(April 25, 2015 at 4:15 am)Nestor Wrote:

(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.

I agree with you that Aristotle  largely accomplishes his goal of creating a secular ethic. It is a good starting point for further debate. I don't think that you can isolate the Ethics from its traditional context. The notion of 'The Good' is an important consideration. He identifies the good that all men desire as happiness but his next task (if i remember correctly) is to show how happiness is achieved based on the essence of what it means to be human, i. e. a rational animal. This brings into play many concepts I wager you would not be as inclined to accept.

(April 25, 2015 at 10:06 am)ChadWooters Wrote:

(April 25, 2015 at 4:15 am)Nestor Wrote: 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.

I agree with you that Aristotle  largely accomplishes his goal of creating a secular ethic. It is a good starting point for further debate. I don't think that you can isolate the Ethics from its traditional context. The notion of 'The Good' is an important consideration. He identifies the good that all men desire as happiness but his next task (if i remember correctly) is to show how happiness is achieved based on the essence of what it means to be human, i. e. a rational animal. This brings into play many concepts I wager you would not be as inclined to accept.

Sure, as brilliant as Aristotle was and as much as I admire the way his mind worked, he was writing in the latter half of the 4th-century B.C.E. so we should expect that our conceptions of the good life are refined to the extent that our knowledge of ourselves, as individuals and as a species, has expanded a great deal. That being said, Aristotle gets much of it correct in my view, and not merely his definitions---of happiness, friendship, and the like---but his approach of the means between contrary extremes, the most important of which for his ethics is a recognition of the latter; that objective morality, whatever it may be, requires two opposing ends, which are universally recognized by a rather urbane enunciation of actual and potential pleasures and pains. On the one hand, it's at the other end of the spectrum in consideration of something like Nietzsche's moral theory or post-modernism, yet these two latter frameworks basically assume a project along the lines Aristotle that established, that whether it's a comparison between two polities or two mutually exclusive ethical systems, reason demands that we can and must evaluate them on terms that are open to criticism or confirmation.

What perhaps struck me the most was how similar Aristotle's ethics were to a modern-day moral realist like Sam Harris and the ideas he advocates in the The Moral Landscape---which is more or less an update.

(April 23, 2015 at 7:41 pm)IATIA Wrote: Good is relative to the event, society, the individual, evolution, etc..

Is death good? Without death, the planet would be immersed in insects, dinosaurs, bacteria, etc.. Without death. what would anyone eat?

Is cutting one's self bad? Not if you ask a masochist. Is cutting someone else bad? Not if you ask a sadist.

Is god good? not if you ask an atheist. Is god evil? not if you ask a theist.

Good and bad or good and evil are subjective terms.

How could god be either?

The source of human knowledge is experience but the nature of conscious experience is unknown. Despite this fact, everything changes constantly, including the known object and the known Understanding. Understanding modifies the impressions coming from the senses. That makes the senses unreliable and the Understanding fallible. For this reason, it is impossible to verify that internal ideas really correspond to external objects, and any description of the physical world remains at most verisimilar, but is never utterly certain. Nobody can be certain that everybody else has the same impressions, or the same ideas on the same things. Moreover, the very notion of evidence is relative. People in different states (ill, drunk, sleeping, hungry, worried and so forth) perceive the world in different and irreconcilable ways.

We know the difference between good and evil solely because of God’s revelation, and not by the exercise of our own reason. God makes the rules and whatever he decrees is just, yet God himself is under no obligation: if he wished, he could punish the righteous and admit the wicked to paradise. God creates in his creature both the power and the choice; then he creates in us the actions, which correspond to these. Nevertheless, we are conscious of a difference between some actions, such as the rushing of the blood through our veins, which are involuntary, and others, such as standing up or sitting down, which are in accordance with our own will. We acquire them and are thus held responsible for them.

(April 23, 2015 at 9:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Harris: Good and Bad have no meaning without God, so God must be real.
Others: ***provide countless meaningful definitions of good and bad not dependent on God***
Harris: Yes, but Good and Bad have no meaning without God, so God.

“Others: ***provide countless meaningful definitions of good and bad not dependent on God***”

FALSE PREMISE

(April 24, 2015 at 8:50 am)Chas Wrote: The 'laws' are human-made descriptions of our experience with reality. The legal metaphor is not apt as there is no law-giver.

Humans are not making laws they are only altering the revealed and discovered laws of ethics and nature.
See my response to IATIA

(April 24, 2015 at 10:33 am)Stimbo Wrote: The dreadful misinterpretation of natural, physical laws into a legal sense requiring a lawgiver is as idiotic as saying that bolts tying together structural supports cannot be fastened by nuts, because I cannot eat them.

If the world is universally governed by causal or physical laws, then it is unclear how anyone could possibly have behaved otherwise than they in fact did, and so have been responsible for what they did.

You should enlighten how human beings are in important ways not subject to iron-clad causal determination or else show that causal determinism does not in fact deprive us of free will.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Harris Wrote: Do you have evidence on your own conscious experiences?

Downbeatplumb Wrote: Yes I do.

Please share your evidence with the world.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: So Religions do not have anything to say about sexual preferences?

I have already discussed a lot on that.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: or about how to treat others of different faiths or colours, (I'm looking at you Mormons) or about people with no faiths?

The Prophet Muhammad, during his Last Sermon in Minâ, said:

“O people! Your Lord is one Lord, and you all share the same father. There is no preference for Arabs over non-Arabs, nor for non-Arabs over Arabs. Neither is their preference for white people over black people, nor for black people over white people. Preference is only through righteousness.”

I told you before criticising you must study the truth.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: 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?

Stalin (atheist), Mao (Atheist), Hitler (believer in Eugenics), were also pointing to bits of their dogma and said that supports their ideologies. Do not you study the history?

News is the propaganda machine to hide crimes of secular and atheist world.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Harris Wrote: I cannot think of that because of the presence of Stalin, Mao, and other atheist dictators.

Downbeatplumb Wrote: 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.

By definition, Natural Selection is bound to terminate everything and everyone for the flourishment of the Fittest. Hitler and Stalin were following these rules submissively.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Harris Wrote: 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.

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

Thank you for exposing your inner being.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Harris Wrote: 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.

Downbeatplumb Wrote: Its all hot air about nothing.

You need to study philosophy with little more care.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Firstly this argument shows a distinct lack in understanding about the evolution of social animals and the psychology of groups.

Argumentum Ex Culo was the literal meaning of the argument.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: 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.

To judge God you should first discern who God is. Your narrow view of God is constrained to your selfish desires and wishful thinking.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Harris Wrote: Why humans are social animals?

Downbeatplumb Wrote:

Hello Yoda.
Live in groups we do.

I seems you did not get the idea behind my question. In other words, I am asking what human consciousness is that pushes man to live in groups and communities.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Harris Wrote: From where all these instincts came into human?

Downbeatplumb Wrote: Evo fucking lution

No need to remind me about who you are.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: 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.

That SOMETHING (if not God) is NOTHING without evidence. Alternate of God is only God because anything that has a power to create and sustain universe is God.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: 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.

You are arguing out of ignorance.

“Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?”
Al Anbiyaa' (21)
-Verse 30-

“With power did We construct the heaven. Verily, We are Able to extend the vastness of space thereof.”
Adz-Dzaariya (51)
-Verse 47-

Compare these verses with the phenomenon of Big Bang and expanding universe.

These verses had revealed in the community of ignorant Arabs in the middle of a desert about 1,500 years back.

If you are not satisfied with these verses, I can give you more.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: 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.

Unfortunately, there is no compelling theory on how life starts on earth. Axioms are not sufficient.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: 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.

Please read the main post “Proof of God.” If you think the post contain mistakes then you are welcome to differ by giving your counter argument.

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Harris Wrote: 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.

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

Please check my response to Stimbo

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: 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.

Blah!

(April 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: God is impossible and an invalid premiss.

Without God, how are you (conscious being) is possible?

By chance! By Accident! Or By luck!

(April 25, 2015 at 3:02 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: 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.

I have never ever received any scientifically authentic evidence from any of you guys for:

The origin of universe
The origin of life
Natural Selection and
Human conscious experiences

If you think, you have some evidence(s) then why not sharing them with the world.

(April 25, 2015 at 3:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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.

“IF” God exist then in your opinion which is the most accurate definition of God? What you think how God should look like.

(April 25, 2015 at 3:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: Harris Wrote: The law of Nature says:

“Everything that has a beginning has an end.”

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

In cases of valid inference, the causal analysis of varying factors will lead to discovery of a true cause, or a Law of Nature. Law of nature is immutable and has the same validity everywhere, as fire burns regardless of geographical location. Fire is not only the most dynamic but also the one that is most obviously self-regulating. A fire consumes all the material that is available to it, nothing more and nothing less. What it consumes it also changes. It lives, as it were, by destroying something else; or, viewed from another perspective, it destroys itself by creating something else.

You can apply same logic to almost all natural phenomenon and you will find those phenomenon obey fixed rules. These are the rules we have given the name Law of nature or Natural law.

It is obvious that anything that has a beginning has an end. No one requires metaphorical accentuation to this ubiquitous phenomenon.

You seem to be a naturalist yet you are not aware about Law of Nature, which is something surprising.

I recommend you the following books:

http://www.amazon.com/Treatise-Laws-Natu...+of+nature

http://www.amazon.com/Essays-Law-Nature-...+of+nature

http://www.amazon.com/Hobbes-Law-Nature-...+of+nature

(April 25, 2015 at 3:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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.

The source of human knowledge is experience but the nature of conscious experience is unknown. Despite this fact, everything changes constantly, including the known object and the known Understanding. Understanding modifies the impressions coming from the senses. That makes the senses unreliable and the Understanding fallible. For this reason, it is impossible to verify that internal ideas really correspond to external objects, and any description of the physical world remains at most verisimilar, but is never utterly certain. Nobody can be certain that everybody else has the same impressions or the same ideas on the same things. Moreover, the very notion of evidence is relative. People in different states (ill, drunk, sleeping, hungry, worried and so forth) perceive the world in different and irreconcilable ways.

We know the difference between good and evil solely because of God’s revelation, and not by the exercise of our own reason. God makes the rules and whatever he decrees is just, yet God himself is under no obligation: if he wished, he could punish the righteous and admit the wicked to paradise. God creates in his creature both the power and the choice; then he creates in us the actions, which correspond to these. Nevertheless, we are conscious of a difference between some actions, such as the rushing of the blood through our veins, which are involuntary, and others, such as standing up or sitting down, which are in accordance with our own will. We acquire them and are thus held responsible for them.

(April 25, 2015 at 3:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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?

Do you agree with Dawkins?

“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.

(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.

And some people like Stalin, Mao … and their supporters define good as killing and raping people in millions. These people have positive emotional reaction on their killings and raping. Would you like to adopt their definition of good?

(April 25, 2015 at 3:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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.

Tell me how many of your daughters were raped brutally. How many of your children were killed? Did someone kicked you out of your house and break it and made a pub, public house, or Disco bar while you are sitting in dust and begging for food and medicine for you and for your family?

If none of these things happened to you then why are you abusing God in place of giving thanks for the luxurious life He bestowed upon you?

If you want to see what is real calamity then only travel in Afghanistan and you will find not a single family who have not lost one or more members of their family (from child to old) because of the killings made by the socialist and secular forces.

(April 25, 2015 at 6:18 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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.

I am firmly holding my position that good and evil have no meanings in the Godless Universe.

Godless Universe operates based on absolute chance which correspond to a random choice of
YES or NO. Chance has no mechanism. The occurrence of chance events disproves determinism. Scientists and philosophers use the term “determinism” in several senses. By one criterion, a system is deterministic if the way it changes in time can be specified by a set of equations that make no reference to chance. That is, there are no probabilities built into the state description due to an averaging over many indistinguishable sub states.

Chance cannot produce order neither can produce continuous chain of progressive events. Chance could not produce a stable system. Besides, chance can be defined only relative to a natural order; so it is incoherent to treat it as the ultimate cosmic principle. It operates within a framework of laws, which allow us to calculate probabilities, to direct and control events within narrow boundaries, and even to progress, although not to utopia. Since chance presupposes already existing causes that come together to produce an unexpected happening, these causes thus would be prior to chance through the agent that allegedly joins them together. The only cause capable of uniting contrary elements into an ordered whole is their maker, the Creator who brought these elements into existence.

Furthermore, if nature is seen as non-rational, as without intelligence or purpose of its own, a special difficulty arises. One thing may produce another by design or by the unfolding or development of some process already inherent in the producing agent. But if nature is without intelligence or purpose, it cannot produce mind by design, nor can it produce it as the unfolding or development of something already there. So a mindless nature can produce mind only by chance. But if mind is only a chance product of nature, how can we trust our reasoning powers, how can we expect our minds to give us the truth about anything? Chance literally abolish the evidence that the person is after all trustworthy.

I have already argued that our virtues and vices are settled practices of deliberately choosing good and bad courses of action. In other words our choices are deliberate acts, whereas, chance nullify ability of determinism through which we make sense of our experiences of choice and deliberation. Everything, including bodily pleasure and pain, is subject to control by external forces and so irrelevant to Godless universe that is founded on random choices of YES and NO.

Man’s destiny is organized in a beneficent way, immutably determined by providence; every apparent evil is part of a larger good and is impenetrable to limited human logic and understanding.

(April 25, 2015 at 6:18 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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.

Can I take your above comment as NO, there is no scientific method, which can give the knowledge on the processes and mechanisms of Natural Selection and there is no scientific way to attain the scientific data on Natural Selection.

(April 25, 2015 at 6:18 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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.

Please tell why people need Nobel Prize and electric chair. In other words, why people need reward and punishment?

(April 25, 2015 at 6:18 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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.

Your observable facts have no roots neither scientifically nor philosophically. These facts are hanging in the middle of air without proper origins and evidences. If that is the structure of atheistic reasoning and rationality then atheism is at the root of the deepest dilemmas of modernity. The crisis of modernity is primarily a crisis of reason. What is thus required before all else is a critical diagnosis of modern reason.

As for your narratives, they are based on the fallacy of perception.

(April 25, 2015 at 1:39 pm)Nestor Wrote: Sure, as brilliant as Aristotle was and as much as I admire the way his mind worked, he was writing in the latter half of the 4th-century B.C.E. so we should expect that our conceptions of the good life are refined to the extent that our knowledge of ourselves, as individuals and as a species, has expanded a great deal. That being said, Aristotle gets much of it correct in my view, and not merely his definitions---of happiness, friendship, and the like---but his approach of the means between contrary extremes, the most important of which for his ethics is a recognition of the latter; that objective morality, whatever it may be, requires two opposing ends, which are universally recognized by a rather urbane enunciation of actual and potential pleasures and pains. On the one hand, it's at the other end of the spectrum in consideration of something like Nietzsche's moral theory or post-modernism, yet these two latter frameworks basically assume a project along the lines Aristotle that established, that whether it's a comparison between two polities or two mutually exclusive ethical systems, reason demands that we can and must evaluate them on terms that are open to criticism or confirmation.

What perhaps struck me the most was how similar Aristotle's ethics were to a modern-day moral realist like Sam Harris and the ideas he advocates in the The Moral Landscape---which is more or less an update.

For Aristotle, God is the Unmoved First Mover. He argues that an unmoved mover must be postulated for each of the distinct movements of the heavenly bodies. He reaffirmed his belief, in Metaphysics XII 10, that in some way the universe is unified by a single first unmoved mover. Since the first mover causes an infinite (that is, beginningless) motion, it must be infinite in power. Aristotle’s Physics VIII

According to the first-mover argument, whatever is moved (that is, caused to move) is moved by something else. It is impossible, however, that there should be an infinite series of moved and moving beings; hence there must be a first unmoved mover. Aquinas argues that a first mover would have to be both a first cause and a necessary being; he then goes on in the next parts (Ia, qq.3-11) of the Summa theologiae to argue that such a being must have the attributes of God.

(April 27, 2015 at 6:57 am)Harris Wrote:

(April 25, 2015 at 3:37 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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.

“IF” God exist then in your opinion which is the most accurate definition of God? What you think how God should look like.

"IF" Boobledyboo exists then in your opinion which is the most accurate definition of Boobledyboo?

Quote:We know the difference between good and evil solely because of God’s revelation, and not by the exercise of our own reason. God makes the rules and whatever he decrees is just, yet God himself is under no obligation: if he wished, he could punish the righteous and admit the wicked to paradise. God creates in his creature both the power and the choice; then he creates in us the actions, which correspond to these.

We know the difference between good and evil because we have positive and negative emotions about things. It has nothing to do with Sky Daddy, and your argumentum ad nauseam is getting a little boring.

If there's a God making and enforcing these rules, prove it. So far you have a lot of blah blah blah and no proof that any of it represents reality.

Quote:

(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.

And some people like Stalin, Mao … and their supporters define good as killing and raping people in millions. These people have positive emotional reaction on their killings and raping. Would you like to adopt their definition of good?

No. Because good and evil are subjective terms, and my subjective state is different than the state of those people, I will not share their definitions of good or evil, or of morality.

Quote:Tell me how many of your daughters were raped brutally. How many of your children were killed? Did someone kicked you out of your house and break it and made a pub, public house, or Disco bar while you are sitting in dust and begging for food and medicine for you and for your family?

If none of these things happened to you then why are you abusing God in place of giving thanks for the luxurious life He bestowed upon you?

If you want to see what is real calamity then only travel in Afghanistan and you will find not a single family who have not lost one or more members of their family (from child to old) because of the killings made by the socialist and secular forces.

Stop proselytizing.

Quote:I am firmly holding my position that good and evil have no meanings in the Godless Universe.

Then you need to learn how dictionaries work.

Quote:Man’s destiny is organized in a beneficent way, immutably determined by providence; every apparent evil is part of a larger good and is impenetrable to limited human logic and understanding.

Says who, and under what evidence? Under what definition? None that anyone who's outgrown fairy tales will recognize.

Quote:

Quote: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.

Please tell why people need Nobel Prize and electric chair. In other words, why people need reward and punishment?

Almost everything you say is based on a false assertion, or an unfounded one. You insist that the universe must have a beginning, but do not prove this to be so. You insist that people need reward and punishment, but have neither defined in what sense they "need" these things, or shown this to be so.

Quote:

(April 25, 2015 at 6:18 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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.

Your observable facts have no roots neither scientifically nor philosophically. These facts are hanging in the middle of air without proper origins and evidences.

Look, whatever you say about my facts or interpretation of them, there is no point at which you can demonstrate that Sky Daddy represents a better fit for those facts than theories based purely on inference from what is observed. It is observed that patterns persist, and that some persist patterns can interact with each other to create new patterns. It is not observed that Sky Daddy had anything to do with it.

(April 27, 2015 at 9:09 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(April 27, 2015 at 6:57 am)Harris Wrote: “IF” God exist then in your opinion which is the most accurate definition of God? What you think how God should look like.

"IF" Boobledyboo exists then in your opinion which is the most accurate definition of Boobledyboo?

Quote:We know the difference between good and evil solely because of God’s revelation, and not by the exercise of our own reason. God makes the rules and whatever he decrees is just, yet God himself is under no obligation: if he wished, he could punish the righteous and admit the wicked to paradise. God creates in his creature both the power and the choice; then he creates in us the actions, which correspond to these.

We know the difference between good and evil because we have positive and negative emotions about things.  It has nothing to do with Sky Daddy, and your argumentum ad nauseam is getting a little boring.

If there's a God making and enforcing these rules, prove it.  So far you have a lot of blah blah blah and no proof that any of it represents reality.

Quote:And some people like Stalin, Mao … and their supporters define good as killing and raping people in millions. These people have positive emotional reaction on their killings and raping. Would you like to adopt their definition of good?

No.  Because good and evil are subjective terms, and my subjective state is different than the state of those people, I will not share their definitions of good or evil, or of morality.

Quote:Tell me how many of your daughters were raped brutally. How many of your children were killed? Did someone kicked you out of your house and break it and made a pub, public house, or Disco bar while you are sitting in dust and begging for food and medicine for you and for your family?

If none of these things happened to you then why are you abusing God in place of giving thanks for the luxurious life He bestowed upon you?

If you want to see what is real calamity then only travel in Afghanistan and you will find not a single family who have not lost one or more members of their family (from child to old) because of the killings made by the socialist and secular forces.

Stop proselytizing.

Quote:I am firmly holding my position that good and evil have no meanings in the Godless Universe.

Then you need to learn how dictionaries work.

Quote:Man’s destiny is organized in a beneficent way, immutably determined by providence; every apparent evil is part of a larger good and is impenetrable to limited human logic and understanding.

Says who, and under what evidence?  Under what definition?  None that anyone who's outgrown fairy tales will recognize.

Quote:Please tell why people need Nobel Prize and electric chair. In other words, why people need reward and punishment?

Almost everything you say is based on a false assertion, or an unfounded one.  You insist that the universe must have a beginning, but do not prove this to be so.  You insist that people need reward and punishment, but have neither defined in what sense they "need" these things, or shown this to be so.

Quote:Your observable facts have no roots neither scientifically nor philosophically. These facts are hanging in the middle of air without proper origins and evidences.

Look, whatever you say about my facts or interpretation of them, there is no point at which you can demonstrate that Sky Daddy represents a better fit for those facts than theories based purely on inference from what is observed.  It is observed that patterns persist, and that some persist patterns can interact with each other to create new patterns.  It is not observed that Sky Daddy had anything to do with it.

To protect your position you have started picking bits and pieces out of my comments and quoting them out of context to distort their meanings unwisely.

You are conferring meaning and value on an otherwise godless and thus meaningless universe. You may think we human beings are the product of blind evolutionary forces and you may think that we are part of a godless universe but in doing so, you are totally undermining the basic principles, which run the universe.
 
I have argued:
 

• Godless universe can only be understood in terms of Chance, Luck and, Accident. If Universe is not the product of Chance, Luck, and Accident then anything or anyone who is able to create and sustain orderly and intelligible universe is God.
  

 

• Chance, luck, and accident are relative to already existing objects. These are incoherent notions in the absence of everything (i.e. in nothingness).
  

 

• If our minds are the product of chance then chance literally, eradicate the evidence that the person is after all trustworthy.
  

 

• Without God, our minds can only produce chaotic assumptions about the existence of the universe and about existence of our own conscious beings.
  

 
You wrote:
 
“No. Because good and evil are subjective terms, and my subjective state is different than the state of those people, I will not share their definitions of good or evil, or of morality.”
 
The question is can judgments about moral values justifiably lay claim to universal agreement merely on expressions of subjective preferences.
 
It is not possible for the human intellect alone to attain a proper knowledge of the true and the good. For human reason is not capable of comprehending things as they are in reality. There must therefore be something higher than the human intellect by means of which the good can be defined and the truth comprehended so as to leave no doubt. This can be done only through divine guidance. It is incumbent, then, on every person to know that among all laws there is one divine law, which gives this guidance. Only a divine law can take us beyond the objectives of merely utilitarian legislation, which seeks no more than social order and stability, and can open up to us the possibility of our genuine felicity.
 
In secular states, normally political superiors set the laws. These laws have the concepts of commands, duties and sanctions. They lay down some general rule for the guidance of human conduct.
 
If certain wrongdoers become moral agents, the view that they deserve to suffer for their conduct would be undermined. If such wrongdoers escape sufferings for their wrongs in this life, it would be fair if there were another world, a hell, where he would be made to suffer. It would be fair if Stalin (assuming that he was a moral agent) were made to suffer in hell.
 
If moral values are matters of subjective preference that means the base ideology is centred around a specific idea, be it race, class or nation. Such ideology necessarily involves terror a systematic, institutionalized, carefully planned and legally unrestrained use of physical and psychological violence. Good examples are Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pott, and many other similar personals.
 
For Islamic political philosophers, the divine law (sharia) revealed to Prophet Muhammad was a necessary and sufficient condition for bringing about human felicity as these laws are pure and not contaminated by the subjective preferences.
 
For a thinking person these points are sufficient for drawing a conclusion that a person trying to conceal obvious traces of the truth behind chaotic assumptions and empty commentaries that is only to emancipate his immediate self-interested desires.
 
“And cover not Truth with falsehood, nor conceal the Truth when ye know (what it is).”
Al Baqarah (2)
-Verse 42-
 
And say: "Truth has (now) arrived, and Falsehood perished: for Falsehood is (by its nature) bound to perish."
Al Israa' (17)
-Verse 81-
 
“Verily We have propounded for men, in this Quran every kind of Parable: But if thou bring to them any Sign, the Unbelievers are sure to say, "Ye do nothing but talk vanities."”
Ar Ruum (30)
-Verse 58-

(April 27, 2015 at 6:57 am)Harris Wrote: According to the first-mover argument, whatever is moved (that is, caused to move) is moved by something else. It is impossible, however, that there should be an infinite series of moved and moving beings; hence there must be a first unmoved mover. Aquinas argues that a first mover would have to be both a first cause and a necessary being; he then goes on in the next parts (Ia, qq.3-11) of the Summa theologiae to argue that such a being must have the attributes of God.

Your summary of Aquinas represents the common modern interpretation of his argument. First, movement, in classical philosophy means 'change'. Change is going from potential being to actual being. Secondly, the unmoved mover is the starting point for an essentially order sequence that happens all in a single moment. It is not meant to be the beginning of an accidentally ordered sequence that happens over time.

(May 2, 2015 at 8:56 am)Harris Wrote:

Quote:To protect your position you have started picking bits and pieces out of my comments and quoting them out of context to distort their meanings unwisely.

You are conferring meaning and value on an otherwise godless and thus meaningless universe. You may think we human beings are the product of blind evolutionary forces and you may think that we are part of a godless universe but in doing so, you are totally undermining the basic principles, which run the universe.

Quote:I have argued:
 

• Godless universe can only be understood in terms of Chance, Luck and, Accident. If Universe is not the product of Chance, Luck, and Accident then anything or anyone who is able to create and sustain orderly and intelligible universe is God.
  

 

Quote:

• Chance, luck, and accident are relative to already existing objects. These are incoherent notions in the absence of everything (i.e. in nothingness).

 

Quote:

• If our minds are the product of chance then chance literally, eradicate the evidence that the person is after all trustworthy.
  

 

Quote:

• Without God, our minds can only produce chaotic assumptions about the existence of the universe and about existence of our own conscious beings.
  

 

Quote:It is not possible for the human intellect alone to attain a proper knowledge of the true and the good. For human reason is not capable of comprehending things as they are in reality. There must therefore be something higher than the human intellect by means of which the good can be defined and the truth comprehended so as to leave no doubt. This can be done only through divine guidance. It is incumbent, then, on every person to know that among all laws there is one divine law, which gives this guidance. Only a divine law can take us beyond the objectives of merely utilitarian legislation, which seeks no more than social order and stability, and can open up to us the possibility of our genuine felicity.

 

Quote:In secular states, normally political superiors set the laws. These laws have the concepts of commands, duties and sanctions. They lay down some general rule for the guidance of human conduct.
 
If certain wrongdoers become moral agents, the view that they deserve to suffer for their conduct would be undermined. If such wrongdoers escape sufferings for their wrongs in this life, it would be fair if there were another world, a hell, where he would be made to suffer. It would be fair if Stalin (assuming that he was a moral agent) were made to suffer in hell.
 
If moral values are matters of subjective preference that means the base ideology is centred around a specific idea, be it race, class or nation. Such ideology necessarily involves terror a systematic, institutionalized, carefully planned and legally unrestrained use of physical and psychological violence. Good examples are Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pott, and many other similar personals.

Quote: 

Quote:For Islamic political philosophers, the divine law (sharia) revealed to Prophet Muhammad was a necessary and sufficient condition for bringing about human felicity as these laws are pure and not contaminated by the subjective preferences.
 

Quote:For a thinking person these points are sufficient for drawing a conclusion that a person trying to conceal obvious traces of the truth behind chaotic assumptions and empty commentaries that is only to emancipate his immediate self-interested desires.
 
“And cover not Truth with falsehood, nor conceal the Truth when ye know (what it is).”
Al Baqarah (2)
-Verse 42-
 
And say: "Truth has (now) arrived, and Falsehood perished: for Falsehood is (by its nature) bound to perish."
Al Israa' (17)
-Verse 81-
 
“Verily We have propounded for men, in this Quran every kind of Parable: But if thou bring to them any Sign, the Unbelievers are sure to say, "Ye do nothing but talk vanities."”
Ar Ruum (30)
-Verse 58-

So its true because it says its true.

What utter tosh.

(May 2, 2015 at 8:56 am)Harris Wrote: You are conferring meaning and value on an otherwise godless and thus meaningless universe.

Learn what "begging the question" and "argumentum an nauseam" are and stop doing them. We've given plenty of examples of meaning which are not dependent on fairy tales.

(May 2, 2015 at 8:56 am)Harris Wrote: It is not possible for the human intellect alone to attain a proper knowledge of the true and the good.

We don't need to discover good, only to define it. And so we have, each in our own way. We don't need the opinions of 1500 years-ago desert people to tell us what is right or wrong.

(May 2, 2015 at 8:56 am)Harris Wrote: There must therefore be something higher than the human intellect by means of which the good can be defined and the truth comprehended so as to leave no doubt.

No there mustn't. You keep saying this, but you haven't supported it.

(May 2, 2015 at 8:56 am)Harris Wrote: If such wrongdoers escape sufferings for their wrongs in this life, it would be fair if there were another world, a hell, where he would be made to suffer.

The desire for fairness should not be greater than the desire for honest observation and clear thought. There's no evidence for hell, and no reason to expect that such a thing exists.

(May 2, 2015 at 8:56 am)Harris Wrote: For Islamic political philosophers, the divine law (sharia) revealed to Prophet Muhammad was a necessary and sufficient condition for bringing about human felicity as these laws are pure and not contaminated by the subjective preferences.

Except the preference of men to control women's sexuality and to hide their dirty, dirty faces under towels, you mean? Except the punishment of clear thinking with death, you mean? Yeah, pretty fucking pure and divine.

(May 2, 2015 at 8:56 am)Harris Wrote: For a thinking person these points are sufficient for drawing a conclusion that a person trying to conceal obvious traces of the truth behind chaotic assumptions and empty commentaries that is only to emancipate his immediate self-interested desires.

Nope. For a thinking person, fairy tales are fairy tales, real knowledge is inferred from real observations, and never the twain shall meet.

When i was a Muslim i had the same question but now i don't have that question anymore,lets suppose that universe had a beginning and an end it didn't come out of nothing,God created it but then the question arises "WHO CREATED GOD??" if you think that universe cant come out of nothing then how did God come out nothing and nowhere,he must have a beginning and an end,if you think like that then we are both Atheists in a way

A God capable of creating this gigantic universe wouldn't be bothered about little things like the affairs of men,do you care about what's happening on a dust particle under your rug??? you don't then why would God care??

the God that all religions created is not a real God,he is a small God with childish behavior and humanly desires,in the Quran he repeatedly says that he doesn't care about anything or anyone then why does he demand prayers,why does he demand good deeds??

the Islamic hell is too big a punishment for any crime,why would a God put people in hell just for not believing in him?? in my opinion none of the theists or Muslims even understand what the word God means

and in the end eternity is the scariest thing one can imagine,now again people have no idea what eternity is and how scary it can be,all pleasures fade away in an eternal frame of time and for the people in heaven they will eventually get bored even if it takes billions of years but what then they still have to live forever,Heaven sounds like an orgy its all about sex with virgins,Death gives meaning to life without death life is meaningless

Indeed, when we ask who created God, we get special pleading. God needs no creator, contrary to all the arguments the theist has presented so far.

Really, they replaced the mystery of where the universe "came from" with where did the creator of the universe come from, and they still have no answer. But they pretend they do, it just "doesn't need one". Well bucko, in that case maybe the universe doesn't need one. Special pleading is not convincing.