Makavali, what’s this religion where actions don’t matter but genes do?
PerfectCircle, as far as war and violence are concerned, money and power beats the crap out of religion. You’ll have to be naive to believe the rationale presented by religious leaders.
katzenjammer,
to be blunt, your posts are not worth my time to respond to in detail.
you claim that i am some sort of fool, but given your responses to my posts its clear that you are the one lacking any knowledge of the “intellectual” handling of these issues.
the fact that you do not understand my references tells me that you are not even casually acquainted with the academic writings on the subject. Your inability to understand my counter-example shows me that you are untrained in any sort of argumentation, logic, or rhetoric. Further, your purely Biblical references lead me to think that your only education on the topic consists in reading books like “case for faith”.
simply, your attack my posts is nothing more then a personal attack made out of ignorance.
although, if you’d like to humor me with your vast training on the subject, i’d love to hear.
[quote]Beowolf wrote:
You don’t know that God is not your coffee cup. [/quote]
God isn’t my cup of tea.
Stokedporkypoo,
Your so-called “counter example” is complete and utter nonsense held together - barely - by only the faintest hint of sincerity. It is not to be taken seriously - and would not be taken seriously by any theologian with any amount of training or knowledge.
I am not an expert theologian - though I have spent the better part of three decades immersed in theology, some of it quite complex. And I am not an expert philosopher, though I majored in philosophy & classics in college.
However, I am quite capable of knowing bullshit when I read it. And it is quite clear to me that you, sir, are a bullshit artist playing at being an intellectual.
[quote]Perfectcircle wrote:
stokedporcupine wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Thus, God is knowable, for I know many things about God, and men who study God know many more things about him then I.
But how did you come across this knowledge and what makes you so sure that it is so?
You say you dont know who or what “God” is but you still know he exsists. What makes you so sure??
I take it that you believe in some form of religion.[/quote]
You misunderstand me.
The facts i’ve claimed to know, as evidence that god is knowable without faith, are hypothetical. though i did not make it explicit (which i should have done), all the facts listed take the form of the statement: “if god exists, then…”. For example, i know that “if god exists, then god is not the coffee cup sitting on my desk”. I do not know that God exists, the facts I know about God are merely hypothetical facts (which is ok though, almost all of science is hypothetical. for instance, “if light is traveling in a perfect vacuum, then it is traveling at the constant c”)
How am i so sure of the facts that i listed? as i said, merely because the denial of the facts leads to contradiction. (this is a basic reductio ad absurdum proof). For instance, for the statement “if god exists, then god is not the coffee cup sitting on my desk” to be false, then it would have to be true that “God exists, and God is the coffee cup sitting on my desk”. But, this statement is an obvious contradiction of terms. by our very conception of God, if the coffee cup on my desk was god, then god would not be god–he’d be a coffee cup. (this is just absurd, you should see the contradiction).
Further, given these considerations, unlike what some of the over-zealous here think, God cannot be “whatever the fuck” God wants to be. There are many things that would lead to contradiction if God were them.
If you’d like perhaps a clearer example, I know the fact that “If the Christian God exists, then God is free from sin”. The denial of this fact is obviously impossible, because to deny it would mean that if the Christian God does exist, then God has sin–which is clearly a contradiction if one accepts biblical doctrine (which one would seem to have to, since in the antecedent of the conditional we have stipulated that it is the Christian God which exists).
Perhaps an even clearer example, one that does not rely on the acceptance of any doctrine, would be this. I know that “if God exists, then God is God”. The denial of this statement is impossible, for clearly it would involve saying that “if God exists, then God is not God”. (which is an obvious contradiction).
but anyway… I hope this has cleared up just what I know about God. One could of course argue that though I know a few facts about God, that this doesn’t constitute my “knowing” God. They might argue that I would need to know many more substantial things about God before I could claim to “know” God. This would be a fine argument–but as i’ve already pointed out, making this would involve clarifying just what one meant be “knowing” God. At the very least though, the idea that god can be “whatever the fuck” god wants to be is silly.
As i’ve hinted, i’m agnostic. I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian. I will freely admit that much of my rejection of Christianity is based on my social situation–I am a philosophy and mathematics student at a secular school. It is probably true that If i would have went to a Christian school, i’d probably still be a Christian. (not that i see this as a fault of mine, i’m just being honest, unlike many people. like i said in my other post, i tend to think one’s religious affiliation depends far more on social context then anything else–regardless of what arguments are employed).
On a brighter note though, I do think total atheism is about as silly as total theism. I think anyone who is honest about the issue will approach it much more carefully and rationally. There is of course much support for the supernatural and mystical… but on the other hand, given the existence of many conflicting dogmatic faiths, it does not seem that one should accept any of them blindly.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Stokedporkypoo,
Your so-called “counter example” is complete and utter nonsense held together - barely - by only the faintest hint of sincerity. It is not to be taken seriously - and would not be taken seriously by any theologian with any amount of training or knowledge.
I am not an expert theologian - though I have spent the better part of three decades immersed in theology, some of it quite complex. And I am not an expert philosopher, though I majored in philosophy & classics in college.
However, I am quite capable of knowing bullshit when I read it. And it is quite clear to me that you, sir, are a bullshit artist playing at being an intellectual. [/quote]
well, since you seemed to like my counter-example so much, you can read what i wrote about it in my above post.
also, your claims would be more believable if you actually seemed to grasp logic. Really, a philosophy student inept at logic? how did you ever pass? And classics, do you speak greek and latin?
this is the interwebzs, as some like to call it. And here, as Socrates says, it is not the person giving the argument, but the argument itself that is important (which is why i never talk of credentials, i’d much rather just examine what people actually say). ie, show me some argumentation skills and a basic grasp of logic.
[quote]stokedporcupine wrote:
well, since you seemed to like my counter-example so much, you can read what i wrote about it in my above post.
[/quote]
I read it - and can only respond in much the same way as above. You are not making an effort to be clear. You are scattering a bunch of nonsense and hoping it will make sense to someone. No one who is trained as a philosopher (as you yourself claim to be - though you also claim not to “talk of credentials”) would write like that.
??? Actually, I not only passed my undergraduate honors course, but was awarded numerous academic honors, scholarships, and was published in a national academic journal even before I graduated. Well, you asked.
I read Homeric & Classical Greek. And have a few years of Latin.
[quote]Perfectcircle wrote:
But to some they dont question it.
It doesn’t even warrant questioning because it has no meaning to them…it just isn’t necessary to live their lives[/quote]
Which is my position. I consider my self an atheist. I live with out any consideration for divinity.
Agnosticism is an untenable position.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Perfectcircle wrote:
But to some they dont question it.
It doesn’t even warrant questioning because it has no meaning to them…it just isn’t necessary to live their lives
Which is my position. I consider my self an atheist. I live with out any consideration for divinity.
Agnosticism is an untenable position.[/quote]
You keep trying to redefine words. Agnosticism merely means you don’t know enough to determine if there is or isn’t a god. You are clearly an atheist as you appear to have no doubt in your mind that god does not exist. These are not the same.
This discussion rocks. Why oh why did I ever leave academia…
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Perfectcircle wrote:
But to some they dont question it.
It doesn’t even warrant questioning because it has no meaning to them…it just isn’t necessary to live their lives
Which is my position. I consider my self an atheist. I live with out any consideration for divinity.
Agnosticism is an untenable position.
You keep trying to redefine words. Agnosticism merely means you don’t know enough to determine if there is or isn’t a god. You are clearly an atheist as you appear to have no doubt in your mind that god does not exist. These are not the same.[/quote]
I think Lifty has a good point - no one, not even the most ardent believer in God, can “determine” whether “there is or isn’t a God.” I think that’s exactly what explains faith, no?
Also, I wonder if Lifty really is the atheist he says he is. After all, he has a near-mystical belief in The Market 
I sympathize with his convictions here (Mises, Austrian school, etc) - but there it is: an all-powerful, all-knowing presence that pervades our lives, solves problems, coordinates resources and needs in the most beautiful way, creates by destroying, and destroys by creating, etc.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Perfectcircle wrote:
But to some they dont question it.
It doesn’t even warrant questioning because it has no meaning to them…it just isn’t necessary to live their lives
Which is my position. I consider my self an atheist. I live with out any consideration for divinity.
Agnosticism is an untenable position.
You keep trying to redefine words. Agnosticism merely means you don’t know enough to determine if there is or isn’t a god. You are clearly an atheist as you appear to have no doubt in your mind that god does not exist. These are not the same.
I think Lifty has a good point - no one, not even the most ardent believer in God, can “determine” whether “there is or isn’t a God.” I think that’s exactly what explains faith, no?
[/quote]
Believers have faith a god exists. Atheists have faith that god does not exist. Agnostics have faith either way. No one can determine the existence or lack of existence of such a being although many have tried.
lol
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
stokedporcupine wrote:
well, since you seemed to like my counter-example so much, you can read what i wrote about it in my above post.
I read it - and can only respond in much the same way as above. You are not making an effort to be clear. You are scattering a bunch of nonsense and hoping it will make sense to someone. No one who is trained as a philosopher (as you yourself claim to be - though you also claim not to “talk of credentials”) would write like that.
[/quote]
would write like what? do you refer to my basic use of counter-examples to disprove a universal claim? or perhaps you refer to my use of hypothetical. i’m not quite sure what your referring to. either way, I’ve made an extraordinary effort to help walk you through the basics of logic… again, the fact that you are so confused by my posts tells me that you have no background.
what “undergraduate honors course”, one in logic? also, “academic honors and scholarships” mean jack shit. every university hands out “awards”, and scholarships are a dime a dozen… i have them too.
as for your claim of being published in a “national” journal, i’m not sure what that means. every journal is “national” as they will generally distribute to anyone anywhere who pays the subscription fee. Also, just about every journal listed on the main online databases is “international”, since they can be read anywhere in the world. if you were trying to sound impressive, the words “peer reviewed” or “professional” would be much more so.
care to list the journal and article name? no matter what it is, it can be hunted down online whether through database or index searches or by going to the national organization for whichever field its in and searching their journal listings.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Also, I wonder if Lifty really is the atheist he says he is. After all, he has a near-mystical belief in The Market I sympathize with his convictions here (Mises, Austrian school, etc) - but there it is: an all-powerful, all-knowing presence that pervades our lives, solves problems, coordinates resources and needs in the most beautiful way, creates by destroying, and destroys by creating, etc.
[/quote]
Oh, no doubt. I believe faith is a big part of most everyone’s life. By training I am a physicist which means I spend much of my day hoping I haven’t wasted my life studying the natural world by observation alone – i.e., I have faith that the scientific method is not just some mystic ritual, etc.
Even axiomatic truth requires a certain bit of faith. Just because something is knowable because we have defined it a certain way does not guarantee us ultimate knowledge.
In many ways, I believe the more one becomes entrenched in the philosophic pursuit of knowledge the more important faith becomes.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
You keep trying to redefine words. Agnosticism merely means you don’t know enough to determine if there is or isn’t a god. You are clearly an atheist as you appear to have no doubt in your mind that god does not exist. These are not the same.[/quote]
At best, I would consider agnosticism a special form of atheism for sophists who like to banter about theism; however, it is my position that it is not possible to “know” one way or another about the ultimate existence of god therefore agnosticism is a redundant definition.
BTW, much of philosophy concerns the meaning of words. This is why many philosophers spend countless pages just defining their terms. Sometimes, the accepted meanings of words are not enough. I have stated before that language is an imperfect means of expression. Mathematics uses a special language defined absolutely with no more than a handful of explicit concepts but it trades nuance for abstraction. There is no perfect means of conveying information.
[quote]stokedporcupine wrote:
what “undergraduate honors course”, one in logic?
[/quote]
I told you I majored in philosophy & classics - so your problem is what?
Yes, I’m sure your college hands out a lot of bullshit honors and scholarships.
Since you’re challenging me, let me give you an example of the kind of thing I mean: I competed first within my university, then within my state, and then nationally for a scholarship that is given annually to a very limited number of graduating undergrads every year, to go study abroad.
And as for the journal, it’s one of the leading intellectual journals of our time. Professors have a hard time getting published in it - let alone undergrads. Anyway, I prefer to remain anonymous, thank you very much. If you don’t believe me, go fuck yourself.
I’m not blowing my own horn to say I am better than anyone - I am no better than anyone else. Your unending accusations about me being an uneducated half-wit (who knows less than nothing about rhetoric, logic, theology, etc.) are absolutely dead on correct. However, my ignorance does not excuse your waxing incoherently on topics you (so obviously) know nothing about.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Also, I wonder if Lifty really is the atheist he says he is. After all, he has a near-mystical belief in The Market I sympathize with his convictions here (Mises, Austrian school, etc) - but there it is: an all-powerful, all-knowing presence that pervades our lives, solves problems, coordinates resources and needs in the most beautiful way, creates by destroying, and destroys by creating, etc.
Oh, no doubt. I believe faith is a big part of most everyone’s life. By training I am a physicist which means I spend much of my day hoping I haven’t wasted my life studying the natural world by observation alone – i.e., I have faith that the scientific method is not just some mystic ritual, etc.
Even axiomatic truth requires a certain bit of faith. Just because something is knowable because we have defined it a certain way does not guarantee us ultimate knowledge.
In many ways, I believe the more one becomes entrenched in the philosophic pursuit of knowledge the more important faith becomes. [/quote]
Well fucking said.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
stokedporcupine wrote:
what “undergraduate honors course”, one in logic?
I told you I majored in philosophy & classics - so your problem is what?
also, “academic honors and scholarships” mean jack shit. every university hands out “awards”, and scholarships are a dime a dozen… i have them too.
Yes, I’m sure your college hands out a lot of bullshit honors and scholarships.
Since you’re challenging me, let me give you an example of the kind of thing I mean: I competed first within my university, then within my state, and then nationally for a scholarship that is given annually to a very limited number of graduating undergrads every year, to go study abroad.
And as for the journal, it’s one of the leading intellectual journals of our time. Professors have a hard time getting published in it - let alone undergrads. Anyway, I prefer to remain anonymous, thank you very much. If you don’t believe me, go fuck yourself.
I’m not blowing my own horn to say I am better than anyone - I am no better than anyone else. Your unending accusations about me being an uneducated half-wit (who knows less than nothing about rhetoric, logic, theology, etc.) are absolutely dead on correct. However, my ignorance does not excuse your waxing incoherently on topics you (so obviously) know nothing about.
[/quote]
nods his head this is surely an impressive doctrine, one which is not easily understood.
[quote]Perfectcircle wrote:
This may cause a bit of ill feeling ,but, we are all entitled to an opinion.
I, personally find the idea of religion as a cop out. A way and excuse for people to justify there actions and the way they live there lives.
I have no problem with admitting that it does good. It encourages values and so on and helps people get through life.
I have a problem with it being used as an EXCUSE for a persons actions or reasonings when it impacts upon another’s life and exsistence.
[/quote]
I challenge you to re-read what you have just written here and apply it to humanistic ideals such as science. The fact is that many people have been hurt in the name of science and that has been used as an excuse, just like religion. I.e. the Tuskegee experiments: Tuskegee Syphilis Study - Wikipedia
Religious people have faith in God, etc and hopefully that governs their lives and actions. The same is said for humanists who believe that man is the highest authority and typically look to science to answer their questions of life etc.
So both religion and science operate from faith or belief and both have done damage to others.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
…
In many ways, I believe the more one becomes entrenched in the philosophic pursuit of knowledge the more important faith becomes. [/quote]
This is why I dislike so much philosophy. It requires faith in a premise, faith I am not willing to give because the premise isn’t perfect.