(September 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: What’s the deal?  Do you not actually accept the validity of invincible inward witnesses?  I’m being dead serious.  

Your statement about your own inward witness was intended seriously? (I thought you were joking). Again, my experience of the Inward Witness does not obligate me to believe someone who testifies to an Inward Witness. Until it does. Meaning, if for some reason God WANTED me to regard YOUR Inward Witness as authentic, my Inward Witness would need to tell me which of your statements are indeed inspired.

Quote:Nothing about consciousness as a fundamental does away with the need, if there is a need, for prime movers.  You’ve caused yourself all this grief and formed a flatly heretical theodicy for nothing.

It means a metaphysics doesn't need "God" as the first mover. Not getting your point.

Quote:Your incredulity shouldn’t just be suspect, your incredulity is demonstrably in error.  Speciation has been observed in the lab and in the field.  Not just speciation, either, full on cladogenesis.

Ok that's amazing, but still we don't know the degree of divine involvement, for example His contributions to the design of the DNA to make it so adaptable. Look, I think we live in a highly mechanistic, highly fabricated environment. To force us to cohabitate/collaborate as one huge family, God limits our self-locomotion (viz. gravity) and locks us into financial interdependence for survival. He's deeply involved with us according to Scripture - each of us is a self-locomoting soul imprisoned within a mechanistic body until death. All the more reason to think that, since God is so deeply involved, His hand largely governs speciation as well. He is conceivably the Creator seemingly depicted in Scripture.

(September 17, 2026 at 1:47 pm)Jal Wrote:

(September 17, 2026 at 12:20 pm)Angrboda Wrote: My post had nothing to do with self-locomotion so your claim that your reply concerning self-locomotion was cogent is simply false.

I didn't reference self-locomotion at all, so in replying about self-locomotion you werre just hallucinating something that you thought I'd said.

Stop making shit up about me opining about self-locomotion when I did nothing of the sort.  Is lies and hypocrisy all that you are?

This whole analysis is just as tautological as insisting that a square has four sides. So please stop saying that I have afforded no evidence or proof.

That's a definition, not a tautology, the word square would be pretty meaningless without it. 

What you call evidence is nothing more than a subjective conclusion you are attaching to reality, several in fact. Panpsychism is one, there is no evidence to support this philosophical notion, and it remains unfalsifiable and untestable, a first cause or prime mover is another, and your arguments here amount to no more than argumentum ad ignorantiam reasoning, and a deity as that prime mover, and I have seen no remotely objective evidence for this either, though in your OP you did offer what amounted to an argument from personal incredulity asserting that "deterministic atheism was implausible", which of course is just your own subjective opinion. 

Since we know natural phenomena exist and the physical material universe exist, and conscious life exists on at least one planet as objective facts, but have no objective evidence deities exist, or are even possible, beyond perhaps epistemic possibility, it follows that any as yet unknown natural explanation is more plausible than an unevidenced deity using inexplicable magic. 

Your own subjective preferences aside.

(September 18, 2026 at 1:26 am)Sheldon Wrote:

(September 17, 2026 at 1:47 pm)Jal Wrote: This whole analysis is just as tautological as insisting that a square has four sides. So please stop saying that I have afforded no evidence or proof.

That's a definition, not a tautology, the word square would be pretty meaningless without it. 

What you call evidence is nothing more than a subjective conclusion you are attaching to reality, several in fact. Panpsychism is one, there is no evidence to support this philosophical notion, and it remains unfalsifiable and untestable, a first cause or prime mover is another, and your arguments here amount to no more than argumentum ad ignorantiam reasoning, and a deity as that prime mover, and I have seen no remotely objective evidence for this either, though in your OP you did offer what amounted to an argument from personal incredulity asserting that "deterministic atheism was implausible", which of course is just your own subjective opinion. 

Since we know natural phenomena exist and the physical material universe exist, and conscious life exists on at least one planet as objective facts, but have no objective evidence deities exist, or are even possible, beyond perhaps epistemic possibility, it follows that any as yet unknown natural explanation is more plausible than an unevidenced deity using inexplicable magic. 

Your own subjective preferences aside.

I am so glad I threw in the towel. Your utter inability to comprehend anything I write is becoming more blatant with every post.

(September 17, 2026 at 12:17 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(September 17, 2026 at 12:15 pm)Jal Wrote: Sorry guy, with you I already threw in the towel. Inasmuch I evidently lack sufficient explanatory powers to explain to you something as basic as the Inward Witness, I see no point in attempting to further communicate with you.  

My intention is to ignore your posts.

A most ungracious capitulation.

Boru

I'd have settled for a simple "no, I can't objectively evidence my beliefs", they're subjective opinions based on subjective feelings. 

Now of course he'd need to explain why he disbelieves that same method, when it produces other beliefs and religions, either they're a) lying, or b) mistaken, which of course they would say about his claims, hardly sounds reliable does it. 

Now though Bell may sneer, methods designed to remove as much subjective bias as possible, and produce objectively verifiable evidence are manifestly and exponentially more reliable at understanding reality, and guess what, Jal rejects the bits that conflict with the religion he prefers, and tries to insert a deity performing inexplicable magic to kickstart evolution and keep objective reality ticking along, yet science, the exponentially more reliable method, neither needs not evidences deities. Indeed deities even as Jal has presented have no explanatory powers, he is just asserting that looks implausible to me, therefore he wants to believe a deity must be required, using as yet unexplained magic. 

For some reason the phrase I don't know terrifies theists.

(September 18, 2026 at 1:38 am)Jal Wrote:

(September 18, 2026 at 1:26 am)Sheldon Wrote: That's a definition, not a tautology, the word square would be pretty meaningless without it. 

What you call evidence is nothing more than a subjective conclusion you are attaching to reality, several in fact. Panpsychism is one, there is no evidence to support this philosophical notion, and it remains unfalsifiable and untestable, a first cause or prime mover is another, and your arguments here amount to no more than argumentum ad ignorantiam reasoning, and a deity as that prime mover, and I have seen no remotely objective evidence for this either, though in your OP you did offer what amounted to an argument from personal incredulity asserting that "deterministic atheism was implausible", which of course is just your own subjective opinion. 

Since we know natural phenomena exist and the physical material universe exist, and conscious life exists on at least one planet as objective facts, but have no objective evidence deities exist, or are even possible, beyond perhaps epistemic possibility, it follows that any as yet unknown natural explanation is more plausible than an unevidenced deity using inexplicable magic. 

Your own subjective preferences aside.

I am so glad I threw in the towel. Your utter inability to comprehend anything I write is becoming more blatant with every post.

That towel doesn't seem to have hit the ground, and you might comprehend what ignore means, but not at this moment it seems. FWIW sweeping vapid dismissals that amount to ad hominem, are as meaningless as your endlessly biased unevidenced and subjective claims. The only thing you're ignoring are all facts / objections to your spiel, twas ever thus...

(September 17, 2026 at 8:14 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote:

(September 17, 2026 at 1:54 pm)Jal Wrote: Ok I guffawed at that one. For 2000 years Christian theologians have tried to explain how an immutable, immaterial God became man, and how an indivisible Trinity has three members (viz. the first one sits on a throne, the second one died on the cross, and the third one was outpoured at Pentecost).
My panpsychism easily resolves all these conundrums, and a few more. 

"It very clearly does add even more problems." I am not aware of any increase in problems. Admittedly every system faces some problems.

-and for 2k years (not really, christianity was dumb as a box of rocks until about the 1200's..but whatever) they never decided that panpsychism was the explanation..even though the idea predated christianity by 400 years or more.  The only times the subject matter came up were when it's component bits and advocates were declared heretical for cause.  

Now you're over here babbling about how panpsychism tells us that 1+1+1=1...but it doesn't, and we already know you reject absurd math in any other form.  You don't give a shit about panpsychism.  You don't believe a bit of it, you don't even understand what it is.  What you are, is willing to believe anything you think can rescue your trinity and your creationism from the problems you yourself appear to see....though I'm willing to bet they aren't even problems..just more of your invincibly witnessed hallucinations.  For example..that trinity bit?  It's a fucking miracle and that's the point.  God is a miracle man, that's how you know he's god.  Possibility maker, not possibility taker.  If god says 1+1+1=1...then it does.  That you find this hard to believe..in a god breathed world...is a you problem, not a god problem.

Horribly stupid post. You insinuate that I'm just hallucinating the notion of Christian insolubles?  You're lying. Or you just plain forgot that I've clearly identified several of them on this thread. Here's just one of them, to refresh your memory:
(1). God is  immutable.
(2). God became man. 
Huh? Please admit you see the Incarnation as a problem in Christology?
Ok, you won't take my word for it? Maybe you'll believe Norm Geisler?

Geisler frankly admitted that the finite human mind must embrace logical contradictions to accept the (traditional version of) the Incarnation, known as the Hypostatic Union of two natures human and divine. His "solution" was to assume that God's infinite mind somehow resolves these contradictions in ways beyond our finite understanding. Therefore Norm wrote:

“The fact that one cannot explain how the two natures unite in one person without contradiction has nothing to do with the obvious fact that what happens when they do [unite] is clearly not a contradiction” (Norman L. Geisler, “Avoid… Contradictions” (1 Timothy 6:20):  A Reply To John Dahms,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol 22:1 (1979), p. 62).

He's clearly stating that any human who postulates an explanation of the Incarnation must embrace contradiction. 

No such contradiction arises in my panpsychism - the Incarnation is a cinch to explain, it's literally a joke. I don't think it requires even a high school education.

Still not convinced? John Dahms agreed with Norm Geisler on the need to embrace contradictions.  Even more concerning is that Paull Tillich threw in the towel altogether - he abandoned the whole Incarnation as traditionally defined, and his alternative solution is just the Nestorian heresy reformulated. 

The conversation between John Dahms and Norm Geisler apparently began in 1978 when John Dahms spoke approvingly of Paul Tillich's disparagement of the  Hypostatic Union as a set of "inescapable contradictions and absurdities” (John v Dahms, "How Reliable Is Logic?," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol 21:4 (1978), p. 373).

That's what prompted Norm Geisler to respond that the finite human mind must embrace contradictions. 

In one article, John Dahms noted, "Many conservatives have turned liberal or neo-orthodox simply because they became convinced that some of the important doctrines of orthodoxy involve logical contradictions” (John v Dahms, "A Trinitarian Epistemology Defended: A Rejoinder To Norman Geisler," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol 22:2 (1979). Dahms included the Trinity as one of the examples where contradictions must be embraced.

(September 18, 2026 at 2:16 am)Jal Wrote:

(September 17, 2026 at 8:14 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: -and for 2k years (not really, christianity was dumb as a box of rocks until about the 1200's..but whatever) they never decided that panpsychism was the explanation..even though the idea predated christianity by 400 years or more.  The only times the subject matter came up were when it's component bits and advocates were declared heretical for cause.  

Now you're over here babbling about how panpsychism tells us that 1+1+1=1...but it doesn't, and we already know you reject absurd math in any other form.  You don't give a shit about panpsychism.  You don't believe a bit of it, you don't even understand what it is.  What you are, is willing to believe anything you think can rescue your trinity and your creationism from the problems you yourself appear to see....though I'm willing to bet they aren't even problems..just more of your invincibly witnessed hallucinations.  For example..that trinity bit?  It's a fucking miracle and that's the point.  God is a miracle man, that's how you know he's god.  Possibility maker, not possibility taker.  If god says 1+1+1=1...then it does.  That you find this hard to believe..in a god breathed world...is a you problem, not a god problem.

Horribly stupid post. You insinuate that I'm just hallucinating the notion of Christian insolubles?  You're lying. Or you just plain forgot that I've clearly identified several of them on this thread. Here's just one of them, to refresh your memory:
(1). God is  immutable.
(2). God became man. 
Huh? Please admit you see the Incarnation as a problem in Christology?
Ok, you won't take my word for it? Maybe you'll believe Norm Geisler?

Geisler frankly admitted that the finite human mind must embrace logical contradictions to accept the (traditional version of) the Incarnation, known as the Hypostatic Union of two natures human and divine. His "solution" was to assume that God's infinite mind somehow resolves these contradictions in ways beyond our finite understanding. Therefore Norm wrote:

“The fact that one cannot explain how the two natures unite in one person without contradiction has nothing to do with the obvious fact that what happens when they do [unite] is clearly not a contradiction” (Norman L. Geisler, “Avoid… Contradictions” (1 Timothy 6:20):  A Reply To John Dahms,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol 22:1 (1979), p. 62).

He's clearly stating that any human who postulates an explanation of the Incarnation must embrace contradiction. 

No such contradiction arises in my panpsychism - the Incarnation is a cinch to explain, it's literally a joke. I don't think it requires even a high school education.

Still not convinced? John Dahms agreed with Norm Geisler on the need to embrace contradictions.  Even more concerning is that Paull Tillich threw in the towel altogether - he abandoned the whole Incarnation as traditionally defined, and his alternative solution is just the Nestorian heresy reformulated. 

The conversation between John Dahms and Norm Geisler apparently began in 1978 when John Dahms spoke approvingly of Paul Tillich's disparagement of the  Hypostatic Union as a set of "inescapable contradictions and absurdities” (John v Dahms, "How Reliable Is Logic?," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol 21:4 (1978), p. 373).

That's what prompted Norm Geisler to respond that the finite human mind must embrace contradictions. 

In one article, John Dahms noted, "Many conservatives have turned liberal or neo-orthodox simply because they became convinced that some of the important doctrines of orthodoxy involve logical contradictions” (John v Dahms, "A Trinitarian Epistemology Defended: A Rejoinder To Norman Geisler," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol 22:2 (1979).   Dahms included the Trinity as one of the examples where contradictions must be embraced.

Still no evidence offered for panpsychism, an unevidenced idea (panpsychism) cannot rationally be use to support another unevidenced idea (deities), else we'd need no evidence for anything, again what then would one's criteria for disbelief be, if it is not a complete lack of supporting evidence? Irrational arguments that involve things like false dichotomy, begging the question, and argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies represent poor reasoning, you have used all of those and failed to even address any objections. 

At least you're spelling panpsychism correctly now, your posts are still painful to read though. The number of strident unevidenced claims makes my teeth itch, as does quoting the subjective opinions of religious apologists as if their assertions are any more a credible evidentiary standard than your own. I am still not convinced that you know what evidence is / means? But you dodged my request that asked for your criteria for disbelief with circular reasoning, your inward witness tells  you what is true, hilarious of course, but not as hilarious as you then accusing others of bias / closed mindedness, another phrase your posts suggest you don't fully understand. 

No need to respond, you never address what I've written anyway. I don't care whether the deity someone imagines has characteristics X Y or Z, if they can offer no remotely objective evidence it exists outside their own imagination, why would I?

(August 30, 2026 at 3:22 pm)Jal Wrote:

(August 30, 2026 at 2:58 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: People are atheists because they don’t believe in gods, not because they do believe they have answers to any given question.

I could say to you that the existence of gods is itself implausible and the idea that gods are the answer to any question is inconceivable….but having heard that, one presumes you still believe?

Not getting your point.  

There really aren't enough face palm emojis.

(August 30, 2026 at 4:48 pm)Jal Wrote: [quote pid='2256469' dateline='1788121751']
[quote pid='2256465' dateline='1788121121']
Consciousness is an emergent property of a brain.

[/quote]
So dead particles suddenly become self-aware?  And  you accuse ME of philo dribble? Really?
[/quote]

There is no evidence that human consciousness is ever observed in the absence of a functioning human brain. In every single case where a human brain dies the consciousness previously observed disappears, if the brain is damaged or impaired (anaesthetic for example) then consciousness is similarly impaired. 

All of that is objective evidence to support the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. 

All you have are false dichotomies, using straw man caricatures of evolution, or god of the gaps polemics that try to claim ignorance of how life emerged makes belief in a deity using magic a "plausible" belief. Since I ask for evidence this:

"So dead particles suddenly become self-aware?"

Is a straw man, no one but you has asserted this caricature of how brains evolved along with consciousness. 

Don't bother to respond, as you will not address the post honestly, this is for my edification from others who are interested in subjecting ideas to objective critical scrutiny, and so bend their beliefs to the facts, not closed minded theists who have already decided their religion is true, and so bend all facts to their belief.