Religious Questions of Logic

TheBodyGuard · September 19, 2011, 12:08am

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:http://i.imgur.com/3iZ0k.png So, explain why god did this? If we look at other animals’ brains and our brains and see these similarities, why did god create us this way if it wasn’t for evolution? >>>[/quote]So that a guy from Holland (who’s name I happen to know isn’t really Ephrem) would, at 5:23 am Detroit time, Sept. 18th 2011 post this picture thinking it was evidence against the God in whose image he was created =] [quote]ephrem wrote:<<< Edit: wrong thread, damn[/quote]Oh… gibberish lol. You wanted it in both threads. Who ya tryin to snow with this?
[/quote]

And your name is Tiribulus? Mom and Dad hated your ass didn’t they? That’s a helluva handle for a kid in school.

Tiribulus · September 19, 2011, 1:33am

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:<<< And your name is Tiribulus? Mom and Dad hated your ass didn’t they? That’s a helluva handle for a kid in school. [/quote]Why ya gotta be like this? Was I not cool to you last time we had a go round or two?

pat · September 19, 2011, 1:36pm

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
Pat, here…I read this (Edward Feser: So you think you understand the cosmological argument?), fully understand it, and finally and fully understand why you think “I don’t get it”. He is infinitely more elegant in his defense of the CA than you (or anyone else here, and I don’t mean that as a dig) and I now understand where you are coming from, and the error of my “approach” to the debate. However, my error is not one of not understanding the ultimate conclusions and pathways of the CA, but one of my failings at the nomenclature of the philosophical disciplines which, to me, at the end of the day and in my opinion amount to linguistic and philosophical masturbation. I understand your (or rather Feser’s) defense of the CA. I still do not accept it without question. And it brings nothing to the table for me personally as I’ve already gone on record as stating I’m not an atheist. That I cannot articulate my objection in your philosophical language is my shortcoming and I’m not interested enough (because like a chessmaster I already see or “grok” the stalemate at the end of this exercise, mo matter what discipline you apply, or nomenclature you use) to continue it’s study to “speak your language”. I’m just really not that interested. I know where it goes and I know where it DOESN’T go. I admit though I’ve been terrible at articulating that.

[/quote]

I have made every single one of those points at one time or another, it’s not my fault if people don’t pay attention.
You keep saying at how uninterested you are in a topic your doing a decent amount of research on. I can assure you I have never put any effort into something I am not interested in, unless I was getting a grade.
so I don’t believe you when you say your bored or not interest. Bored, uninterested people do behave like they give a shit and then say they don’t.
I think you give a shit and you give a big one.

You can tell the threads I don’t give a shit about. I don’t participate. [/quote]

Intellectual curiosity. But I’m bored easily. Pat, please don’t try to analyze me and I promise I will not mislead you, as I have not thus far. I don’t care b/c of the ultimate stalemate. It’s philosophical masturbation to me. It does not give me an answer. To be clear, there are two types of information that I thirst for and will hold my attention: knowledge I can use right away (social, economic, wisdom, etc.) and what I’ll call “search for truth” knowledge. There is no ultimate “truth” to the CA. When I say I’m not interested, I’m not interested enough to continue to give it my time, such that I can come back here and debate it on its terms, only to reach the stalemate end that I know is attached to it.

And, in fairness, you may have made those points at one time or another, but not as elegantly as the reference/blog. You were too busy arguing, and too busy saying “gotcha”. Maybe, just maybe, your defense of the CA has not been as elegant as you imagine. I breezed thru the reference and said…“okay”.

I defended you in a thread the other day…said “I think Pat is very bright…”. And the reply was to the effect, “but how bright can he be if I can’t understand anything he says?”[/quote]

Okay.

pat · September 19, 2011, 1:58pm

[quote]ironcross wrote:
Cortes- I was under the impression that the entire reason CA wqs being brought up in this thread was to prove that religion itself was more logical than the other ideas mentioned. My first comment on it wasn’t true. In my last ones, I was trying to bring it back to the original thread topics. Thanks for the apology. No problem.
[/quote]
The point actually is two fold. One is to show that faith in God, isn’t completely devoid of logic. That there is a logical component there. However, religion in general is based in faith and not logic. The second, is to show also, that many components of daily life consists on non-nonsensical ritualistic behavior that if observed from an alien point of view, doesn’t make any sense. We do stuff all the time, we don’t need to do.

Kamui- interesting. It’s possible to use both methods. The first makes for a much more interesting read, the second offers a wider perspective. I wouldn’t discount either or say that using the first makes it impossible to understand the second or vice versa.

In you first reply post it sounded like you were saying that religion provides an experience, which much has been written on, where the participant experiences an altered state of consciousness. I remember reading an article on the hormones involved with “being in love” which showed that the body responds to them like drugs, which is why we somewhat fall out of it around 1-2 years when our body gets used to the chemicals. It ended by saying that humans are always seeking an altered state of consciousness and this was so powerful tha tit allowed people to ignore warning signs in the relationship.

I would love to read that article. That makes no logical sense at all. First, if you developed a tolerance to ‘love’ chemicals in the body, then there would never be adultery. Simply once you developed a tolerance to the chemicals, then it wouldn’t make sense that you could respond to a different person in the same way or have those same feelings ever again. But alas way to many people re-‘fall in love’ even when they are supposedly with their soul mate.
Second, anybody who has been married for any length of time can relate, that ‘love’ really makes no sense what so ever. It is probably the most nonsensical thing we do. Love consists primarily of toil, sacrifice and struggle. Feelings have little to do with it over time, it more about action and behavior.
Third, an experience from a chemical whether it is indigenous or exogenous is different from the chemical itself. The chemical may trigger an experience, but the experience isn’t the chemical.

[quote]
I’m pretty sure my posts up to this point have mislead you concerning how I have read and talked to people about religion and experienced it myself. I think my post interesting experience was going to a Buddhist meeting after deciding that Judeo-christian religions were illogical. Beforehand, I’d spent 14 years as the most enthusiastic Christian that could be found, so I was familiar with how “Gos changed lives”. Well, at this Buddhist meeting, numerous people were getting up and telling stories abouthow much their life had sucked before they became Buddhist and how everything just fell into place after they converted, because they were on the right path. Exactly, word-for-word like all of the Christians talking about God, except replace “found Jesus” with “became buddhist”.[/quote]

I would argue that people who look for religion to fix their lives won’t be religious very long, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Jew. Feelings come and go. If your religious for ‘get-off’ so to speak, your what Jesus described as the seed which fell on rocky ground. You receive the word with joy, but when the joy goes away, so does your faith.

We religious folk aren’t religious because it feels good, or because it fixes our lives. We do it out of faith and love, because it is the harder path. It is a humbling journey, it doesn’t always feel good and many times it damned hard.

Sorry to barge in…Kam is a brilliant dude, but he isn’t religious. I figured I could add something.

TheBodyGuard · September 19, 2011, 3:13pm

[quote]pat wrote:
One is to show that faith in God, isn’t completely devoid of logic. That there is a logical component there. [/quote]

After numerous threads (2 I know of), and dozens of posts, I have found agreement with you. We’re really not that far apart.

I’ll still maintain religion is terribly flawed and separates as many people as it “brings together”. You need look no further than this forum. You have people lump together that believe the same thing, and they are therefore sympathetic to each other’s arguments and positions. And then you have those that do not share those believes, and reading these pages, you’d come to believe there was this great chasm between them.

I see this with and between Christian, Jew, Muslim, et als. When, at the end of the day, they all supposedly share a love of “God”.

The CA logically leads you to what you call “God”. It does not lead to a Christian God, or any other denominational God for that matter. And if we all share at least that belief, are we really that far apart?

kamui · September 19, 2011, 5:00pm

The reader/student can learn something from both methods. The writer/researcher shouldn’t mix them.

[quote]

I’m pretty sure my posts up to this point have mislead you concerning how I have read and talked to people about religion and experienced it myself. I think my post interesting experience was going to a Buddhist meeting after deciding that Judeo-christian religions were illogical. Beforehand, I’d spent 14 years as the most enthusiastic Christian that could be found, so I was familiar with how “Gos changed lives”. Well, at this Buddhist meeting, numerous people were getting up and telling stories abouthow much their life had sucked before they became Buddhist and how everything just fell into place after they converted, because they were on the right path. Exactly, word-for-word like all of the Christians talking about God, except replace “found Jesus” with “became buddhist”. [/quote]

what you describe has more to do with our post-modern condition than with “normal” religion.

The destitution of traditional societies ruined the collective narratives of our civilization. We are now doomed to endlessly repeat countless individual life-stories.

as a rule, the less authentic’s the experience, the more enthusiastic’s the subject.

ironically : In greek, “mystic” means “silent”.

pat · September 19, 2011, 6:27pm

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
One is to show that faith in God, isn’t completely devoid of logic. That there is a logical component there. [/quote]

After numerous threads (2 I know of), and dozens of posts, I have found agreement with you. We’re really not that far apart.

I’ll still maintain religion is terribly flawed and separates as many people as it “brings together”. You need look no further than this forum. You have people lump together that believe the same thing, and they are therefore sympathetic to each other’s arguments and positions. And then you have those that do not share those believes, and reading these pages, you’d come to believe there was this great chasm between them.

I see this with and between Christian, Jew, Muslim, et als. When, at the end of the day, they all supposedly share a love of “God”.

The CA logically leads you to what you call “God”. It does not lead to a Christian God, or any other denominational God for that matter. And if we all share at least that belief, are we really that far apart? [/quote]

Fair enough. You are certainly entitled to hate religion as much as you want to. I am betting though, that it’s based on a lot of false information and broad brushing. It’s kinda hard to lump all religion in the same category. That being said religion will always be as flawed as man, because man runs religion. God isn’t religious.

TheBodyGuard · September 19, 2011, 8:40pm

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
One is to show that faith in God, isn’t completely devoid of logic. That there is a logical component there. [/quote]

After numerous threads (2 I know of), and dozens of posts, I have found agreement with you. We’re really not that far apart.

I’ll still maintain religion is terribly flawed and separates as many people as it “brings together”. You need look no further than this forum. You have people lump together that believe the same thing, and they are therefore sympathetic to each other’s arguments and positions. And then you have those that do not share those believes, and reading these pages, you’d come to believe there was this great chasm between them.

I see this with and between Christian, Jew, Muslim, et als. When, at the end of the day, they all supposedly share a love of “God”.

The CA logically leads you to what you call “God”. It does not lead to a Christian God, or any other denominational God for that matter. And if we all share at least that belief, are we really that far apart? [/quote]

Fair enough. You are certainly entitled to hate religion as much as you want to. I am betting though, that it’s based on a lot of false information and broad brushing. It’s kinda hard to lump all religion in the same category. That being said religion will always be as flawed as man, because man runs religion. God isn’t religious.[/quote]

Would it be too much to avoid the fallacious constructs you so happily jump upon when another person utters the same? Did I say I “hate” religion? How do you know my opinion is on “false information” and “broad brushing”?

And you can quite easily lump them all together. They pretty much exclude all but their own, and on that basis, one could LOGICALLY conclude they are likely false, except perhaps one, but no single religion makes a compelling (any more than the other) case for itself b/c it requires the suspension of reason, and ask for faith.

Religion is as flawed as man b/c man corrupted it. When you find me something divine uncorrupted by man, I shall embrace it.

pat · September 19, 2011, 9:07pm