Tooth Fairy Bullshit

[Thumpalumpacus]

Here's a little better analogy than the crap you just spewed...

Let's say some guys wife is getting boned on the side. He can rule out huge numbers of people his wife might be fucking without ever figuring out who it really is. After all, King Henry the 8th isn't available for any afternoon delight. Neither is Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan swinging by to poke her pussy. He can scratch Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and President Obama from the list since they've never had the opportunity to dance the horizontal mambo with her. In fact, he can rule out quite literally billions of people with absolute certainty (or something so close as to make no difference) without even trying...

It is possible to know what the answer isn't even if you don't know what the answer is.

Besides, you give me four of something and I can certainly tell you I don't have ten of them (or 20, or 100, or 2048, or 243,985,243) without ever figuring 2+2=4.

Cold logic wrapped in funny prose ... fuckin' priceless.

[Crossless2.0]

Seeing how time is relative it's totally doable.

You do realize that from our perspective it may take a photon years to reach it's destination, but from the point of view of a photon, it takes no time at all, it's instantaneous.

Aww, you mentioned relativity.  That's adorable.  Like watching a four-year old try to ride a bike.

Relativity is about how matter flows through time relative to its velocity.  It doesn't mean that talking about a point in time when time did not exist suddenly isn't nonsensical.

Seeing how every living thing has a spirit (including you), I don't see how you figure it is, especially when there are cases that suggest consciousness can exist without a functioning brain.

Ah, yes, this magical "spirit" that no one can find, no one can describe, no one knows where it's at, no one knows what it does, no scientific study has ever found the tiniest scrap of evidence for but religious people really, really insist is there.  They point at things we don't understand about the most complex organ in the human body and say, "See!  I promise you it's hiding in those ever-shrinking gaps!"

Tell you what, Huggy.  You let someone fillet your brain with a butcher knife then come and tell me how you can float around without a brain, and I promise you I will convert on the spot.

I've made the same challenge many, many times. For some reason, the people who are absolutely sure they have this indestructible, immaterial spirit/soul that is "them" and that somehow survives their physical death aren't eager to prove it by undergoing radically invasive brain surgery. Hell, I'm not even talking about killing them -- just altering their brain so they can demonstrate how unaffected their immaterial self is by material change. But no takers.

It's almost like they don't really believe their own bullshit.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Except you guys never lead with "I don't know"...Not knowing means you can't say one way or the other.

...in the case of naturalists answering the question, it's often implied that what they don't know is a plausible naturalistic explanation.

Not sure about your meaning given the phrasing. If you mean that "I don't know" is not a naturalistic answer, then I agree and it is accurate to say that naturalism supplies no answers to some philosophical questions; but rather, a promissory note that it cannot make good. Someday, maybe we'll have an answer, isn't an answer.

Not knowing doesn't preclude one from ruling out specific answers. Supernatural explanations are unbounded.  Unless you've got something better than magic as an explanation, you've got nothing.

I agree. At the same time, magic is only magic until it isn't. It is a common belief on AF that once the proper mechanism or agent of something is identified an explanation moves from supernatural to natural. For example, electricity displaces Thor. If the explanations were simply "God did it" then you would have a point. Which god? How would we know? Etc. Here that is not the case. If the rule of sufficient reason universally applies, i.e. there are no brute facts, then it is reasonable to ponder metaphysical questions such as how beings can both persist and endure change. Since experience confirms that there are degrees of actuality and potential, then Aquina's logical demonstration (1st Way) proves, without special pleading BTW, that there must be something with complete actuality, i.e. a prime mover, on the far end of that scale. If the premises are sound, the conclusion follows. Believers (of various stripes from Muslims to Buddhists) and naturalists could both acknowledge a prime mover without agreeing on what exactly that means. It is an entirely separate question.

[Asmodee]

Finally, that I don't know the cause for something IN NO WAY says that I cannot know what was NOT the cause.  Do you claim to not know the universe was not caused by sentient marshmallows?  Do you feel the need to evaluate this ludicrous claim?  Are you not thinking seriously about it, knowing full well you will never know for sure that sentient marshmallows didn't create the universe?  No.  You dismiss it immediately.  Did you do that because you DO know what caused the universe?  No.  You may think you know, but you have no proof and therefore it is a belief, not knowledge.  So YOU "don't know" what caused the universe, but you are reasonable in your assumption that you can rule out sentient marshmallows.  And if you did not immediately rule out sentient marshmallows then you're just stupid.  Why would something utterly stupid that I just made up be deserving of serious consideration instead of simple cursory dismissal?  It would not.  There are a million things you "know" didn't cause the universe, and not one of those things is something you know because you have any real knowledge of what did cause the universe.  You CAN both not know what IS the cause AND know what is not the cause.

*emphasis mine*

I love when you guys come up with silly analogies proving that you missed the point...

We are talking about a point in time where as Simon put it "no space at all, and no time, no particles, no fields, no laws of nature" existed. In order for a sentient marshmallow to exist, the former has to also exist, so I can safely rule out sentient marshmallow on that basis.

However God is a spirit. A spirit does not exist within the laws of nature, it is a supernatural being, and therefore not affected by natural law, particles, fields, or time...

Was I talking about that?  Did I quote that?  You were responding to my response to what he said, but that's not what he said that I was responding to.  So yeah, I missed your point because you had some context in your head that you never articulated in words so that I could figure out what you were talking about and, given what I had quoted, that context was not a given.

You sure have a strange notion about how imaginary things work.  A sentient marshmallow is, in fact, a "primary being" (that's a new term and it's MINE!) which requires no other existence to, itself, exist.  All regular marshmallows are made in its image.  All sentient marshmallows can go invisible at will, too, but they can't go visible at will.  Because they existed before time and space, being the cause for it all, most of them are now permanently invisible.  Unfortunately sentient marshmallows are not perfect beings.  That's why the universe is so fucked up, as evidenced by the fact that Pauly Shore once had a career.

As for that last statement, PROVE IT.  You BELIEVE God is a spirit which is real.  You BELIEVE a spirit does not exist within the laws of nature.  You BELIEVE it is not affected by natural laws, particles, fields, time.  However, so called "ghost hunters" disagree with you on much of that.  They believe that either a spirit IS affected by its environment or, at least, has a discernible effect on its environment.  They believe that large quartz deposits (crystals are shiny, thus, magic) effect the formation of certain spirit types.  They believe that a magnetic field feeds a spirit energy.  They believe spirits are actually made of energy and, in fact, many believe God is made of some form of energy because it just sounds really cool and mysterious, so pretend it's not stupid.

What you have are beliefs.  Stating those beliefs as if you know what you're talking about, that only makes you sound smart to stupid people.  And believing that imaginary beings have to follow some rules of the universe, that isn't the smartest thing anyone has ever said to me either.  God is an imaginary being who doesn't have to follow the rules of the universe, so what's different about sentient marshmallows?  You're applying the rules which govern REGULAR marshmallows.  Just as the rules which govern man don't effect God, the rules which govern regular marshmallows don't effect sentient marshmallows.

But you were right about one thing.  The analogy was, in fact, "silly".  THAT WAS THE POINT!  Your God is equally as silly.  Describe him.  "He's the bestest best that was ever bestest at anything!  He's the most good!  He's the most loving!  He's the most fair!  He's the strongest!  Nobody is even close to him!"  That's a child on the playground describing his super powers.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...the people who are absolutely sure they have this indestructible, immaterial spirit/soul that is "them" and that somehow survives their physical death aren't eager to prove it by undergoing radically invasive brain surgery. Hell, I'm not even talking about killing them -- just altering their brain so they can demonstrate how unaffected their immaterial self is by material change.

Personally, I would love to experience DMT. Oddly enough that particular radical material change in brain chemistry seems to convince people of a spiritual reality rather the reverse.

---

If the laws of nature did not exist, there was nothing for the supernatural to be beyond. By definition.

The laws of nature do exist. Why?

[Asmodee]

...the people who are absolutely sure they have this indestructible, immaterial spirit/soul that is "them" and that somehow survives their physical death aren't eager to prove it by undergoing radically invasive brain surgery. Hell, I'm not even talking about killing them -- just altering their brain so they can demonstrate how unaffected their immaterial self is by material change.

Personally, I would love to experience DMT. Oddly enough that particular radical material change in brain chemistry seems to convince people of a spiritual reality rather the reverse.

---

If the laws of nature did not exist, there was nothing for the supernatural to be beyond. By definition.

The laws of nature do exist. Why?

Because the Tooth Fairy deemed it so.

[Huggy Bear]

[Rhondazvous]

Those who compare God to the tooth fairy are douchebags. I’m sorry but that is truly how I feel. Without even an ounce of shame they ridicule some of the best and brightest thinkers who take up a problem serious and came to serious conclusion. Kierkegaard, Hegel, Kant, Buber, Kripke, Plantinga, Newton, Leibnitz, Putman, and Godel are/were theists. That list doesn’t even include theologians, like David Bentley Hart, or physicists, like, Francis Collins or Max Planck. All brilliant.

Maybe you don’t realize this but it is possible to be an atheist without acting like an infantile little snark. It’s astonishing to me how such ass-wipes will disrespect the legacies of truly great men and women like Dr. King, Bonhoeffer, and Catherine Booth (founder of the Salvation Army) by pretending that their religious convictions did nothing to motivate and inspire them to change the world.

How can anyone seriously believe that the motivating force to build the very first hospitals is in any way comparable to believing in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus? Here in Chicago we have Mount Siani, Rush Presbyterian, Illinois Masonic, Loyola, Mercy, Saints Mary and Elizabeth, Saint Anthony...that’s just a start. They came to be because of religious convictions for which you have no respect.

Thanks for giving us an example of the kind of language you think we should use. I'm humbled.

[Mister Agenda]

[Rhondazvous]