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.
marg wrote:Jersey Girl wrote: I'm curious about your Grandma, dart.
Is this from a pm?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'm curious about your Grandma, dart. What do you think accounts for her abilities?
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?
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.
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.
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?
Just the other day you said this, "Only religion includes moral teachings, which is what humans require before becoming moral individuals."
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.
It is associated with a particular class of arguments you are drawing from.
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.
Yes, the term has a horrible connotation. And with good cause.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I'm saying atheism does not offer anything to create happiness in life, whereas religion most certainly does.
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.
This is an empirical fact that flies in the face of anyone trying to say society wold be better off without religion.
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!
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.
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.
Yes. You feel free to pick and choose among God's word? OK. Me too.
The difference is that you do so in ignorance.
The Bible is a joke to you so for you it will always be used as comic material.
But there is a rather intricate and sophisticated science devoted to its understanding.
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.
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.
This was being demonstrated on the previous thread, and it was tearing you up.
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.
But now you're realizing I don't really have many religious beliefs for you to mock,
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.
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.
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.
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?
As a Darwinian you should know that animals have various senses unknown to us.
There are probably others we haven't discovered.
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!
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.
Your New Atheists are tripping over themselves trying to forward wild theories on this thesis.
But the result is not science, only blind bigotry and a wreckless usage of peripheral scholarship they clearly do not appreciate or understand.
Why would humans need morals at all to survive if other species clearly don't?
Game theory is interesting but it doesn't explain all kinds of moral awareness/activity.
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?
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.
Well, being happy myself and so on I just flatly deny 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.
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".)
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.
But the unhappiness of an atheist is not. Oh brother. This very poor Dart. Tal about special pleading.
In fact, it is exactly as fallible as one would expect if there were no real supernatural revelation.
How much have I studied the Bible?
There is a rather intricate and sophisticated science devoted to astrology (even Newton was into it). What does that prove?
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Do you really feel that the assertion that "GOD" exists explains morality. How? Morality is complex. Study it sometime.
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?
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?
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.
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?.
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?