Pleasure and Joy

[genkaus]

Thanks for your sincere and honest statement. At least you have proven my guess correct that you are indeed a frontline solder. It doesn’t matter anymore whether I am giving you easy targets or difficult because you are obliged to shoot anything and everything as part of your job. Solders have nothing to do with thinking rather their obligation is to obey the commands.

Maybe you are thinking of religious soldiers who don't need to think and just obey commands. Atheist soldiers do need to think - because nobody is issuing commands.

At least I am making claims and giving proper reasoning, but what has you done other than rejecting them in the air unjustifiably by abusing them as inappropriate for you. Based on your behaviour I can assume that you simply cannot refute those claims and left with no choice than to reject them in the air.

Don't delude yourself. You are just making claims. There is no justification or reasoning to be seen - proper or otherwise.

You think your perspective is not limited. This thinking itself is a sign of narrow perspective.

Its also a sign of broad perspective.

Your negation is in the air and unjustified. Do you think materialism has the explanation for consciousness, which is non-material?

Yes, it does. Given in this very thread. And calling my negation "unjustified" doesn't make it so.

You are correct! It is hard for me to answer those posts, which are full of thick stinky mucus. You really enjoy spiting people’s faces. You correctly observed I ignore your posts when there is nothing other than filth.

Your posts are full of stinky mucus and filth as well. You don't see me ignoring your arguments.

I hope you liked the flavour of this word-salad.

Tastes like shit. Which is the nature of your arguments.

Dreaming is not bad for health. Keep on spiting on people’s faces and have more fun. Good luck with happy spiting.

Who's dreaming?

You are debating for wining; I am debating to share my knowledge and experience. You are fighting for a reward, which I already had gifted you long ago.

Your knowledge and experience? Don't make me laugh.

One more guesstimate. This time it is concerning my views.

As for “moronic”, you are using these types of words for the use of personal attack to try to undermine or refute my argument. Mostly you try to shift the burden of proof unjustifiably. Instead of justifying the proposition by good evidence, you use abusive and violent language to suppress the truth. You also take support of popular views in atheism but this is wrong and unacceptable in so far as it deviates from logic, or from the accepted view based on coherent thinking.

Your guesstimate concerning your view appears more like statements regarding mine.

I'm using words like 'moronic' to characterize your views, because they describe your views aptly. That proposition has already been justified, which is why I won the debate, As for the rest, no truth is being suppressed and I also don' support the popular views within atheism - just ask any other atheist here.

You should study harder to be a good student.

Atomical atheism (according to which all things come about by chance),

Hylozoic atheism (which imputes life to matter, associated with Strato of Lampsacus),

Hylopathian atheism (which is merely materialistic, associated with Anaximander) and

Cosmo-plastic atheism (which makes the world soul the highest numen).

Again, none of these views describe my atheism.

Argument without references. Argument in the air. If you are not materialist that means you are not atheist.

Argument from ignorance. Argument from bullshit. Materialism =/= Atheism.

Again, it is an argument without sufficient matter for proper justification. Your answers are not satisfactory at all. I am interested to see what ideology you have about spirituality.

If you are interested in my ideology about spirituality - look at one of the thread I started about it.

If you want to know materialist view on spirituality - ask a materialist, which I'm not.

If you want to discuss my ideology here, then first wrap up your nonsensical arguments.

But this is exactly what you are doing when you say there is no spirit. You present spirit as brain function with the help of popular scientific notions. Contrary evidence is your own existence. Why suddenly you start thinking? Why you are conscious being? You are a complete conscious person who is living with impressions, ideas, imaginations, and emotions, you have power to contemplate, analyse, and reason in order to make your choices, yet, your existence and life span are not engendered by your choice. You are deceiving your own self by simply closing your eyes over these facts or by means of disguising them by popular scientific concepts.

On the contrary, my existence is not contrary to the scientific view. The questions asked here are answered there - as has already been indicated within this thread. Accepting the scientific view requires going against intuitive notions, which means it requires opening your eyes, not closing them.

It is nonsensical as you look at consciousness as chemical reactions, neural interactions, and other brain functions but you don’t realize brain science is in its primitive stages and many things are not clear to the scientists. Making conclusions based on the insufficient discoveries in neural sciences is no more than a self-deception.

The conclusions made are regarding aspects for which we have sufficient evidence. I look at consciousness as it is. Deceiving yourself regarding its nature only intensifies your blind faith.

Argument in the air.

Then try to shoot it.

So, perhaps, you have already collected many moral laws based on your rationality. It would be highly appreciated if you share those laws with everyone.

I have. Search the forum.

In your opinion, am I writing correctly or not?

Not.

Explain how I am deceiving myself?

By assuming that showing consciousness in terms physicalism is self-deception.

You mean greed, rudeness, disrespect are not forms of wrongdoing? I need a logical answer in place of simple yes or no.

Yes. And to find the "logical" answer, find my arguments about contextual morality.

Shot in the air

And you're to blame.
Darling, you give love,
A bad name.

You have not elaborated on how sensations are very much within the grasp of language.

We can communicate sensation through language - thus they are within its grasp.

Brain of the elephant is the largest contained by any living land-dwelling mammal. The adult male elephant's brain can grow to be a whopping 12 pounds. Now compare it with the normal human brain 3.1 pounds. Elephant’s brain has 400% more mass than the brain of human yet poor elephant can’t have fun by spiting on people’s faces.

Yes, it can. But don't confuse quantity with quality.

Whether you have not understood the proposition or you have ignored it intentionally.

Neither. This is called reductio ad absurdum.

Shot in the air.

And you're to blame.
Darling, you give love,
A bad name.

Would you mind elaborating on errors you find in the agency, dualism, and causation?

I just did.

You are using abusive language. This is itself a provocation. If you are doing it for fun then okay, it’s your way of having fun but if you are debating then you don’t have a right to insult counterparty for fun in order to keep the spirit of debate intact. You can use the vulgar language only if counterparty abuse or attack your person.

Boo-fucking-hoo. Cry me a river, you big crybaby. If you can't handle the heat, stay out of the fucking kitchen.

Alright! Let us try this way.
Everything we know of has a cause.

Let us say that everything that we know comprise of 80% of the whole. 20% is unknown.

My argument is if 80% is true then 20% unknown would also be true or at least 99% qualify to be true.

All new discoveries what science and rational thinking is making are only confirming every beginning has a cause. Based on this fact it can easily be established that Universe has a beginning hence it has a cause.

Wrong.
Everything we know of does not necessarily have a cause.
We know of the Universe. And yet, we don't know if it can have a cause.

That was established by Hubble’s discovery of the galactic red shift in 1929. The ‘Big Bang’ theory has since been modified in one important respect by the addition of an inflationary episode in the first fraction of a second of cosmic expansion.

The common, annoying misrepresentation of the Big Bang theory. What it signifies is the beginning of the universe in its current form - which says nothing about any supposed "before".

So far, we know everything has a cause. Every new discovery is hardening this fact. If we think in terms of chance only then only we can assume that things may happen without a cause. However, science don’t valuate things based on chance. If anyone wants to deny that universe has a cause, then he/she can do so based on the foundation of assumption but he/she would not find evidences in support. Rather every know fact goes against this denial.

We also know that causation is a temporal phenomenon and time is not universe-independent. Therefore, assumption of causation of universe if, in itself, illogical.

Can you disprove Hubble’s discovery of expanding universe to prove universe has no origin?

Hubble's discovery does not prove the beginning of the universe. So there is no need to disprove it.

Guesstimate! This is not my personal opinion.

It is. Calling it 'guesstimate' doesn't change that.

I know they make sense of joy and pleasure for you because those fictions satisfy your desires.

My desires are contingent upon facts - not the other way around.

Aging is one of the most important aspects in the existence of every individual whether the structure of the individual is complex or simple. It is an irreversible process. There are hidden codes of commands in every individual, which control the ageing process and establish particular time of existence for every individual. This ageing does not only specify average time of existence but also responsible for a continuous change in the structure of individual. The conviction that everything is always changing (in as much as it is always subject to ageing) had resulted from the contemplation of the law of impermanence. Second, by referring to ageing everything changes all the time and thus undergoes origination and destruction at every moment. Any form of transformation implies the substitution of one entity for another. We don’t see any hitch in the process of ageing as it is perfectly controlled by the code of commands embedded within the structure of every individual. This code is the essence of consumption, which provides prices pulses of instructions to the transformation process.

How these codes originated and how they were embedded in the existence of every individual? Who writes these codes if there is no God and who is maintaining these codes so they provide precise instructions without any default?

This is one of many things, which hardened my belief in the existence of God.

I don’t have a blind faith, I came to this point only after having little contemplation over nature and on the verses of Quran. No one has forced me to believe in God. However, you have for sure blind faith in the non-existence of God. Interestingly, you don’t have any logical reason to prove non-existence of God other than you can’t perceive Him with your physical brain.

A typical argument from ignorance and incredulity.

You don't know how it came about, you can't imagine it coming about without an intelligence behind it - therefore there must be a god.

Your argument here is one of the defining characteristics of blind faith.

I am not huffing and not puffing. I am enjoying the fact that you are representing those fictitious statements as your personal refutation. I am only waiting the moment when you will present them here for me.

What fictitious statements?

You are avoiding presenting those fictions here. Isn’t it?

Which "fictions" are you babbling about?

[KichigaiNeko]

genkaus! You have the patience of a saint!

Harris, no one is making you become atheistic..... because it's up to you. Joy and pleasure are totally subjective and so you argument falls apart.

[max-greece]

Harris,

Your responses are simply too long to wade through.

I will pick you up on one thing:

"Atheism abandons moral rules, which religions enforced on human actions. Consequently, atheism literally lacks code of moral conducts in any form. This leads atheist to the vagueness of moral rules where he tends to interpret them in ways convenient to himself."

This is a nonsense.

Atheism is not about abandoning moral rules. It does abandon much of the moral rules enforced by religion, thankfully. Atheists generally do not find slavery acceptable. Atheists do not think human sacrifice is a good idea. Atheism does not encourage suicide bombing, Atheism does not provide judgements on people through gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and so on.

Religion provides a moral framework for sure. The frameworks provided, however, were set down hundreds or thousands of years ago and are no longer applicable now.

This does not mean no moral guidelines provided by religion is correct - merely that, in the main, they are not useful. Thou shalt not murder was probably not an earth-shaking revelation even 4,000 years ago.

An alternate view on morality is to look how people behave and map them in terms of their religious affiliations.

Do we see any sign of improved morality amongst the religious over the irreligious?

It appears not.

As Christopher Hitchens used to say:

"Can you think of a moral act a religious person might perform that an atheist couldn't?"

That would be no.

"Can you think of a morally reprehensible act a religious person might perform that an atheist wouldn't?"

Oh yes, and there's another, and another....

At best then morality and religion are not related. At worst religion has a deleterious affect on morality.

[KichigaiNeko]

Another one (max-greece) with the patience to educate the ignorant!

Much KUDOS to you both gentlemen!

[paulpablo]

Professor is known as an expert in his subject based on his degrees, diplomas, and research work. That is the reason professor is appointed by an educational institution to teach the students. It’s a common sense understanding that professor knows more than his students do.

It's not a universal fact that every professor ever will always know more than any of their pupils.
The professor could have suddenly had mental problems, the student could be an absolute genius and overtake the professors knowledge fairly quickly.

This has nothing to do with you guessing that the quran gives hints to finger prints even when it doesn't mention the word unique or the word fingerprints.

---

Here you are misrepresenting my position to make it appear less plausible. You have used a tactic in which the conclusion is itself required as a premise to support the argument being advanced to justify the conclusion.

I was using a tactic in which the conclusion required a premise to support the argument being advanced to justify the conclusion?

I wasn't using a tactic the verse doesn't mention perfect fingertips, unique fingertips or fingerprints.

The surface meaning of this verse is vibrant in every sense. It doesn’t need second interpretation due to its simple and clear format.

What you mean is you have guessed what it means and you aren't willing to listen to anyone else now.

---

After rechecking Wikipedia for fingerprints what I found that you intentionally omitted the part where it clearly states:

ALTHOUGH ANCIENT PEOPLES PROBABLY DID NOT REALIZE THAT FINGERPRINTS COULD UNIQUELY IDENTIFY INDIVIDUALS, references from the age of the Babylonian king Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE) indicate that law officials would take the fingerprints of people who had been arrested. During China's Qin Dynasty, records have shown that officials took hand prints, foot prints as well as finger prints as evidence from a crime scene. In China, around 300 CE, handprints were used as evidence in a trial for theft.

You told me that ancients did not use prints for crime, I just showed you they did. You told me they probably just used fingerprints as a symbol of royalty or something.

This doesn't support your argument anyway on the basis that the verse does not mention unique fingerprints.

---

This is what you said earlier.

only skin part which is responsible for burning or cutting sensation

This is what you're saying now.

I never said that skin is the only part of body that feels the pain. You are quoting my statements out of context.

Ok let's look at the whole context, and other comments made by you.

If there won’t be skins there won’t be pain and punishment.

WRONG
There will be because of pain from the eyeballs and other organs when they are set on fire.

There is a special mention of changing of skins, which is related to continuation of punishment, and this is the clue that skins are special.

WRONG
other parts of the body would feel pain if destroyed by flames feel the skin is not special.

---

Yes, it says God will reconstruct people’s body including the fingertips. This shows that for God it is not challenging to recreate all human beings with all those unique fingerprints no matter those fingertips might be trillions in number. To create something second time is not difficult than the first time.

It's almost too easy to show how illogical you are if you just look over what you have typed over time.

You have said that there are plenty of body parts that are unique, yet in the above statement you are saying that this verse is saying how it isn't challenging for god to specifically recreate all those unique fingerprints, if other body parts are also unique then why focus on fingerprints?

So basically you have guessed the quran is talking about fingerprints being unique even though the words unique and fingerprints aren't in the verse then you have guessed this is gods way of saying that recreating unique things isn't challenging to him even though other body parts are unique and other body parts are more complex such as the brain for example.

[Esquilax]

Atheism abandons moral rules, which religions enforced on human actions. Consequently, atheism literally lacks code of moral conducts in any form. This leads atheist to the vagueness of moral rules where he tends to interpret them in ways convenient to himself.

What I find interesting about this statement is that we can prove it demonstrably untrue; just looking at the statistics, prisons are full of the religious, not atheists. If one looks at stats on child abuse, it's the religious doing the majority of that too, and the more fundamental they are, the worse it gets. And so on, and so on.

If anyone is guilty of interpreting moral rules in convenient ways, then the evidence bears out that it is the people with their morality clearly written in ancient books that are more inclined to spin it, or disregard it, or outright break it in accordance with their own whims.

You can toss out generalizations and baseless stereotypes all you like, Harris; the facts point in precisely the opposite direction.

[max-greece]

Esquilax,

I'd say we were singing from the same hymn-book again but it's probably not appropriate.

[gilbertc06]

Atheism abandons moral rules, which religions enforced on human actions. Consequently, atheism literally lacks code of moral conducts in any form. This leads atheist to the vagueness of moral rules where he tends to interpret them in ways convenient to himsel

Moral rules are a human construct. Religion tries to enforce the ideology that their rules are right and are better than everyone else's. Atheists reject that. Therefore they seek out rules based on the negative or positive consequences of their actions.

Saying that Atheists have no rules is ridiculous. Morality does not come from religion.

[Zazzy]

Well, then it's a good thing we have genomics on Neandertals and Denisovans for comparative genetics!

Are you trying to say that scientists have the haploid set of chromosomes or the complete set of genes or genetic material, which were present in the cells of:

a. Lucy
b. Homo sapiens
c. Neanderthal man
d. Cro-Magnon man

I said what I meant. We have complete genome sequences for Neandertals and Denisovians, and of course for our own species, Homo sapiens. I did not say anything about Australopithecus afarensis, which we do not have genomics for. Cro-Magnon is the name given to an early group of Homo sapiens.

Are you also trying to say that scientists have connecting links in history and biology, which help in studying procedural development of those genes and manifest how:

1. Lucy evolved to Homo sapiens
2. Homo evolved sapiens to Neanderthal man
3. Neanderthal man evolved to Cro-Magnon man and
4. Cro-Magnon man evolved into present day humans.

Why are you trying to put words in my mouth? You well know I said none of that, although I'd be happy to comment on it if you want- the 4 things you have listed above are pretty tragically garbled and not in line with evolutionary thought or claims. Comparative genomics does indeed give us much information on the relationships between our own species and the ones I detailed above.

[paulpablo]

Just incase it's a misunderstanding of the English language that is making the understanding of the verse difficult for you I'll help you out.

Yes, We are able to put together in perfect order the very tips of his fingers. (Qur'an, 75:4).

This statement mentions the word perfect.

The way this sentence is put together means the word perfect is specifically talking about the action of putting the fingertips back together not the fingertips themselves.

To go to an extreme example a sentence could say this.

The imperfect box was created then crushed, but god recreated in perfect order exactly how the box used to be even though the box itself was imperfect.

If the word perfect was relating specifically to fingertips the statement would look more like this.

Yes, We are able to put back together mans perfect fingertips

Or if it was specifically regarding uniqueness it would look more like this.

Yes we are able to put back together his unique fingertips.

The verse simply isn't telling you fingertips are unique, if you get that information from this verse it is guess work, and very vague guess work.