(April 24, 2015 at 8:34 am)Mezmo! Wrote:

(April 21, 2015 at 1:07 pm)Surgenator Wrote: The fifth way is Aquinus trying to sneak intelligence into natural laws. The natural laws are a byproduct of symmetries. For example, translation invariance (this spot over here is no different than that spot over there) -> conservation of momentum. No intelligence is required for the conservation laws to exist.

The legal metaphor of natural laws is based on the idea of a law giver.

What the hell is a 'legal' metaphor? What would be an illegal metaphor?

Quote:It is appropriate to ask why such laws consistently hold true.

Because mindless objects do not have a favourite spot. This is what it means to have translation invariance.

Quote:The typical atheist answer is that they just do. The more curious and critical response by believers is that there is a cause for each observable fact. This is known as the principle of sufficient reason.

And the cause of it is the lack of discrimination by inanimate object (Noether's theorem). The cause believer's spout is an argument from ignorance.

(April 22, 2015 at 1:44 pm)Harris Wrote:

(April 20, 2015 at 11:48 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: You are. Atheism has nothing to say about prejudices. All atheism is is that we don't think that gods exist.
Now atheists tend to be less prejudiced than theists but that is because we tend to evaluate things using evidence.

Quote:Do you have evidence on your own conscious experiences?

Yes I do.

(April 20, 2015 at 11:48 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: But there is nothing to stop an atheist being prejudiced.
Religions however, demand it.  

Quote:Study Islam before making rash statements against religion.

So Religions do not have anything to say about sexual preferences? or about how to treat others of different faiths or colours, (I'm looking at you Mormons) or about people with no faiths?

You must admit a lot of religious people point to bits of the dogma in their religion and say that it supports prejudice, or don't you watch the news?

(April 20, 2015 at 12:11 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Perhaps, for humans -those somewhat intelligent and social animals inhabiting the planet Earth - "fittest" means those that can best cooperate with each other and survive as a group. You ever think of that?

Quote:I cannot think of that because of the presence of Stalin, Mao, and other atheist dictators.

Wow way to go off left field. these are issues that can be addressed and indeed have been ad nauseum but this was not a very valid place to air them.

(April 20, 2015 at 12:11 pm)pocaracas Wrote: One person alone is weak, no matter how strong he is compared with other humans... one person alone cannot maintain his sustenance, health, home, family,... gadgets, transportation, thirst for knowledge or recreation for very long.
One person alone is so much less than a community.

True.

(April 20, 2015 at 1:43 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I was attacking your ideas about God, which are illogical, and you used the greatness of Islam, especially its growth, as evidence supporting you God idea.

Quote:If in your mind God is Illogical then does that mean that all those who believe in God are Illogical people who are much greater in number than you (atheist) are.

Yes. Its true that there are a depressing amount of idiots out there.

Quote:Do not undermine the fact that we are interested in knowledge, fiction, necessity, causation, or sensation, so we find ourselves studying about what interests us. Large number of positive views about existence of God in general inform and support philosophical positions on the real objects of philosophical interest.

Its all hot air about nothing.

Quote:This argument is a perfect example of Argumentum Ex Culo

You: "If there were a good God, then He would not make a world that could have evil. There is evil in the world; therefore, a good God did not create it."

Me: "How do you define good without God."

You: "I just know what is good and what is not by feeling."

Firstly this argument shows a distinct lack in understanding about the evolution of social animals and the psychology of groups.
Secondly the "god" character in the various texts does not act in a moral way. There is much smiting and shaming and turning people into condiments etc.

(April 20, 2015 at 1:43 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Humans are a social animal,

Quote:Why humans are social animals?

Hello Yoda.
Live in groups we do.

(April 20, 2015 at 1:43 pm)bennyboy Wrote: and have instincts that allow us to work together. These include a sense of right and wrong, the feelings of familial love and brotherhood, and so on.

Quote:From where all these instincts came into human?

Evo fucking lution

(April 20, 2015 at 1:43 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Your religious texts didn't create moral feelings-- they reflect an ancient (and mostly uneducated) culture's response to those feelings.

Quote:You advocate the idea of no God blindly and by overruling all the logical facts in favour of God. For instance, I have argued that without God:

• Universe came out of nothing,
• Life appeared on earth by accident, and
• Intelligence happened by lucky mutation.

And these are shitty points that hold no water.

Universe came from nothing.

1:There probably was something before the current universe there are many ideas as to what these could be some of these even have supporting hints of evidence.
2: There is never any explanation of how god did it in the theistic world it's just " god did it" end of story. It is sufficient explanation only to ill educated morons who will swallow anything that means they still get to believe.

Life appeared on earth by accident

Life appeared on earth probably because of the interplay of chemicals over time. It is fairly likely that in certain circumstances life is inevitable.
I urge you to watch the Wonders of life by Brian Cox who explains how it would have happened in a way that is easy to understand. he  a physics professor so came at from that perspective. 

intelligence happened by lucky mutation

Once evolution started properly it was inevitable. If you look at the history of earth it was only relatively recently that evolution really got going. for most of the time it was cellular division that spread life and the rate of change was low. If some universal manipulator was in charge it would have been kicked off much sooner.

But I digress. We supply all the supporting science and you just say "but god did it" without even proving the existence of your favourite character.

Its kinda sad.

 

Quote:In this entire scenario what is the meaning of GOOD and what is the meaning of BAD. Nothingness, accident, and chance do not know GOOD and do not know BAD. Therefore, nonexistence of God confirms that good and bad have no meanings.

You do bang on don't you. Social creatures evolve to live socially.

Quote:Dawkins and many other renowned atheists follow this idea:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won't find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.
- Richard Dawkins, Out of Eden, page 133.

Here Dawkins is clearly saying there is no good and no evil. Well if that is the case then there is no point in charging God or religion or anything else with evil because he has abolished the concept. Think of the twin towers, if the people who flew the planes into the twin towers were just dancing to the music of their DNA then nobody would blame them for doing it. In fact, BLAME becomes a NON-CONCEPT. So the whole thing dissolved into a non-moral universe.

The people who crashed into the twin towers were dancing to the music of Islam. They were good little Muslims. At least they thought so.

(April 20, 2015 at 1:43 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Harris Wrote: I thought atheists are unprejudiced people. It seems I am mistaken.

Bennyboy Wrote: I seriously doubt you ever thought that.

Quote:If you can doubt in the existence of God without whom the existence of everything is an impossibility then who am I in comparison to God.

god is impossible and an invalid premiss.

(April 22, 2015 at 3:41 pm)Surgenator Wrote: Why would it matter when human beings discovered the relationship between symmetry and conservation? The direct-consequential relationship would still exist prior to humans discovering it. So Aquinas arguing that intelligence is required to explain these laws is him arguing from ignorance.

Also, Aquinas argues that physical laws are inherent to the reality itself. The admission that physical laws could be a byproduct of the human mind organization undermines Aquinas's argument further.

There is indeed a reality out there independent of our involvement and capable of being describe and understood objectively. However, there is more to reality than the objective reality. Reality has both an objective and a subjective side. Science precisely works on the objective side because it is objective to the core and can only give us the access to “have.” Scientific explanation is free from any particular point of view but consciousness is essentially subjective. Something, which is visible from a particular point of view.

Human beings approach the universe in terms of human concepts, in terms of concepts that we have developed through our biological and cultural histories. Is not it at least possible that some aspects of reality are not graspable in terms of human sized concepts?

Our concepts regarding the subjective side come from introspection from reflecting on our own phenomenal experience. Our concepts regarding the objective physical side come from our perception of the external world, independent of us and perhaps inferences based on those concepts of perceptions.

“Reason” is not merely the name for a human faculty, which contributes in a specific manner to our gaining knowledge; it is ultimately and eminently real. This is the ontological connotation. Reason is reality, and that alone is truly real which is reasonable.

Personalism, beginning with these facts, develops a worldview that begins with immediate, self-conscious experience and interprets not only the life of the individual but the world at large in personalistic terms. This involves the claim that the basic categories or fundamental concepts of our thought should be understood in terms applicable to persons and their experiences.

How could any physical phenomenon explain conscious experiences? What is the physical understanding of how subjective qualia even look like? Although physical and mental are somehow linked, there is an explanatory gap for the relationship of physical and mental. Science is incapable to fill that gap due to its objective nature.

Concept of God is the only mean to have subjective understanding of the relation between subjective and objective concepts.

I recommend you to study the work of Al-Ghazali in order to understand Aquinas as Aquinas was influence by the work of Al Ghazali.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali

(April 22, 2015 at 4:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I didn't say "God is Illogical." I said "your ideas about God. . . are illogical."

What are your logical ideas about God?

(April 22, 2015 at 4:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: And this is no more a matter of opinion than whether the world can logically be considered flat. Good god + dying babies = illogical.

The law of Nature says:
“Everything that has a beginning has an end.”

The questions about the evil of death are more puzzling for materialists and others who accept the notion that the dead cannot experience pains or other misfortunes. How can then death harm us? If death cannot harm us, how can it be reasonable for us to fear death and to say Death is an EVIL? In materialist scenario, EVIL of pain and suffering exists only with the existence of life.

Despite the fact that materialist has no reason to be afraid of death, fear of death is a universal feeling in everyone. Why then there is a fear of death in everyone? How can materialist explain that fear?

Without God, no one can classify Death as evil.

(April 22, 2015 at 4:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Harris Wrote: Please be refrain from dragging me into politics if you are only interested in “Proof of God.”

Bennyboy Wrote: Please stop using politics to support your idea of God.

Your statement intended to deceive by portraying a dishonest scenario of things what are not facts. I never initiated discussions on politics and whenever you or someone else started it, I always condemned it by expressing my hatred.

(April 22, 2015 at 4:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: If you're going to quote, don't paraphrase the thing you just quoted. I didn't say that I magically know what is good and not by feeling; I say that people's feelings about things DEFINE what is good to them. That's what meanings MEAN: people have a feeling or idea, and make a word to describe it. However, the supposed goodness of God-- suffering babies and religious wars-- do not meet any sane person's definition of goodness.
If you want to argue that babies who are born, get malaria, and die a week later are good, then it's pretty much /thread, because you're insane.

Can you blame Godless Universe for the tragic death of an infant? Is there anything or anyone you think responsible for all crazy actions in the Godless Universe including the death of an infant or rape of a child or mass killing of innocent people? Can you blame Natural Selection or Nature for that (so-called) evil? Who deserves blame and punishment in the Godless universe? In such a place, all things are equally indifferent, unmeasurable and undecidable, and that our perceptions told us neither truths nor falsehoods about the way things really are.

Alternatively, perhaps you are willing to compromise (like Dawkins) with an indifferent, immoral, unjust universe where blame can never be justified.

If you want to blame God then you should first have a sound belief in the existence of God. Without God, your blames have no values, as without God nothing is equal to Good or EVIL.

You are blaming God because God exist and yes, life and death of an infant and of everything in the universe is from God.

I would be in position to give you epistemological clarifications on all your inquiries about the evil once I will feel that you are confident in the existence of God.

If you doubt in the existence of Root then how comes you expect an explanation about the Fruit?

(April 22, 2015 at 4:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: bennyboy Wrote:
Humans are a social animal,

Harris Wrote:
Why humans are social animals?

Bennyboy Wrote:
Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution.

bennyboy Wrote:
and have instincts that allow us to work together. These include a sense of right and wrong, the feelings of familial love and brotherhood, and so on.

Harris Wrote:
From where all these instincts came into human?

Bennyboy Wrote:
Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution.

Procedures for attaining scientific knowledge are known as scientific methods. These methods include formulating theories and testing them against observation or experiment.

Scientific explanation consists in describing the processes through which observable phenomena, and whatever regularities obtain between them, are generated by the operation of underlying structures and mechanisms. Rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.

Natural Selection is the heart and soul of the Theory of “Evolution by Natural Selection.” Simply provide me a scientific method, which can give the knowledge on the processes and mechanisms of Natural Selection. Simply let me know through which conventional procedures in contemporary science I could attain the scientific data on Natural Selection.

If you fail to provide a proper scientific method then all that repetition of the word “Evolution” in your responses are nothing but ARGUMENTUM AD NAUSEAM.

“ALMOST ALL OF EVOLUTION happened way back in the past, WHICH MAKES IT HARD TO STUDY DETAILS. But we can use the “LENGTH OF BOOK” THOUGHT-EXPERIMENT to agree upon what it would mean to ask the question whether information content increases over evolution, IF ONLY WE HAD ANCESTRAL ANIMALS TO LOOK AT.

The answer in practice is COMPLICATED and CONTROVERSIAL, all bound up with a vigorous debate over whether evolution is, in general, progressive. I am one of those associated with a LIMITED FORM of yes answer.”

Richard Dawkins
http://www.skeptics.com.AU/publications/...challenge/

(April 22, 2015 at 4:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I've never said that philosophically speaking, God is not a possibility. I have good evidence, however, that your God idea does not represent reality. I can also say that if God is intrinsically good, your particular religion represents neither reality NOR God.

You are floating in between God and No God. However, with the word God you try to put “if” and “your” and that is a clear indication that you are inclined towards the idea of No God.

If in your opinion, God is a possibility (philosophically speaking) then why are you reluctant in giving your interpretations to that possibility?

If for the sake of argument, I agree with your opinion that my particular religion (Islam) does not represent neither reality nor God then why do not you correct that false perception of God and show the world what intrinsically good God is.

(April 22, 2015 at 4:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Fuck off with that. Go look in a dictionary, and you'll see the meanings of GOOD and BAD. None of them are dependent on a 1500 year-old mythology rooted in a 3000 year-old mythology.

Look!

Dawkins is saying:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won't find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.
Richard Dawkins, Out of Eden, page 133.
By this statement, Dawkins is trying to demonstrate that universe is without God.

On the other side, I am arguing that without God good and evil, moral and immoral, justice and injustice, etc. are meaningless words.

In conclusion, both Dawkins and I are agreed that without God Universe is indifferent and immoral.

To understand the particular idea you do not need to look in 1,500 and 3,000 years old histories and even to modern dictionaries.

Only thing you need is a little bit of Common Sense to realise that Chance, Accident, and Luck simply kill the concepts of good and evil, moral and immoral, justice and injustice, etc.

Instead of making us go all TL;DR, try a better approach?

Harris

All of your points have been answered often and with evidence but you have not moved one iota from your initial position.
No matter how much evidence is sent your way you will refuse to take it in.

(April 25, 2015 at 2:38 am)Harris Wrote:

(April 22, 2015 at 4:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I didn't say "God is Illogical." I said "your ideas about God. . . are illogical."

What are your logical ideas about God?

I'm not trying to prove any God idea, and do not have to produce ANY ideas about God, logical or otherwise. I can only say that your religious tradition has glaring logical inconsistencies, and therefore IF there is a God, under any definition, it is not under the definition of your religious tradition.

Quote:

(April 22, 2015 at 4:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: And this is no more a matter of opinion than whether the world can logically be considered flat. Good god + dying babies = illogical.

The law of Nature says:
“Everything that has a beginning has an end.”

Nature's not a person, and there's no such law. You're making stuff up.

Quote:The questions about the evil of death are more puzzling for materialists and others who accept the notion that the dead cannot experience pains or other misfortunes. How can then death harm us? If death cannot harm us, how can it be reasonable for us to fear death and to say Death is an EVIL? In materialist scenario, EVIL of pain and suffering exists only with the existence of life.

Despite the fact that materialist has no reason to be afraid of death, fear of death is a universal feeling in everyone. Why then there is a fear of death in everyone? How can materialist explain that fear?

Without God, no one can classify Death as evil.

Is there a reason you deliberately ignore what's already been said, and then reword your same arguments? I told you good/evil/bad are defined by our instinctive feelings about things. Death is evil because we naturally fear harm to the self. We naturally fear harm to the self because those who did not have such fear were (for the most part) weeded out by the process of evolution.

Quote:

(April 22, 2015 at 4:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: If you're going to quote, don't paraphrase the thing you just quoted. I didn't say that I magically know what is good and not by feeling; I say that people's feelings about things DEFINE what is good to them. That's what meanings MEAN: people have a feeling or idea, and make a word to describe it. However, the supposed goodness of God-- suffering babies and religious wars-- do not meet any sane person's definition of goodness.
If you want to argue that babies who are born, get malaria, and die a week later are good, then it's pretty much /thread, because you're insane.

Can you blame Godless Universe for the tragic death of an infant? Is there anything or anyone you think responsible for all crazy actions in the Godless Universe including the death of an infant or rape of a child or mass killing of innocent people? Can you blame Natural Selection or Nature for that (so-called) evil? Who deserves blame and punishment in the Godless universe? In such a place, all things are equally indifferent, unmeasurable and undecidable, and that our perceptions told us neither truths nor falsehoods about the way things really are.

You imply a false assumption-- that there is a necessity of, or value in, assigning blame to agents for shitty events. Some events, like murder, are clearly caused by someone. Others, like malaria, are caused either by bad luck, by lack of education (i.e. of how to prevent the disease), or of neglect (i.e. of people who could stop a disease but don't bother). Nowhere in all of this is your God idea required, or even of any utility in dealing with the evils discussed. If God were real, people would pray for mosquitoes to be destroyed by miracle. If God is not real, people will ask for more mosquito nets. Want to place bets on which method will reduce malaria?

Quote:If you want to blame God then you should first have a sound belief in the existence of God. Without God, your blames have no values, as without God nothing is equal to Good or EVIL.

I don't need to blame God. A God who can be blamed is not perfect, and therefore does not meet the definition of Godhood. Therefore the blame is itself proof that the God represented by your chosen mythology cannot be real.

As for the nothing being Good or EVIL, bullshit, and stop fucking saying it. Good and evil are definitions made by man to describe his feelings about things and events in his environment. Most people have a negative emotional reaction to baby rape, or to the idea of baby rape, and so baby rape is considered evil. No Sky Daddy is required.

Quote:If you doubt in the existence of Root then how comes you expect an explanation about the Fruit?

Because if you claim that a good tree exists, and nothing can be found but rotten fruit, then the tree is not what you say it is. I say it's the statistical interactions among forces and materials in the universe over time-- there's no reason why the fruit of this "tree" should be especially favorable to us. You say it's God-- in which case, the fruit should be favorable to us. Simple observation shows us that the world is not intrinsically favorable to peace, happiness, or the protection of innocents like children. Therefore the "tree" of life is not God, at least not God as represented by your definitions and ideas.

Note: from now on, I will answer only 3 or 4 quotes from each post, to avoid textwalls. If you want to answer more than 4 quotes, please break your posts into smaller pieces to avoid editing difficulties. I will try to do the same.

(April 25, 2015 at 3:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: As for the nothing being Good or EVIL, bullshit, and stop fucking saying it.  Good and evil are definitions made by man to describe his feelings about things and events in his environment.  Most people have a negative emotional reaction to baby rape, or to the idea of baby rape, and so baby rape is considered evil.  No Sky Daddy is required.
me.

As I have completed Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics a few days ago, I can say most assuredly that ethics---and one that is unfortunately in this case quite antiquated in its opinion of women and slaves---need not rely on some notion of divinity to be rational and objective, and furthermore, the results of a secular approach (which is more or less what Aristotle attempts, and in my view, largely accomplishes) are almost guaranteed to be more intuitively pleasing to the senses of a person with a capacity for moral reasoning than religious dogmas are.

(April 25, 2015 at 3:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: Bennyboy Wrote:
Humans are a social animal,

Harris Wrote:
Why humans are social animals?

Bennyboy Wrote:
Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution.

bennyboy Wrote:
and have instincts that allow us to work together. These include a sense of right and wrong, the feelings of familial love and brotherhood, and so on.

Harris Wrote:
From where all these instincts came into human?

Bennyboy Wrote:
Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution. Evolution.

Harris Wrote:
Procedures for attaining scientific knowledge are known as scientific methods. These methods include formulating theories and testing them against observation or experiment.

Scientific explanation consists in describing the processes through which observable phenomena, and whatever regularities obtain between them, are generated by the operation of underlying structures and mechanisms. Rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.

Natural Selection is the heart and soul of the Theory of “Evolution by Natural Selection.” Simply provide me a scientific method, which can give the knowledge on the processes and mechanisms of Natural Selection. Simply let me know through which conventional procedures in contemporary science I could attain the scientific data on Natural Selection.

If you fail to provide a proper scientific method then all that repetition of the word “Evolution” in your responses are nothing but ARGUMENTUM AD NAUSEAM.

“ALMOST ALL OF EVOLUTION happened way back in the past, WHICH MAKES IT HARD TO STUDY DETAILS. But we can use the “LENGTH OF BOOK” THOUGHT-EXPERIMENT to agree upon what it would mean to ask the question whether information content increases over evolution, IF ONLY WE HAD ANCESTRAL ANIMALS TO LOOK AT.

The answer in practice is COMPLICATED and CONTROVERSIAL, all bound up with a vigorous debate over whether evolution is, in general, progressive. I am one of those associated with a LIMITED FORM of yes answer.”

Richard Dawkins
http://www.skeptics.com.AU/publications/...challenge/

You have almost covered all my responses except one. I am repeating this one in hope to receive your talented and clever reply.

Your claims of "argumentum ad nauseam" are hypocritical, because you keep insisting there's no good or evil without God, despite beyond told 20 ways past Sunday why that is not the case, and you haven't effectively responded to those.

As for evolution and natural selection: disregarding their status as scientific hypothesis or theory, they have a great advantage over your religoius views: common sense. At its core, evolution is just a statement of very obvious fact: some events lead to properties which have an increased chance to persist, and some do not. By the simplest definitions of time and function, persistent systems will. . . persist.

I have also sometimes criticized evolution as being too based on narrative, and too little on evidence. For example, I don't like hearing that the universe's capacity for mind evolved "just because." However, it's pretty obvious from the WAY we behave that our behaviors are 1) geared toward survival or sexual fitness; 2) lagging behind our social development.

Let me ask a question: why do men lust after women, even though birth control and harsh laws will lead to non-reproduction and punishment? Your answer is that God is fucking with us: He gave us these desires to see if we could overcome them; and if we CAN, we will be rewarded with 72 virgins. My answer is that most of these behaviors represent vestigial behaviors-- they made sense thousands of years ago, and the slow process of weeding them out through sexual selection, natural selection, and artificial selection (like execution) has not caught up yet to the fast changes in society.

I believe my answer makes a lot more sense than your answer, and EVEN IF there were zero scientific evidence for evolution, my narrative would still make a lot more sense than yours. That's because my narrative is an extension of observable fact: some things persist, so it's probable that collections of persistent qualities will interact and move forward through time together. Your narrative is based on an entity who nobody can demonstrate having seen or communicated with, and whose definition is intrinsically contradictory.

What use is a definition of good and evil if some uninvolved third party is deciding which is which?

It may as well be called blue actions and yellow actions. It's arbitrary. To evaluate whether something is actually helpful or harmful requires us to assess it. If you refuse to assess what the judgements given are, you are entirely amoral, not caring what effect your actions have. You have surrendered your humanity.

Of course, this is not actually what happens; almost everyone does filter their religious definition of what is good and evil. At the very least, they refrain from doing things which are "good" because they know they are not really good. They just won't admit to it, so they can convince themselves there is an objective standard. Or rather: an arbitrary standard subjective to God.