And God created gravity.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]chobothx wrote:
Any worldview that desires to be seriously considered within the marketplace of ideas must address 4 essential questions…
[/quote]
Says you, but the very fact that it exists in the market place of ideas shows that this is not so.
It only shows that you are not willing to buy, but your subjective desires are not an objective truth.
[/quote]
Atheism is not a worldview that is seriously considered in the marketplace of ideas.
Any idiot with an introductory course in Philosophy recognizes that it is impossible to affirm an absolute negative. This is self defeating.
How can you affirm a negative in the absolute?
Atheism comes from the Greek, alpha the negative, theos for God = There is no God. A-theism.
It is affirming the non-existence of God.
The atheist claims to have infinite knowledge in stating that there is no being with infinite knowledge.
This is not to be confused with agnosticism, which is a respectable stance. Dialogue is possible with agnostics, but this is not a thread on agnosticism.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…i welcome the day when the Jewish, Muslim and Christian people of this earth and all demoninations realise that much of their religious ideology is outdated and non-applicable. By all means keep the good parts: be kind; live well; do no harm. What the rest is concerned: it’s archeology…
[/quote]
Eph, explain yourself please. This does not make any sense to me. If the Church speaks the truth, and since truth is absolute, it does not change over time. So what shall we throw away because it is archaic?[/quote]
…good != truth. An absolute truth is that we’re all bound to this planet by gravity, because it’s true for all of us. What you believe is true is not absolute truth…[/quote]
Pretty sure it is. I mean there are scientist that are working on disproving gravity as we know it. Maybe they will disprove it maybe they won’t. However, the issue here is faith and reason. You have to have both, some folks idolize reason. The only thing they’ll use. They make a god out of it, and won’t believe anything (which is funny because you have to have faith in your own reason to believe reason is the only thing that you can use) without reasoning it out.[/quote]
…come again? Disprove gravity? But this comes back to your misconceptions about what relative and absolute actually means, Chris. Gravity affects us all equally; this is an absolute…
…that we need to breath air to live; this is an absolute. Beliefs however differ from person to person; they are subjective, and can’t be absolute. Reason does not need faith like religious beliefs require faith: 1+1=2. No faith needed here…[/quote]
I am not talking about beliefs, I am talking about truth. People are fallible, leading through reason that they could believe in something false. However, ideas are not dictated as true or false by beliefs. Mathematics is not an area which one needs faith, non sequitor. In the area of supernatural there does need to exist faith AND reason.
Humans are fallible, so relying solely on reason is a troublesome matter. I am not saying we should be illogical, I am saying we should use reason. At the same time, not figure that we will be able to reason everything. In your last paragraph you have confused me with your example. Could you explain it to me a little further.
There, you misunderstand me and I see where it is that you do so.
I am not talking about beliefs, I am talking about truth. Yes, and some scientist believe that gravity is a false theory. I personally believe there is such thing as gravity, however they do not. My point in the purpose of that statement is that even things, as solidly proved as gravity, can be considered false.
I am not talking about what I think or believe. What I think does not dictate truth. If I believe in the truth, then the truth is still the truth. If I do not believe in the truth, it is still the truth. The Catholic Church holds truth on faith and morality, absolute truth, but finite absolute truth at that, since we are finite beings.
[quote]chobothx wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]chobothx wrote:
Any worldview that desires to be seriously considered within the marketplace of ideas must address 4 essential questions…
[/quote]
Says you, but the very fact that it exists in the market place of ideas shows that this is not so.
It only shows that you are not willing to buy, but your subjective desires are not an objective truth.
[/quote]
Atheism is not a worldview that is seriously considered in the marketplace of ideas.
Any idiot with an introductory course in Philosophy recognizes that it is impossible to affirm an absolute negative. This is self defeating.
How can you affirm a negative in the absolute?
Atheism comes from the Greek, alpha the negative, theos for God = There is no God. A-theism.
It is affirming the non-existence of God.
The atheist claims to have infinite knowledge in stating that there is no being with infinite knowledge.
This is not to be confused with agnosticism, which is a respectable stance. Dialogue is possible with agnostics, but this is not a thread on agnosticism.[/quote]
These terms are used interchangeably because in practice they are.
Also, just because ideas are illogical hardly prevents them from being part of the “marketplace of ideas”.
Finally, if you use the same standard of proof for religions they do not amount to much either.
[quote]Atheism is not a worldview that is seriously considered in the marketplace of ideas.
Any idiot with an introductory course in Philosophy recognizes that it is impossible to affirm an absolute negative. This is self defeating.
How can you affirm a negative in the absolute?
Atheism comes from the Greek, alpha the negative, theos for God = There is no God. A-theism.
It is affirming the non-existence of God.
The atheist claims to have infinite knowledge in stating that there is no being with infinite knowledge.
This is not to be confused with agnosticism, which is a respectable stance. Dialogue is possible with agnostics, but this is not a thread on agnosticism.[/quote]
you are reading too much into the greek etymology of the word “atheism”
and you forgot that greek philosophies weren’t predominantly theoretical.
there were praxis, first and foremost.
atheism doesn’t mean “i affirm there is no God in the Universe” but “i will live without the idea of God”.
Epicurians believed that the Gods existed somewhere in the Universe but that those Gods didn’t cared for human beings in any way.
their stance was : “Do not fear the Gods. The gods don’t think about you, so don’t think about them”.
And for this reason, epicurianism was still considered an atheism.
a practictal if not metaphysical one.
many today’s atheists have a similar position. their atheism means “i do not fear Hell, and i won’t kill or be killed in the name of Yahwee/Allah/Jesus.”
[quote]kamui wrote:
atheism doesn’t mean “i affirm there is no God in the Universe” but “i will live without the idea of God”.
[/quote]
The logical outworking of either definition amounts to the same conclusion of life without good and evil.
Did I say that all atheists are immoral people?
No, because atheists can, and sometimes choose to live ‘moral’ lifestyles.
The point I am attempting to drive across is that an atheist cannot justify a ‘good’ lifestyle over an ‘evil’ one, for they lose all point of reference without a vertical morality.
Was Hitler evil? According to a true atheist, no. He was simply using the formula of a nihilism presented to him by Fredrick Nietzsche’s Superman, which was in turn influenced by Charles Darwin’s works on Natural Selection (survival of the fittest).
What’s wrong with killing the ‘weaker’ races of society? That’s how our ancestors came about to evolve into the current human, no?
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world… The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.” -Charles Darwin, Descent of Man
Charles Darwin did a lot for science, but not everything he said about evolution is correct. Darwin was a racist (which was the norm for the time) and he tried to use science to confirm his racism.
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
Charles Darwin did a lot for science, but not everything he said about evolution is correct. Darwin was a racist (which was the norm for the time) and he tried to use science to confirm his racism. [/quote]
What’s wrong with hating a person based on their ‘race?’
I have a reason for not being racist, that being that I adhere to a worldview in which an individual’s race is sacred based on their person being created in the Imago Dei(image of God.)
What is an atheist’s justification for railing against the racism of Charles Darwin?
-edit for clarity-
You made the statement, “Darwin was a racist.”
Implied in this statement is a moral pronouncement that racism is wrong.
Can you give me a secular explanation as to why your morality of anti-racism is superior to Darwin’s morality of pro-racism?
[quote]chobothx wrote:
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
Charles Darwin did a lot for science, but not everything he said about evolution is correct. Darwin was a racist (which was the norm for the time) and he tried to use science to confirm his racism. [/quote]
What’s wrong with hating a person based on their ‘race?’
I have a reason for not being racist, that being that I adhere to a worldview in which an individual’s race is sacred based on their person being created in the Imago Dei(image of God.)
What is an atheist’s justification for railing against the racism of Charles Darwin?[/quote]
It turned out there was no scientific evidence to support his assumptions about race. If he were a “rational racist”, then he would have changed his mind at that point. More likely his feelings about race had nothing to do with science, and he’d be a closet racist today.
[quote]Spartiates wrote:
It turned out there was no scientific evidence to support his assumptions about race. If he were a “rational racist”, then he would have changed his mind at that point. More likely his feelings about race had nothing to do with science, and he’d be a closet racist today.[/quote]
If I am correctly interpreting the swing from which you’re coming… If one can rationally defend racism, then it would become ‘all right?’
What if I were to bring crime statistics on Blacks +Hispanics in America, and if I were to calculate the draining effect they have on the United States through their single parent homes leading to perpetual dependence on entitlement funds from the government, and thereby reason that it would be better for society if they were exterminated through the use of eugenics?
-edit for fun fact-
(which is actually already happening today, do some research on the founder of Planned Parenthood and their strategical placements of abortion clinics in the inner cities predominately populated by Blacks…)
as an atheist, i think there’s something wrong with hating a person. period.
i don’t need a god to find that. I just have to see hate in action around me (or in me).
[quote]kamui wrote:
as an atheist, i think there’s something wrong with hating a person. period.
i don’t need a god to find that. I just have to see hate in action around me (or in me).[/quote]
Why do you think there’s something wrong with hating a person?
The Christian would perhaps quote Romans 1:19-22
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
You have been given a conscience according to the Bible, this is why you think it is wrong to hate.
But Natural Selection would teach otherwise, only the fittest of the pack deserve to live, how is it that you came about to all of a sudden contradict the flow of Natural Selection and decide it is wrong to hate?
Couple additional questions…
So do you think it is wrong to hate a child molesting, drug peddling, murdering individual? Would you forgive an individual that murdered your family because you believe it is wrong to hate a person? What are your qualifications on ‘hate?’
Going one step further, as an atheist, what is wrong with child molesting, drug peddling, and murdering?
If I am achieving my sexual gratification through the abuse of another individual, please enlighten me as to how that is wrong in a world with no God.
It could not possibly be wrong because ultimately I am nothing more than a random collocation of atoms and molecules bouncing about, created by Time + Matter + Chance, and there is no afterlife. Right?
^
Remember that people not only evolve genetically, but culturally as well in a sense. Those types of behaviours that hurt a society will make the society ‘die’ off if they get out of hand.
Even in the animal kingdom, there are often social behaviours that allow animals to survive/thrive.
Take a tazmanian devil for instance. They have extremely powerful jaws that can cause great harm to one another should they choose. But they don’t and they often share food. If they didn’t, there is a good chance that they would not be successful as a species. Granted, this is just one solution to a problem in the animal kingdom and just like in the animal kingdom people can have differing successful solutions to the same problem.
Not sure if the last sentence is relevant, but it was on my mind.
In large part to me, morality is often a question of social benefit and continuing our species and often this involves getting along with your fellow man/woman. Personally for me (I don’t speak for all atheists), there really isn’t a good reason to continue our species and improve society I just do it because. Maybe it’s just something hard-wired into me.
The fact that there seems to be little to no correlation between spiritual belief and moral action lends to the idea that morality is something more related to the environment one grows up in and the way that person is wired than their belief system.
As far as belief systems go, I feel that it is something related to what I coin ‘cultural evolution’. Those religions that tell societies to do harmful things and can’t adapt tend to die off and those that are helpful continue on. That’s one of reasons that despite being atheist, I hold the bible in high esteem. Much to most of it is solid advice for individuals and societies as a whole.
[quote]chobothx wrote:
[quote]kamui wrote:
as an atheist, i think there’s something wrong with hating a person. period.
i don’t need a god to find that. I just have to see hate in action around me (or in me).[/quote]
Why do you think there’s something wrong with hating a person?
The Christian would perhaps quote Romans 1:19-22
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
You have been given a conscience according to the Bible, this is why you think it is wrong to hate.
But Natural Selection would teach otherwise, only the fittest of the pack deserve to live, how is it that you came about to all of a sudden contradict the flow of Natural Selection and decide it is wrong to hate?
[/quote]
Nonsense.
Have you ever considered that having a conscience could make you the fitter animal?
when i see hate, i see intense sufferings. everywhere.
in this world, not in a book.
when i feel hate, i feel intense sufferings too.
in my own mind and my own spirit.
so i do not only see hate is wrong, i see it’s bad.
in a very concrete way.
it burns you know.
granted, i don’t speak about absolute morality here. it’s just very basic ethics.
something called “rational Eudaimonism”, which was first theorized by the Greeks and later became a part of… the teachings of the Catholic Church, as a part of the Scholastic Thought.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]chobothx wrote:
But Natural Selection would teach otherwise, only the fittest of the pack deserve to live, how is it that you came about to all of a sudden contradict the flow of Natural Selection and decide it is wrong to hate?
[/quote]
Nonsense.
Have you ever considered that having a conscience could make you the fitter animal?
[/quote]
Aargh, his schoolbook about natural selection is from the 1920’s. Define fit and fit for what, to fuck? You don’t have to be the strongest around to get pussy.
You and I just may get along.
EDIT: BTW, this Christian has gone to Romans 1 about 10 times already =]
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
^
Remember that people not only evolve genetically, but culturally as well in a sense. Those types of behaviours that hurt a society will make the society ‘die’ off if they get out of hand.
Even in the animal kingdom, there are often social behaviours that allow animals to survive/thrive.
Take a tazmanian devil for instance. They have extremely powerful jaws that can cause great harm to one another should they choose. But they don’t and they often share food. If they didn’t, there is a good chance that they would not be successful as a species. Granted, this is just one solution to a problem in the animal kingdom and just like in the animal kingdom people can have differing successful solutions to the same problem.
Not sure if the last sentence is relevant, but it was on my mind.
In large part to me, morality is often a question of social benefit and continuing our species and often this involves getting along with your fellow man/woman. Personally for me (I don’t speak for all atheists), there really isn’t a good reason to continue our species and improve society I just do it because. Maybe it’s just something hard-wired into me.
The fact that there seems to be little to no correlation between spiritual belief and moral action lends to the idea that morality is something more related to the environment one grows up in and the way that person is wired than their belief system.
As far as belief systems go, I feel that it is something related to what I coin ‘cultural evolution’. Those religions that tell societies to do harmful things and can’t adapt tend to die off and those that are helpful continue on. That’s one of reasons that despite being atheist, I hold the bible in high esteem. Much to most of it is solid advice for individuals and societies as a whole.
[/quote]
Let us assume for a moment that evolution is true. (Which I do not… I believe in micro-evolution / natural selection (the elimination of excess genetic information), but I believe there is a lack of sufficient scientific data / research in macro-evolution (the process of which beneficial genetic information is created through mutation))
Is not your own thought that people not only evolve genetically and culturally a product of this evolution you speak of? Therefore any statement you make will never be objective because of the underlying foundation of determinism that impregnates all of Naturalism.
But let us put that minor point aside for a moment while we dig a little deeper into your morality.
Your next statement proves my previous point about all Secular morality being pragmatic, utilitarian, subjective or emotive. This is a serious pitfall for the evolutionist, because the moment you bring up some sort of ‘beneficial’ reason for keeping these savages around, I can give 2x the reasons for their just extermination. (see previous post on elimination of Blacks + Hispanics for the ultimate good of the United States)
Next you say that the notion that there is little to no correlation between spirituality and morality. At this point many Naturalists / Humanists / Secularists bring up all the atrocities that ‘religion’ has brought into the world, namely the Crusades, or if one is feeling ballsy, he’ll talk about the Theo-Political ideology of Islam (which is not really a religion, but I digress). I will concede that point, that what those individuals did in the name of Christianity was an atrocity, and ought to have never happened, but I do have an explanation. You cannot find any logical ties from their proposed spirituality to their immediate actions. Christianity has, and never will propagate through violence, for salvation begins from God, not with the sinner. But I will not go into the theology of Calvinism vs Pelagianism.
However, the atheist will often neglect to speak of the atrocities that have taken place in the name / ideology of atheism. We can move from the nihilism adopted by Hitler championed by the atheist Friedrich Nietzsche, to the avowed atheist Stalin, Lenin singularly appointed Stalin due to his hatred for all notions of God, moving on to Mao Tse Dong who tortured / killed millions who was influenced by the atheist Karl Marx, moving onto the Killing Fields of Cambodia created by the ideology of Jean Paul Sartre…
“What he did not foresee, and what a wiser man would have foreseen, was that most of the violence to which he gave philosophical encouragement would be inflicted by blacks not on whites, but on other blacks. By helping Fanon to inflame Africa, he contributed to the civil wars and mass murders that have engulfed most of the continent from the mid-sixties onwards to this day. His influence in Southeast Asia, where the Vietnam War was drawing to a close was even more baneful. The hideous crimes committed in Cambodia from April 1975 onwards, which involved the deaths of between a fifth and a third of the population, were organized by a group of Francophone middle-class intelectuals knowns as the Angka Leu (The Higher Organization). Of its eight leaders, five were teachers, one a university professor, one a civil servant, and one an economist. All has studied in France in the 1950’s where they had not only belonged to the Communist Party, but had absorbed Sartre’s doctrines of philosophical activism and “necessary violence.” These mass murderers were his ideological children.” - Paul Johnson, Historian
Additional quote for thought…
“If we present man with a concept of man that is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present him as an automation of reflexes, as a mind machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instincts, heredity, and environment, we feed the despair to which any man is prone. I became acquainted with the last stages of corruption in my second concentration camp in Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment, or as the Nazis like to say “of blood and soil”. I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Majdanek, were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or the other in Berlin, but rather at the desks of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”
- Viktor Frankl
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…i welcome the day when the Jewish, Muslim and Christian people of this earth and all demoninations realise that much of their religious ideology is outdated and non-applicable. By all means keep the good parts: be kind; live well; do no harm. What the rest is concerned: it’s archeology…
[/quote]
Eph, explain yourself please. This does not make any sense to me. If the Church speaks the truth, and since truth is absolute, it does not change over time. So what shall we throw away because it is archaic?[/quote]
…good != truth. An absolute truth is that we’re all bound to this planet by gravity, because it’s true for all of us. What you believe is true is not absolute truth…[/quote]
Pretty sure it is. I mean there are scientist that are working on disproving gravity as we know it. Maybe they will disprove it maybe they won’t. However, the issue here is faith and reason. You have to have both, some folks idolize reason. The only thing they’ll use. They make a god out of it, and won’t believe anything (which is funny because you have to have faith in your own reason to believe reason is the only thing that you can use) without reasoning it out.[/quote]
…come again? Disprove gravity? But this comes back to your misconceptions about what relative and absolute actually means, Chris. Gravity affects us all equally; this is an absolute…
…that we need to breath air to live; this is an absolute. Beliefs however differ from person to person; they are subjective, and can’t be absolute. Reason does not need faith like religious beliefs require faith: 1+1=2. No faith needed here…[/quote]
I am not talking about beliefs, I am talking about truth. People are fallible, leading through reason that they could believe in something false. However, ideas are not dictated as true or false by beliefs. Mathematics is not an area which one needs faith, non sequitor. In the area of supernatural there does need to exist faith AND reason.
Humans are fallible, so relying solely on reason is a troublesome matter. I am not saying we should be illogical, I am saying we should use reason. At the same time, not figure that we will be able to reason everything. In your last paragraph you have confused me with your example. Could you explain it to me a little further.
There, you misunderstand me and I see where it is that you do so.
I am not talking about beliefs, I am talking about truth. Yes, and some scientist believe that gravity is a false theory. I personally believe there is such thing as gravity, however they do not. My point in the purpose of that statement is that even things, as solidly proved as gravity, can be considered false.
I am not talking about what I think or believe. What I think does not dictate truth. If I believe in the truth, then the truth is still the truth. If I do not believe in the truth, it is still the truth. The Catholic Church holds truth on faith and morality, absolute truth, but finite absolute truth at that, since we are finite beings.[/quote]
…yes, people are fallible, but in science, when something is proven to be false, the theory is discarded or revised. Beliefs do no such thing; they are stagnant…
…faith and reason are mutually exlusive Chris. You may believe, or disbelieve in, the theory of gravity that tries to explain what’s the cause of the force of gravity; but gravity itself is fact. You don’t need to believe in the force of gravity because it is fact, an undeniable reality equal to everybody except those in the space station…
…if something is an absolute truth, then that truth is equally true for all of us. This is not the case with beliefs. This means that beliefs can never be absolute truths, they’re always subjective and thus relative…
…i’d challenge you to prove to me that gravity is false…