13 Questions

[Statler Waldorf]

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

The first cause had to be separate from the universe because nothing can bring itself into existence because it would have to exist and not-exist prior to its existence which violates the law of contradiction.

I would like to add to what the Reverend already stated about this 'infinate regression' based on an arguement you've made against me in regards to radioactive decay.
Which is to say that you've argued against the legitimacy of using radioactive decay based on 'we weren't there, therefore we couldn't possibly rely on estimates based on radioactive decay.

The arguement above is entirely invalid due to, well, evidence, but ignoring that for a moment, you have to realize just how hypocritical your argument for a 'first cause' is. You have zero evidence of any 'first cause' - particularly one started by an intelligent being and no human or even testable evidence would be around to validate your statements.

---

Thanks for the clarification on the first point. I disagree with you, but you explained your position well. I feel that the law of contradiction, law of identity, and etc would still exist even if all humans died out on earth, so I think they exist apart from humanity not because of it. Interesting topic though.

The laws of logic would exist independant of humans only if there were other beings that could use them. That is to say, they have a nuanced language the equal or better of humans.

As to your second point, maybe we are just missing each other on this one. When I say rational I mean having the ability to exercise reason, which is something animals and natural events do not possess. So my question is where did this ability come from? It seems that a person’s ability to discern truth is unrelated to survivability, so I do not believe Darwinian processes could explain how the rational mind arose. Any thoughts?

Storms and natural events do not have the ability to exercise reason. Animals other than humans can be another matter entirely, however.
I don't know what ability you're thinking of to answer your first question.
A person's ability to discern truth from fiction is intergal to survivability. In nature, creatures frequently use deception tactics to survive or hunt. For example, humans can get along very well in the wild if they can tell apart nearly identical berries where one is poisonous and the other is nutritious. Numerous animals have the ability to make similar discernments about their surroundings as well. Evolution has bred this constant arms race for millions of years and many of the creatures alive today are exceptionally talented in their ability to survive based on their ability to 'discern truth.'
So you might not believe it, but your view of nature is exceptionally skewed.

[Angrboda]

Actually I was not rude to you at all, I simply said I was disappointed because you always expect people to give reasons for what they believe but when you are pressed as to what you believe you dodge the issue or just flat out ignore the questions as you did in the PM. Don’t misrepresent the facts please.

I'll let the hellhounds of damnation decide.

I only ask additional questions when I think the answers I am getting are not well thought out, are arbitrary, or are not based on rationality. I had hoped that you'd be a different kind of atheist, sadly I guess I will have to continue waiting for an atheist to sign up for this forum who can actually back their beliefs up.

I don't know about you, but I consider that an unwarranted insult. And an 'angry face' is at odds with your claim that you were just 'disappointed'.

But by all means, back up your implied claim that I cannot back up my claims. You cannot, because there is no such evidence, and even a fool like you knows better than to attempt to prove a negative. So you were just blowing smoke, insulting, uncharitable.

The only person misrepresenting facts here is you.

Even if everyone hated me on here (which they don’t, I have a positive rep and have several theists I get along with fine on here) it would not bother me in the least. I have been ten times more civil to others on here as they have been to me. I have been called a “F**ker”, “Moron”, “Sh**head”, “A**hole”, told to die, told to suck a fart out of someone’s a**, and a closet homosexual just to name a few of my favorites to date. If you can point to any example where I have used such brutality, be my guest.

There are worse things than harsh language, in my book, and prophets with lying spirits in their mouths are among them. There is a passage in the Tao Te Ching which analogizes the Tao's relationship to reality as like a king to his subjects -- they are ruthless, treating the subjects as dummies. I see some of this in you, yet you carry no crown. I am unfairly biased to value goodness and truth above all else, but my gambit on you is that you gleefully bend the corners of truth if you feel it serves a higher purpose. That's just my bias. (And when I said 'nobody', I was using hyperbole; I should be clearer where there is controversy.)

The fact is though; you give all these atheists a pass and bash the theist just because he does not compromise on his positions.

More lies. The fact of the matter is that I will attack sloppy thinking, bad morals or untruth wherever they may live. It matter not to me whether it live in the breast of a theist or atheist. I'm more than happy to listen to Fr0d0 as I trust him, and believe he is dealing straight from the top of the deck; for whatever reason, I don't get that impression from you (your apparent willingness to lie and criticize based on ad hominem doesn't help; as to the rest, many of your behaviors are straight out of the traditional sophistry and casuistry practiced by some religious positions (YEC) -- impossible to concretely demonstrate, so I give a pass on this. However, if others are as knowledgeable about prior examples of the use of such argument as I am, it is disrespectful to parade before them old paint and claim it a war horse).

As to why you are an atheist now, I do not know. I know it is one of two things, you are either one of the sheep and just in a period of doubt, or you never were one of the sheep. As to which you are, that is not up to me.

You are so wrapped up in your silly, private fantasies, if a shaft of daylight were ever to penetrate it would scare you to death. I can only presume that by "one of the sheep" you mean a believer in Christ. I was one at one time, though since you've given it a pass, I'll tell you that I don't even know why I stopped believing, but I'm confident it had nothing to do with doubt. You are correct that doubt continues to propel my disbelief, doubt that Theism can bring reasonably believable evidence to the table. There are many things I don't believe for lack of evidence. The banal idiocy of both common and gifted defenses of belief don't encourage me any, either. Oddly enough, not only are you displaying hypocrisy in asserting intelligence to re-converted theists and don't consider yourself owing of the same burden with respect to deconversions, since my "story" is posted publicly on this board, a resourceful person might have looked for it and used it to prosecute their case; but that resourceful person is not you.

You cannot tell me how people as intelligent as Carl Wieland and Alister McGrath can denounce their atheism and decide to carry the cross can you?

I can't definitively claim to know without examining some evidence in the matter, but since you can't do the same in the other direction, who cares? In general terms, my belief is that people are not essentially rational creatures, and are moved more by the dialectics of emotion, and social needs. Moreover, while I confess no absolute claim to belief in coherence theories of truth, I'm sure that figures into it. As such, beliefs are developed and maintained by "discourses" whose logic and rhythm is not ultimately guided by truth or evidence; thus, persons likely become theists -- after age of majority -- for the same types of reasons that people become atheists. [See -- I do NOT simply give atheists a pass. Your assertion has been tried and found wanting.]

ETA: I also note that you failed to answer my challenge to answer why we care about the fate of fictional characters in the way that we do? Why we agonize when our hero's fate is balancing on a knife edge, why writers killing off a favorite character can sadden us deeply, or why we want Huck Finn to come out all right? I don't expect you'll have an answer to this, but I'd be delighted to hear your speculations on the matter -- presuming you consider the human experience worth explaining; I've peeked in the good book, and am ignorant of any answers written there -- which is odd, given that the book involves the same themes, the narratives of great characters that move us to sadness, anger, joy, and experiences of the sublime. Given what we now know about the complexity and difficulty in correctly interpreting texts, don't you consider it strange that God wouldn't have included instructions on how his book is to be read? A hermeneutic to preface Genesis, an interpretive stance "woven" in the text like language savvy essays on the written word, or even so much as a "this book was meant to be read in the original Hebrew" to prevent Latin theologians from working in error? Where are the footnotes, the index, the table of contents? My God would certainly be capable of producing a more perspicacious document than this -- why not your God?

[reverendjeremiah]

It's really sad you find such uncivil action something to be proud of. I find your beliefs equally as ridiculous as you find mind but notice I do not stoop to your level. I just find it disappointing that many of the atheists on here get on me for being confident in my position but give you a free pass for being completely rude and uncivil. Kind of goes to show that there really is no such thing as a fair minded individual. That being said, I am not responding to any of your posts from here on out, if you want to waste your time it is your time to waste. Good luck in all your endeavors and may God bless you.

It is? Then why am I smilling and laughing if it is so sad? I would actually give MORE respect to you if you could dish it out. But you cant. You sit there rubbing your eyes under your aligator tears trying to look persecuted for being joked out for saying idiotic shit. Do you actually think the majority of atheists on this board actually give a fuck about what you think about them? Oh stop your melancholy drivel.

I get a free pass because Im so hot and sexy.

You get ragged on because ..well... you are Waldorf.

'nuff said

I will have to continue waiting for an atheist to sign up for this forum who can actually back their beliefs up

And this is why we mock you. Atheists DISbelieve. The burdon of proof is on the one making the positive claim.

[Statler Waldorf]

[Anymouse]

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

I think you are getting my arguments confused here. I am making a logical argument here, not a scientific one. So the fact I was not there to observe the first cause is irrelevant to its logical validity. If I remember correctly I think my objections to your use of radiometric dating was focused on your uniformitarian principles and the fact you had no control to prove the method was valid. I don’t think any of that is relevant to the “first cause” logical argument for God. You say the evidence disproves my position, are you suggesting you have evidence that one, something can create itself, or two it is possible to have an infinite series of causes? I feel have plenty of empirical evidence that out of nothing nothing comes and a good logical argument against an infinite series of causes.

I did say that the evidence disproves the position that radiometric dating is invalid, but I was setting that aside for the purposes of pointing out a bit of hypocracy on your part.

My point being that even using your logical arguementation in which you say that there must be a 'first cause' contradicts your logical arguement of radiometric dating being invalid.

I disagree that evolution would preserve rationality in humans (even if it did preserve it, that doesn’t explain where the first rational mind came from). Say I have a set of berries, the red ones are poisonous and the blue ones are not. Even if I hold an irrational view that eating anything red will turn me into a frog and I thus do not eat the red berries I will survive and this irrational thought is thus preserved. I think there is plenty of empirical evidence suggesting that non-rational events cannot give rise to rational minds. A rational creator is a better explanation I think. Feel free to opine though.

Really? What if that irrational thought is based on very rational observations? Perhaps his information was wrong. Perhaps he saw someone die four hours earlier after eating the red berries and returned only to find a missing body (thanks to woodland creatures) and a frog that just happened to have decided that his shoe (or other garment) was a pleasant place to hide from predators? Perhaps this person is ignorant of nature enough to not understand what happened, so he rationalized it by attributing the berry to being magical.
Irrational or otherwise, the dangerous nature of the red berries was logically concluded to be dangerous in my more complete scenario, even if the exact conclusion wasn't entirely rational (thanks to lacking a proper education on the part of the observer).
People rationalize things they don't understand all the time. This is why christians attribute natural disasters to somehow mean that god is angry at americans for repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell or some other ridiculous thing.

A rational god is a better explaination for what? Better how? It's certainly an easy explaination, but hardly a rational one or even one that can actually explain how the human mind came to be.

[Angrboda]

[Anomalocaris]

(statler).......You're adept at debating, but you seem to lack any gift for nuance......

It's hard to be nuanced about verbal masterbation.

He is adept at none of the fruitful aspects of debating. He neither submits to mutural examination for the purposes of Finding, broadening, validating and reaffirming the more meritorious of the two arguments, nor attempt any persuasive advocacy or nonporous defense of his own position, nor even play effectively to any audience that's actually present. He ignores rebuttals. He waste time by rehash long discredited garbage without doing anything to reinvigorate the same old lines. He falls back on claims of authority without credentials. He attacks the qualification of his counterparts without addressing the arguments presented before him. He mimics poorly only some of the form of a debate while avoiding the all of the substance of a debate. He comes here apparently for the sole purpose of acting out the fantasy of being the fount of higher received wisdom, using this forum and it's participants as props in a piece of self-absorbed theatric played to himself as the main audience. But maybe that can not be avoided in one deluded enough to subscribe to the sickeningly Calvinist mixture of maximum moral conceit and maximum intellectual servility, the fantasy of being capriciously "elected" by a cruel despot to whom one nonetheless owns eternal and all encompassing graveling subservience.

He is jerking off, moaning the words of his "theology", at the expense of persons charitable enough to give him some time. Too bad before his end comes and the ultimate blackness descends irrevocably to extinguish his last delusional light, he can't be made to pay back all the valuable time he took away from the rest of us.

[downbeatplumb]