opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Discuss arguments for existence of God and faith in general. Any aspect of any orientation toward religion/spirituality, as long as it is based upon a positive open to other people attitude.

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Jim B.
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Re: opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Post by Jim B. » Thu Feb 27, 2014 3:03 pm

Metacrock wrote:
Jim B. wrote:
Metacrock wrote:
they would have to prove it point for point. they would also have to prove that

(1) my view of God is already given me by previous generations who didn't have this argument and

(2) that it wasn't already formed before I had the argument.
Under (1), do you mean they'd have to prove that your view is not already given you? What if they mean ex post facto and ad hoc logically speaking, not historically speaking?
I'm not really sure what you mean? Isn't it usual to look over your beliefs and understand what they answer and what they don't address? what's the problem with that?
I don't think either one of us are that sure what the other is saying :o Does that mean we're making progress? I thought you were claiming that your view cannot be ex post or ad hoc because it's already given to you, or at least certain elements of it are given to you, through a longstanding tradition. So the way I see it, your view might still be ex post and/or ad hoc logically, though not historically. One can argue for an ad hoc position that's been around for 2,000 yrs. It still has to be justified on its own merits.

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Re: opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Post by Metacrock » Thu Feb 27, 2014 4:47 pm

Jim B. wrote:
they would have to prove it point for point. they would also have to prove that

(1) my view of God is already given me by previous generations who didn't have this argument and

(2) that it wasn't already formed before I had the argument.
Under (1), do you mean they'd have to prove that your view is not already given you? What if they mean ex post facto and ad hoc logically speaking, not historically speaking?[/quote]

I'm not really sure what you mean? Isn't it usual to look over your beliefs and understand what they answer and what they don't address? what's the problem with that?[/quote]

I don't think either one of us are that sure what the other is saying :o Does that mean we're making progress? [/quote]

indubitably! :mrgreen:

I thought you were claiming that your view cannot be ex post or ad hoc because it's already given to you, or at least certain elements of it are given to you, through a longstanding tradition. So the way I see it, your view might still be ex post and/or ad hoc logically, though not historically. One can argue for an ad hoc position that's been around for 2,000 yrs. It still has to be justified on its own merits.
sure.
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Re: opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Post by LogicLad » Mon Mar 03, 2014 7:53 am

Meta

Please explain how god is simple is relation to his ability to create and maintain a whole universe? The assumption that god is complex comes from the fact that he is described that way in holy text, which you have to admit has to be the definitive source.
Even if I accept there is a god, I see no evidence that he is not subject to the physical rules of the universe, please give one well evidenced example of something happening outside the rules of physics.

Everything we know indicates that consciousness is an emergent property of a physical entity ( the brain), given we have no examples of a non physical consciousness you would be yet again smashing Occam’s reason to propose one.

The bible frequently refers to god as having a very human temperament, certainly when I refer to the big man in the sky aspect of god it is short hand for the jealous, judging, angry, self-righteous and petty attitudes that god is often shown as having, particularly in the old testament. I am sure if god wanted to appear as a bearded patriarch he could, and indeed at the time of the writing of the bible such an image would have been used to portray authority so the fact he is pictured as such you cannot entirely blame the atheists for, plenty of religious paintings depict god in just such a way.
However this is all really beside the point, just because the bible is making the same mistake that you are, naming two different things the same and then claiming they are the same doesn’t make you any more right.
my ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts, you are not like you can't understand me
I love this quote and ones like it, here you have a quote saying that you cannot understand god, yet that is exactly what you claim to trying to do. Either god is beyond understanding so stop trying, or he isn’t and lets continue the conversation, but if he is understandable then your book is wrong and the basis for much of your argumentation becomes questionable.

Having never heard of Balthasar I have no idea what his argument is, if you are familiar with it please give me a summary before deciding that I can’t respond to it.

There is no concept of faith, there is a common usage definition, belief in something with no evidence, that is the meaning that I have always used and which has been used in every argument I have ever read. So yes there are some underpinnings of science which require a degree of faith, that there are natural laws and that they are not arbitrarily being changed would be two, however we have yet to have these beliefs proved to be wrong, so we continue to proceed on the assumption they are true.
It is the utter lack of evidence for any deity that is the problem, and then whenever testable claims are made about the deity they are inevitably proved to be false. So while there is no evidence that there is no god I continue to reserve acceptance until there is at least some evidence for a god.
In both of the quotes these men are clearly recognising the limits of science and the need to make assumptions to get started, faith is a loaded word, but that’s because the religious have tried to make it more that it is, it is not a virtue, having faith does not make you a better person it simply means you believe in things with no evidence.
why would that be? It's still based upon a concept that's taken for granted as a norm of truth. That's no different than religious faith.
Please explain how a cultural belief in a higher power has anything to do with the arrow of causality. If you can’t the argument is a non sequitur and hence has no weight, it is simple a list of things that happen to be true.

As I said, Newton lived in a time when the divine was seen in everything, the fact he saw it in the laws of gravity does not make it true, simply makes it of its time. Knowledge moves forward and hence while the physical aspects of Newton’s work are still relevant the spiritual aspects have become less so.
As to the Hawkins thing you said
Like most atheists you are not well versed in literary devices so you take them all literally.
May I suggest you check your own ability to understand literary devices, when avowed atheists start talking about ‘seeing in to the mind of God’ they are probably waxing lyrical and trying to appeal to the widest audience. I would very much doubt you will find many references to god in their academic papers.

Morality is subjective, there can never be an objective moral standpoint as all morals are mutually agreed rules to enable creatures to live together in a social group. In humans these rules are bolstered by our empathy and sympathy so we can modify these rules as the situation demands. Even if there is a god, his morals are still subjective.
Subjective morality is not meaningless, as I said it allows us to live in large social groups. And from my point of view we are the result of a big accident and we do impose our own meaning on life, and yet I still manage to function in society and be considered a generally moral being.
God, if he exists and if he is cares (two massive ifs) is still subjective in his morality, he decides what moral, this doesn’t make him objective, it just makes him powerful enough to enforce his opinions on others. Given I don’t believe that might makes right why should I believe his morals are any better than mine?
You are still conflating your philosophical construction of a ground state of existence with a thinking entity that cares and notices when we do stuff he doesn’t approve off, you have presented no argument to support this link.
God is a sticking plaster than can be used to cover over bits of the universe we don’t understand and pretend that we now have knowledge.
Yes. that's a good thing
How can this be a good thing? Every time someone has declared ‘and therefor God did it’ some scientist has come along and said ‘well possibly but also this totally natural and understandable process also allows for that outcome, and all things being equal let’s not go with the theory that has to involve magic.’
of course it does. If God created the universe the it's a meaningful product of a mind that created it in wisdom for a purpose. With atheism it's just a big accident and has no meaning.
A number of your arguments seem to suffer from the fallacy of final consequences. You don’t like the idea of the universe having no greater meaning, therefore it must have been created with a meaning therefore god. That has no logical standing. I don’t argue there is no god because I don’t like the idea, but because I see no reason to believe there is a god. Premise then conclusion not the other way round.
Because all existing things were created for a purpose by an all knowing creator so they exist for a reason. Thus they are meaningful the are not merely accidents.
There is a major unstated premise here, given I don’t believe in any deity then this argument is meaningless, yes we are all happy accidents, we have no purpose beyond passing on our genes and anything else we choose for ourselves. Hence all the troubles of the world cannot be solved with a wave of the hand and the meaningless statement ‘ it’s all part of god’s plan’ and while people keep thinking like that we are not actually getting on with the work of trying to solve these problems.

You have presented a logical argument that is internally consistent, which I have disagreed with some of the premises for, what you have failed to do is present any evidence that supports that argument in the real world. With all logical arguments you have to do a reality check at some point and you have still to show any reason to believe that your argument is anything other than purely hypothetical. Reality doesn’t care about your fancy logic. It is improbable that an entity with the characteristics as described in the Bible exists, testable claims made about this entity have been proved to be false, reserving acceptance of this entity’s existence is the only reasonable position to take, the same as with fairies and the Loch Ness Monster.

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Re: opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Post by Metacrock » Mon Mar 03, 2014 10:26 am

LogicLad wrote:Meta

Please explain how god is simple is relation to his ability to create and maintain a whole universe?
as I said before the principle of evolution assumes that a complex world like earth can begin from an single organism or from a ball of gas. The question atheist pundits imply that complex requires more complex is opposed their own world view.

The assumption that god is complex comes from the fact that he is described that way in holy text, which you have to admit has to be the definitive source.
No he's not. The Bible never uses the term "complex" in relation to god. you are asserting that being beyond our understanding implies complexity and it does not necessarily.

another aspect of the issue that needs to be understood is that the consequences of complexity are wrong. Dawkins argues that the more complex something is the less probable it is, but that would not apply to God. Because is not contingent, he's not a product of nature, he's not soemthing that was caused so you can't attack probability in the same way.

Then I also argued that there's nothing to compare God to before he creates. There's no basis for saying something is complex if there's nothing to compare it to. If you have a has tag: #, that looks simple right. Compare it to this: | it's complex. compre it to !@# and it simple.

Even if I accept there is a god, I see no evidence that he is not subject to the physical rules of the universe, please give one well evidenced example of something happening outside the rules of physics.
how the hell could he be since he creates the rules? That's like saying the dream you have is dreaming you. He's eternal he has no beginning and no end how is he going to be subject to cause and effect?
Everything we know indicates that consciousness is an emergent property of a physical entity ( the brain), given we have no examples of a non physical consciousness you would be yet again smashing Occam’s reason to propose one.
(1) emergent properties are opposed to the kind of reductionism that brain/mind people argue. you are contradicting contradicting the idea that mind is reducible to brain and brain is reducible to chemistry because that's contradicted by emergence. Emergence is part of holism which is opposed to reductionism.

(2) moreover, emertentism doesn't' say that emergency is produced by brain chemistry or that they can be reduced it says that emergence is produced by complexity that moves up the scale of evolutionary progress to a point that it can't be reduced to a lower level.

(3) There's a ton of evidence supporting the idea that consciousness is not reducible to brain chemistry. There are five different things that studies show make it impossible. one is called the binding problem.

Some empirical data supports claim:
Irreducibility


There are, however, empirical data that imply that brain is not necessary to mind. One such datum is the humble amoeba. They swim, they find food they learn, they multiply, all without brains or brain cell connections. Various theories are proposed but none really answer the issue. Stuart Mameroff (anesthetist from University of Arizona) and Roger Penrose, Mathematician form Cambridge, raise the theory that small protein structures called microtubules found in cells throughout the body. The problem is they don’t cause any problem with consciousness when damaged. Nevertheless, the amoeba is a mystery in terms of how it works with no brain cells. That leads to the recognition of a larger issue the irreducealbity raises the question of consciousness as a basic property of nature. Like electromagnetism, there was a time when scientists tried to explain that in terms of other known phenomena, when they could not do so they concluded that it was a basic property and opened up a branch of science and the electromagnetic spectrum. David Chalmers and others have suggested the same solution for consciousness.


The late Sir John Eccles, a neuroscientist who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1963 for his work on brain cell connections (synapses) and was considered by many to be one of the greatest neuroscientists of the twentieth century, was perhaps the most distinguished scientist who argued in favor of such a separation between mind, consciousness and the brain. He argued that the unity of conscious experience was provided by the mind and not by the machinery of the brain. His view was that the mind itself played an active role in selecting and integrating brain cell activity and molded it into a unified whole. He considered it a mistake to think that the brain did everything and that conscious experiences were simply a reflection of brain activities, which he described as a common philosophical view:

'If that were so, our conscious selves would be no more than passive spectators of the performances carried out by the neuronal machinery of the brain. Our beliefs that we can really make decisions and that we have some control over our actions would be nothing but illusions.

Top Down Causation
confirming irreducibility


REMIND WHAT TOP DOWN IS

*problem of binding

There is a problem with understanding what it is that binds together the unity of a conscious experience. We have many different kinds of conscious faculty at work in the process of being conscious, symbolic thinking, literal thinking, sense of temporal, sense of reality, and physical perceptions. Somehow it all gets brought together into one coherent sense of perceptions. How are the individual aspects, such as color, form, the temporal, and united into a coherent whole experience? Unification of experience is not achieved anatomically. There is “no privileged places of structures in the brain where everything comes together…either for the visual system by itself or for sensory system as a whole ” McDougall took it as something that physicalilsm can’t explain. Dennett and Kinsbourne recognize the phenomena marking top down causation and acknowledge it, they spin it as undermining unity. The old approach was to assume there must be an anatomical center for binding. Without finding one the assumption was that it couldn’t be explained. Modern explanations of unity are based upon a functional approach.
The essential concept common to all of them is that oscillatory electrical activity in widely distributed neural populations can be rapidly and reversibly synchronized in the gamma band of frequencies (roughly 30-70 Hz) thereby providing a possible mechanism for binding.” (von der Malsburg 1995). A great deal of sophisticated experimental and theoretical work over the past 20 years demonstrates that mechanisms do exist in the nervous system and they work in relation to the normal perceptual synthesis. Indeed Searl’s doctrine of biological naturalism has now crystallized neurophysiologically in the form of a family of global workspace theories, all of which make the central claim that conscious experience occurs specifically and only with large scale patters of gamma band oscillatory activity linking widely separated areas of the brain.(44)
In other words if consciousness was reducible to brain chemistry there should be an anatomical center in the brain that works to produce the binding effect. Yet the evidence indicates that binding mechanisms must be understood as functions of various areas outside either the brain (nervous system) or in different parts of the brain which means it can’t be reduced to just a physical apparatus but is systemic and that is indicative of top down causation.

* Projective activity in perceptual process

Our brains act as a sort of “word generating virtual reality system.” (45) That is the brain is constantly projecting and updating a model of the perceptual environment and our relation to it. Top down cross modal sensory interactions have been recognized as the rule rather than the exception, in perceptions, as several studies indicate (A.K. Engle et al, 2001; Shimojo and Shams 2001).(46) Evidence indicates that the ultimate source of projective activity may originate outside the brain. A great deal of knowledge is put into action for use in understanding language and in writing. Some researchers have advanced the view that the fundamental form of projective activity is dreaming. (47)

*Semantic or intentional content; word meaning and other form of representation.

This has been dealt with traditionally through reductionism. Representations were said to work by resembling things they represent. This was disproved by Goodman and Heil (1981). (48) In cognitive psychology there is a rule of thumb that meanings are not to be conceived as intrinsic to words, they are defined by the functional role they play in a sentence. The major approach to the problem used now is connectionism, from dynamic systems theory. The meaning of a given response such as settling of a network into one of its attracters or firing of a volley of spikes by a neuron in the visual cortex is identified with the aspect in the environment that produces the response. This account can’t deal with abstract things or non existent things. There’s nothing in the environment to trigger it. Responses do not qualify as representations nor signs as symbols. “That something,” as Searl so effectively argued (in 1992) “is precisely what matters.”


*problem of Intentionality

Intentionality is the ability of representational forms to be about things, to reflect meaning and to be about events and states of affairs in the world.(50) The problem of intentionality has plagued both psychologists and philosophers. Intentionality is inherently three ways, involving the user, symbols, and things symbolized. Searl tells us that intentionality of langue is secondary and derives from the intrinsic intentionality of the mind. “Intentionality can’t be obtained from any kind of physical system including brains.” (51)

*The Humunculus Problem

The Homunculus was a medieval concept about human reproduction. The male was said to have in him little men just like him with all the basic stuff that makes him work that’s how new men get born. In this topic it’s the idea that we need in the mind another mind or brain like structure to make the mind work. The problem is it keeps requiring ever more little structures to make each one before it work; in endless regression of systems. Kelly and Kelly et al site Dennett’s attempt to solve the homunculus problem in the form of less and less smart homunculi until the bottom level corresponding to heard ware level end the recursion so it’s not infinite. (Dennett 1978) (52) Searl (1992) responds that there has to be something outside the bottom level that knows what lower level compositions mean. Cognitive models can’t function without a homunculus because they lack minds, as Kelly tells us. (53)
No homunculus problem, however, is posed by the structure of our conscious experience itself. The efforts of Dennett and others to claim that there is such a problem, and to use that to ridicule any residue of dualism, rely upon the deeply flawed metaphor of the Cartesian theater a place where mental contents get displayed and I pop in separately to view them. Descartes himself, James, Searl and others all have this right: conscious experience comes to us whole and undivided, with the qualitative feels, phenomenological content, unity, and subjective point of view all built in, intrinsic features. I and my experience cannot be separated in this way.(54)

end notes:

37 Science Research Foundation, “Science at the horizon of life,” independent charitable organization in UK 2007-2012. On-line resource, UFL: http://www.horizonresearch.org/main_page.php?cat_id=200 visisted 5/2/12
38 ibid
39 ibid
4o ibid
41 Edward F. Kelley and Emily Williams Kelley, et al, Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. Boulder, New York, Toronto: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Inc, 2007/2010, 37.
42 Ibid. 38, referring to W.McDougall, Proceedings of scientific physical research 25, 11-29. (1911/1961)..
43 ibid. 38 refers to Dennette and kinsbourne in Consciousness Explained. (op cit) 183-247
44 ibid, sites C.Von der Malsburg, “Binding In Models of Perception and Brain Function.” Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 5, 520-526. also sited Crick 94; Dehaene and Naccache, 2001; Edelmon and Tononi, 2000; Engle, Fries and Singer 2001; W.J. Freeman 2000, and others.
45 ibid
46 ibid, 40, he sites A.K. Engle et al, 2001; Shimojo and Shams 2001;
47 ibid, 41-42 sites Rodolfo Llina’s and Pare’ 1996 Llina’s and Ribary, 1994.
48 Ibid, 42 see Heil 1981
49 ibid, 43 see Searl 1992
50 ibid
51 ibid, see also studies, puccetti 1989; Dupuy 2000 discussion of issue form opposing points of view).
52 Ibid see Dennett 1978 and Searl 1992)
53 ibid
54 ibid, 44
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Re: opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Post by Metacrock » Mon Mar 03, 2014 11:28 am

Part 2 Answer to LL>
LL: The bible frequently refers to god as having a very human temperament, certainly when I refer to the big man in the sky aspect of god it is short hand for the jealous, judging, angry, self-righteous and petty attitudes that god is often shown as having, particularly in the old testament. I am sure if god wanted to appear as a bearded patriarch he could, and indeed at the time of the writing of the bible such an image would have been used to portray authority so the fact he is pictured as such you cannot entirely blame the atheists for, plenty of religious paintings depict god in just such a way.
However this is all really beside the point, just because the bible is making the same mistake that you are, naming two different things the same and then claiming they are the same doesn’t make you any more right.

you are just going to have to learn get off the fundie band wagon. Fundies dont' know anything, can the literalism. It's not a literal history book. It's literature, literature uses devices. It uses symbols and metaphors. Of cousre it uses personification. So attributing To God motivations we understand is just literary device that enables us to relate tot he character. The bridge between known and unknown is the metaphor. Metaphors use what we know to connect us to what we don't know. We can understand the motivation of love, and we know that's God's major motivation so we can understand this one thing about God, that he loves us. Attributing anger and indignation and so on is just the attribution of human feelings so we can relate.
my ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts, you are not like you can't understand me
that is not necessarily complexity, but transcendence.

I love this quote and ones like it, here you have a quote saying that you cannot understand god, yet that is exactly what you claim to trying to do. Either god is beyond understanding so stop trying, or he isn’t and lets continue the conversation, but if he is understandable then your book is wrong and the basis for much of your argumentation becomes questionable.
We can understand certain aspects but not the whole. If you can't understand what makes a engine work you can't you understand the engine. you can't reproduce one. You might understand the basic principle of internal combustion. We can understand things about God through experiencing God's presence but we still can't explain those things to others who have no experienced God's presence.
Having never heard of Balthasar I have no idea what his argument is, if you are familiar with it please give me a summary before deciding that I can’t respond to it.
Maybe I can link you to it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=LLhBuw ... ing&f=true
There is no concept of faith, there is a common usage definition, belief in something with no evidence, that is the meaning that I have always used and which has been used in every argument I have ever read.
of cousre there is a concept. IF a word has a meaning it has a concept. Moreover, since it is a formal teaching in theology it has a formal meaning in Christian parlance.

So yes there are some underpinnings of science which require a degree of faith, that there are natural laws and that they are not arbitrarily being changed would be two, however we have yet to have these beliefs proved to be wrong, so we continue to proceed on the assumption they are true.
(1) My argument was not that science is wrong.

(2) you are special pleading. If the acquisitions of faith is wrong for theology then it's wrong for science, If it works for science it could work in theology.

(3) science is not the only form of knowledge.


It is the utter lack of evidence for any deity that is the problem, and then whenever testable claims are made about the deity they are inevitably proved to be false. So while there is no evidence that there is no god I continue to reserve acceptance until there is at least some evidence for a god.
that's nonsense, the BS that there is a "lack of evidence" is just a mantra repeated so constantly by the brain washers that the brain washers believe it. It's obviously since we have many God arguments. each God argument is a pile of evidence. So there is clealearly evidence. Atheist are really really at answering God arguments. they never win those argumetns, they know that becuase they are so very angry about it. they've tried to change logic to invent their own logic to high jack possible worlds theory and all sorts of things to shut God arguments because they know they never win.




In both of the quotes these men are clearly recognising the limits of science and the need to make assumptions to get started, faith is a loaded word, but that’s because the religious have tried to make it more that it is, it is not a virtue, having faith does not make you a better person it simply means you believe in things with no evidence.
(1) obviously faith is a virtue in religion.

(2) atheists have changed the meaning of the term. "faith" in an atheist diatribe is not confidence and fitfulness it's being stupid. believing stuff for no reason. that's changing the term to have a connotation no religious person ever put on it.

(3) you are talking like atheists had the term fist then religious took it away form them. We had it first, it's our word. you guys stole it and changed its meaning and tried to make into a hated dirty word.
why would that be? It's still based upon a concept that's taken for granted as a norm of truth. That's no different than religious faith.
Please explain how a cultural belief in a higher power has anything to do with the arrow of causality. If you can’t the argument is a non sequitur and hence has no weight, it is simple a list of things that happen to be true.
(1) I don't mean to quibble but the Tillich stuff is not beilef in a higher power. It's beliefe in an aspect of being. that's a huge difference.

(2) physical laws are not just causes. They were actually what secular thinking left over from taking out God but leavening and assuming the work of God.
As I said, Newton lived in a time when the divine was seen in everything, the fact he saw it in the laws of gravity does not make it true, simply makes it of its time. Knowledge moves forward and hence while the physical aspects of Newton’s work are still relevant the spiritual aspects have become less so.
As to the Hawkins thing you said

that's totally missing the point about Newton. We don't have anything to replace Newtonian law with but other laws. If we try to replace it by seeing the universe as a bundle of behaviors and laws as mere descriptions we still have the problem that what is being described is law like. We don't see universe popping up in tea cups all the time. We find the universe operating in regular ways.

the issue was Newton understood law the product of a law giver. When we take out the law giver the law like regularity is unexplainable.
Like most atheists you are not well versed in literary devices so you take them all literally.
May I suggest you check your own ability to understand literary devices, when avowed atheists start talking about ‘seeing in to the mind of God’ they are probably waxing lyrical and trying to appeal to the widest audience. I would very much doubt you will find many references to god in their academic papers.
I know literary devices. It doesn't matter that kind of talk is metaphorical. I expect it to be. That's beside the point. There still the "like" dimension that has to be there for the metaphor to make sense.


Morality is subjective, there can never be an objective moral standpoint as all morals are mutually agreed rules to enable creatures to live together in a social group. In humans these rules are bolstered by our empathy and sympathy so we can modify these rules as the situation demands.
That's begging the question. you are assuming that all morality is merely pastiche and used social stop gap. There's a good reason to think that it's rooted in both culture and human nature. There is a universal element becuase cultures keep finding the same things wrong and right.

Even if there is a god, his morals are still subjective.
Our cultural understanding and personal individual need to intermittent will always mean there is a subjective element. But God is also the only truly objective judge. God is the final arbiter.

Subjective morality is not meaningless, as I said it allows us to live in large social groups. And from my point of view we are the result of a big accident and we do impose our own meaning on life, and yet I still manage to function in society and be considered a generally moral being.
I agree with that. It also breaks down at a certain point. Without grounding in a universal truth subjective morality is hopelessly doomed to blow up.

God, if he exists and if he is cares (two massive ifs) is still subjective in his morality, he decides what moral, this doesn’t make him objective, it just makes him powerful enough to enforce his opinions on others. Given I don’t believe that might makes right why should I believe his morals are any better than mine?
why would God be subjective? He's the creator so his meanings are written into the fabric of reality. He understands form all points of view. He's only judge who knows exactly why the defended committed the crime as well as the feelings of the victims. The only one who can know every fact from all perspectives.

God know more about who you are than you know yourself.

Morality is based upon the Character of God, which is love. God is the true and original source of love.
You are still conflating your philosophical construction of a ground state of existence with a thinking entity that cares and notices when we do stuff he doesn’t approve off, you have presented no argument to support this link.
I have much better reasons to think that than you have to doubt it. Your doubt is based entirely upon being down the garden path by peers, your personal feelings (whatever they are) about something of which you have no experience and don't understand. I'm not saying this to put you down but it's time atheists face the fact that reason you are an atheist is because you have not had the experience of God that religious people have. IF you had you would be religious. You don't know theology, you have not read theology, if you had you would these concepts better you wouldn't say certain things you are that are just the result of knowing or having read theology.

you can't disprove my reasons. You barely undersatnd a few of them and you can't answer the one's you know about.

God is a sticking plaster than can be used to cover over bits of the universe we don’t understand and pretend that we now have knowledge.

Yes. that's a good thing
so what? So is science, so is materialism.


How can this be a good thing? Every time someone has declared ‘and therefor God did it’ some scientist has come along and said ‘well possibly but also this totally natural and understandable process also allows for that outcome, and all things being equal let’s not go with the theory that has to involve magic.’
that's not based upon what any theologian has ever said.; It's absolute bull shit! it's bull shit! there are red neck morons in Alabama who argue that way but you make sure that they are the only Christians you know about. the real thinkers you have nothing to do with. The real thinkers don't say that but you don't know becuase you don't read them.



of course it does. If God created the universe the it's a meaningful product of a mind that created it in wisdom for a purpose. With atheism it's just a big accident and has no meaning.

A number of your arguments seem to suffer from the fallacy of final consequences. You don’t like the idea of the universe having no greater meaning, therefore it must have been created with a meaning therefore god. That has no logical standing. I don’t argue there is no god because I don’t like the idea, but because I see no reason to believe there is a god. Premise then conclusion not the other way round.
If that was my actual reason for belief in God you might have a point. you are have forgotten or never understood the concept of parsimony. Parsimony is an atheist idea. It's a scinece idea. it's something sciences use and atheist accept and even argue form. It's not an apologetic trick it's a real science idea. You could cynically understand parsimony as saying "this is easier than actually finding truth so we'll take this."

the kind of parsimony I'm using seeks the most elegant solution. It has to be simple it also has to be neat, that is it solves all the problem in a simple and logical way. That's what god does that's why you are assuming that this is the reason for belief in God. It's not my major reason it's just that the parsimonious aspect makes it seem that it's saying that.


Because all existing things were created for a purpose by an all knowing creator so they exist for a reason. Thus they are meaningful the are not merely accidents.
nothing illogical about that concept. It's a valid use of parsimony. It's just abductive, it's saying we should make this assumption if we find x,y,z, because that's what we should expect to find if God is real.

There is a major unstated premise here, given I don’t believe in any deity then this argument is meaningless, yes we are all happy accidents, we have no purpose beyond passing on our genes and anything else we choose for ourselves. Hence all the troubles of the world cannot be solved with a wave of the hand and the meaningless statement ‘ it’s all part of god’s plan’ and while people keep thinking like that we are not actually getting on with the work of trying to solve these problems.
That's improbable and incredulous to think all the good is happy accidents and that there could be so many. but we not talking about anything you can look at as an accident. Its' not accident that we can see the world as containing meaning and value if God is real. There's no objective visible meaning we can look at and say "O see here it is, it's there." It's an assumption we have to make in assuming God. Yet life will work much better making that assumption.

Like the assumption of Neutrinos becuase they were discovered. The theory is explained better if we assume they exist, so let's assuming. that's really what scinece said it worked. they were making that assumption about Neutrinos decades before they had any objective proof they existed. their only proof was that other particles behave in such a way as we could expect them to behave if neutrinos exist.

By that same token we can assume all these problems are resolved if there is a God, since these they are pressing problems and we will do much better if we assume they are solved by one equation we should assume that equation especially since other things are in place that would imply the reality of God. That's what makes the solution elegant it's not only simple but it's grounded in actual data: such as the universal nature of mystical experience, and the relation of mind to law like qualities of universe.


You have presented a logical argument that is internally consistent, which I have disagreed with some of the premises for, what you have failed to do is present any evidence that supports that argument in the real world. With all logical arguments you have to do a reality check at some point and you have still to show any reason to believe that your argument is anything other than purely hypothetical. Reality doesn’t care about your fancy logic. It is improbable that an entity with the characteristics as described in the Bible exists, testable claims made about this entity have been proved to be false, reserving acceptance of this entity’s existence is the only reasonable position to take, the same as with fairies and the Loch Ness Monster.

Obviously not true the arguments of Newton and Whitehead were based upon data and physical features of the universe. The more subjective problems such as meaning and morality are real problems. Those all constitute valid reason to assume there's a God.

Remember I don't have to actually prove God actually does exist only that belief is warranted.
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Re: opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Post by LogicLad » Wed Mar 05, 2014 5:48 am

Meta
as I said before the principle of evolution assumes that a complex world like earth can begin from an single organism or from a ball of gas. The question atheist pundits imply that complex requires more complex is opposed their own world view.
Complexity comes from his ability to create a universe, that is not a simple thing. I am happy that a world could evolve using the simple laws of physics, however to poof an entire functioning universe fully formed into existence requires a being that could visualise the whole thing in one go, please don’t tell me that this is a simple thing.
The Bible never uses the term "complex" in relation to god
This is just rank semantics, just because the bible doesn’t use the word complex does not mean that the being described is not so. He has emotions, can create a universe from scratch and observe every action and thought of every human on a planet, that is a complex being.
but that would not apply to God
Only because you have chosen to define god in such a way that it doesn’t you present no evidence that your description is accurate.
He's eternal he has no beginning and no end how is he going to be subject to cause and effect?
Please answer the question
please give one well evidenced example of something happening outside the rules of physics.
(1) emergent properties are opposed to the kind of reductionism that brain/mind people argue. you are contradicting contradicting the idea that mind is reducible to brain and brain is reducible to chemistry because that's contradicted by emergence. Emergence is part of holism which is opposed to reductionism.
Rubbish, an emergent property is just one that arises from a given system. The brain (just a bag of chemical/electrical reactions) gives us consciousness, because it is suitably complex. It is wholly reductionist; I am not suggesting that the mind is separate to the brain that would be duality. Do you believe that the mind can exist without the brain? And that physical changes to the brain do not affect the mind?
I am not a biologist so I am not qualified to comment on the paper you site, however a quick read shows two things, neither of the authors are biologists and the I find the argument about the amoeba laughable, so a cell can react to stimulus, this is not proof a consciousness unless you think that plants need to have brains too.
It's not a literal history book
I quite agree, so given that you don’t believe in it’s infallibility please explain how you know which bits are true and which bits are just made up to make a good story? Unless you can come up with a system that allows that accurate identifying of all the ‘good’ bits then what exactly are you basing your theology on?
We can understand certain aspects but not the whole
So how do you know your interpretation is correct, if you don’t understand the whole your understanding of the little bit may be incorrect, this is what we find in science, as our understanding deepens then older theories which were good enough prove to be wrong. In science this means progress in religion this means you may have been worshipping the wrong god, or worshiping the wrong way, both have very serious consequences.

Thanks for the link I will have a read and come back to you

Please explain how the common usage definition of faith is insufficient for the current discussion, if there are deeper aspects you think are relevant then you need to introduce them.
(1) My argument was not that science is wrong.

(2) you are special pleading. If the acquisitions of faith is wrong for theology then it's wrong for science, If it works for science it could work in theology.

(3) science is not the only form of knowledge.
1. Fair enough
2. No special pleading, I am not saying one is bad and the other is good, however the assumptions of science are tested and if found wanting they will have to change, the assumptions of religion not so much.
3. Please point to one advancement in human knowledge that did not come from experimentation and observation, just one that came from revelation.
that's nonsense, the BS that there is a "lack of evidence" is just a mantra repeated so constantly by the brain washers that the brain washers believe it. It's obviously since we have many God arguments. each God argument is a pile of evidence. So there is clealearly evidence.
No what you have is arguments, philosophical musings, not evidence. I can construct elegant theories and histories about the unicorn, however unless I can produce one theories is all I have. Present some evidence for the actual intervention of an actual deity in the actual universe. As I said in my previous post at some point you have to reality check your theories, just like a scientist has to, if you can’t present evidence then you at best have an interesting unproven theory and at worse you have garbage.
(1) obviously faith is a virtue in religion.
(2)atheists have changed the meaning of the term. "faith" in an atheist diatribe is not confidence and fitfulness it's being stupid. believing stuff for no reason. that's changing the term to have a connotation no religious person ever put on it.
(3) you are talking like atheists had the term fist then religious took it away form them. We had it first, it's our word. you guys stole it and changed its meaning and tried to make into a hated dirty word.
1. Fair enough, however I stand by my it doesn’t make you a better person
2. Some atheists may mean that, this atheist doesn’t so please stop making sweeping generalisations. I stand by the same definition I gave before, believing in things with no evidence.
3. Words are not owned they are used and have definitions, as I said above if you are using faith to have some special meaning outside the one I am using please explain it.
(1) I don't mean to quibble but the Tillich stuff is not beilef in a higher power. It's beliefe in an aspect of being. that's a huge difference.
Every time I try to make an argument based on this aspect of god you instantly pull out Tillich and say that’s not what he means, fair enough but at some point, for you to be a Christian, you must align this base state of reality with the biblical god. This is the being we have actual information about, this is the one I am talking about when I say a higher power.
2) physical laws are not just causes. They were actually what secular thinking left over from taking out God but leavening and assuming the work of God.
Not sure exactly what you are getting at here, do you mean that the physical laws are all the things science can’t explain so therefor god?

that's totally missing the point about Newton. We don't have anything to replace Newtonian law with but other laws. If we try to replace it by seeing the universe as a bundle of behaviors and laws as mere descriptions we still have the problem that what is being described is law like. We don't see universe popping up in tea cups all the time. We find the universe operating in regular ways.
Again not sure what the point you are raising here, there are incredibly few laws in science, I believe the only ones that exist are in pure maths, because a law is uncontrovertibly true, even things like gravity are only theories because they could be proved to be incorrect. Your example of things popping into existence would be evidence for the divine, given that our current understanding would not allow for such things to occur. I agree that the we find the universe operates in a regular way but that is not evidence of a deity it is evidence that there are fundamental laws of the universe that have to be that way.
you are assuming that all morality is merely pastiche and used social stop gap. There's a good reason to think that it's rooted in both culture and human nature. There is a universal element becuase cultures keep finding the same things wrong and right.
Morality is an evolved property of social interaction, so the fact that most cultures share some common morals is expected not surprising, in order to live in large groups we have to be able to be sure that we won’t be killed or robbed, or you would spend all your time defending your home rather than benefiting the larger society, hence most cultures have morals against killing and stealing, except in exceptional circumstances. The very fact that killing and stealing can occasionally be considered moral is evidence that morals preventing them are not universal truths but subjective.
Similar morals against killing and stealing can be seen in primate groups, so it’s not like humans have the monopoly.
Our cultural understanding and personal individual need to intermittent will always mean there is a subjective element. But God is also the only truly objective judge. God is the final arbiter.
If he is deciding on the rules then the rules are subjective not objective, if he is obliged to follow certain rules then he did not set them. Again the fact he is the final arbiter just means that he is powerful enough to enforce his rules, it speaks nothing of the morality of those rules, let’s face it god has done some pretty nasty things, things that we would consider immoral.
I agree with that. It also breaks down at a certain point. Without grounding in a universal truth subjective morality is hopelessly doomed to blow up.
No at all, please tell me one universally true moral. One that under no circumstances can be questioned. The whole point is that as our understanding of the universe improves our ideas of right and wrong change. This means that things we used to find acceptable are nor immoral and vice versa. Indeed if there are all these universal morals, which a built into the fabric of the universe then why is there so much disagreement about what they are? Even amongst members of the same religion.
why would God be subjective
If god is capable of independent thought, even he is aware of every piece of knowledge in the universe, then his opinion on any given topic is subjective, given a new piece of evidence his opinion could change.
I hate to get into this but you really need to justify the God is love statement, given he has ordered mass killings, the murder of children, and the destruction of the whole world.
I have much better reasons to think that than you have to doubt it. Your doubt is based entirely upon being down the garden path by peers, your personal feelings (whatever they are) about something of which you have no experience and don't understand. I'm not saying this to put you down but it's time atheists face the fact that reason you are an atheist is because you have not had the experience of God that religious people have. IF you had you would be religious. You don't know theology, you have not read theology, if you had you would these concepts better you wouldn't say certain things you are that are just the result of knowing or having read theology.

you can't disprove my reasons. You barely undersatnd a few of them and you can't answer the one's you know about.
You are right that I have not experienced god, but I put it to you how do you know that experience is real at not just imagined. Given that every different religion has people who will swear that they have experienced the one true god, which ones of you are wrong? And how can you tell?
You are correct that I don’t read theology, but given my atheistic stand point, it is a meaningless as dragonology, or leprachology. I need to be convinced there is something to it before I invest time and energy in understanding it. The Tillich stuff about ground state of existence is interesting, but not because he is trying to prove a god, simple as a philosophical exercise.
If your argument amounts to, if you can’t prove me wrong then I am right, do you believe in Bertrand’s teapot? You can’t prove it’s not there so do you accept that it must be?
so what? So is science, so is materialism
To use a much underused word, balderdash, science is all about questioning and exploring, expanding our knowledge. God just the priest saying ‘don’t look at the man behind the curtain’ don’t ask, just accept. Don’t be curious just do as we say. Religion does not advance knowledge it stagnates it.
that's not based upon what any theologian has ever said.; It's absolute bull shit! it's bull shit! there are red neck morons in Alabama who argue that way but you make sure that they are the only Christians you know about. the real thinkers you have nothing to do with. The real thinkers don't say that but you don't know becuase you don't read them.
Ancient theologians said exactly that, and every time they had declared that we had reached the end of man’s knowledge and now there is only the divine, some scientist came along and proved them wrong. More recent theologians have got wise to this and the smarter ones no longer make testable claims about the universe, much like you are avoiding making a single testable claim. By stopping making testable claims they stopped the scientists proving them wrong, but they have in effect admitted defeat, the further that god is removed from the physical the less relevant he becomes. You have to admit that the vast majority of people do not view God the way you do, and given you have no evidence to support your version of God what makes you right and them wrong? Like I have said many times before, if you can’t reality check your arguments then they have little actual value, outside of a purely mental exercise. Like any thought experiment they may be instructive but they don’t prove anything. The burden of proof does not lie with me, you are making the extraordinary claim, you present the evidence.
If that was my actual reason for belief in God you might have a point. you are have forgotten or never understood the concept of parsimony
It’s not that I don’t understand parsimony, it’s just that your interpretation of it is baffling to me, let me ask you, do you but the arguments of the Muslim scholars concerning god? If not why not? Also if you did not already believe, would you find the arguments that you present satisfying and sufficient for you to embrace Christianity?
My problem, with theology is it works backwards, it starts from the premise that there is a god and then seeks to justify that belief, not existence. You say yourself that you are not trying to prove good exists only that belief is no unwarranted, that is a mighty low bar, I repeat my comment about Bertrand’s teapot.
Because all existing things were created for a purpose by an all knowing creator so they exist for a reason. Thus they are meaningful the are not merely accidents.
How is this parsimonious? Assuming everything was created for a purpose means you have to envisage a creator. This is in direct contravention of Occam’s Razor, particularly when the answer, we are all happy accidents of the known laws of physics, explains the existence of everything without needing to add a new entity. Which of the two explanations is more parsimonious? I agree it is internally logical, but so is
1. Zeus creates all lightning bolts
2. I have seen lightning bolts
3. Therefore Zeus exists
That does not mean that it has anything to do with reality.
That's improbable and incredulous to think all the good is happy accidents and that there could be so many
Why? And not just only the good, everything, do you know what the chances are of the universe being the way it is? I don’t but then again we have only one data point so no one can. The universe may be so unique that only a thinking being could have created it, on the other hand it might be so inevitable that this was the only way it could be. We don’t know, but until we have more evidence then parsimony suggests that we not invent any new entities until we need them.
Its' not accident that we can see the world as containing meaning and value if God is real.
This feels like the puddle argument,
‘the water in a puddle thinks, look how the edges if the puddle exactly fit my shape, it must have been made for me.’
We see meaning and value in the world because we evolved to see patterns in things, intrinsically it is easier for us to think that some entity made things than understand the vast amounts of time that are needed for these things to occur naturally. The fact we see god in things is an accident of our evolution not a sign that god is real.
Your comment about neutrinos is interesting, yes, like many of the fundamental particles, they were postulated before they were observed, however all the work based on their existence was provisional until they were proved to exist. If they had been proved not to exist then all the work done assuming they were would have been redundant. Theologians have been trying to prove god for thousands of years and still no hard evidence.
How does the existence of god solve all problems? If he does exist then these problems would not occur, given that we see an imperfect world surely that is the best evidence against an interventionist deity.
the universal nature of mystical experience
Please give me some examples of the universal nature of mystical experience?
Obviously not true the arguments of Newton and Whitehead were based upon data and physical features of the universe. The more subjective problems such as meaning and morality are real problems. Those all constitute valid reason to assume there's a God.
Newton’s and Whitehead’s arguments simple prove that they thought they saw the divine in operation, not that it was actually there. So they don’t prove your assertions anymore than anyone else saying ‘I agree’ does. And surely the subjective questions of meaning and morality are more of a problem for you. If god exists why do we have these questions, if he dictates morality and meaning then they should be self-evident to all people, we should not be having this conversation because I would just agree with you.

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Re: opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Post by Metacrock » Wed Mar 05, 2014 10:51 am

LogicLad wrote:Meta
as I said before the principle of evolution assumes that a complex world like earth can begin from an single organism or from a ball of gas. The question atheist pundits imply that complex requires more complex is opposed their own world view.
Complexity comes from his ability to create a universe, that is not a simple thing. I am happy that a world could evolve using the simple laws of physics, however to poof an entire functioning universe fully formed into existence requires a being that could visualise the whole thing in one go, please don’t tell me that this is a simple thing.
Wrong! I've quoted several different ideas about what that means none of them say that creating a complex universe makes him complex. I've already demonstrated that contrary to evolution. do not you get that? You are supposed to believe in evolution right? do you? that means you believe that this complex universe evolved to a state of complexity form one of simplicity do you not get that?

IF YOU BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION YOU MUST ACCEPT THE IDEA THAT A COMPLEX EFFECT NEED NOT ALWAYS HAVE A COMPLEX CAUSE!




The Bible never uses the term "complex" in relation to god
This is just rank semantics, just because the bible doesn’t use the word complex does not mean that the being described is not so. He has emotions, can create a universe from scratch and observe every action and thought of every human on a planet, that is a complex being.
None of that is proof of complexity on the part of God. I just got through showing that creating a complex unvierse does not make God complex. That's counter to evolution.

None of the images used of God in the Bible necessitate taht he be complex. God does not have emotions for the same reason humans do becuase he's not a biological organism. Get it through your head once and for all, GOD IS NOT A BLEEDING ORGANISM HE'S NOT BIOLOGICAL! STOP MAKING BS ASSUMPTIONS BASED UPON ATHEIST IDEOLOGY AND TRYING TO PASS THEM OFF AS LOGIC!
but that would not apply to God
Only because you have chosen to define god in such a way that it doesn’t you present no evidence that your description is accurate.
(1) WHAT I JUST SAID, HE'S NOT BIOLOGICAL

(2) I did not make up any of the ideas I hold about God, they are given me by the tradition.I have not chosen how to define God, the tradition chose it based upon God's revelation in Christ.

(3) you have no proof. the only proof you pretend to have is misunderstanding the nature of Biblical imagery that's not your possession, it's property of the tradition those in the tradition understand it.
He's eternal he has no beginning and no end how is he going to be subject to cause and effect?
Please answer the question
please give one well evidenced example of something happening outside the rules of physics.
The thing that created it. wanting an exampel of soemthing like God. how can you have an example of something like something transcendent that is like nothing else. What would it prove to have an example form nature when God is beyond nature. God created nature. never did not exist until God made it, can't you understand that? God created nature! nature is God's play thing.

Of cousre anything we have empirical data about is from within nature. That's why we don't have empirical evidence of God. It's not going to work to demand some example from beyond nature. Logically God created nature than he's beyond it. That just follows. How could God be part of the thing he created?


(1) emergent properties are opposed to the kind of reductionism that brain/mind people argue. you are contradicting contradicting the idea that mind is reducible to brain and brain is reducible to chemistry because that's contradicted by emergence. Emergence is part of holism which is opposed to reductionism.
Rubbish, an emergent property is just one that arises from a given system.
wrong that is ignorant Bull shit.

(1) emergence is a form of downward causation, and downward causation resists reductionism becuase it means qualities of the system are dependent upon aspects from higher up.

Francis Heylighen, “Downward Causation.” Principia Cybernetica web On line resource. Sept 15, 1995, summarizing work of Donald T. Campbell 1974. Heylighen is research Professor at Free University of Brussels and director of Global Brain Institiute. URL: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DOWNCAUS.html visited 5/9/12

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DOWNCAUS.html

(2) “Top-down causation refers to the effects on components of organized systems that cannot be fully analyzed in terms of component-level behavior but instead requires reference to the higher-level system itself.”

Mary Ann Meyers “Top Down Causation: An integrating theme within and across the sciences.” A symposium by the John Templeton foundation, Participnats from the Royal Society, Contact Mary Ann Meyers Senior Fellow, 2010, website: URL http://humbleapproach.templeton.org/Top ... %2025,2012


The brain (just a bag of chemical/electrical reactions) gives us consciousness, because it is suitably complex. It is wholly reductionist; I am not suggesting that the mind is separate to the brain that would be duality.
(1) wrong. that's not duality. mind is separate from the brain .no more daulity than syaing the hand is separate from the arm.

(2) there is no such scientific proof. the assumptions you make come form propaganda and ideology. I have proved it. quoted five quotes form different studies showing problems such the problem of binding that the brain reductionists can't answer.

Do you believe that the mind can exist without the brain? And that physical changes to the brain do not affect the mind?
(1) you have the burden to prove that the mind can't exist without the brain.

(2) In biological organisms the mind is produced by the brain that doesn't that one is reducible to the other. nor does it mean that God can't be pure mind without physical components. God is not a biological organism.
I am not a biologist so I am not qualified to comment on the paper you site, however a quick read shows two things, neither of the authors are biologists and the I find the argument about the amoeba laughable, so a cell can react to stimulus, this is not proof a consciousness unless you think that plants need to have brains too.
they don't have to be biologists to have expertise in that field. all sorts of scientific fields study different aspects. Who are they quoting?
It's not a literal history book
I quite agree, so given that you don’t believe in it’s infallibility please explain how you know which bits are true and which bits are just made up to make a good story? Unless you can come up with a system that allows that accurate identifying of all the ‘good’ bits then what exactly are you basing your theology on?
by using historical critical methods.
We can understand certain aspects but not the whole
So how do you know your interpretation is correct, if you don’t understand the whole your understanding of the little bit may be incorrect, this is what we find in science, as our understanding deepens then older theories which were good enough prove to be wrong. In science this means progress in religion this means you may have been worshipping the wrong god, or worshiping the wrong way, both have very serious consequences.
We have experiential understanding and we have communicable understanding. not all experiential understanding can be communicated. We can know for example God is love because we experience God's love. WE can't communicate it in words becuase words can't really communicate the nature of love. The only way we can communicate is si by loving others. Then we can't love others as perfectly or completely as God can. The believer who experiences God's love understands that it's real, its' transcendent, it's beyond anything we can match but he/she can't communicate that reality to others.

Our understanding of God and God related is related things is growing all the time so that's why we have more modern sophisticated views of God. God is not changing our capacity to understand God in more sophisticated ways is growing.





Thanks for the link I will have a read and come back to you
Please explain how the common usage definition of faith is insufficient for the current discussion, if there are deeper aspects you think are relevant then you need to introduce them.
not common usage, atheist usage. Faith is not believing things without reaosn.
(1) My argument was not that science is wrong.

(2) you are special pleading. If the acquisitions of faith is wrong for theology then it's wrong for science, If it works for science it could work in theology.

(3) science is not the only form of knowledge.
1. Fair enough


2. No special pleading, I am not saying one is bad and the other is good, however the assumptions of science are tested and if found wanting they will have to change, the assumptions of religion not so much.
before you make the fortress of facts ploy abut 'we have the tested view and you have no facts" you have to ask what needs testing, what is the appropriate test for that material, and what kind of knowledge are you dealing with.

Most of the things we can say aren't testable are transcendent and don't need to be tested. Experiential things can be tested in terms of effect. The effect they have on those who have the experiences.

3. Please point to one advancement in human knowledge that did not come from experimentation and observation, just one that came from revelation.
[/quote]

phenomenology
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Re: opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Post by Metacrock » Wed Mar 05, 2014 11:09 am

part 2, Meta answers LL.

that's nonsense, the BS that there is a "lack of evidence" is just a mantra repeated so constantly by the brain washers that the brain washers believe it. It's obviously since we have many God arguments. each God argument is a pile of evidence. So there is clealearly evidence.
No what you have is arguments, philosophical musings, not evidence.
The BS that God arguemnts are "philosophical musings" is nothing more than a calculated lie designed to hide the fact that you can't answer the arguemnts. your atheist ideology says "we can't win a God argument unless we can screen out most of their evidence," to do that they have to control the concept of "facts" and "evidence." they just rule all the kinds of evidence their method does not control. such as logic, deduction, modal logic, psychology, phenomenology and so on. they just say "there's no evidence." that's becuase they just refuse to accept as evidence anything that counts against them.

Look at the ill-logic you are involved in now. you are arguing a God augment. If you are so sure that God arguments are just "musings" why don't you stop arguing and just assert you wont before you started because no God argument can ever prove anything. The fact that arguing with this one shows that you reaise points are made that must be answered.



I can construct elegant theories and histories about the unicorn, however unless I can produce one theories is all I have.
that's not the same as arguing that they exist. Star Trek cat' be used as a proof that there really are Klingons.

Present some evidence for the actual intervention of an actual deity in the actual universe.
such evidence does exist so you could introduce it but your propaganda machine of the movement that brain washed you tells you to believe that any such proof has to be wrong and can't be a proof. anything that counts against atheism you must automatically see as false regardless of it's nature. In other words you would never see anything as evidence that disproves your view. the very fact that it disproved it would be enough to dismiss it.

As I said in my previous post at some point you have to reality check your theories, just like a scientist has to, if you can’t present evidence then you at best have an interesting unproven theory and at worse you have garbage.
you are begging the question because that's what the argument we are discussing now does. so you have to show how it doesn't do it. It's not enough to just assert that it doesn't.
(1) obviously faith is a virtue in religion.
(2)atheists have changed the meaning of the term. "faith" in an atheist diatribe is not confidence and fitfulness it's being stupid. believing stuff for no reason. that's changing the term to have a connotation no religious person ever put on it.
(3) you are talking like atheists had the term first then religious believers took it away form them. We had it first, it's our word. you guys stole it and changed its meaning and tried to make into a hated dirty word.
1. Fair enough, however I stand by my it doesn’t make you a better person
depends upon what you mean by "better person." the studies show that those who have religious experiences do better in life and less prone to mental illness, depression and so on.
2. Some atheists may mean that, this atheist doesn’t so please stop making sweeping generalisations. I stand by the same definition I gave before, believing in things with no evidence.
I just got through proving that it's not that. that's what atheists changed it to. in the same sentence you say you don't do that then turn around and say you do it. "this guy doesn't do that but I stand by doing it."

3. Words are not owned they are used and have definitions, as I said above if you are using faith to have some special meaning outside the one I am using please explain it.
wrong. words have meanings within contexts. the way a tradition uses a term is the context. In Christian tradition faith is never used to mean "be stupid, believe stuff for no reason."
(1) I don't mean to quibble but the Tillich stuff is not beilef in a higher power. It's beliefe in an aspect of being. that's a huge difference.
Every time I try to make an argument based on this aspect of god you instantly pull out Tillich and say that’s not what he means, fair enough but at some point, for you to be a Christian, you must align this base state of reality with the biblical god. This is the being we have actual information about, this is the one I am talking about when I say a higher power.
then you need to learn about Tillich if you want to argue with me.
2) physical laws are not just causes. They were actually what secular thinking left over from taking out God but leavening and assuming the work of God.
Not sure exactly what you are getting at here, do you mean that the physical laws are all the things science can’t explain so therefor god?
I mean in the 17th century when most of science was still done by Christians and Newton invented the concept of laws of phsyics, he understood them as laws God set in motion. When the unbeliever atheists took over scinece latter in the 18th century (the French) they took God out but kept the laws that Newton specifically assigned to God. All the talk about physical laws is really talk about God's actions, without the assumption of God.

that's totally missing the point about Newton. We don't have anything to replace Newtonian law with but other laws. If we try to replace it by seeing the universe as a bundle of behaviors and laws as mere descriptions we still have the problem that what is being described is law like. We don't see universe popping up in tea cups all the time. We find the universe operating in regular ways.
Again not sure what the point you are raising here, there are incredibly few laws in science, I believe the only ones that exist are in pure maths, because a law is uncontrovertibly true, even things like gravity are only theories because they could be proved to be incorrect. Your example of things popping into existence would be evidence for the divine, given that our current understanding would not allow for such things to occur. I agree that the we find the universe operates in a regular way but that is not evidence of a deity it is evidence that there are fundamental laws of the universe that have to be that way.

I will have to answer the rest of this latter. I will. I will get to it, probalby today.


you are assuming that all morality is merely pastiche and used social stop gap. There's a good reason to think that it's rooted in both culture and human nature. There is a universal element becuase cultures keep finding the same things wrong and right.
Morality is an evolved property of social interaction, so the fact that most cultures share some common morals is expected not surprising, in order to live in large groups we have to be able to be sure that we won’t be killed or robbed, or you would spend all your time defending your home rather than benefiting the larger society, hence most cultures have morals against killing and stealing, except in exceptional circumstances. The very fact that killing and stealing can occasionally be considered moral is evidence that morals preventing them are not universal truths but subjective.
Similar morals against killing and stealing can be seen in primate groups, so it’s not like humans have the monopoly.
Our cultural understanding and personal individual need to intermittent will always mean there is a subjective element. But God is also the only truly objective judge. God is the final arbiter.
If he is deciding on the rules then the rules are subjective not objective, if he is obliged to follow certain rules then he did not set them. Again the fact he is the final arbiter just means that he is powerful enough to enforce his rules, it speaks nothing of the morality of those rules, let’s face it god has done some pretty nasty things, things that we would consider immoral.
I agree with that. It also breaks down at a certain point. Without grounding in a universal truth subjective morality is hopelessly doomed to blow up.
No at all, please tell me one universally true moral. One that under no circumstances can be questioned. The whole point is that as our understanding of the universe improves our ideas of right and wrong change. This means that things we used to find acceptable are nor immoral and vice versa. Indeed if there are all these universal morals, which a built into the fabric of the universe then why is there so much disagreement about what they are? Even amongst members of the same religion.
why would God be subjective
If god is capable of independent thought, even he is aware of every piece of knowledge in the universe, then his opinion on any given topic is subjective, given a new piece of evidence his opinion could change.
I hate to get into this but you really need to justify the God is love statement, given he has ordered mass killings, the murder of children, and the destruction of the whole world.
I have much better reasons to think that than you have to doubt it. Your doubt is based entirely upon being down the garden path by peers, your personal feelings (whatever they are) about something of which you have no experience and don't understand. I'm not saying this to put you down but it's time atheists face the fact that reason you are an atheist is because you have not had the experience of God that religious people have. IF you had you would be religious. You don't know theology, you have not read theology, if you had you would these concepts better you wouldn't say certain things you are that are just the result of knowing or having read theology.

you can't disprove my reasons. You barely undersatnd a few of them and you can't answer the one's you know about.
You are right that I have not experienced god, but I put it to you how do you know that experience is real at not just imagined. Given that every different religion has people who will swear that they have experienced the one true god, which ones of you are wrong? And how can you tell?
You are correct that I don’t read theology, but given my atheistic stand point, it is a meaningless as dragonology, or leprachology. I need to be convinced there is something to it before I invest time and energy in understanding it. The Tillich stuff about ground state of existence is interesting, but not because he is trying to prove a god, simple as a philosophical exercise.
If your argument amounts to, if you can’t prove me wrong then I am right, do you believe in Bertrand’s teapot? You can’t prove it’s not there so do you accept that it must be?
so what? So is science, so is materialism
To use a much underused word, balderdash, science is all about questioning and exploring, expanding our knowledge. God just the priest saying ‘don’t look at the man behind the curtain’ don’t ask, just accept. Don’t be curious just do as we say. Religion does not advance knowledge it stagnates it.
that's not based upon what any theologian has ever said.; It's absolute bull shit! it's bull shit! there are red neck morons in Alabama who argue that way but you make sure that they are the only Christians you know about. the real thinkers you have nothing to do with. The real thinkers don't say that but you don't know becuase you don't read them.
Ancient theologians said exactly that, and every time they had declared that we had reached the end of man’s knowledge and now there is only the divine, some scientist came along and proved them wrong. More recent theologians have got wise to this and the smarter ones no longer make testable claims about the universe, much like you are avoiding making a single testable claim. By stopping making testable claims they stopped the scientists proving them wrong, but they have in effect admitted defeat, the further that god is removed from the physical the less relevant he becomes. You have to admit that the vast majority of people do not view God the way you do, and given you have no evidence to support your version of God what makes you right and them wrong? Like I have said many times before, if you can’t reality check your arguments then they have little actual value, outside of a purely mental exercise. Like any thought experiment they may be instructive but they don’t prove anything. The burden of proof does not lie with me, you are making the extraordinary claim, you present the evidence.
If that was my actual reason for belief in God you might have a point. you are have forgotten or never understood the concept of parsimony
It’s not that I don’t understand parsimony, it’s just that your interpretation of it is baffling to me, let me ask you, do you but the arguments of the Muslim scholars concerning god? If not why not? Also if you did not already believe, would you find the arguments that you present satisfying and sufficient for you to embrace Christianity?
My problem, with theology is it works backwards, it starts from the premise that there is a god and then seeks to justify that belief, not existence. You say yourself that you are not trying to prove good exists only that belief is no unwarranted, that is a mighty low bar, I repeat my comment about Bertrand’s teapot.
Because all existing things were created for a purpose by an all knowing creator so they exist for a reason. Thus they are meaningful the are not merely accidents.
How is this parsimonious? Assuming everything was created for a purpose means you have to envisage a creator. This is in direct contravention of Occam’s Razor, particularly when the answer, we are all happy accidents of the known laws of physics, explains the existence of everything without needing to add a new entity. Which of the two explanations is more parsimonious? I agree it is internally logical, but so is
1. Zeus creates all lightning bolts
2. I have seen lightning bolts
3. Therefore Zeus exists
That does not mean that it has anything to do with reality.
That's improbable and incredulous to think all the good is happy accidents and that there could be so many
Why? And not just only the good, everything, do you know what the chances are of the universe being the way it is? I don’t but then again we have only one data point so no one can. The universe may be so unique that only a thinking being could have created it, on the other hand it might be so inevitable that this was the only way it could be. We don’t know, but until we have more evidence then parsimony suggests that we not invent any new entities until we need them.
Its' not accident that we can see the world as containing meaning and value if God is real.
This feels like the puddle argument,
‘the water in a puddle thinks, look how the edges if the puddle exactly fit my shape, it must have been made for me.’
We see meaning and value in the world because we evolved to see patterns in things, intrinsically it is easier for us to think that some entity made things than understand the vast amounts of time that are needed for these things to occur naturally. The fact we see god in things is an accident of our evolution not a sign that god is real.
Your comment about neutrinos is interesting, yes, like many of the fundamental particles, they were postulated before they were observed, however all the work based on their existence was provisional until they were proved to exist. If they had been proved not to exist then all the work done assuming they were would have been redundant. Theologians have been trying to prove god for thousands of years and still no hard evidence.
How does the existence of god solve all problems? If he does exist then these problems would not occur, given that we see an imperfect world surely that is the best evidence against an interventionist deity.
the universal nature of mystical experience
Please give me some examples of the universal nature of mystical experience?
Obviously not true the arguments of Newton and Whitehead were based upon data and physical features of the universe. The more subjective problems such as meaning and morality are real problems. Those all constitute valid reason to assume there's a God.
Newton’s and Whitehead’s arguments simple prove that they thought they saw the divine in operation, not that it was actually there. So they don’t prove your assertions anymore than anyone else saying ‘I agree’ does. And surely the subjective questions of meaning and morality are more of a problem for you. If god exists why do we have these questions, if he dictates morality and meaning then they should be self-evident to all people, we should not be having this conversation because I would just agree with you.[/quote]
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LogicLad
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Re: opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Post by LogicLad » Mon Mar 24, 2014 6:26 am

Meta
IF YOU BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION YOU MUST ACCEPT THE IDEA THAT A COMPLEX EFFECT NEED NOT ALWAYS HAVE A COMPLEX CAUSE!
First an observation colours and capitals add nothing to your argument, however, I have never questioned that complex things can come from simple start points, however you propose a being that can visualize and create the whole of existence in a single go ( or over 7 days depending on which version of which creation myth you are looking at) So not a gradual increase in complexity over time? To create from whole cloth you must be able to comprehend the complete end product, this requires complex thinking, hence a complex being.
GOD IS NOT A BLEEDING ORGANISM HE'S NOT BIOLOGICAL!
How do you know? You keep going on about how mysterious god is and yet you insist on knowing some pretty fundamental things about him. You have constructed an argument for a being that is the ground state of existence, then called this god and then assumed that this god is the biblical one, that is at least two non-sequiturs.
All of the evidence that we have is that only biology can create a functional brain and hence mind. We have no examples of none biological based intent based interaction with the universe, so please explain why your god construct is allowed to run completely against all the evidence we have on nothing more than your say so?
I did not make up any of the ideas I hold about God, they are given me by the tradition.I have not chosen how to define God, the tradition chose it based upon God's revelation in Christ.
Wow, that is weak, are we now making appeals to tradition to support our arguments, in that case you must admit that Hinduism, or even judasim are older and so must be more truthier.
you have no proof. the only proof you pretend to have is misunderstanding the nature of Biblical imagery that's not your possession, it's property of the tradition those in the tradition understand it.
The burden of proof is on the one making the claim, not on the one defending the null hypothesis. You have no evidence of god, you have a bunch of philosophical arguments and a big pile of belief. And as to having to be part of the tradition to understand it, that’s just garbage, what you just admitted was that if I already believed in god then your arguments for the existence of god would make sense. The fact that your arguments do not sway me is a comment on the quality of the argumentation and evidence.
God created nature. never did not exist until God made it, can't you understand that? God created nature! nature is God's play thing.
In which case you will have no problem in providing me with evidence of something happening outside the rules of physics. The actual question that I asked. I want solid evidence of a miracle, something that is clearly supernatural, not just you saying ‘well god is an example’, we can’t agree that god exists so that is rather poor evidence, not to mention circular.
How could God be part of the thing he created?
You claim you accept the laws of physics, hence you must understand the conservation of energy. If there was only god and then god and some other stuff then the other stuff must have come from god, and hence they are inherently part of each other. Indeed for the universe to be create god must have been diminished as he was the only source of energy available.
wrong. that's not duality. mind is separate from the brain .no more daulity than syaing the hand is separate from the arm.
Should have known you were a dualist, not a materialist, dualism in the context of the mind is the belief that the brain and the mind are separate, materialism is that the mind is a construct of the brain. There is no evidence that mind can exist independent of the brain, religious believers have to be dualists as they need to believe that the mind can exist after the body is dead. You are claiming that the mind is a separate entity to the brain , the burden of proof is on you. I suppose you also believe that a program can run independent of a computer.
by using historical critical methods.
Excellent, please provide an example of a true bit and an allegorical bit with the supporting evidence, and please make sure both bits involve supernatural events so we are comparing apples with apples.
We can know for example God is love because we experience God's love. WE can't communicate it in words becuase words can't really communicate the nature of love.
So you get a funny feeling that you can’t put into words and hence god, is that supposed to be convincing? No t to mention the whole god is love thing is not very well supported by his actions, as portrayed in the bible.
Our understanding of God and God related is related things is growing all the time so that's why we have more modern sophisticated views of God. God is not changing our capacity to understand God in more sophisticated ways is growing.
No your modern sophisticated understanding of god is an outgrowth of lots of people looking at previous arguments and pointing out who useless they were, the fact that you have had to define god in such complex, inaccessible and untestable manner is a comment on how far religious theory has been driven by science fact.
Faith is not believing things without reason
For what I hope is the last time, faith is belief without evidence, I have never spoken to reason. I am not going to respond to any point you make using a definition that I have clearly and repeatedly corrected.
Most of the things we can say aren't testable are transcendent and don't need to be tested.
Then how do we know they are true. You insist on making statements that you claim are true and yet untestable, if it can’t be tested then you have no basis for claiming truth other than you believe. I proposition put forward with no evidence can be dismissed with no evidence. I believe you are wrong please explain how your belief is more correct than mine, without siting some form of evidence.
phenomenology
biblical criticism
astronomy
archaeology
history as a social science
modal logic
Which of these is subject to revelation? I have a number of friends who are Archaeologists and they would get very upset if you suggested that they were not observing and experimenting. If you think these branches of science support your argument you need to explain how.
The BS that God arguemnts are "philosophical musings" is nothing more than a calculated lie designed to hide the fact that you can't answer the arguemnts. your atheist ideology says "we can't win a God argument unless we can screen out most of their evidence,"
You never present any bloody evidence. You have none. Hence you have unsubstantiated theories. If you can’t test it, replicate it and record it, then ir is not evidence, or are we into another example of you redefining words for your personal amusement.
I keep up this discussion because I am trying to get you to present any evidence for your position and also because I find it interesting to see someone arguing to other point of view from my own. I will stop when it stops being fun / interesting.
that's not the same as arguing that they exist. Star Trek cat' be used as a proof that there really are Klingons.
It is to you, all you present theories. Based on that then there is as much if not more evidence that Klingons exist than god. I can actually see a picture of a Klingon, I can learn the language and talk with people who have made an in-depth study of their culture, please explain how what they do is any different to what you do.
In other words you would never see anything as evidence that disproves your view. the very fact that it disproved it would be enough to dismiss it.
Utter bollocks, you know nothing about me so assume you know what it would take to convince me. The answer, as I keep asking for, is evidence. I accept that the bar for such evidence is very high, but the claim you are making is extraordinary. I mean 20 foot high letters of fire in the sky would certainly make me open to possibilities but I would still have to rule out all the natural ways of doing that before I accept a god, the point is sufficient evidence would move me. Let me turn this around, what could convince you that you are wrong?
you are begging the question because that's what the argument we are discussing now does.
Arguments are not evidence.
depends upon what you mean by "better person." the studies show that those who have religious experiences do better in life and less prone to mental illness, depression and so on.
No they don’t, they show that people who are part of good communities and have a good support network are less prone to mental illness, and in most places these communities are built around the church. What you just did is a classic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
I stand by the same definition I gave before, believing in things with no evidence.
I am beginning to think that you are either not reading or not understanding. You claim that atheist say faith is belief without reason and I correct you to belief without evidence, and yet every time it comes up you insist I mean the first. As I said above, if you continue to deliberately miss characterise my argument then I will simply not respond to any further points you make in that argument.
In Christian tradition faith is never used to mean "be stupid, believe stuff for no reason."
Will you stop putting words in my mouth, I have never claimed that faith has this meaning, please stop straw manning me, I know it is easier to knock down a straw man but it doesn’t actually prove anything.
I mean in the 17th century when most of science was still done by Christians and Newton invented the concept of laws of phsyics, he understood them as laws God set in motion. When the unbeliever atheists took over scinece latter in the 18th century (the French) they took God out but kept the laws that Newton specifically assigned to God. All the talk about physical laws is really talk about God's actions, without the assumption of God.
Ridiculous, so when the ancient Greeks claimed that thunder was the gods battling on mount Olympus then they were right, we should cast away all our knowledge of weather and static electricity because people long ago thought differently. Newton was a product of his age, he believed in god and saw the divine in action, our understanding has moved on and now we know that god is not required to underpin physical laws.

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Re: opinons on God argument: Eligance of God Hypothesis

Post by Metacrock » Mon Mar 24, 2014 10:05 am

Part 1

so long I'm breaking it up.
LogicLad wrote:Meta
IF YOU BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION YOU MUST ACCEPT THE IDEA THAT A COMPLEX EFFECT NEED NOT ALWAYS HAVE A COMPLEX CAUSE!
First an observation colours and capitals add nothing to your argument, however, I have never questioned that complex things can come from simple start points, however you propose a being that can visualize and create the whole of existence in a single go ( or over 7 days depending on which version of which creation myth you are looking at) So not a gradual increase in complexity over time? To create from whole cloth you must be able to comprehend the complete end product, this requires complex thinking, hence a complex being.
I know it's hard to break the habit of talking like this, but you start out being wrong when you put things wrong. God is not "a being" but the ground of being, or being itself. That makes a huge difference. In thinking of God as "a being" you think of one of many and you think of biological life. Your argument is about biological life.

God is not biological, so he doesn't have need a brain and he's not limited brain chemistry. So what he knows does not require a big complex brain to generate lots of firing over the synapse.

GOD IS NOT A BLEEDING ORGANISM HE'S NOT BIOLOGICAL!
How do you know?
(1) first because that's the concept

(2) becuase special revelation tells us God is spirit.
You keep going on about how mysterious god is and yet you insist on knowing some pretty fundamental things about him. You have constructed an argument for a being that is the ground state of existence, then called this god and then assumed that this god is the biblical one, that is at least two non-sequiturs.
stop saying "a being." what you say is not sensible. to say "You have constructed a being that is the ground and call it god." no that's what God is. that's the definite of God. it's not god is just some by and I'm calling something else god. the concept of God is that the basis of existence.

that was the concept of the early chruch when "Luke" wrote "in him live and move and have our being." (in Acts)

All of the evidence that we have is that only biology can create a functional brain and hence mind. We have no examples of none biological based intent based interaction with the universe, so please explain why your god construct is allowed to run completely against all the evidence we have on nothing more than your say so

that's a misleading statement. to say "all the evidence we have shows that blah blah" because we have no evidence at all. The only evidence we have is of physical stuff, and it's physical stuff that's easy to get so it's not stuff from far away or other dimensions, it's physical stuff from around here. So we don't know much, we have non physical stuff to compare to. Saying is not meaningful.

We have no evidence that there can't be other kinds of minds. We only have it from biological things becuase that's all we are capable of examining, and its' all from stuff here in our world where it's easy to get to. So it's not very representative sample of the universe and does not include any non material stuff.

We know that any patterns that determine the universe's behavior are non material and beyond our ability to discover. I refer to the laws of physics which can't be biological. they have patterns that suggest mind.
META: I did not make up any of the ideas I hold about God, they are given me by the tradition.I have not chosen how to define God, the tradition chose it based upon God's revelation in Christ.
LL:Wow, that is weak, are we now making appeals to tradition to support our arguments, in that case you must admit that Hinduism, or even judasim are older and so must be more truthier.
Nothing wrong with using tradition to set the concepts. If that's the basis of the belief system I'm defending then you have to get the definitions right or your are not really dealing my arguments. you said that tailoring the definitions to fit the evidence, (which is what scinece would do so there's nothing wrong with that-that's just using the hypothesis that aren't disprove) but I answer that by saying the basis of the view I defend is already given to me in the religious tradition so it' not tailored. That's very different than trying to use tradition in place of empirical evidence. I argue that it stacks up with the empirical evidence.
Meta: you have no proof. the only proof you pretend to have is misunderstanding the nature of Biblical imagery that's not your possession, it's property of the tradition those in the tradition understand it.
The burden of proof is on the one making the claim, not on the one defending the null hypothesis.
Wrong. the BOP is on the one makes the argument. you make a claim such as "there is no God" you must prove it. Notice I have not made such a claim. I never said "this arguemnt proves God." I specifically said it's an arguemnt or warrant. belief in warranted. that's the same as saying "there's good reason to believe." it's not saying it's proved.


You have no evidence of god, you have a bunch of philosophical arguments and a big pile of belief.
you are trying evoke the atheist ploy "fortress of facts." we have all the fact. Science is not a pile of facts. In fact science is not proof of things. All scinece does is disprove bad hypothesizes and offer explanations that are taken as default. they prove it, they are just the best version still standing.

you are also begging the question. You assert from the outset that there is no God, therefore, there can't be any God arguments, therefore the argument is wrong. rather than demonstrate that it is wrong it you assert that it is. We see that clearly in what you said, because I have actually evidence of God a bunch of it, the whole argument we are discussing is a bunch of evidence for God. The whole point of the argument is that we have good reason to believe in God (belief is warranted).

your statement is merely evoking your position to prove your position, which is begging the question or a circular reasoning. (begging the question is a form of ciruclar reasoning).
Have Theology, Will argue: wire Metacrock
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