religious knowledge (of Dart)

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_Jersey Girl
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Re: religious knowledge (of Dart)

Post by _Jersey Girl »

marg wrote:
Jersey Girl wrote: I'm curious about your Grandma, dart.


Is this from a pm?


No, he wrote about his Grandma in his post. I think he actually mentioned her in two posts.
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
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_marg

Re: religious knowledge (of Dart)

Post by _marg »

dartagnan wrote: As far as evidence for the supernatural, I have personal family related experiences that pretty much solidify that for me as fact. Extra sensory perception is something I have some experience with. My grandmother experiences it every few years or so, but the instances are so powerful, the superntural realm is the only explanation. I believe that as humans evolve, these perceptions will become gradually stronger, to the point that we will be able to know God clearly. It could be a few hundred or even a thousand years. But I don't think coincidence adequately explains these things.


The fact that the experiences aren't consistent, indicates they are likely a coincidence.

I have to provide specifics? Well, my grandmother knew precisely when her oldest son died, when her daughter was pregnant, when my father had a boating accident, and when a sink hole opened up, nearly causing her death. If these were just stories passed down from grandpa, I'd be skeptical to the point of rejection. But I was present during some of these instances. What materialistic argument explains this? You don't have one, so at this point it is probably best if you just accuse me of lying.


What sort of consistency did your grandmother have. This sort of stuff happens and people remember the hits and assign meaning to it, and don't take notice of all the misses.

The other day someone was telling me about their ex husband who had been at work when a fire broke out and on his way going down some stairs he suffered a heart attack. It so happened that the firemen had arrived, and they were able to take care of him before he got to the hospital. He needs a triple bi-pass and was informed by the doctors that if the firemen and their equipment had not been there he would have died. Well a religious person would likely think it wasn't a matter of luck but rather some supernatural agent involved. People do that, they notice the hits and ignore the misses.

My reasons for believing in the supernatural are based on experience. Are they verified? How could they be? It was just dumb luck that I happened to be in the presence of my grandmother when she jumped out of bed and ran to the telephone to call my Dad who she had not spoken to in weeks. She didn't know the specifics of what was wrong, but she knew something. She called him at 7:12pm. But he wasn't home. He was on a boat off the coast of Savannah. At 8pm his boat hit a sand bar and he nearly died after suffering internal and external injuries. I would have said coincidence if it were not for the fact that this is a repeated occurance.


Does your grandmother or did your grandmother look for these sort of occurences. The more one looks, the more one will likely find what they are looking for. How many times did your Grandmother suspect something and it never materialized? Did she talk about that?

How a I supposed to explain this? The only way I can. There is a supernatural realm that occasionally feeds knowlege in a muddled way, to certain individuals. It is not predictable, therefore it is untestable. You just have to be there when it happens, kinda like Haley's comet I suppose. Personally I believe it is related to genetics because it seems to exist only on my father's side. But then how do genes transfer the ability to have awareness of events thousands of miles away and many minutes into the future? It seems idiotic to even begin thinking like this, but this is the only way materialists know how to think. They begin with this assumption, and spend the rest of their time fighting to keep it.


Why should anyone assume para normal assumptions? I'd be impressed if you said your grandmother made consistent predictions that came true and you observed this.

Do you think people are better off in some way assuming extra sensory perceptions exist? Why do you have a problem with a skeptical attitude on this, such that it gets rejected because it can not be verified?
_Some Schmo
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Re: religious knowledge (of Dart)

Post by _Some Schmo »

It doesn't surprise me in the least that dart thinks his family has extrasensory perception, given that he regularly declares what other people on this board are thinking and what their motives are. He's done this so many times with me personally, I lost count a long time ago.

What dart doesn't know, however (or at least, his ego couldn't possibly allow him to admit), is that he is never right when he makes these declarations. It is so obvious in observing his posting style and history that he's someone who has surrendered himself to wishful, delusional thinking. Either that or he's completely full of it. It's probably a combination of both.

One thing is for certain; it has to be wishful thinking to expect people will take him seriously after writing this latest pile of steaming rubbish (he of the psychic grandma). I stand amazed that he actually explicitly declares his arguments as things others can't dispute.

How good is confidence if it's the confidence of a fool?




________
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_Tarski
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Re: religious knowledge (of Dart)

Post by _Tarski »

EAllusion wrote:Tarski -

Mikwut is offering a type of argument that is relatively esoteric. He's arguing that belief in God is properly basic. In short, he's arguing that it is something you fundamentally apprehend with your senses and base all your other rational thoughts around. It provides the foundation from which you justify other beliefs. Hence, you do not need any evidence or argument for it. It is at the base of your justification tree and should be taken for granted. This is something that takes some background knowledge in epistemology to best process. Otherwise, it can get disorienting. If you read a little Alvin Plantinga on this kind of argument you'll see where Mikwut is going here.


I thought I smelled some Plantinga in there. Look, I see no reason at all to think that God is properly basic in the sense of something you "fundamentally apprehend with your senses and base all your other rational thoughts around".

Why in the world should anyone accept that? Do you think that you apprehand God with your senses?
Plantinga makes belief in God like an axiom (properly basic belief he calls it). This seems like a cheap trick to short circuit the whole process. Make God like an axiom and then ......
It seems foolish even when Plantinga says it.

Why not make atheism an axiom (properly basic belief) or the belief that I myself am god?
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie

yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
_dartagnan
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Re: religious knowledge (of Dart)

Post by _dartagnan »

Sorry to dump all of those posts simultaneously last night but I had a 12 hours flight so I spent most of that time writing up responses, and I sent them when I landed.

Jersey Girl,
I'm curious about your Grandma, dart. What do you think accounts for her abilities?

I have no frickin idea.
Do you think it's a supernatural being transmitting messages to her or do you think that she has a strong ability to perceive? Intuit?

I think ESP is appropriately called that, pecisely because it is an extra sensory perception. Perception of what? I can only describe it as the supernatural world. I don't think angels or whatever, are sending her messages. I think it is like any other sense. If you close your eyes you enhance your hearing capability. What enhances an ability to perceive the supernatural? Heck if I know. It just seems clear to me that some people have it more than others.
You stated that, the case of her husband, she knew something. Is it always a sensing or does she also see visions? I'm totally serious and the reason is because I've experienced at least three events that involved a sort of vision.

I think I have shared this story before, but maybe it was on another forum. This happened many years ago when I was just 11 years old. My grandparents were coming home from somewhere and they decided to stop at a store of some sort. I forget the details, whether it was a pawnshop or a hardware store. Grandpa told me the story first, then my dad confirmed it, and then my grandma told me about it a year or so later in more detail. She didn't like talking about it. Anyway, they went into the store together and she immediately felt cold and saw the place getting darker. She then looked over to the guy working behind the counter and said she couldn't picture him with a face. The harder she tried, the more he appeared to be headless. So she freaked out, ran back to the car and hid behind the steering wheel. Her husband knew what this meant from experience, so he left as well and they went home. Later that evening they heard on the news that the store was robbed and the clerk was shot directly in the face with a shotgun.

I spent a lot of time with my grandma as a kid. We lived in Alabama and she lived in Orlando, but I always spent a months out of each summer visiting with her. I always had to drag this stuff out of her because she didn't like talking about it, and when she did was usually brought to tears. But anyway, that is the only story I recall where a vision of sorts was involved.

If she see's visions, would you say she has some sort of photographic memory? Again, the reason I ask is because I have somewhat of a photographic memory myself and wonder if that's connected to the "mind pictures" that I've seen. Don't know what else to call them...TMI...not meaning to derail.

Except memories reside in the past, and she is experiencing future or current events as they happen in different parts of the country. The one thing all of these experiences have in common is emotion. Pain, joy, sufferng, etc. I can only assume extreme emoton triggers this perception in those who have this ability.

EA,
I'm reading you in the broader context of saying, like, the exact opposite of the notion that meaningful moral thought is obtainable without the existence of a deity. Over and over again
What the heck Kevin?

Yes, I believe morality does have to be grounded in a source like a diety, but I also beleve atheists have access to morality without religion. Why? Simply put, it is culturally based and they are just as much a part of culture as any theist. There is a reason atheists raised in New Hamphire don't think infanticide is morally acceptable, and yet atheists in ancient Greece did. Today our culture owes so much to Judeo-Christian ethic, it is difficult for anyone to revert back to a pure state of immorality without having some kind of mental disorder (i.e sociopath). The reason I don't particular like the morality argument is because we are so neck deep in religious culture that it would be impossible to prove one way or another, what it would be like if Americans were raised in a completely different, amoral society.
Just the other day you said this, "Only religion includes moral teachings, which is what humans require before becoming moral individuals."

Well yeah, as opposed to atheism. What other organization teaches moral teachings if not religions? There may be some, but the moral standard is already set based on a religious culture. We pick up moral principles in every day culture, but it is a culture based on Judeo-Christian ethic. No need for me to split hairs.
You're using creationist arguments. Explicitly. In some cases, almost verbatim from creationist sources. Creationism is the position that there is scientific evidence that a creator created life or some aspect of it.

Then in a broader sense all theists are creationists. But creatonism has a negative connotation because it is generally associated with those who reject evolution, believe the world is 6,000 years old, take the Bible as a science book, etc. Would you call Antony Flew a creationist simply because he is persuaded by the fine-tuning argument?
It is associated with a particular class of arguments you are drawing from.

Because atheists like to fit everything in convenient cubby holes for dismissal purposes? How is any of this productive? All it does really is allow people to dismiss, based on a single word that someone else threw on them. It adds nothing. It obfuscates, and suggests I believe the world is only 6,000 years old. I don't.
When you busted out the "what good is half a wing?" argument a few months ago, you used - outside of the watchmaker analogy - the single most iconic creationist argument of all.

Creationists reject evolution, whereas I believe evolution is true, albeit evolution that has been rigged from the start with a purpose. Evolutionary biologists proclaim that evolution has no goal or purpose. I see no logic in arguing that wings appear by random mutations and natural selection for no purpose. Obviously the purpose is to take to the air. They come up with other theories as to how this could be base strictly on NS, but they have no demonstrated it via an scientific method. It is just taken for granted that NS is the universal mechanism by which species are as they are. But they say no purpose because that shuts out an intelligent source, not because science has shown it to be that.

Yes, the term has a horrible connotation. And with good cause.

Francis Collins wrote an entire chapter on creationism, and then another on ID, and then another on Biologos. There are significant differences that your caricature doesn't appreciate. I think it would be better if we ignore the semantics and just deal with the arguments, or ignore them. Ignoring them would be better than trying to discredit them by using a negative label.
Edit: If you think I'm calling fine-tuning a biological design argument, I'm not. I'm saying you are also offering that, with "moral sense" seemingly being your target of design in this specific case.

But I do not think morality comes from our biology. I've argued quite the opposite.

Marg,

Your requirement that my grandma provide "consistency" is based on? The need for consistency is so it can be tested and proved. But I'm not here to prove anything. The queston was asked why I believe what believe, and can only share my experiences which provide powerful evidence for me. There is nothing "unjustified" n this belief since humans only know what they perceive. By the New Atheist logic, anyone who becomes blind at a young age, can never really know anything worth knowing because they are compelled to take everything they hear on blind faith like any religious person. Even though he will learn truths from those speaking to him, you have to agree that he is unjustified in believing them.

According to evolution species acquire their senses through gradual steps covering thousands of years. Birds didn't just wake up one day with the ability to sense electromagnetism with an innner compass. Dolphins didn't suddenly acquire the ability to receive and transmit sonar. According to eolution, these features were acquired in gradual steps covering many millenia. So any intial steps to obtaining a new sensory perception via evolution would not produce "consistency" by any stretch of the imagination. It would not be testable until it became a full blow attribute of the species.

So if what my grandma is experiencing is in fact an evolutionary leap in sensory perception, then there is no reason to expect consistency, even from a materialistic framework. But I find it hard to believe the overwhelming nature of her experiences could be dismissed as coincidence. People don't know the future by coincidence. If she were to tell me the Steelers would win the superbowl just before gametime, then yeah, that would be a coincidence.

Which brings me to another interesting point. Everyone of us believes things on faith. How am justified to believe in evolution when I have never once been involved in an experiment that verified it? I've only read books on the subject. I have faith that these scientists are not lying. The vast majority of atheists are in the same position. They accept it on faith the same as I do. Hell we accept just about everything we know on faith. Who here actually goes about proving beyond all doubt, every little thing they accept as truth? What the New Atheists really want is to be able to replace religon as a system of indoctrination. And that makes it every bit as dangerous as Islamic fascism.

I'll let readers decide how much value Schmo has just added to the discussion with his usual driveby skit.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein
_Tarski
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Re: religious knowledge (of Dart)

Post by _Tarski »

dartagnan wrote:Tarski,
This is just my impression from radical atheists on this forum, as well as the New Atheists when I watch them debate. Anyone who has this much time to attack religion online day after day, monhs after month, year after year, can't be a happy camper. Speaking of which, has anyone ever seen Sam Harris' teeth? I was wondering if they were as hideous as Dawkins' teeth, but he never smiles or laughs. The guy looks like a personality-free zombie rehearsing a skit.

Is this the kind of discussion you wanted? Seriously?

Those guys have every reason to be happy. This is what they do for a living, philosophy, public understanding of science (specifically evolution) etc. What should they promote an idea that they believe in? After a few thousand years of everyone being subjected to preaching the supernatural gospel, you are offended by a few guys defending the "gospel" of naturalism?

Just curious, but how do you explain the overwhelming data suggesting atheists do not even reproduce at a rate to secure their continued existence? What's up with that?

Is this evidence of God? Whats up with the question? Personally, I think people have to many children but I have no ideas about nor do I care about this point. Atheism is not hereditary so they don't have to spawn. It (unlike religion) lives by the sweat of good arguments. Probably most atheists were born into at least a moderately religiou family.


Of course I don't expect you to say you and other atheists are unhappy, and I'm not saying all atheists or even most atheists are unhappy.

There is no point to be made here.

I'm saying atheism does not offer anything to create happiness in life, whereas religion most certainly does.


Well, being happy myself and so on I just flatly deny this.

Whether we're talking about every day people, those suffering in hospitals, those trying to rid themselves of addictive habits, or those suffering in prisons, religion has a well established track record of making good people better for both society and their family. Atheism has no hope of ever doing this.


I do it (by volunteer work). The guy that got me into it was atheist. You are just kinda full of it on this point.


This is an empirical fact that flies in the face of anyone trying to say society wold be better off without religion.

Please try to avoid saying things are empirical facts without providing evidence (and please make sure to do the statistics correctly, atheists are a minority--adjust for that by "division".)


This reminds me of the atheist, Scott Atran, who in response to the for horsemen of atheism, said they made him embarrassed to be an atheist and a scientist. I'll go ahead and provide the quotation in context:
"I find it fascinating that among the brilliant scientists and philosophers at the conference, there was no convincing evidence presented that they know how to deal with the basic irrationality of human life and society other than to insist against all reason and evidence that things ought to be rational and evidence based. It makes me embarrassed to be a scientist and atheist. There is no historical evidence whatsoever that scientists have a keener or deeper appreciation than religious people of how to deal with personal or moral problems. Some scientists have some good and helpful insights into human beings' existential problems some of the time, but some good scientists have done more to harm others than most people are remotely capable of. " (http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/st ... elief.html)

Priceless!

Worthless. Why? Because, none of the 4 are promoting that scientists as such are morally or socially superior. The argument is that the world would be better off without powerful fundamentalist religious movements and the elevation of faith to a principle or virtue of (supposed) knowledge isn't a good idea. They also argue that there is no credible evidence for the supernatural.
They also are not arguing that scientists are sexier or have better teeth.


Religious people are unhappy too,
but their unhappiness is generally grounded in the unfortunate nature of social organization, along with the mechanisms of misery that exist in the world.


But the unhappiness of an atheist is not. Oh brother. This very poor Dart. Tal about special pleading.

Ask a Mormon why he or she is depressed, and you're likely to find out that it has more to do with the social pressure, feelings of inadequacy, failing to meet certain expectations from the group, a loved one died, and absolutely nothing to do with their "unjustified belief" in the three Nephites. The New Atheists delude themselves on this point.
Assign a word to that, and you have what I am opposed to. I call it RELIGION but you may invent a new word if you like.



What are they? The word of God or the words of men telling stories of a religious nature?

Clearly the latter. And no, none of them are close to being infallble.

In fact, it is exactly as fallible as one would expect if there were no real supernatural revelation.

Yes. You feel free to pick and choose among God's word? OK. Me too.

The difference is that you do so in ignorance.


How much have I studied the Bible?
The Bible is a joke to you so for you it will always be used as comic material.

More of it is horrifying than humorous. Modern biblical literalist are funny though.
But there is a rather intricate and sophisticated science devoted to its understanding.

There is a rather intricate and sophisticated science devoted to astrology (even Newton was into it). What does that prove?

If you appreciated this you probably wouldn't come across as ignorant whenever you start telling people what it says and worse of all, what it must mean to them. The worst part about it is that you know you're ignorant about biblical scholarship, but don't seem to care. Because when attacking religion, anything goes.



I am going to guess that I have as much knowlege about the Bible as you do. We just interpret what we see differently. My view is similar to the insights of "higher biblical criticism".
I see it differently and so you call be ingnorant. Is Robert M. Price also ignorant of the Bible

(He is Professor of Theology and Scriptural Studies, Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary

Founder and Editor, The Journal of Higher Criticism)


Which brings me to the point of your questions. I realize now that the purpose of this thread was to provide a diversion from the fact that your New Theists are frauds.

You nitpick with them, and forgive mountains of falsehoods in religious writing.
Look, Dart. I have been studying the thought of Einstein for my whole life. He was certainly loath to just call himself an atheist (who can blame him since such are hated?). But once you look at the whole picture and really understand his thought, it is clear that for him the word "God" was nothing but a poetic word for the mysterious and often beautiful laws of nature.
There are many many more anti-religion Einstein quotes than anything that may superficially seem to support relgion. You don't figure out what someone really believes by looking at one or two isolated quotes. As for the one or two quotes the theists use, well, all we learn is that he was inconsistent in his public statements. He also mistreated his wife. So what? Let's drop this Einstein thing because you said your piece and I don't buy it. The guy was an admirer of Spinoza, said so, and even worte a poem about him.


This was being demonstrated on the previous thread, and it was tearing you up.


Look, you have to get over this. Nothing about any of this has even come close to tearing me up. What a silly projection. Dawkins is just Dawkins. He is a pretty good writer, knowledgable about science and makes a fair numer of good points. He also seems a cheerful and likable guy. I haven't cared enough to read his God Delusion book. I have read The Ancestor's Tale and the Selfish Gene. That's the end of it for me.


So you responded, not by addressing the points against Harris, but by attacking me - attacking my religious beliefs, as if that had anything to do with the fact that Richard Dawkins is a proven liar.

I don't think so. Do you know what a liar is? It's not the same as making a mistake or interpreting the sum total of a historical figure's words differently than Kevin Graham.
Dawkins is closer to the truth about Einstein that you are. Neither of you are dead on and probably couldn't be. So are you therefore a liar?


But now you're realizing I don't really have many religious beliefs for you to mock,

What are you so worked about about then? I think you protest to much. I think you are a supernaturalist and tend to be attracted to the strange and paranormal. But you play it close to the vest. Whatever.

but you're still going to milk this for what you can. So go ahead and make fun of the Bible, demons, the Moonies, the Mormons, the JWs, the Baptists, heaven, hell, the eucharist, etc.


You don't want me to apply the word "religion" to all this right? I should think only of the most intellectual and harmless diests right? Look around!

I don't care. I know that these are the typical ploys used to rally the sidelines to applause, but ultimately they do nothing to address my position on God.

Which is that He/She/It exists. Can I just say "it"?


god or gods (male, female, or animal) or other supernatural forces that stood in for what they were not in a position to understand. Yes?

Yes, this has been humanity's way of addressing our own perceptions of the divine.


Perception??? When what is seen is fantasmagorical and varies from person to person and religion to religion, cannot we conclude or at least supsect that the perception is not veridical? Imagination is a better word for this.

As humans, naturally we have attributed anthropomorphic or even zoomorphic to what has not been seen, but rather perceived. Who are you to say humans have not perceived God?

First, I am a human myself. One who has experienced things that forced me to use the same words as the people of whom you speak. Don't blame it one drugs (a cheap maneuver) because I thought I percieved God (and had a witness of the spirit) long before and long after that single year when I experiemented with "entheogens".
Ironically my most powerful revelations and insights were centered on the notion of consciousness.
I am also a human who has studied this aspect of religion for a long time starting with James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience".

As a Darwinian you should know that animals have various senses unknown to us.
There are probably others we haven't discovered.


So what? We do find out about other senses occasionally but they always turn out to be....drum role...non-supernatural. There is no God-connection here.

But for you these experiences can't be true unless it is verified through one of the known senses: sight. Yeah, you're all about appreciating the complexities of reality and perception. LOL!


Wrong! It is not which sense that counts, but just exactly how robust, repeatable, quantifiable and rational it is. Even you wouldn't believe me if I told you I can sense that Napolean was a woman (I use my 9th sense).
The point is that there is an abundent danger of delusion, wishful thinking, and nonveridical perception. It's all around us.
If you don't have a way to take that into account and deal with it (even with oneself) then you don't have a very good epistemology. Science is careful about this stuff--that's one of it's virtues.


Actually, that is only your assumption.Your pie in the sky is to be able to prove religion is just a Darwinian phenomenon, but you're unable to demonstrate this.


You wouldn't recognize the demonstration (There is a river in Egypt etc). Actually, it is a hypothesis and there are plenty of things that support it ---not the least of which is that we already know that we are, in fact, the result of evolution as demonstrated independenly by mountains of cross-correlated evidence from many fields piling up for nearly a century.

Your New Atheists are tripping over themselves trying to forward wild theories on this thesis.


Wild theories? "Wild". Is that a technical term? Which religious beliefs are "wild"?
This is rich Dart--you defend the supernatural and the various religions but accuse trained careful thinkers with high intelligence of coming up with wild theories?
Is quantum mechanics a wild theory? Well it is sure weird but it is also true and this we know by careful experimentation, not by personal revelation.

But the result is not science, only blind bigotry and a wreckless usage of peripheral scholarship they clearly do not appreciate or understand.


*sigh*
Why would humans need morals at all to survive if other species clearly don't?

Elephants need things to survive that humans don't. Same with fish and penguins. Do you know what a niche is?
Humans have sociality and language (its our good trick). Since we have this, it ups the stakes for certain things which only make sense in a language bearing social context. Humans swim in language as someone once said. We ourselves form the most important feature of our environment.
Morality is necessary in that situation.
I could write for pages about this but that fact that you didn't think about it long enough to realize just the obvious part I just explained is telling.
Have you read the literture on this?
One can even see proto-morality in other primates. But again we slowly developed language and the consequent socially rich (and dangerous) environment wherein we ourselves form the most immediately survival sensitive feature of our own environment. I don't know about you, but for getting food and suceeding in reproduction, my muscles don't do a millionth of the work my social sense does. In fact, my reputation as a truthful, dependable and moral person is crucial to my survival. I know some who have given that up by repreated misbehavior and now they can even get a freaking job at McDonalds. Think about it.


Game theory is interesting but it doesn't explain all kinds of moral awareness/activity.

Am I supposed to take you word for that? Isn't this a God-of-the-gaps argument. There is still more to learn in a field and so......poof! God!
No! It just means we haven't finished the so far successful project.

God does not explain morality AT ALL for the simple reason we know nothing about his/her/it's properties. Presumable God would be moral so we still have morality itself hanging around unexplained.
Do you really feel that the assertion that "GOD" exists explains morality. How? Morality is complex. Study it sometime.
But the God-story about its etiology is embarrassingly simple-- worse than simple. It just defers the question by declaring "it because of God--period"
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie

yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
_dartagnan
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Re: religious knowledge (of Dart)

Post by _dartagnan »

Those guys have every reason to be happy. This is what they do for a living, philosophy, public understanding of science (specifically evolution) etc. What should they promote an idea that they believe in? After a few thousand years of everyone being subjected to preaching the supernatural gospel, you are offended by a few guys defending the "gospel" of naturalism?

Oh now that is priceless! Tarski thinks the New Atheists are not on the offense, but rather on the defense. The defense of naturalism. Would it help if I provided citations from them admitting their intentions to attack religion and essentially wipe it off the face of the earth?
Is this evidence of God? Whats up with the question?

No it isn't evidence for God. I'm just curious what you think the answer is. How does evolution explain atheism if it means no survival? Again, if you can't reproduce higher than your death rates, you're going to go extinct. Why do atheists generally have so few children?
Personally, I think people have to many children but I have no ideas about nor do I care about this point. Atheism is not hereditary so they don't have to spawn. It (unlike religion) lives by the sweat of good arguments. Probably most atheists were born into at least a moderately religiou family.

That doesn't even begin to explain why atheists don't even reproduce enough to ensure their continued existence. There has to be something behind this stat, I just can't put my finger on it. Happiness might have something to do with it. A single guy with no kids can say he's happy all day until he is blue in the face, but how does he kow if he has never experienced a fulfilling family life? What is he comparing his life to?
Well, being happy myself and so on I just flatly deny this.

Oh really? So you are happy because of atheism? Yeah, go ahead and argue that for us.
I do it (by volunteer work). The guy that got me into it was atheist. You are just kinda full of it on this point.

But it isn't because of atheistic principles that you did this, because atheism has no principles. Again, religion teaches principles and through centuries, a religious society forms a culture of which you are a part.
Please try to avoid saying things are empirical facts without providing evidence (and please make sure to do the statistics correctly, atheists are a minority--adjust for that by "division".)

Oh so you really want to challenge the notion that organized religion has a track record of providing moral services in society? You must really be trapped in your own world of atheism. No wonder your best friends are atheists. Don't tell me, you're like Penn Fraser Jillette, who insists he will never allow a theist to enter into his home.
Worthless. Why? Because, none of the 4 are promoting that scientists as such are morally or socially superior. The argument is that the world would be better off without powerful fundamentalist religious movements and the elevation of faith to a principle or virtue of (supposed) knowledge isn't a good idea. They also argue that there is no credible evidence for the supernatural. They also are not arguing that scientists are sexier or have better teeth.

You don't even know what their argument is do you? Just admit it. You already said you never read Dawkins and now you're pretending to know his positon better than Atran? Dawkins and the gang do not reserve their criticism for "fundemantalist religious movements." That is a qualification inserted by Tarski. These guys apply it across the board and attack all religion. They even admit it. No relgion is worth having. All relgion presents a threat. That is what they argue, and it is bunk. You should get a better grip on what you are defending.
But the unhappiness of an atheist is not. Oh brother. This very poor Dart. Tal about special pleading.

Of course atheist are subject to same mechanisms of misery in the world, but what I am saying is that atheism as a belief system offers nothing, I repeat nothing, to offer happiness, or make a suffering person suffer less. Take for example a drug addict on the verge of death. What has a better chance of helping, religion or atheism? Tell a really depressed person there is no God and see how that helps. He might just blow his brains out. Or let's take the starving in Africa. What has a better chance of helping, religion or atheism? This is all I am saying, and you keep twisting it to say something I never said.
In fact, it is exactly as fallible as one would expect if there were no real supernatural revelation.

Great, so does that mean we can stop talking about the Bible now? You keep bringing it up.
How much have I studied the Bible?

Anyone can study the Bible and not have the faintest clue what it means. But you're exposure to scholarship on the Bible is scant. It has to be, given the ridiculous comments you've made.
There is a rather intricate and sophisticated science devoted to astrology (even Newton was into it). What does that prove?

It means you shouldn't start telling people what the constellations ought to mean to them without having at least a basic exposure to the relevant scholarship. Get it?
I am going to guess that I have as much knowlege about the Bible as you do. We just interpret what we see differently. My view is similar to the insights of "higher biblical criticism".
I see it differently and so you call be ingnorant. Is Robert M. Price also ignorant of the Bible

Price doesn't help you in your rants Tarski. Price doesn't tell people what the Bible is supposed to mean to them. No surprise that your sole authority on the Bible would be a fringe scholar and an atheist, but even here Price doesn't explain why you're ignorant of the Bible.
You nitpick with them, and forgive mountains of falsehoods in religious writing.

You can't possibly be serious Tarski. I didn't start that thread. The thread was started by Schmo, who wanted to discuss Harris' so called refutation of religion defenses. And you're going to sit there and tell the forum that I am not allowed to engage the topic and disagree or point out Harris' errors, because you think I first must condemn "mountains of falsehoods in religous writings." Unbelievable. That wasn't even why Harris was criticizing religion to begin with. By that standard, you're no longer allowed to criticize religion, or defend your preferred atheists, until you first condemn every failed hypothesis science has presented us over the centuries.
Look, Dart. I have been studying the thought of Einstein for my whole life. He was certainly loath to just call himself an atheist (who can blame him since such are hated?).

If you have been studying him all your life then how is it you didn't know he wasn't an atheist? What does this say about your ability to comprehend his writings? Sorry, but you challenged me to provide evidence he wasn't an atheist and I provided quite a few citatons that proved it. Dawkins was a liar. And you respond by saying you think Dawkins is more credible than me. What the hell kind of response is that? You just proved that your contempt for theists is so thick that you don't even care if an atheist is a proven liar. You'll continue to believe the liar over the theist simply because you don't like the fact that he believes things that are not "empirically grounded." I guess this could be another case of a blind love for science Trump's a love for morality.
But once you look at the whole picture and really understand his thought, it is clear that for him the word "God" was nothing but a poetic word for the mysterious and often beautiful laws of nature.

You're spinning as most atheists try to do. He referred specifically to a superior reasoning force, a superior mind. This suggests intelligence. He even provided a detailed analogy strongly implying these laws had been written by someone who knew the language. In any event, it is perfectly clear Einstein was much closer to theism than atheism. He absolutely hated to be called an atheist. He only opposed being lumped into specific religons.
There are many many more anti-religion Einstein quotes than anything that may superficially seem to support relgion.

Jesus, you've already drifted off the subject.... AGAIN. Anti-religion and anti-theism are not synonymous. I concede Einstein was anti-religion. I don't belong to a religion either. But he did believe Jesus existed and he loved his teachings. His problem was with organized religion. But none of this changes the fact that he believed science could never answer everything because of a "spirit" that transcends humanity and our abilty to comprehend it.
You don't figure out what someone really believes by looking at one or two isolated quotes.

Which is why I read the books by Jammer and Isaacson, and why I have provided much more than "one or two isolated quotes." You've clearly read neither of these works or else you never would have doubted Einstein wasn't an atheist.
As for the one or two quotes the theists use, well, all we learn is that he was inconsistent in his public statements. He also mistreated his wife. So what? Let's drop this Einstein thing because you said your piece and I don't buy it. The guy was an admirer of Spinoza, said so, and even worte a poem about him.

No, you don't get to play the Spinoza card so easily after ironically suggesting I am the one relying on a single quote or two. Hell, even the link you provided suggested that his love for Spinoza had to do with the way he lived his life in isolation. Again if you had read Jammer you would know his exposure to Spinoza was very limited, which is why he said he wouldn't write anything about him; because he didn't have the required knowledge. Spinoza was a pantheist, Einstein clarified his previous comment by saying he doesn't think he would consider himself a pantheist, but that he definately wasn't an atheist. So to equate Spinoza and Einstein is to do so despite the evidence.
Look, you have to get over this. Nothing about any of this has even come close to tearing me up. What a silly projection.

Projection? I'm not the one who came after you Tarski, you came after me. So what the hell am I supposed to be projecting? You saw me making mincemeat out of Harris and you just had to jump in and start attacking me for being a theist. That's how it went down. The thread is still there if you can't remember.
Dawkins is just Dawkins. He is a pretty good writer, knowledgable about science and makes a fair numer of good points. He also seems a cheerful and likable guy. I haven't cared enough to read his God Delusion book. I have read The Ancestor's Tale and the Selfish Gene. That's the end of it for me.

That is an interesting admission. Then why attack me for making valid criticism against a book you haven't even read? I think the word you're lookng for is "Oooops."
I don't think so. Do you know what a liar is? It's not the same as making a mistake or interpreting the sum total of a historical figure's words differently than Kevin Graham.

And that isn't what he did. He was aware of the fact that Einstein vehemently denied being an atheist, and yet he still continued to refer to him as such. I brought it to his attention on his forum and I was banned for it, but later found out he knew about this before publishing his book. McGrath brought it to his attention too. Since you absolutely refuse to listen to a theist, because he is a theist, go talk to your atheist friend who has this high sense of morality, and ask him what he thinks.
Dawkins is closer to the truth about Einstein that you are. Neither of you are dead on and probably couldn't be. So are you therefore a liar

Just to be clear -

Kevin: "Einstein was not an atheist"

Dawkins: "Einsten was an atheist."

Einstein: "I am not an atheist."

Tarski: "Kevin is the liar. Dawkins is closer to the truth."

So much for evidence and love of empirical truth. This must be intellectually and morally embarrassing for you Tarski.
What are you so worked about about then? I think you protest to much. I think you are a supernaturalist and tend to be attracted to the strange and paranormal. But you play it close to the vest. Whatever.

I'm not attracted to it, I just happened to be in the positon of acknolwedging it. What am I so worked up about? You asked questions and then immediately gave crappy answers and then pretended those were my answers. Who needs that?
You don't want me to apply the word "religion" to all this right? I should think only of the most intellectual and harmless diests right? Look around!

Yeah, let's look around the forum. Who was the only person to make a death threat here? As far as I know it was the atheist mercury. He had the "apocalyptic" belief that one day atheists and theists would be gunning for each other in the streets, and he said on that day he would put a bullet in my head.
Perception??? When what is seen is fantasmagorical and varies from person to person and religion to religion, cannot we conclude or at least supsect that the perception is not veridical? Imagination is a better word for this.

But imagination alone doesn't explain personal experience and strange coincidence on a repeated basis. Not without drugs anyway.
First, I am a human myself. One who has experienced things that forced me to use the same words as the people of whom you speak. Don't blame it one drugs (a cheap maneuver) because I thought I percieved God (and had a witness of the spirit) long before and long after that single year when I experiemented with "entheogens".
Ironically my most powerful revelations and insights were centered on the notion of consciousness.
I am also a human who has studied this aspect of religion for a long time starting with James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience".

But religious variety is precisely what we would expect if, as Einstein explained, humans were in a very feeble positon to comprehend that greater spirit. Pointing to religious variety proves nothing except the fact that not all of them can be 100% true. That's all it proves. It proves nothing against theism.
So what? We do find out about other senses occasionally but they always turn out to be....drum role...non-supernatural. There is no God-connection here.

How do you know? There is no way for modern science to detect, measure or test supernatural perceptions. How do animals know when bad weather is on the way long before clouds develop and thunder rolls? How does one species of baby birds on the coast of Alaska know to fly solo, with no explainable guidance system, to the same tiny island hundreds of miles away, beyond their line of sight, into the middle of the Pacific as soon as they can fly? Science hasn't even begun to explain all perceptions. Are you kidding me?

But like I said before, if something described as supernatural can actually happen, then it becomes natural by definition. The problem is science is limited and works within a limited framework of materialism. Everything is tested within that model. But what about supernatural things? There is no way for science to verify, but that doesn't make them false.
Wrong! It is not which sense that counts, but just exactly how robust, repeatable, quantifiable and rational it is.

Rational? How much more rational is sight over taste? Touch over smell? What is I see manure, feel it as cotton and smell it as flowers? Which is more rational?
Even you wouldn't believe me if I told you I can sense that Napolean was a woman (I use my 9th sense).

You're confusing two different things. What I sense is evidence for me, not for someone else. And you are talking about a sense that already exists. You absolutely disallow humans to evolve and obtain new senses. Thanks for proving just how bad and narrow your kind of science really is. I mean think about it. Everything you just told me would prevent any scientist from accepting a new sense because it wouldn't be repeatable and testable. Our senses evolved in gradual steps over the course of thousands of years. So there is no reason to expect it to be fully testable during its initial developmental stages.
The point is that there is an abundent danger of delusion, wishful thinking, and nonveridical perception. It's all around us.

That perceive the future accurately, that warn us of danger preemptively? No Tarski, that kind of stuff isn't "all around us." You're being a bad scientist by telling us what's impossible based on your limited scientific framework. Your current scientific method doesn't provide you any leeway in accepting what canot be "repeated, tested, measured," which would be fine if you just left it alone. But you have to attack it and those who experience it, and claim you have science supporting you.
You wouldn't recognize the demonstration (There is a river in Egypt etc).

Don't give us this cop out. There is no science behind this and you know it. It is just wishful thinking and conclusion driven hypotheses at work.
Actually, it is a hypothesis and there are plenty of things that support it ---not the least of which is that we already know that we are, in fact, the result of evolution as demonstrated independenly by mountains of cross-correlated evidence from many fields piling up for nearly a century.

Sure. No specifics though, right? Didn't think so. But I'm supposed to give you exact details as to why I believe in the supernatural. But your beliefs, while "empirical" statements of truth, somehow are not opened up for anlaysis and criticism. We're just supposed to take it on faith that you and Dawkins have found the truth, and of course your rabid atheism isn't supposed to cause any doubt about your motives or objectivity. Give it up Tarski, we both know science has not shown religion to be a Darwinian phenomenon, the same is true for consciousness, which is actually more powerful evidence than morality.
Elephants need things to survive that humans don't. Same with fish and penguins. Do you know what a niche is? Humans have sociality and language (its our good trick). Since we have this, it ups the stakes for certain things which only make sense in a language bearing social context. Humans swim in language as someone once said. We ourselves form the most important feature of our environment. Morality is necessary in that situation

No it isn't. Immoral societies thrived just fine without any moral code. They too "swam in language and sociality." Your model needs work.
I could write for pages about this but that fact that you didn't think about it long enough to realize just the obvious part I just explained is telling.
Have you read the literture on this?

Are you going to offer scientific proof, explain the scientific procedure, or are you going to resort to bald assertion?
One can even see proto-morality in other primates.

Altruism and morality are not the same. Without communication with the species you have no basis to declare altrusitic activity as morality, and to say this explains our higher sense of morality is quasiscience a best. We cannot even tell if a human is acting morally just by observation, we have to ask intent. With insects and animals you can't do that, so yo just take it for granted that it is really just "proto-morality" at work. That's not science.
But again we slowly developed language and the consequent socially rich (and dangerous) environment wherein we ourselves form the most immediately survival sensitive feature of our own environment. I don't know about you, but for getting food and suceeding in reproduction, my muscles don't do a millionth of the work my social sense does. In fact, my reputation as a truthful, dependable and moral person is crucial to my survival. I know some who have given that up by repreated misbehavior and now they can even get a freaking job at McDonalds. Think about it.

Thank you for sharing just how unscientific the reasoning goes. You have to use the whackiest, rarest of all scenaros and then apply it as the general rule over all human morality.

Just think about what you said.

So the people working at McDonalds are dropping dead everywhere or they are working there because they weren't moral enough to get better jobs? They aren't surviving too? And what about the fact that the dishonest and immoral survive much better than most moral people?

Think of the current economic crisis and the immorality of the bankers and CEOs across the country. They are surviving better than most of us. It seems that given some social circumstances, immorality is what one needs to survive. Just think of history, like the Vikings. The nice guys didn't live to see their teens. Today you can't survive in politics as the honest guy. In many places in Africa it is literally a survival of the fittest, morals be damned.

If you're going to use your single, carefully crafted, exceptional example as evidence for evolutionary morality, then these above, which are more general and encompassing, work as evidence against it. You can't have it both ways.
Am I supposed to take you word for that?

Apparently, we're just supposed to take your word.
Isn't this a God-of-the-gaps argument. There is still more to learn in a field and so......poof! God!

No, it is a naturalism of the gaps argument. There is still holes in the theory, so poof, fill it in with some naturalistic putty. Anything but the supernatural.
Do you really feel that the assertion that "GOD" exists explains morality. How? Morality is complex. Study it sometime.

Yes, it s to complex for you to fit into a Darwnian paradigm. And no, the argument isn't just a God assertion. The argument is that naturlism doesn't explain it, therefore something else does. Science is confined to naturalistic explanations, therefore it has to explain it using the limited framework it is allowed. The results will be devastating. Just think. People will start wondering why they are moral and say to themselves, hell, I am dong this because of my ancestors learing languages and trying to survive? Well screw that now. Those days are over with and don't apply anymore.

No need to take care of the poor, donate to charity, or even be nice to my neighbors.

Why?

Because it isn't necessary for my survival. People generally perform moral acts because they believe they actually have a sense of right and wrong. What you are doing is taking away that sense and explaining it as merely materialistic, mechanistic process that any one of us would do just fine rebelling against.

Think about that.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein
_marg

Re: religious knowledge (of Dart)

Post by _marg »

dartagnan wrote:Again, if you can't reproduce higher than your death rates, you're going to go extinct. Why do atheists generally have so few children?


You are quite a comedian Dart.

That doesn't even begin to explain why atheists don't even reproduce enough to ensure their continued existence. There has to be something behind this stat, I just can't put my finger on it. Happiness might have something to do with it. A single guy with no kids can say he's happy all day until he is blue in the face, but how does he kow if he has never experienced a fulfilling family life? What is he comparing his life to?


Your lines are hilarious. Ya how on earth could a single guy be at all happy compared to guy with loads of kids and a wife, he doesn't know what he's missing. :wink:

Of course atheist are subject to same mechanisms of misery in the world, but what I am saying is that atheism as a belief system offers nothing, I repeat nothing, to offer happiness, or make a suffering person suffer less.


You remind me of this guy's satire on youtube.

Atheism Is a Religion!
_Tarski
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Re: religious knowledge (of Dart)

Post by _Tarski »

dartagnan wrote:
Those guys have every reason to be happy. This is what they do for a living, philosophy, public understanding of science (specifically evolution) etc. What should they promote an idea that they believe in? After a few thousand years of everyone being subjected to preaching the supernatural gospel, you are offended by a few guys defending the "gospel" of naturalism?

Oh now that is priceless! Tarski thinks the New Atheists are not on the offense, but rather on the defense. The defense of naturalism. Would it help if I provided citations from them admitting their intentions to attack religion and essentially wipe it off the face of the earth?.

See, this is why you are impossible to talk to. It doesn't matter if they are on the offensive. The goal of most major religions is to wipe out unbelief and convert the whole world.
The fact that Harris and Dawkins are taking on religion and trying to aggressively convince anyone who listens is fine. At least they don't want religious people themselves to be tortured, stoned, or sent to hell.
They don't even want religion to be so much as outlawed. They treat religion (not deism or quiet philosophical pondering of The One) like smoking--something to be challenged in ordinary conversation in the same way that one can challenge a political beleif. They would like it to be possible for an atheist to be taken seriously in politics. Is that so much to ask?
You are exaggerating and spinning and apparently unable to see the dangers of widespread fundamentalism, anti-science, and apocalyptic thinking. It's real, I am surrounded by it.
I don't plan on backing down either. I believe there should be a day when in this country (let alone in Muslim countries) a person can say in a social situation that he/she is an atheist without everyone looking at the person like they farted or worse like they need to be thrust into a fire.
The only religious person in my department who explicitly knows of my disbelief has spent the last 20 years trying to ruin my career. Try being a skeptic in the Bible belt or an infidel in Saudi Arabia and then tell me there isn't a problem. When I was religious I was praised for it and people assumed I was good--I got a pass. That's BS. This is the BS that Dawkins and Harris dislike (along with the creationist machinations).

I'll think things are OK when an atheist has a 1 in 10 chance of becoming president.
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie

yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
_Tarski
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Joined: Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:57 pm

Re: religious knowledge (of Dart)

Post by _Tarski »

dartagnan wrote:That doesn't even begin to explain why atheists don't even reproduce enough to ensure their continued existence. There has to be something behind this stat, I just can't put my finger on it. Happiness might have something to do with it. A single guy with no kids can say he's happy all day until he is blue in the face, but how does he kow if he has never experienced a fulfilling family life? What is he comparing his life to?

Yes it does. You can't ensure the survival of a freethinking ideal just by having babies. I just don't get it.

Look, all but one of my friends who are athiests are family men and women. So I don't have any idea what your point is. I cannot relate.

On the otherhand, family life is certainly not the only way to have a fullfilled life. Why would you presume to impose this on others. Just for an example, I am certainly glad Newton existed and did what he did. I am not sure he could have done it if he had gotten married and made a big family. I just can't believe you think that everyone is meant to have a big family (how about a gay man for example?).
Do you suppose Newtons life was a waste? I supsect his impact on the world dwarfs yours or mine. "God said, `let there be light', and there was Newton".
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie

yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
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