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I was talking with a muslim recently, and i asked him how can you prove the quran is from god, and he answered with what would it take to convince you that this book is from god. Ive never though about this before. Ive been thinking about this and im still sort of confused.
We say prove to me that god is real, show me god and ill believe, he needs to do this and this and then ill believe, etc. I was thinking that no matter what i come up with and this being does it, i can always say something like what if the real god created billions of beings, and this being that im talking to is one of them. How can i be sue this being is actually god? Ive come to the realization that at the end of the day i would need either believe he is god or just admit that i dont know.
First of all, what is your definition or understanding of "god"?
I'd say that "I don't know" is the best answer to most "prove it" issues. I don't know if god is "real" I just believe it. I don't know if I am god, I just accept it. I don't know if such and such comes from god, I just believe it does, etc. Notice how few folks are willing to say "I don't know" and will come up with all kinds of Proofs about what is only their beliefs or hearsay such as scriptures and lectures from some Preacher or Guru.
It's humiliating to admit that you don't know so most folks are absolutely certain of silly stuff that they only BELIEVE IN.
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Originally Posted by yologuy01
I was talking with a muslim recently, and i asked him how can you prove the quran is from god, and he answered with what would it take to convince you that this book is from god. Ive never though about this before. Ive been thinking about this and im still sort of confused.
We say prove to me that god is real, show me god and ill believe, he needs to do this and this and then ill believe, etc. I was thinking that no matter what i come up with and this being does it, i can always say something like what if the real god created billions of beings, and this being that im talking to is one of them. How can i be sue this being is actually god? Ive come to the realization that at the end of the day i would need either believe he is god or just admit that i dont know.
For Starters.....
Make Everyone believe in You...yes, that includes Atheists too
I was talking with a muslim recently, and i asked him how can you prove the quran is from god, and he answered with what would it take to convince you that this book is from god. Ive never though about this before. Ive been thinking about this and im still sort of confused.
.
Simple, he is relying on your lack of knowledge.
Islam claims we are slaves to God.
This denies free will to disbelieve.
Thats why their world view is cockeyed.
The paradox is its the disbelief of atheism which points at the existence of free will.
The atheists have long been invested in trying to disprove free will.
And thats why their world view is cockeyed too.
To disbelieve in free will is self refuting.
The paradox is its the disbelief of atheism which points at the existence of free will.
The atheists have long been invested in trying to disprove free will.
And thats why their world view is cockeyed too.
To disbelieve in free will is self refuting.
...
To an atheist position, questions about "human will" would be irrelevant.
I think you are talking about the physicalist position, which is one evidenced by the practice of science more and more. Most atheist do adopt a physicalist position, but I've met atheists that believe in ghosts and hauntings.
The physicalist position understands that a sperm has no free-will, and that an egg has no free-will, and that a computer has no free-will and that a robot that could think on it's own would also have no free-will. And that the idea of "free-will" as commonly thought to be "wholly independent and freely arising" doesn't make sense with physicalism as revealed by science. It could make sense with quantumism as revealed by science, I suppose, but it has yet to be evidenced. Why one would need for it to be independent and freely arising out of some concrete identity (with the possibility of immortally, no less) is probably only for emotional reasons; this favoring of emotional reasoning leads to strife more times than not, although sometimes our emotions happen to be more correct than logic (pure and humanly incomplete) either by chance or by unperceivable yet proper intuitions.
Very good. There is also the element of strawmanning the atheist position in order to make a point against it. We do not seek to disprove free will, which, even if we could do it, would not disprove a god having done it that way (or possibly Satan, corrupting His work), but to show that it (however one argues it works, where it came from or indeed what it is) does not work as any kind of support for the efforts by Theists to prove a god using the morality argument (1), but only as an excuse as to explain away why the problem of evil undermines the claims made for various kinds of personal gods, and of course specifically, that of Christianity.
It does not disprove a god, but it does provide a very persuasive case against the god as depicted in the Bible and as claimed by Christianity. It is still one of the most often cited reasons why believers themselves come to doubt the claims.
(1) we see there the familiar gambit of taking the argument by atheism against the Theist case and trying to reverse it - which results in ascribing to athesism a sort of reverse type thinking of theists -which atheism doesn't actually hold. That is the cause of so many of these strawman arguments.
Very good. There is also the element of strawmanning the atheist position in order to make a point against it. We do not seek to disprove free will, which, even if we could do it, would not disprove a god having done it that way (or possibly Satan, corrupting His work), but to show that it (however one argues it works, where it came from or indeed what it is) does not work as any kind of support for the efforts by Theists to prove a god using the morality argument (1), but only as an excuse as to explain away why the problem of evil undermines the claims made for various kinds of personal gods, and of course specifically, that of Christianity.
It does not disprove a god, but it does provide a very persuasive case against the god as depicted in the Bible and as claimed by Christianity. It is still one of the most often cited reasons why believers themselves come to doubt the claims.
(1) we see there the familiar gambit of taking the argument by atheism against the Theist case and trying to reverse it - which results in ascribing to athesism a sort of reverse type thinking of theists -which atheism doesn't actually hold. That is the cause of so many of these strawman arguments.
Naaaah, I recall the atheist forums across the web going nuts when they thought the Libbet experiments proved free will is an illusion, until those experiments were debunked.
" the problem of evil undermines the claims made for various kinds of personal gods, "
I have never understood why evil is a problem, the atheist argument I hear makes absolutely no sense.
The theist response is usually feeble too.
Now I have to admit that I never heard of the Libbet experiments. And I am so sure that free will IS an illusion - or rather has no reality outside human preferences -that I can't see why it would bother an atheist very much (I can't recall it ever having been mentioned, here).
Of course if it WAS proved to be something...I can't think of a better way to make it sound interesting - that it was not something that could possibly have been Given as a Gift by a God, that might get atheists exciting, but if that experiment failed (and I'm no surprised) it wouldn't make us do more than yawn and stretch.
Btw. I like the way you post a lot - and in A/A too. We don't get enough theists coming here to stir us up.
P.s Ah -yes, I had heard of the experiment, but the name didn't ring a bell. It was never mentioned here 9as I recall) in connection with free will, but we did get excited about the implications of the brain being themechanism of consciousness rather than consciousness being an independent entity (this is a whit a discussion here.
For me, I may say, my view on what freee will is (or isn't) are such that these brain experiments are pretty much what I'd expect.
And from what I read, the experiments weren't 'debunked' but are valid. It was that "some" (and perhaps they were atheists) thought they debunked Free will. the professor disassociated himself from any such conclusions, and, for my part, so do I.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 04-06-2017 at 03:49 PM..
The libbet experiment had a prediction rate around 60%.
You could do that flipping a coin. And they wonder WHY congress wants to cut funding?
Also, rather glaring... the action potential Libbet was measuring triggers even if you do not move your hand.
So he really had less than nothing.
But some good did come out other areas of the study, the fact that baseball players hit a ball way faster than the brain can process, it might imply retrocausality. WHich in turn gives evidence to the brain utilizing quantum physics inside the skull. Thats something atheist physicist L Krauss insisted could never happen.
Physicist Roger Penrose (atheist) said the Libbet experiment was quite poor.
The decision to move a hand is not the sort of decisions we associate with free will.
Something a little more profound, such as deciding whether to believe in God or not maybe.
It can take many yrs to reach that decision.
I could say I had less free will when I was atheist, I wanted to believe but my ego wouldn't let me, I was impaired. I hear the same thing from many atheists " I would believe but my mind will not let me".
Its not their mind, its their ego thats the obstruction.
"we did get excited about the implications of the brain being the mechanism of consciousness rather than consciousness being an independent entity"
Well its not as clean cut as either side wants, brain is obviously involved but Penrose made a very strong case that mere neurons ( switches) cannot give rise to consciousness. Something else is going on.
He proposed quantum mechanics in the brain, the atheist physicist community went nuts and excoriated him.
Today, quantum biology is a fact of science. Funny how that went.
Facts change, the truth don't.
The libbet experiment had a prediction rate around 60%.
You could do that flipping a coin. And they wonder WHY congress wants to cut funding?
Are you a statistician? Was the libbet experiment (I hadn't heard of the guy either) actually like a coin-toss? Because 60% of something that should be 0% might be extremely significant (especially when errors are sifted for over and over again and are not found). Please stop trying to agree with defunding science simply because you are unwilling to put the personal effort and investment it requires to be understood academically (and neutrally).
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Also, rather glaring... the action potential Libbet was measuring triggers even if you do not move your hand.
So he really had less than nothing.
This "less than nothing" as you called it, is actually "a small bit of something" and that is how all science starts.
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But some good did come out other areas of the study, the fact that baseball players hit a ball way faster than the brain can process, it might imply retrocausality. WHich in turn gives evidence to the brain utilizing quantum physics inside the skull. Thats something atheist physicist L Krauss insisted could never happen.
That makes no sense, because a brain wouldn't need to process quantum physics (although evolution would allow for that) in order to hit a ball fast and hard. Even dogs are capable of intuitively doing Calculus (or just calculations of angels and distances and speeds) in their heads. If L Krauss didn't know this that is his loss. We (skeptics) are not as corrupt and cronyist as the religious, Laurance can defend himself, if you happen to be right.
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Physicist Roger Penrose (atheist) said the Libbet experiment was quite poor.
Ok. great.
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The decision to move a hand is not the sort of decisions we associate with free will.
Yes it is. Who would deny this, and why?
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Something a little more profound, such as deciding whether to believe in God or not maybe.
It can take many yrs to reach that decision.
Do you believe in Buddha above deluded and egotistical Gods such as Jesus, Allah, and Vishnu? No... maybe a couple more years of training your free will will get you to that "profound decision."
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I could say I had less free will when I was atheist, I wanted to believe but my ego wouldn't let me, I was impaired. I hear the same thing from many atheists " I would believe but my mind will not let me".
You didn't metamorph, you have the same amount of will now as when you had not given yourself any reasons to believe in any of the many postulated gods. I think you ego was what wanted to believe (in immortality... and if a God was useful for that, then why not), and your inhibition centers of your brain (which are more logical) wouldn't let you. Indeed, inhibition is a type of impairment, a good one most of the time
Spoiler
although you can exhaust it, so letting yourself believe in immortality of yourself as you ultimately wanted (belief in God being just a tool for that) would mean that you wouldn't tire out your inhibitions as much, although you'd also become more willing to just not care about making mistakes, since you are immortal (in the only God postulations that matter to people in these days filled with knowledge of nature).
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Its not their mind, its their ego thats the obstruction.
How could it ever not be more egotistical to believe that you have successfully sucked up to a primordial monster of creation and have thus gained favors?
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"we did get excited about the implications of the brain being the mechanism of consciousness rather than consciousness being an independent entity"
Well its not as clean cut as either side wants, brain is obviously involved but Penrose made a very strong case that mere neurons ( switches) cannot give rise to consciousness. Something else is going on.
What was your consciousness five years ago at this same date and time? You don't even remember, it wasn't the "real/important" you, you forgot that egotistical self and now it's dead and gone. What are you worrying about consciousness for? No one ever thought that invisible beams of light could create a whole network of communication, and then Radio came along (after the government funding many studies into basic science).
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He proposed quantum mechanics in the brain, the atheist physicist community went nuts and excoriated him.
Where? The "atheist physicist community" isn't even recognized as a legitimate scientific community, it's purely cultural. The most they could do was laugh at his baseless accusation and wish him the best (or try to beat him to a new and novel finding).
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Today, quantum biology is a fact of science. Funny how that went.
Facts change, the truth don't.
Are you kidding me? "Quantum biology" seems to have been widely believed by scientists 60-70 years ago.
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Originally Posted by definition
Quantum biology refers to applications of quantum mechanics and theoretical chemistry to biological objects and problems. Many biological processes involve the conversion of energy into forms that are usable for chemical transformations and are quantum mechanical in nature. Such processes involve chemical reactions, light absorption, formation of excited electronic states, transfer of excitation energy, and the transfer of electrons and protons (hydrogen ions) in chemical processes such as photosynthesis and cellular respiration
Last edited by LuminousTruth; 04-07-2017 at 08:16 PM..
The libbet experiment had a prediction rate around 60%.
You could do that flipping a coin. And they wonder WHY congress wants to cut funding?
Also, rather glaring... the action potential Libbet was measuring triggers even if you do not move your hand.
So he really had less than nothing.
But some good did come out other areas of the study, the fact that baseball players hit a ball way faster than the brain can process, it might imply retrocausality. WHich in turn gives evidence to the brain utilizing quantum physics inside the skull. Thats something atheist physicist L Krauss insisted could never happen.
Physicist Roger Penrose (atheist) said the Libbet experiment was quite poor.
The decision to move a hand is not the sort of decisions we associate with free will.
Something a little more profound, such as deciding whether to believe in God or not maybe.
It can take many yrs to reach that decision.
I could say I had less free will when I was atheist, I wanted to believe but my ego wouldn't let me, I was impaired. I hear the same thing from many atheists " I would believe but my mind will not let me".
Its not their mind, its their ego thats the obstruction.
"we did get excited about the implications of the brain being the mechanism of consciousness rather than consciousness being an independent entity"
Well its not as clean cut as either side wants, brain is obviously involved but Penrose made a very strong case that mere neurons ( switches) cannot give rise to consciousness. Something else is going on.
He proposed quantum mechanics in the brain, the atheist physicist community went nuts and excoriated him.
Today, quantum biology is a fact of science. Funny how that went.
Facts change, the truth don't.
This all seems a fuss about nothing. We know that instincts react faster than conscious thought. research into the mental mechanism is interesting. But it hardly is going to make atheists, physicists or not, feel the earth move. And I can't quite see where you stand on this. You seem to note with disapproval the "atheist physicists" excoriating him when you imply yourself that the experiment was flawed.
Howsoever, the free will debate for atheism doesn't focus on how our decision -making process works. It focuses on the the way theist apologists use it to try to get God of the hook of being responsible for the way (bad) humans turned out.
I have to note, also, that we seem to have drifted a long way from the initial drift from topic - what would convince anyone that a god exists
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