(May 28, 2014 at 10:30 pm)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: You're saying spiritual "truths" are based on nothing but faith, while science is based on evidence.

That would be consistent with this study linking long-term religious belief in contradictory ideas to observable brain damage

http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...-of-brain/

all scientific discoveries have a spiritual expression.

what that inspires is up to the believer .

the fact that it inspires and can move people to take action is the substance of that faith. and i wouldn't lie to you.

(May 28, 2014 at 10:36 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote:

(May 28, 2014 at 10:30 pm)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: You're saying spiritual "truths" are based on nothing but faith, while science is based on evidence.

That would be consistent with this study linking long-term religious belief in contradictory ideas to observable brain damage

http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...-of-brain/

all scientific discoveries have a spiritual expression.

what that inspires is up to the believer .

the fact that it inspires and can move people to take action is the substance of that faith. and i wouldn't lie to you.

"all scientific discoveries have a spiritual expression."

No they don't

"what that inspires is up to the believer ."

You don't believe in science - you accept or reject it.

"the fact that it inspires and can move people to take action is the substance of that faith. "

No faith required in science. You either have evidence, something that can be tested, or you don't. One is science the other a claim.

"and i wouldn't lie to you"

You already have, multiple times.

Ahhhh. I see Artur has no interest in supporting his bullshit with evidence. I'm not surprised seeing as this is the typical christer MO.

Too bad. I was hoping (however faintly) to see something new from one of the faithers.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Atheism is a close ended belief system where everything is explained in terms of the natural order of things.

If everything it's already explained in terms of the natural order well then we wouldn't still be investigating…well everything.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: But the problem for the godless is how to explain rational thinking.

Is this one of those misleading threads to force and convince atheists to admit that soul exists?

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: But any thought which is not guided by what is “true” but only by mechanical , physical needs ,is not rational.

Define true please.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: And if one comes to his beliefs and thoughts not because he chose it, but because it was all that the total universe would allow, then the" nature is everything"is, basically , self-defeating.

Either this guy is incredibly smart or I misread something somewhere because for me that doesn't make any sense whosoever.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: No belief is rational if it can be fully explained in terms of non-rational causes.

I thought that we where talking about thinking and now it's about beliefs?

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: If all there is ,is materialism , then all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of non-rational causes.

Emm technically speaking all beliefs are already explained either aboarding a rational or emotional line of causes and events.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: so if materialism is true, then no belief is rational. If any belief is based that no belief is rationally derived , then it should be rejected ...

To me beliefs are the assumption or supposition of how something that we can't either predict nor explain works(there you go a rational explanation of a belief, at least from my point of view) but just because you may believe in something doesn't make it real. Also the rational thinking that you gave into creating that belief must take in count in order to rely your trust and hopes in it.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Therefore materialism ,atheism and nothing but nature should also be rejected ..

Do any of this guys had any debate victory since the forum started?

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: but there's more : any notion of good and evil, right and wrong, love and hate, etc., must also be treated as mythical.

Yeah kids forget the myths of pegasus and Perseus the real myth about emotions it's vast and more fantastic.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Life would then be essentially meaningless since its ultimate goal is mere survival, an unattainable goal in a world where death is guaranteed and final.

Sometimes I ask if some people aren't better without atheism because the idea of telling them they won't spend their eternal vacations on the penthouse it's like try to explain a spoiled self absorbed kid with violent tendencies that there is no Santa Claus. It's like in their brains atheism it's more radical and absurd than a person with a light ring on top of their heads.

"Atheism is a close ended belief system where everything is explained in terms of the natural order of things."

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: any notion of good and evil, right and wrong, love and hate, etc., must also be treated as mythical. nothing more than helpful ideas , but ideas with no existence ( ontology) of their own.

Your right,SO WE CAN TAKE WHATEVER WE WANT!

(May 29, 2014 at 3:56 am)LastPoet Wrote:

*pulls knife out* Give me your popcorn now!

(May 28, 2014 at 10:36 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: the fact that it inspires and can move people to take action is the substance of that faith. and i wouldn't lie to you.

Really? Because up to now you've been trying to sell the idea that the substance of faith is your pet god. This is pure dolphinetics - switching definitions at will to suit the occasion.

Incidentally, the classic hallmark of a liar is a person who says "I wouldn't lie to you". Of course you would, if it suits your game - you have an agenda to push.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Atheism is a close ended belief system where everything is explained in terms of the natural order of things.

Gee, you think you'd, like, ask us what it is we believe, rather than just telling us. That's just rude.

Quote:And so ,no god or gods , only nature .

Not necessarily. So far you've said two sentences, and both have been false. That's not a good start.

Quote:But in nature all things are linked together and everything has precedence which can be traced back to the big bang.
But the problem for the godless is how to explain rational thinking.

Hoo boy, I can't wait to hear this one.

Quote:Since thoughts are events, all of our thoughts should be fully explainable in mechanical terms, and not to a person’s free-will .. But any thought which is not guided by what is “true” but only by mechanical , physical needs ,is not rational.

Except that truth is what conforms to reality, reality exists, and hence the thoughts one has about it are rational.

Quote: And if one comes to his beliefs and thoughts not because he chose it, but because it was all that the total universe would allow, then the" nature is everything"is, basically , self-defeating.
No belief is rational if it can be fully explained in terms of non-rational causes.
If all there is ,is materialism , then all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of non-rational causes.

This makes literally no sense at all. Try speaking clearly next time?

Quote: so if materialism is true, then no belief is rational. If any belief is based that no belief is rationally derived , then it should be rejected ... Therefore materialism ,atheism and nothing but nature should also be rejected ..

This is one of those gotcha questions that are so frustrating, but I won't get into that since I don't need to: given that you haven't bothered supporting any of your initial premises, you've just asserted them, they can be safely rejected out of hand.

Do you have any evidence for the word salad you said above?

Quote:but there's more : any notion of good and evil, right and wrong, love and hate, etc., must also be treated as mythical. nothing more than helpful ideas , but ideas with no existence ( ontology) of their own. Life would then be essentially meaningless since its ultimate goal is mere survival, an unattainable goal in a world where death is guaranteed and final.

Gosh, never heard this one before.

Good and evil can be formulated according to natural lines, simply by determining what is and isn't good for sentient beings and working from there. These aren't, like, big, complex things, dude. And your religion doesn't get to take ownership over ideas by fiat, either.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Atheism is a close ended belief system where everything is explained in terms of the natural order of things.

Atheism is not necessarily a belief (it can just be, and often is, mere lack of belief in any God or gods). It is not a system, which is an entity composed of interlocking parts. As soon as you add something to 'doesn't believe in God' you're no longer talking about mere atheism.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: And so ,no god or gods , only nature.

As far as anyone can demonstrate, anyway.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: But in nature all things are linked together and everything has precedence which can be traced back to the big bang.
But the problem for the godless is how to explain rational thinking.

Yes, explaining rational thinking to people who think faith without evidence is a virtue is often a struggle.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Since thoughts are events, all of our thoughts should be fully explainable in mechanical terms, and not to a person’s free-will .. But any thought which is not guided by what is “true” but only by mechanical , physical needs ,is not rational.

That's an assertion, not an argument.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: And if one comes to his beliefs and thoughts not because he chose it, but because it was all that the total universe would allow, then the" nature is everything"is, basically , self-defeating.

That's an assertion, not an argument.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: No belief is rational if it can be fully explained in terms of non-rational causes.

That's not an argument, it's a double assertion: that no belief is rational if it can be fully explained, and that explainable causes are non-rational. Something fully explainable is rational by definition. Causes that are inexplicable, even hypothetically, could reasonably be called non-rational.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: If all there is ,is materialism , then all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of non-rational causes.

I dare you to find a materialist writer who would use 'non-rational' in that sentence.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: so if materialism is true, then no belief is rational.

That's your claim. Why should I take your word for it? You haven't supported it at all.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: If any belief is based that no belief is rationally derived , then it should be rejected ... Therefore materialism ,atheism and nothing but nature should also be rejected ..

If would hope that no one is stupid enough to accept your straw man caricature of materialism as true. If I reasoned so poorly about it, I would still be a theist, too.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: but there's more : any notion of good and evil, right and wrong, love and hate, etc., must also be treated as mythical. nothing more than helpful ideas , but ideas with no existence ( ontology) of their own.

What's wrong with helpful ideas? Ideas don't have existence on their own, they only exist when they're being thought of or considered.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Life would then be essentially meaningless

An assertion, not an argument.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: since its ultimate goal is mere survival, an unattainable goal in a world where death is guaranteed and final.

An assertion, not an argument. What you want now are arguments for thinking your (many) assertions are true.

---

(May 27, 2014 at 8:07 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: You can...Try painting..

Trying painting on the canvas of your mind..

What are your perceptions of the world around you.

What ideas ,what beliefs , what feelings are you experiencing?
none of this would be possible if you did not possess the capacity for consciousness..

Since no one disputed that they have the capacity for consciousness, and you have no reason to assume anyone would, this is a nonsequitur. I notice you do that a lot.

---

(May 27, 2014 at 8:20 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Yes, rational thinking can exist without believing in god ,but up to a point.

What point? How do you know that?

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Rational thinking cannot be totally explained in materialistic terms because it's evolution cannot be explained soley on a purely natural basis.

This is an assertion. How do you know this is true?

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Perception by evolutionary principles, must evolve from sentient being or beings.

Must it? How do you know this?

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Human consciousness must serve the evolutionary process in ways other than the mechanical process of instinct.

What does it mean 'to serve the evolutionary process'? Why must it?

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Good and evil come about as a result and thusly form the religion basis to human existence.

Religion is observably not the basis for human existence, clearly it's the other way around.

---

(May 27, 2014 at 8:34 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: pick up a brush and paint something.. do a self portrait.

and label it accordingly. make it accountable ..

You seem not to have understood the question.

---

(May 27, 2014 at 9:09 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote:

(May 27, 2014 at 8:27 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Despite the excessive length of the OP, the argument has merit but needs a nuanced approach to what rationality entails.

You mean" nuanced "as in the approach that atheism takes?

Chad's a Christian. It's unlikely that he means 'nuanced' as in the approach atheism takes. For one thing, he's been around long enough to understand that it doesn't make sense to say that atheism has an approach to nuance. For another, like I said, he's a Christian.

---

(May 27, 2014 at 9:26 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: sorry, how did you refute my argument.. ? I somehow missed it..

"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." --C.H.

---

(May 27, 2014 at 9:42 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Rational thinking lies outside the realm of evolutionary biology.
And that's true no matter how it develops.

And that is yet another bare assertion.

---

(May 27, 2014 at 9:57 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: I just ruined the keyboard by spilling my heineken .. you owe me a new one.

Why not ask me if i beat my dog ..

I think you're thinking of the question 'are you still beating your dog', for which a simple yes or no answer will not suffice. You can certainly answer yes or no to the question of whether you consider yourself misogynistic or chauvinistic...unless you consider yourself one but not the other.

---

(May 27, 2014 at 10:31 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote:

(May 27, 2014 at 10:20 pm)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: In that case, would you say the ability to make difficult choices is more adaptive or less adaptive than by instinct alone?

Or problem solving. For example, the ability to build tools adapted to perform a task that would be arduous or impossible otherwise?

instinct ,in a purely biological sense ,doesn't exist in humankind.

So how does a newborn human know how to suckle?

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Everyone is a blank slate at birth.

Then why do identical twins separated at birth tend to have similar interests and life experiences?

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Everyone is a product of their environment and education [upbringing]

And genetic tendencies.

---

(May 27, 2014 at 10:40 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: I don't run .. I still don't know what the point is..

The point is that your argument doesn't require any effort to refute because you never actually made one, you just posted a series of bare assertions, some of which were loosely connected to each other.

---

(May 28, 2014 at 6:16 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: All Im saying is for you to explain rational thought in purely materialistic terms .

If you can't ,then that opens the possibility that there exists a reality beyond the physical.

you're overthinking this and getting too worked up over it.

Do you know what an 'argument from ignorance' is? Here's a hint: someone else not knowing the answer to a question does not increase the probability that your answer is correct at all.

---

(May 28, 2014 at 7:21 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Evolved adaptation ,but evolved from what?

Our distant ancestors.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Beaks became noses , fins became arms , wings became legs ,but where and why and from what did human reasoning and self perception evolve ?

Um, it's noses became beaks and arms became wings. Do you really think you know enough about this subject to argue your position effectively? What do you think we evolved from? My impression is that we evolved from a common ancestor we share with chimps. Are you familiar with the reasoning ability and self-perception of chimps?

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: can you explain this. i don't think you can..

It's not even that hard. The great apes are among the few animals that demonstrate self-awareness. They can learn to recognize themselves in mirrors. Likely a heightened sense of self-awareness has selective value for a large animal that climbs trees a lot.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: And ,how can you say god doesn't exist for lack of empirical evidence.

How can you say God exists lacking such evidence? Most of us don't say God doesn't exist, we just say we don't believe God exists. I don't believe 'real' leprechauns exist, but I could be wrong and if I ran into one, I'd have to either start believing in leprechauns or stop believing in my sanity.

(May 27, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: Have you travelled from one end of the universe to the other and you've peeked behind every planet and photographed behind every star and you can now say with certainty :god doesn't exist because you saw none.
WOW! what an ego!

WOW! See what an ass assuming you know what other people think makes you?

I don't believe in any gods at the same level I don't believe in Yetis. If one ever verifiably turns up, I'll start believing, it would be silly for me to believe in advance of having the evidence...there's no end to the amount of silly crap I would have to believe if the standard was 'believe it until you can prove it doesn't exist'.

---

(May 28, 2014 at 7:36 pm)Artur Axmann Wrote: I'm not claiming anything. you must think there's a good chance that tooth fairies exist or you wouldn't ask me to advise you.

You can't disprove a negative . unless you have an oversized ego..

You can't disprove a universal negative...with the exception of something that's omnipresent. If an omnipresent being isn't in the first place you look, it doesn't exist at all.