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But... the theist crowd love quick, snappy answers that they deem to decimate the opposition. Especially when they have never taken the time to illuminate their own minds as to the details of a specific technical point in the debate.
It's quite instructional that our friend Mystic here is well educated, has read the literature, and therefore does believe in the obvious (Evolution, an ancient Earth, and elements of the cosmos that a true ill-educated Christian cannot abide or tolerate. After all, Mystic has necessarily formed the correct conclusions as to how those processes and events occurred...) However my debate with him is in his insistent (and endlessly smug; sorry Big-M, but what is, is...) interpretation that...
1) his World View requires, were it's simply not necessary, a theist causative origin. But then, to further complicate things...
2) He provides, as proof of his Godly entity, really etherial, wishy-washy and frankly, totally improbable (or explained with as many 0.95¢ words as he can cram in) explanations of stuff that lingers provocatively on the edge of an LSD dream. A sort of dream-state event horizon to be sure.
The "science world view" claimed here as some sort of failure or near-sighted perspective is actually potentially and reasonably correct, in that, yes, some of us who use science regularly have come to trust its inevitable reliability in answering the questions in this life. Or the mans by which it can remove from question the least likely scenarios. Like Noah's silly Ark et al. (I know, Mystic, the fundy literalists come on like the brain-dead zombies in a really stupid "B" class Sci-Fi movie. "The Attack of The Intransigent Theists"
After all, the answers that the SM ("Scientific Method", for the great unread masses..) has so far reliably provided are remarkable, insightful, and correctly predictive of the most likely and successfully comprehensive and fitting answers for the ever expanding set of Big Questions.
When you can build on past successful accomplishments, and then make a reasonable prediction of likely consequences, and then BINGO, darned if that's not what you then find & see, what ARE you to conclude about the process or the answers?
Answer: You learn to respect a highly respectable process. Anything thataccurate and inevitable becomes highly trustable and may thus become a strong component and element of a thinking person's valuable personal "World View", versus one of clinging to the fundamentalist, literalist bumbling, hopeful but ever-more fallacious fairy-tales whose consequences have shown themselves to be nonsense in so many situations!
QED, huh, Mystic.
(Hey pal; BTW; you can give me my 2000th rep point! Imagine that! Another predictable accomplishment!)
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Originally Posted by Asheville Native
Yet it is 99.99999999999999999999999999% more factual than the book of ancient superstitions.
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Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
Correct. And we should believe the tiny percentage of what we do know rather than believe a particular preferred personal selection of the many uninformed mythical speculative guesses about the huge amount we don't know.
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Originally Posted by catman
Allow me to pile on to (onto) the heap of critical thinkers I see here and add my assent to the idea that it is much better to add to the percentage which we do know using the methods of scientific inquiry, rather than believing in speculation (and ancient tomes) concerning a Prime Mover (or whatever one wishes to call it).
You bastards are tiresome. Your obsession with Biblegod and the myriad other religious BS has NOTHING to do with the existence of God . . . but you are too obtuse, pigheaded, arrogant and ignorant to get it. Try piling on AFTER you get an education and actually know something useful . . . your ignorance exceeds my tolerance.
You bastards are tiresome. Your obsession with Biblegod and the myriad other religious BS has NOTHING to do with the existence of God . . . but you are too obtuse, pigheaded, arrogant and ignorant to get it. Try piling on AFTER you get an education and actually know something useful . . . your ignorance exceeds my tolerance.
Then perhaps you can stop beating us over the head with your very familiar back to front chat about science and beliefs. I'm sure we are all now very familiar with your very interesting theory and rather inverted dissmissal of evidence as belief and insistence that we accept your beliefs as evidence.
Get it polished up and submitted and peer - reviewed and give up posting the abusive cliche with it's mind -numbing dots and go bother the experts.
The Cosmic intelligence is not a matter with which we are concerned; it can get on with keeping the atoms and natural selection doing what it does naturally anyway and we will get on with our business of explaining why believing unsupported mythologies is not reasonable.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 09-05-2011 at 07:26 PM..
You bastards are tiresome. Your obsession with Biblegod and the myriad other religious BS has NOTHING to do with the existence of God . . . but you are too obtuse, pigheaded, arrogant and ignorant to get it. Try piling on AFTER you get an education and actually know something useful . . . your ignorance exceeds my tolerance.
OOOOooooooo.............. challenge a mythical character of ancient lore and those that follow the myth get testy.............
Feeling threatened
and the big words mined from your thesaurus of insults, comes up really short on any facts in rebuttal................ a pathetic display from a person that wears their supposed phd as if it meant anything beside staying in college long enough to dodge say perhaps the draft, being you are old enough to remember those days.
You bastards are tiresome. Your obsession with Biblegod and the myriad other religious BS has NOTHING to do with the existence of God . . . but you are too obtuse, pigheaded, arrogant and ignorant to get it. Try piling on AFTER you get an education and actually know something useful . . . your ignorance exceeds my tolerance.
Your argument is the equivalent of saying "everyone should rightfully believe in unicorns, even if they disagree on whether unicorns have horns or are magical."
You seem to miss the point that a unicorn that isn't magical and doesn't have a horn isn't a unicorn at all....it's just a horse.
By convention, There are a few certain necessary criteria to be considered a "God". You don't have to follow convention, and you can abandon all of those criteria in your own personal definition of God. But you have no right to call us pigheaded because we don't adopt your non-standard definition of "God".
By convention, a God is a single sapient entity with a will and with the power to violate a great many (if not all) of the known laws of science.
If I remember correctly, your definition of God does not follow that convention.
If it does, I apologize. It's been awhile since I've read your thoughts on it.
But if it doesn't, they you are demanding we believe in unicorns, and using horses as your proof.
By convention, There are a few certain necessary criteria to be considered a "God". You don't have to follow convention, and you can abandon all of those criteria in your own personal definition of God. But you have no right to call us pigheaded because we don't adopt your non-standard definition of "God".
By convention, a God is a single sapient entity with a will and with the power to violate a great many (if not all) of the known laws of science.
If I remember correctly, your definition of God does not follow that convention.
God is the Source of all that is and has been created. God establishes the universal field that provides the "laws," constants, physical and chemical processes that govern our reality. God is the Source of Life and the provider of all that is necessary for it to flourish. God is the Source of consciousness and its capabilities. God is the Source of the DNA helix and the codes that define how life has and will evolve and develop. I guess none of that is sufficiently magical for your conventional God, Box? Until the multiverse is scientifically established . . . God IS a single sapient entity . . . your belief that God is NOT sapient is just that a belief . . . not science. Our consciousness cannot be accounted for in a reality that is not conscious . . . unless you have somehow surpassed the greatest minds who have tried to explain it. So all your preferred attributes are mere beliefs . . just as are the other religious beliefs about God that trouble you so.
God is the Source of all that is and has been created. God establishes the universal field that provides the "laws," constants, physical and chemical processes that govern our reality. God is the Source of Life and the provider of all that is necessary for it to flourish. God is the Source of consciousness and its capabilities. God is the Source of the DNA helix and the codes that define how life has and will evolve and develop. I guess none of that is sufficiently magical for your conventional God, Box? Until the multiverse is scientifically established . . . God IS a single sapient entity . . . your belief that God is NOT sapient is just that a belief . . . not science. Our consciousness cannot be accounted for in a reality that is not conscious . . . unless you have somehow surpassed the greatest minds who have tried to explain it. So all your preferred attributes are mere beliefs . . just as are the other religious beliefs about God that trouble you so.
To say that God is THE SOURCE of everything is one claim.
A different claim is to say that God IS everything.
The first claim could easily fit into the traditional definition of God.
To say that God is THE SOURCE of everything is one claim.
A different claim is to say that God IS everything.
The first claim could easily fit into the traditional definition of God.
The second claim does not.
Which claim, if either, do you make?
They are the same claim. God is everything . . . which makes God the Source of everything. (It is called panENtheism, btw). My version is quite a bit more sophisticated and scientific than the typical version though.
You have the right to define God as "everything", but that is not the conventional definition, and you don't have the right to insist that everyone who doesn't adopt that definition is pigheaded.
You could just as well define God as a "cricket" and then insist that atheist were obtuse for denying the existence of what you call God when we can clearly hear him chirping at night.
God is not traditionally defined as synonymous with "Everything". A rock or a fish, for example, is not conventionally defined as part of God. God is conventionally defined as a separate distinct being with an individualized will. That is at least one criteria where your definition fails.
You have the right to define God as "everything", but that is not the conventional definition, and you don't have the right to insist that everyone who doesn't adopt that definition is pigheaded.
The pigheadedness abides in the refusal to acknowledge the Godliness of what is accepted as default AS IF it is NOT Godly. Natural is not an explanation . . . it is an appeal to God as the explanation since we do not have the foggiest idea what makes it "natural" or what it is.
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You could just as well define God as a "cricket" and then insist that atheist were obtuse for denying the existence of what you call God when we can clearly hear him chirping at night.
That is absurd . . . a cricket does not account for the very existence of our reality that we explore with our science . . . God does whether or not you call God "Nature."
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God is not traditionally defined as synonymous with "Everything". A rock or a fish, for example, is not conventionally defined as part of God. God is conventionally defined as a separate distinct being with an individualized will. That is at least one criteria where your definition fails.
Nonsense. On what basis do you determine that a rock or fish is not part of the distinct being with a Will? They are merely vibratory energy events with spherical standing wave patterns (as are we) . . . that we identify as separate by their interference patterns with the vibratory energy of our sensory systems. The separateness is illusion. it is all the same vibratory energy.
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