patrick.net

I've argued with you before Dan.

Dan8267 says

in which case I come out ahead by learning something

I'm quite certain you aren't going to learn anything from me Dan. At least not in any immediate way that would be reflected in a forum conversation.

I'll give you one small argument then I'm out of here.

Dan8267 says

Atheism is a conclusion, not a presumption.

Maybe. But only by presuming that you totally understand what all forms of adult spiritual belief can take, can you debunk them. Your conclusions are based on a straw man argument of what adult religious belief is.

Your "proof" may accurately address some believers, but is unable to touch others.

How do you begin to supposedly understand what it is that for example this Episcopalean Bishop believes ? Logically, wouldn't you have to understand his belief before you could disprove it ?

He describes his belief as "walking in to the mystery."

http://www.youtube.com/embed/6AfFcAmx-Ro&feature=relmfu

Dan8267 says

According to Marcus, George Carlin is an "unhealthy childish crusader". Who are you going to believe, George Carlin or Marcus? I'll go with Carlin any day.

Generalizing about most institutional religion is a far cry from your arguments about any form of spiritual belief.

It's the difference between thinking that religion should be better versus thinkng that it needs to not exist and that we all need to be atheists.

"When it comes to God's existence, I'm not an atheist and I'm not an agnostic. I'm an acrostic. The whole thing puzzles me."
- George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

Dan, you are a rational person. Whould you say the nature of man has been pretty consistant over the last few thousand years? I would suggest it has been. So, given the basic nature of man, and his tendancey to want to leave his mark, and art, and imagination, and stuff like that, doesn't it seem pretty far fetched that the oldest writings we have from man tells such matter-of-fact detailed things as how and when to plant, fertilize, when harvest a crop? And how to make beer and bread. And how man came to exist, and the fact that man was created after all other life forms. And how there was a big deluge that almost wiped man out. And a big rock that wiped out alot of things too. What I'm getting at is this, why would the nature on man be so different in that ancient time that he would create an exact documant with nothing but facts, write every part as a fact, but then, out of the blue, ad in some fairy tale. That would certianly not be following the nature of a people that advanced enough to invent writing. They then took the time to write down their detailed knowledge for the furture generations to have and hold. It would make no sense. A history book, or a manual full of directions, seldom have fairy tales included.

Writing, schools, roads, farming, animal husbandry, schools, hospitals, money, banks, debts, uniform measurements ... not the stuff fairy tales are made of, are they? The first history of man ever wrote was the Genisis story. In extreme detail. The nature of man has not changed.

The Zues, Posidon, crap came long after the original explainations of our universe was wrote down. You can't say ancient man had a special nature without proof. If anything, ancient man was much smarter -- and spiritual. Those two things are mutually exclusive in the minds of most liberal/leftists, it seems. And that may be the real issue here. Liberal/leftists see spirituality as a sign of stupidity, much like conservatives see male sodomites as being soft or weak. Both are assumptions based on nothing but personal points of view.

marcus says

I'm quite certain you aren't going to learn anything from me Dan.

Finally, something we can agree upon!

marcus says

I'll give you one small argument then I'm out of here.

Promise?

marcus says

But only by presuming that you totally understand what all forms of adult spiritual belief can take, can you debunk them. Your conclusions are based on a straw man argument of what adult religious belief is.

Hardly. I have listened to every argument made in favor of the belief in a god, any type of god. I play devils advocate -- no pun intended -- in any ideas that I debate in my mind. I always welcome new arguments in favor of the opposition. If a new opposition argument prevails, then I will gladly change my position 180 degrees on a dime, but only if the opposing argument is demonstrably true.

A few months ago I even watched a debate between Richard Dawkins and a priest in the Anglican Church. It was a wonderfully civilized debate, and if only it were available on YouTube I would have posted it on this site and given my critic of it. Interestingly, the Anglican priest illustrated why many people want their to be a god: they need a god to justify the belief in absolute morality which they erroneously believe is the only alternative to morality being arbitrary and meaningless. I would have gone into great detail in my critic about why this is wrong, but without a transcript or video to link to, it would have been pointless.

In any case, I listen to all arguments as there is no disadvantage to doing so. And the arguments I've heard are far more intelligent than anything that has ever come out of your mouth, Marcus.

marcus says

Your "proof" may accurately address some believers, but is unable to touch others.

Irrelevant. The purpose of a proof is to demonstrate beyond doubt to rational people why a statement is true. Proofs are not created to persuade those who are willfully ignorant and consciously choose not to accept the truth because it threatens their income or power.

A proof that the square root of two is irrational is a valid proof regardless of how many fools choose to ignore it and continue believing that the root is rational.

And as I said many times, the viruses of religion, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. cannot be cured. One must simply strive to prevent infection of the next generation. Society advances with every funeral as bad ideas die with their advocates.

marcus says

How do you begin to supposedly understand what it is that for example this Episcopalean Bishop believes ? Logically, wouldn't you have to understand his belief before you could disprove it ?

I could watch the 30 minute video you posted and critique it point by point. But I have little motivation to do so since I have yet to witness you actually listening to anything I've ever said. So unless I am convinced that other people think the video is worth discussing, I have no reason to spend the time watching it and then responding to it.

marcus says

It's the difference between thinking that religion should be better versus thinkng that it needs to not exist and that we all need to be atheists.

George Carlin did not think religion needs to be improved. He thought the world would be better without it.

In any case, improving an inherently flawed system is foolish. It is far better to create a new system that is not inherently flawed. Should we try to improve racism making it nicer or should we replace racism with something better like rationalism. The same applies to religion and for the exact same reasons. You don't make astrology better. You replace it with astronomy.

There is no reason why religion should be preserved. It serves no purpose that isn't already served by better institutions like philosophy, ethics, compassion, social justice, and reasoning.

I love it when confused deists with secular humanistic leanings are confused into thinking they are "true atheists". The definition of atheism ain't all that complicated. If you think it is, then you're a deist. Nothing wrong with that at all. Be proud. Deists are profoundly rational people, including most of those who founded this country, after all.

In modern western cultures, most christians are also secular humanists, including most of the evangelicals in actual practice. While many tend to profess literal fundamentalist beliefs, very very few practice accordingly. Even Bap33 is a secular humanist, though I doubt he realizes it. If evangelicals did stay true to their scripture then they would find themselves quickly incarcerated...at the least, they wouldn't be on the Internet blogging, incurring debt or treating their ailments with modern medicine.

But hey, at least there aren't any $cientoligist$ on this site.

Bap33 says

Whould you say the nature of man has been pretty consistant over the last few thousand years?

The question is too vague to answer, particularly what is meant by the nature of man. The human brain has not changed significantly in the past few thousand years, however, culture and paradigms have changed greatly and these things affect human behavior.

Bap33 says

The first history of man ever wrote was the Genisis story. In extreme detail.

The Bible is not a single work. It is a collection of many works written over long periods of time, revised and rewritten, and voted on in a committee. The Bible is not full of facts in any historical sense. It's full of contradictions.

And Genesis is not the first history of man ever written by any account. Genesis isn't even the oldest book in the Bible. Just because it appears first in the Bible doesn't mean it is the oldest. And Genesis completely lacks any meaningful details to construct a historic account even if you took it literally. How the hell did Adam and Eve's children find mates?

Genesis is clearly an allegory. Taking it literally completely misses the point of the story -- which isn't a bad thing since the point is a stupid one anyway.

Take Adam and Eve. They were banished from paradise for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Can you see the symbolism. Babies are innocent and know nothing of good and evil, so they are happy in paradise. As a child grows into adulthood he learns of good and evil and thus is banished from the paradise of ignorance. It's a story about how losing innocence is the price to pay for gaining adult knowledge. And it's a bad point because you want children to mature into adults.

Then take Cain and Able. As I've said elsewhere, this is an allegory of the conflict between nomadic life and the earliest cities. When the ice age ended the agricultural revolution started. This allowed people to settle down and build cities. This also allowed the ancient religions that are still practiced today to get started. And when these religions started, there were conflicts between those who lived nomadic lives (the old ways) and those who farmed and settled in towns and cities (the new ways).

Cain represents the farmers / city dwellers. Able represents the hunter-gather nomads. The story was written by the nomads so Cain is evil and Able is good. Cain kills Able like agriculture killed the nomadic way of life.

Then consider how the life expectancy drops with every generation from Adam. This symbolizes the distancing of man from god, the source of life.

As for the flood, there were many natural disasters including many floods and flood stories throughout history at different times and places. Although a major flood might appear to be world-wide to some tiny ancient tribe, it does not mean the flood was world-wide.

Various floods inspired similar stories, and these stories were combined and intertwined and spawned new stories which eventually became the standard story of Noah's flood. But I assure you that rainbows existed long before man. I know this from physics.

Clearly Genesis is not even an attempt at recording historical facts. It is purely a symbolic script.

Bap33 says

You can't say ancient man had a special nature without proof.

I don't know what you mean by "special nature" or how you are trying to relate it to the historical accuracy of myths. But know that there are many different creation myths throughout the world. Most of them are very different from the Christian one. Are you prepared to accept those non-Christian creation myths as literally true? The ones from India are the oldest and predate Christian myths by many thousands of years.

Bap33 says

If anything, ancient man was much smarter -- and spiritual.

There is no reason to believe ancient man was smarter, and he certainly was far less knowledgeable. As for ancient man's spiritual beliefs, they were what you would call pagan and witchcraft.

Bap33 says

smarter -- and spiritual. Those two things are mutually exclusive in the minds of most liberal/leftists, it seems.

Leftists can be quite religious. Just look at the nuns who were criticized by the Vatican for spending their time helping the poor instead of fighting gay marriage.

The philosophy of liberalism says nothing about mythical beliefs except that people have the right to hold and practice them.

Now, the philosophy of rationalism does have a problem with mythical beliefs. What you call spiritualism is nothing more than a euphemism for superstition, the belief in supernatural entities. Although neither leftist philosophy nor liberal philosophy has a problem with supernatural beliefs, rational philosophy clearly does.

Rationalism is based on the acceptance of truth, as best as we can know it, based on evidence and reasoning. Supernatural beliefs by definition are beliefs in which there is no evidence for and which contradict or ignore natural laws (physics, chemistry, etc.). So, of course, superstition and rationalism are mutually exclusive.

In fact, for the better part of three millennia there has been a war between mysticism and rationalism. I clearly advocate the rational side. Rationalism is why we live in the modern world with electricity, world-wide communication, flying machines, skyscrapers, and modern medicine. If mysticism ruled, we'd still be living in the Bronze Age trying to turn lead into gold and performing rain dances to ensure sufficient food for the winter. Rationalism is clearly the right choice, and mysticism offers nothing but lies.

Sometimes when a thesis and and anti-thesis fight, you don't get a synthesis because one side is utterly bullshit.

Patrick,
Don't go to a Catholic church, the priest might abuse you.

BTW, Does anyone have any proof a spirit?

Randy H says

Even Bap33 is a secular humanist, though I doubt he realizes it.

Bap333 a secular humanist? If that's true, I'm god, which would be ironic since I'm an atheist and clearly a secular humanist.

Noun

S: (n) humanism, secular humanism (the doctrine emphasizing a person's capacity for self-realization through reason; rejects religion and the supernatural)

Princeton University's WordNet

HEY YOU says

BTW, Does anyone have any proof a spirit?

Ah, tangible evidence. Why would one need that when basis one's entire life on a belief?

I didn't say how much of a secular humanist he was, only that he demonstrates something more than 100% fundamentalist evangelism in his behavior simply because he clearly engages in modern society and lives within its laws, mores and norms.

Dan on the other hand is just a bit too wound up and preachy. The problem being a preachy atheist is you end up wasting all your time arguing with BOTH the evangelicals AND the postmodernist whack-a-moles.

Life's short dude, live and let live. If you're really an atheist then you know that the believers will never learn the truth because when they die they'll cease to exist, thus they will die ever believing their interpretation of the truth was right. That's the clever thing about the rationality of faith: it is unfalsifiable.

Dan8267 says

The ones from India are the oldest and predate Christian myths by many thousands of years.

for the first time - ever - you may be wrong. I understand the facts to suggest that the first written accounts of ANYTHING are from Sumer. And the history of man is one of the facts they shared.

Dan8267 says

Bap33 says

smarter -- and spiritual. Those two things are mutually exclusive in the minds of most liberal/leftists, it seems.
Leftists can be quite religious. Just look at the nuns who were criticized by the Vatican for spending their time helping the poor instead of fighting gay marriage.

cmon dude, I said spiritual, not religious. Religion is not the answer.

Dan8267 says

Bap33 says

You can't say ancient man had a special nature without proof.
I don't know what you mean by "special nature" or how you are trying to relate it to the historical accuracy of myths.

special nature in the context of my post, meaning different than the known, historic nature of man.

dude, you write too much, making me write too much to answer. Boo!

Dan8267 says

Then consider how the life expectancy drops with every generation from Adam. This symbolizes the distancing of man from god, the source of life.

wrong. But, sounded good.

Dan8267 says

Bap33 says

The first history of man ever wrote was the Genisis story. In extreme detail.
The Bible is not a single work.

oh, I see where you mis-understood my post. I meant the "Genisis story" , not the Book of Genisis!! .. I just sited the story, knowing you would know what it is about. I did not mean the first book in the Bible - exactly - just the story. Sorry for that.

Dan8267 says

Bap33 says

Whould you say the nature of man has been pretty consistant over the last few thousand years?
The question is too vague to answer, particularly what is meant by the nature of man. The human brain has not changed significantly in the past few thousand years, however, culture and paradigms have changed greatly and these things affect human behavior.

Are you suggesting there is no "nature" to man(generic)?

Randy H says

Even Bap33 is a secular humanist, though I doubt he realizes it.

I am a complicated person! lol
I can only promise you this: God is.
I have spent long nights on my knees on the floor in deep meditation and prayer -- looking for something, anything, and believe it or not, there is something there.
I'm still a scumbag, but I am a believer.

I'm going to get a rusty old halo, skinny white cloud, and second hand wings full of patches.

Bap33 says

I understand the facts to suggest that the first written accounts of ANYTHING are from Sumer.

Myths don't have to be written down.

Bap33 says

cmon dude, I said spiritual, not religious. Religion is not the answer.

Fine then, leftists can be quite "spiritual" as well. Just look at the nuns who were criticized by the Vatican for spending their time helping the poor instead of fighting gay marriage.

Bap33 says

special nature in the context of my post, meaning different than the known, historic nature of man.

OK, clear as mud now.

Bap33 says

Dan8267 says

Then consider how the life expectancy drops with every generation from Adam. This symbolizes the distancing of man from god, the source of life.

wrong. But, sounded good.

Feel free to argue the point with theologians. It's just a fairytale anyway.

Bap33 says

Are you suggesting there is no "nature" to man(generic)?

No, but if you want to discuss the nature of man productively, you have to write very precisely and define exactly what you mean.

Bap33 says

Randy H says

Even Bap33 is a secular humanist, though I doubt he realizes it.

I am a complicated person! lol
I can only promise you this: God is.

Dan8267 says

Noun

S: (n) humanism, secular humanism (the doctrine emphasizing a person's capacity for self-realization through reason; rejects religion and the supernatural)

So then god rejects religion and the supernatural. Isn't that ironic, don't you think?

Dan8267 says

Bap33 says

Dan8267 says
Then consider how the life expectancy drops with every generation from Adam. This symbolizes the distancing of man from god, the source of life.
wrong. But, sounded good.
Feel free to argue the point with theologians. It's just a fairytale anyway.

man lived about the same amount of time, with the longest living coming many gererations after Adam. The age of man was cut shorter after Noah went sailing.

Dan8267 says

So then god rejects religion and the supernatural. Isn't that ironic, don't you think?

God can be defeated not with irony, but with iron:

"And the LORD was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."

thunderlips11 says

God can be defeated with iron.

"And the LORD was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."

Holy shit! Kurse is god?

It all makes sense now... Jesus must be the Hulk. You don't want to see Jesus mad.

thunderlips11 says

God can be defeated with iron.

At least Cybermen require gold to take down.

Dan8267 says

Take Adam and Eve. They were banished from paradise for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Can you see the symbolism. Babies are innocent and know nothing of good and evil, so they are happy in paradise. As a child grows into adulthood he learns of good and evil and thus is banished from the paradise of ignorance.

True. But I think the story is about the fruits of consciousness, and the burden that comes with it.

The couple eats from the tree of knowledge, that the snake (who is not Satan, by the way) says that, if eaten, "your eyes will be opened and you will be like us."

The God who put the tree in the garden is immediately found sewing animal skins together for their post-Eden life. He has helped them to attain a conscious mind.

The price for their consciousness is to work and have pain in childbirth. Things, I think it would seem to people from that era, that the animal kingdom without our consciousness do not have to "suffer".

HEY YOU says

BTW, Does anyone have any proof a spirit?

Yes.

So if I can prove there is not infinite anything, then does that destroy god?

I think - maybe - that:
you can split any line infinitly small
you can increase any line infinitly big
fractals are the same, infinite small, infinite big.
Energy seems to me umlimited in heat and cold, it' just that atoms and matter have issues at some levels of both hot and cold.
But, I do look forward to your next post.

leoj707 says

HEY YOU says

BTW, Does anyone have any proof a spirit?

Yes.

A classic Islay malt. Good choice.

A line cannot split infinitely small unless it is also infinitely large. Otherwise it is bounded by constraints, and at some level of arbitrary smallness it will cease to be divisiable. And a line cannot be infinitely large because *infinitely* means it will exceed the contraints of the universe unless the universe is also infinite. If the universe is finite, then the line would consume the universe and the entire universe would only be the line. If the universe is infinite, then everything has already happened and causality is broken.

If there is were really a hell, then it would surely be an infinite universe.

Randy H says

at some level of arbitrary smallness it will cease to be divisiable

lol. no.

Here's how I see the Hell that God tosses Satan in:
Bottomless Pit: The center of the earth
Unquenched fire: The center of the earth
Darkness: Also, the center of the earth

And, as you know, Satan was cast down to earth and given dominion over it. What do you think?

I think "The Satan Pit" was a great Doctor Who episode.

I imagine that falling into a black hole would be another rendition of Hell given that the experience of the person falling in would be one of agonizingly near-infinitely long crossing of the event horizon.

But I still hold that a line is not infinitely divisiable. You're one for literalism and observation over Jedi mind tricks, bap33. So, you should be able to demonstrate the infinite divisibility of a line for me. Just do so 10^100 times for a 1cm line and I'll call that infinite and believe you.

lol

Religion is an excellent form of mind control, for the masses of course, gotta look somewhere for the answers to the little things in life that scare people.

Randy H says

A line cannot split infinitely small unless it is also infinitely large.

What are you talking about ?

These questions were considered long ago by Aristotle and Zeno.

If you start with a line segment one inch long, I don't care how many times you cut it in half, say n times, the resulting length will be an actual nonzero length of exactly 1/(2^n) inches (one over two to the nth inches).

If we can't measure one trillionth of one trillionth of one trillionth of an inch, does that mean that such a small length does not conceptually exist ? I guess this does get tricky if we are talking about actual physical space, but certainly conceptually on a number line we can express lengths as small as you wish.

That is, at least mathematically speaking, infinitely small is easy to grasp, and is not questioned.

But the topic has some depth to it. Rational numbers versus irrational numbers, countably infinite versus uncountably infinite.

Randy H says

A line cannot split infinitely small unless it is also infinitely large. Otherwise it is bounded by constraints, and at some level of arbitrary smallness it will cease to be divisiable. And a line cannot be infinitely large because *infinitely* means it will exceed the contraints of the universe unless the universe is also infinite. If the universe is finite, then the line would consume the universe and the entire universe would only be the line. If the universe is infinite, then everything has already happened and causality is broken.

The axiom of choice would beg to disagree

Randy H says

But I still hold that a line is not infinitely divisiable.

Oh, prey tell, give me the smallest segment on the line from zero to one.

Is .99999999999999...(repeating) equal to one ? If so, than please tell me what is the number that comes right before one ?

And if one represented one inch, what would be the distance between these two "adjacent" numbers ?

Would it be zero ? Well, maybe. But then we do not have the ability to name two such adjacent numbers. For any two arbitrarily close numbers you can come up with, I can easily list infinite numbers that are between them.

Infinity is one of those areas where the empirical may not support the conceptual. Mathematics allows for many concepts which are entirely abstract and exceed the constraints of the physics of the universe. That doesn't mean math is truth and those aspects of the universe are simply undiscovered/undiscoverable. It also means that some math exceeds reality and qualifies as well structured, rational imagination. Infinity is one of those concepts.

Substitute "time" for "line" in your theorem above and suddenly you can no longer rely upon dividing a segment of time 1/2^n because time cannot be smaller than a single chronon.

If nothing is actually continuous, then infinity is reduced to "countable infinity" which simply means it's finite, but really f'ing huge.

So if I hear you correctly, you are saying that "reality" might be an extremely high definition digital computer program (as in the matrix)?

Just kidding.

Randy H says

If nothing is actually continuous, then infinity is reduced to "countable infinity" which simply means it's finite, but really f'ing huge.

I don't get what you're trying to say. I do get that you are trying to agree with Aristotle. Sure, if you want to talk about the number of stars or grains of sand, these things would seem to be finite.

But infinity is simply a concept. Zeno argues basically that motion is impossible without infinity because to get from point A to point B would would have to cross a point C that is half way between A and B. Then to get from point C to point B you would have to cross a point half way between those.etc, etc. Without crossing infinite points you can not get from A to B. REmember, this is how the rabbit loses to the tortoise.

THere are logical paradoxes that try to counter zeno. These are fun and prove only that arguing about infinity can lead to paradoxes about paradoxes.

I get your point about abstraction. And that in reality infinity is not so easy to fathom. This is why we have axioms (or postulates). I have never even seen an axiom that states that infinitely small intervals of time or space exist. But physics and even the idea of using continuous functions to describe reality implies such axioms.

About countable versus uncountable.Countably infinite would be for example the number of integers or rational numbers, because we can come up with a plan for counting (or listing them if you prefer), where as the irrational numbers are uncountably infinite. Both are truly infinite. It's just that the latter is a much larger infinity. (I know, weird, right?).