true.
If you say you like hot summer days, I don't give a shit.
If you say you like believing in god, I give a shit. That's no longer the realm of "everybody is entitled to an opinion". That becomes the realm of "you might as well believe in snarfblatts" (just like god, we're not sure what they are, but it's just your opinion, right?).
If you like hot summer days, it doesn't mean that you dislike summer nights. This is just stating opinions about what you like thugh. Stating what you believe to be true about reality is another thing.
If you say "God exists" is true, for example, you are automatically committed to the position that the claim "God does not exist" is false.
It makes sense.
Nobody would say this. You can stop now.
Insulting grammar is not an argument, this is true. But sometimes people really do have bad grammar, making them very difficult to read.
I haven't accused you of making a straw man argument in this reply yet, but since you brought it up, you did make one.
Damn, huh?
Learned. Educated. Yes.
We base our arguments on what is known to be true about reality.
And anybody who wants to reply can do so. This is the RRS's forum. Naturally, the RRS and any of their lackeys are going to read and discuss. If I went and posted some atheist logic on a Christian website, I would be extremely surprised if they just ignored it. It's their website!
*ahem*
Straw man.
What? It is.
Being an atheist doesn't give you any kind of authority.
Being a physician doesn't give you any kind of authority.
So you're paranthetical hint at an appeal to authority is wasted.
Just chuckling doesn't prove it wrong either.
You can both chuckle until the cows come home, but that doesn't prove anyone else wrong.
We chuckle at theists, too, but we also argue.
Or maybe your communication skills are woeful? Communication is a two-way process, my friend.
Or maybe your arguments were bad?
I haven't seen anyone with poor reading skills, though I have seen some people who try to reply to what they haven't read (or thought about) at all. That's different though.
We can't even discuss God until you define him. "God" is just a word until proven otherwise.
(please... nobody make any jokes along the lines of "and the word was God" lest they be promptly splattered with tomato)
What the hell is dancing with the stars? Is that television?
I don't watch television, so I'm completely clueless when it comes to anything on it. Books are nice though. I like books. And movies are good too, when I get the chance.
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.