(December 26, 2014 at 4:16 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I'm not indifferent to the universe. I'm very much interested in understanding it, and in particular, the part of it I and other humans occupy. And I have an emotional attachment to much in the universe, awe even.

The question is how you think God/ the universe relates to you, not you to it. Is it indifferent to your plight. That's the difference that faith brings.

I get that you have a negative understanding of Christianity. That seems a waste of brain processing cycles to me. You spend energy having to put something down rather than enriching your own experience.

(December 26, 2014 at 5:19 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: The question is how you think God/ the universe relates to you, not you to it. Is it indifferent to your plight. That's the difference that faith brings.

I get that you have a negative understanding of Christianity. That seems a waste of brain processing cycles to me. You spend energy having to put something down rather than enriching your own experience.

First, for me the universe doesn't relate to me at all. I'm nothing, we're all nothing. We only matter to ouselves and to our loved ones and friends.

And, though you obviously talked to Jenny, my answer to your second paragraph is the following. Why of all the possible deities, the christian god? All the deities ever existing have obvious human traits, human needs and human vices. So it stands to reason, that they have been created by human imagination. Also, there's no question about the earth being 4,5 billion years old, the universe about 13,5 billion years. Humans or their close ancestors populate this earth for about 4 million years. I'm not entirely sure, but that's approximately it. So we're nothing to what our planet has seen in it's long history. To imagine a caring deity for a species that virtually was born yesterday is simply human grandeur and arrogance.

All in all, it doesn't add up. There's neither evidence nor logic behind any god, unless you want to think about some neutral uncaring force.

(December 26, 2014 at 3:39 pm)fr0d0 Wrote:

(December 26, 2014 at 3:37 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Do you understand the difference between asserting the existence of information, and detailing what that information is?

Your problem is with understanding the information. You and I given the same information reach opposite conclusions. Mine in line with the authors and their descendants.

Obviously, however, only one of us can be correct, which leads to my second point...

Quote: Yours not. Personally I'd rather you focus on your own ideas rather than trying to understand from putting someone else's thoughts down.

Which is that I'm well aware that my own ideas aren't necessarily correct, and that if I'm to understand the universe I must first understand that other people are a part of the universe. Their perspectives are a means by which my own understanding can be expanded, either through getting new truthful ideas, or bad ones I can interrogate and figure out what's wrong with them. I only get to the putting down phase when ideas are presented either overly aggressively, or not at all, which is why I asked about the difference between the assertion of information, and the presentation of the same.

So far, I've only ever seen you do the former, which might potentially be perfectly good justification for you to believe, but not for me, which is kinda why I'm here on this forum.

(December 26, 2014 at 5:29 pm)abaris Wrote:

(December 26, 2014 at 5:19 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: The question is how you think God/ the universe relates to you, not you to it. Is it indifferent to your plight. That's the difference that faith brings.

I get that you have a negative understanding of Christianity. That seems a waste of brain processing cycles to me. You spend energy having to put something down rather than enriching your own experience.

First, for me the universe doesn't relate to me at all. I'm nothing, we're all nothing. We only matter to ouselves and to our loved ones and friends.

And, though you obviously talked to Jenny, my answer to your second paragraph is the following. Why of all the possible deities, the christian god? All the deities ever existing have obvious human traits, human needs and human vices. So it stands to reason, that they have been created by human imagination. Also, there's no question about the earth being 4,5 billion years old, the universe about 13,5 billion years. Humans or their close ancestors populate this earth for about 4 million years. I'm not entirely sure, but that's approximately it. So we're nothing to what our planet has seen in it's long history. To imagine a caring deity for a species that virtually was born yesterday is simply human grandeur and arrogance.

All in all, it doesn't add up. There's neither evidence nor logic behind any god, unless you want to think about some neutral uncaring force.

Why not every god? Why not your world view too? Why should I feel disconnected and therefore lose responsibility? Like it or not we are part of the universe. I have no delusions of grandeur. I don't think I or we are any more important to the whole than we are. Why should I?

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@ Esq

With respect, I think you delude yourself. You make a game of ridiculing easy targets. That's not a search for truth mate. That's a game of ego inflation.

(December 26, 2014 at 5:19 pm)fr0d0 Wrote:

(December 26, 2014 at 4:16 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I'm not indifferent to the universe. I'm very much interested in understanding it, and in particular, the part of it I and other humans occupy. And I have an emotional attachment to much in the universe, awe even.

The question is how you think God/ the universe relates to you, not you to it. Is it indifferent to your plight. That's the difference that faith brings.

I get that you have a negative understanding of Christianity. That seems a waste of brain processing cycles to me. You spend energy having to put something down rather than enriching your own experience.

Whether the universe is indifferent to me is a matter of fact. The facts suggest it is indifferent to my plight as it is not sentient. Faith to the contrary will changes the facts one whit.

I do have a negative understanding of some Christianity. There are a rather large number of versions. All of them are unsupported by evidence.

Evidence being not the subject.

Your world view, the one you're not talking about, determines how you understand the universe relating to you.

I'm talking up one side and down the other about my world view. That view looks to the facts about reality, not my wishes about reality. I think it's dangerous to mistake what we want to be, for what is.

So does mine (look to facts). Why I submit to organised religion is so that I don't introduce personal failings. How do you know your world view isn't selfish?

To be selfish is think of ones-self foremost without regard to the rights, comforts, or needs of others. Believing that the universe is not made for people and no god is looking out for people, might make one more aware that one is dependent on oneself and others, but it hardly leads to selfish behavior with regard to others. Atheists don't appear to be generally selfish, nor theists generally selfless.

I will debate that it can't be proven that believing in God is irrational.

There is proofs for God but they rely on properly basic premises. The problem isn't necessarily that these premises are not manifestly true, it's that Atheists tend to ask for proof for everything, but at the end, we are going to have properly basic beliefs.

For example, that the past existed and is not a made up illusion by a trickster creator. That we are continuous self (you are not a completely different person from the person you were a minute ago). That goodness exists. That the people we see are real individuals with real experience and a mind (that we aren't seeing illusions of people in a world where only our mind exists). There is a lot that are built upon properly basic beliefs we have.

There is good arguments for God if a person is really looking for the truth in a humble way my opinion. But if people are looking at proving there is no proof whenever meeting an argument, they will always use prove this prove that, even when things are obvious in themselves.

I can discuss for reasons that prove God. But if you want a knock out argument that none of the premises can be doubted, I don't think you'll find it.