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science plus his "encounter"
while at the same dismissing anyone else's "encounter" past or present as nonsense
Well that's not so uncommon with religion... I mean you aren't willing to agree that Jesus was God, and did away with Mosaic law, right? Mohammed is not the definitive authority on god in your opinion, right? You don't hold that Bahaullah is the fullfillment of prophecy give by the Bab, and thus the final manifestation of divine instruction? You certainly don't agree with my experiences which led me to the conclusion that there is no reason to believe a god exists
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
if science can not validate it, he dismisses it as nonsense. he is the first to tell everyone that, and has done so in many threads and many posts. he is very much a materialist because he rejects everything outside the material plane. he has spent the better part of how many decades not exploring how to be more loving towards others, but how to prove god using science. that is a materialist.
I think you are very much misunderstanding Mystic. I say that as something very close to a materialist atheist. He certainly does not agree with me about the state of reality. He is very much a spiritualist, but he likes to posit sciencey sounding but non-scientific explanations for consciousness, love, god, and all that.
You don't have to agree with him, but misrepresenting him is not real cool. He believes what he believes, and trying to shove him into a box which he most certainly doesn't belong is not useful.
Not only is it inaccurate, but it is a bit insulting. You accuse him of being a materialist, a humanist, and relying on science as if those are all bad things, things that disqualify him from being a good, moral, thoughtful person.
Well that's not so uncommon with religion... I mean you aren't willing to agree that Jesus was God, and did away with Mosaic law, right? Mohammed is not the definitive authority on god in your opinion, right? You don't hold that Bahaullah is the fullfillment of prophecy give by the Bab, and thus the final manifestation of divine instruction? You certainly don't agree with my experiences which led me to the conclusion that there is no reason to believe a god exists
I think you are very much misunderstanding Mystic. I say that as something very close to a materialist atheist. He certainly does not agree with me about the state of reality. He is very much a spiritualist, but he likes to posit sciencey sounding but non-scientific explanations for consciousness, love, god, and all that.
You don't have to agree with him, but misrepresenting him is not real cool. He believes what he believes, and trying to shove him into a box which he most certainly doesn't belong is not useful.
Not only is it inaccurate, but it is a bit insulting. You accuse him of being a materialist, a humanist, and relying on science as if those are all bad things, things that disqualify him from being a good, moral, thoughtful person.
i would never in a million years say he is a humanist and i never have.
and he bends over backwards to tie everything he says about god to scientific explanations and utterly rejects as "woo" and "nonsense" that which science can not validate. he is desperate to. it is his raison d'etre and he readily admits he has spent the last how many decades doing so, what is it now 30 years? 40 years?
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 08-21-2018 at 01:45 PM..
i would never in a million years call him a humanist and i never have.
and he bends over backwards to tie everything he says about god to scientific explanations. he is desperate to. it is his raison d'etre and he readily admits he has spent the last how many decades doing so, what is it now 30 years? 40 years?
Not really... like I said he is trying to leverage the legitimacy of science and evidence, but his ideas are not scientific, and he does not use science in their pursuit. In a very real way he uses science like a messianic Jew used Judaism, as a cover to try to convey legitimacy to an entirely different set of beliefs. That isn’t done out of a deep and abiding love for science and empiricism, it is done to gain legitimacy and to try to play logical judo on those who would disagree with him.
Disagree with him all you like, I do. But please do not lump him in with us actual materialist unbelievers. It’s just not honest.
Our Reality has intelligence and consciousness because we are part of our Reality and we have intelligence and consciousness. Our Reality is one unified entity and we are its components so any silly composition fallacy is moot. It requires a separation of things.
No sir . Enough of your silly games . An actual God would require an intelligence and consciousness that extended beyond the individual consciousnesses of its creation. Otherwise it would have had no consciousness in the beginning of the universe , would not have had consciousness and intelligence for the first 9 billion years or so of the universe's existence, and would not have existed before the Universe came into being .
This is where you consistently fail. You cannot show a conscious and intelligent god and so you try to squirrel out by co opting the individual consciousnesses to cobble some half azz theory together . Nobody buys it . Big fail. Come back when you have evidence for the panENtheistic god that possesses consciousness and intelligence beyond its created parts.
Last edited by wallflash; 08-21-2018 at 03:19 PM..
Taking them to churches? Make sure you instill at a young age the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, all-watching, sorta petulant city-destroying occasionally angry and worship-demanding master who is merciful enough to burn you in hell for eternity if your transgressions cross some not very clearly defined limits. Make sure to read to them Exodus 21 about beating your slave or selling your daughter as a slave. Instill them with divinely-approved homophobia and sexism and the wonderful writings of the Bible - like again mentioning slavery without really condemning it and not including it as one of the 10 commandments. That way, getting that idea in at a young age, they will be set up for life.
On the other hand you can say look we just don't know, no-one in fact does although many people will lie and say they do. What we do know is that on earth human beings have come up with varying moral systems - the very imperfect ones of the Bible, the Quran and other ideologies, and the closer to perfect one of the Universal declaration of Human Rights.
Of course you will have to explain that abiding by the declaration of human rights, which is based on people collectively deciding how each of them wants to be treated, individually, and not justifying how you might treat others (in other words, based on honesty rather than some prescriptive, marginalizing system) doesn't get you any glittering sparkly prize of NOT dying when you die! Admittedly, that is the kind of story that will appeal to children - ya don't die when ya die! - but honesty or dishonesty is your choice I guess.
Tell them they don't have to surrender their innate humanity - their compassion towards the elderly lesbian couple, their sympathy for the lamb being sacrificed, their empathy for the young teenager grappling with being born gay - they don't have to give up any of that humanity just to please the omniscient being and get the sparkly prize.
Sorry I went off course there. Yes put that fear into them right from the get go so it becomes part of their very fabric, you should be proud of presenting guesses as fact and installing the fear of an omnipotent being who needs to be worshipped like a petty human tyrant.
Good post.
There’s this idea that religion is completely harmless, but it can be a form of child psychological abuse.
How well will one’s children function if they live their lives in fear of imaginary dangers and have to interact with the outside world where there are atheists, other religions, gays?
No sir. Enough of your silly games. An actual God would require an intelligence and consciousness that extended beyond the individual consciousnesses of its creation. Otherwise, it would have had no consciousness in the beginning of the universe, would not have had consciousness and intelligence for the first 9 billion years or so of the universe's existence, and would not have existed before the Universe came into being.
This is where you consistently fail. You cannot show a conscious and intelligent god and so you try to squirrel out by co-opting the individual consciousnesses to cobble some half azz theory together. Nobody buys it. Big fail. Come back when you have evidence for the panENtheistic god that possesses consciousness and intelligence beyond its created parts.
Tell me, wallflash, how exactly is it that you KNOW God does NOT have a collective intelligence and consciousness beyond ours comprised of ours and any OTHER sentient species throughout our Reality?
Furthermore, the argument you present here is inherently self-defeating. I would posit that a "relative" god is no god at all. You are essentially arguing that reality is so much bigger or complex or exceedingly whatever than us that it is like a god to us, which implies that in actuality it is not a god at all. You are pulling a Gldnrule fast one here and declaring metaphor to be fact!
This one is also wrong! There are cells that are part of you, which do not breath, they reproduce asexually, and they are nourished entirely by simple sugars. Do all of these descriptions apply to the composite entity which is you? No. Just because reality contains minds does not mean reality itself is conscious, just as reality containing pedophiles does not mean your version of god is one.
So I think it would be instructive to see if you have anything other than semantic fiddling to back up your claim of the divinity of reality. What do you see as the necessary attributes of a god, and how do you think reality exhibits them? Let's dissect this and see what you've got...
-NoCapo
Let's use your analogy to our composition. We are, in essence, God to our cells and microbiota that comprise us. That does NOT mean that every cell or biota is the same or possesses the same characteristics but that does NOT preclude them all from being part of their God. Their God possesses all the characteristics that they comprise. As to the attributes that define God that our Reality possesses indisputably: Our Reality is responsible for our existence and the existence of everything else that exists. Our Reality is responsible for the "laws" that govern and maintain everything that exists. You can demand more from it to qualify as your God, but at the very least, that is Godlike.
Last edited by MysticPhD; 08-21-2018 at 04:51 PM..
Tell me, wallflash, how exactly is it that you KNOW God does NOT have a collective intelligence and consciousness beyond ours comprised of ours and any OTHER sentient species throughout our Reality?
He doesn’t.
Nor do you KNOW that the Great Extradimensional Space Crabs do not have a collective intelligence and consciousness beyond ours.
Tell me, wallflash, how exactly is it that you KNOW God does NOT have a collective intelligence and consciousness beyond ours comprised of ours and any OTHER sentient species throughout our Reality?
As Freak said, I don't, and don't claim to . Nor is it my job to disprove it. It is your job to show evidence for such claims . You know this, so don't start acting silly . Stop the semantics , show the evidence, or everyone will understand you have none and are just playing word games and spouting wordy gobbledygook in the hope it will fool some.
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Ah, Pleroo. I love you! 
