(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.
