Here is why you should believe in God.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't think playing on the letter "I", or on the vast set of viewpoints of what actually makes me .. me, will be of any practical use. As you said, it wouldn't stop us from calling ourselves I, and we should continue doing that, unless there is a real incentive to rethink this issue. We move on with our lives, regardless of any particular theory of consciousness. If we can conceive of life and death, the latter literally meaning to cease to exist, then we clearly have a conception of our existence.


It is futile from a practical point of view. As far as I know, there was never any significant advancement regarding reductive or non reductive theories of consciousness, nor any decisive evidence clearly solving the mind body problem ... it's simply one word against another. That is, one guy who's prepared to believe in metaphysical stuff and the other guy who thinks that WYSIWYG.

Speaking of taking things seriously, I don't think the theological viewpoint of consciousness was taking seriously by "philosophers and researchers", there is a huge, authentic literature about the soul in Islam, and I would be interested in reading the Islamic concept of soul *criticized*. But again all we get as criticism is Muhammad did this, Muhammad didn't do that...

I guess we just disagree?  Understanding consciousness is of vast practical use.  We could all benefit from a better understanding of self, whatever that happens to be. 

A criticism of "soul" in islamic literature will be the same as criticism of "soul" in any other body of superstitions.  

1. I think I already addressed this gross misunderstanding in a previous dicussion. a god was always there, there was never any nothing he came out from. So no, there is no special pleading.

2. a 747 is much more than Aluminum. You are strawmaning my axiom. If we take all the components with their needed quantities as in a 747, they clearly have the potential as a whole to actually become a 747, and even more, provided we have really clever aliens way brighter than every Airbus engineer. And a 747 is only a label given by humans, it could be as useless as a single Carbon atom to some aliens. Human beings are made of  (organic chemistry+ the entire set of chemical/physical laws and convenient environment throughout aeons of time to make the evolutionary processes operate as "precisely" as they did). If you think about a little bit more carefully, what could be done with this set of conditions through thousands of centuries is only bounded by your imagination.

3. It actually depends on what you mean by infinity, a very tricky concept in its own right. Under certain definitions of the latter, infinite regress is clearly impossible. If we mean by infinite regress a successive causal chain of events, say ... => A => B => C => our universe => stuff => ... then clearly our universe shouldn't have been here since it's preceded by an infinite amount of events, and since the latter never ends, by definition, the universe never comes into being.

Do you have any other reasons?  Arguing over factual corrections to your axioms is pointless.  You're free to take them as axioms and insist that they're true regardless of whether or not they are.  People generally assess their axioms against brute facts - but I don't see the point between us.  If you took those thing to be true axioms..sure, you could probably force a god - just like you could force absolutely any claim whatsoever by any set of axioms in the same manner.  

You've freed yourself from a commitment to facts all the way down to an axiomatic level - the sky is the limit, lol!

Abraham actually believed that the Sun is God, it's clearly stated in the Qur'an. My point is that he was justified, temporarily, in doing so. If I think the Sun's visible properties are too impressive for it to be merely stuff, and I decide to worship it, then at least I have some reason to worship it. 

Similarly we're clearly impressed by the sunset, by the diversity of creature, by the beauty of nature, etc. An atheist jepordizes this overwhelming sense of wonder by appealing to what we know currently. The thing is, it doesn't help, as I said, that we know how things became beautiful and impressive. There are underlying conditions that made all the natural processes we know possible. We're dealing with specified complexity, a universe that could have been much, much worse.

Sure, and in the comics, people really never connect clark kent to superman.  It's a story.  A narrative vehicle for theology. 

Atheists also feel the sense of the numinous.  It's a human trait, not a trait of the faithful that's jeopardized by the status of one's belief in gods.  

-but so what?

So what if not believing in god reduced a persons sense of wonder?  That would be an argument to negative consequences.  Invalid.  

I'm sure that the universe could have been worse..however you define worse, but it could have been better as well.  You must believe this, if you believe in a hereafter.  This..is not the best world.

I am curious then. How do you think we can reach John? Knowing cooking recipes clearly doesn't help, nor is the mechanical process of chewing food, but we still know someone ate the food. We skipped through the minutious details and scientific processes of (cooking recipes) and (chewing food) and decided that swallowing a meal requires a conscious agent.. can't you do that for the whole universe? Is it that hard really ...?

You directly asserted that the only way that we can know john..analogizing john to god, is through his processes.  Well, if that's true, then we can know John - and if that's true, then not finding any god through process is a problem. 

Either way you'll have to figure out whether you doubt your faculties on your own.  You know yourself better than I do.  

How can you possibly know that "natural law requires a lawgiver" is *factually untrue*... ? You have no empirical data of universes casually popping out into being which are described by natural laws. And you still have to deal with the ex nihilo problem. It is logically forced that something was always there. And it doesn't take too much honesty to acknoweldge that a universe that could have been infinitely much worse and simplistic, should come from some intelligent agent.

And the real question you should be asking is : what would be carefully built according to you? If you don't think designing this universe warrants intelligent preparation.. what would actually warrant it? If you can't answer that then your objections go both ways, and then they wouldn't be very good objections.

Natural law is descriptive law - by definition.  I can know that natural law needs no lawgiver for the same reason that I know there are no married bachelors.  Natural law simply isn't referring to that kind of law.  It doesn't have the -defining- requirements that prescriptive law has, and therefore the existence of descriptive law doesn't imply that the requirements of prescriptive law exist.  This is a common equivocation on the boards, for the faithful.  Let's use a fun example.  Molly.  Molly is either a drug, or a girl.  

Molly(the girl) requires parents, therefore Molly(the drug) has parents.  

Is that the best you can do? All the greek literature(Aristotle's, Hippocrates', Galen's) on medicine back then presented menstrual blood as involved in embryonic development.. the Qur'an didn't do that. It's pretty impressive for an illiterate merchant to get this detail straight...even more impressive is to take the chance of mentioning that in a book supposed to guide humanity to better spiritual life ... why bother delving into human development in a religious book if you know you're lying?

I think I asked for clear mistakes and internal inconsistencies. The Qur'an claims that much more unlikely things will happen, like resurrection. It would just be your word against mine.

First of all, if by "magic book" you're referring to the Qur'an specifically, the existence of God is not a matter of dicussion throughout the whole book. Even Meccan pagans back then worshipped their idols because they believe them to be intermediaries to the highest being, nobody back then denied the highest being. As a result, the Qur'an never presents an argument intended to "prove" God. Speaking of the children of Adam - us - witnessing, it's an event that reportedly happened, clearly not an argument. Speaking of ad pop, the Qur'an is literally the last religious book about which you can make such an accusation, countless verses explcitly state that most people are wrong, misguided, dishonest.

And about the Qur'an stating that "people who believe in god have more stuff", I think you should try and actually find the verse that says that. Good luck.

So much for gladly leaving your faith, huh? You knew that wasn't true when you said it..everyone else did too. Getting shit wrong in the way you've been is explicable, particularly by your faith - but it's hard to explain why you'd say something so silly about such a menial detail as what you would do confronted with the inadequacies of your superstitions.

You need to make up your mind on key issues for this to be a profitable discussion. Issues like whether or not we can know anything. We must be able to know something, if we need good reasons. Hell, if we want to have a coherent conversation at all. You need to make up your mind on whether or not you need good reasons, even. If you decide that we do, you're going to have to offer those, instead of arguments as to why you think your bad reasons are good ones. For fucks sake..whatever you decide on those issues - take a little time to look them up before you post. That's the premise of the thread, is it not?

That there is some reason that you have, for why other people should believe in god? I'm not personally aware of any, and haven't been informed of any through your posts.