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Old 03-14-2014, 06:21 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,079 posts, read 20,479,780 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina View Post
Why does it seem like every thread I click on in the Atheist and Agnostic forum, I see Christians and generic theists tossing around Bible verses and proselytizing as if this were the Religion and Spirituality forum?
It's what they do. This business of picking out Bible quotes as though they were evidence of something is incomprehensible to me, but it is their textbook and source of proof to them.
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Old 03-14-2014, 12:24 PM
 
8,582 posts, read 9,050,676 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NOTaTHEIST View Post
No, what you sense is something you are calling "God". It may not represent anything beyond the confines of your brain, or it might be in response to an external stimuli most reasonable people would not call a god.


So the god is producing some type of radiation that can be tested? If so, this seems like a material process and not worthy of the "god" label.
If no living thing with a conscience existed in our universe, would the universe exist? Same can be said of a god perhaps? Another words if God created the universe with only primitive microbes, would god exist? Who would appreciate a creator, if there was one?
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Old 03-14-2014, 03:41 PM
 
63,391 posts, read 39,647,364 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
Usually you provide logical arguments in rebuttal . . . but these were so off the beam that they require no response. Of course the brain can be tricked. Of course the brain can be dysfunctional. I am NOT suggesting that the God Helmet is causing someone to experience God. It is obviously tricking the brain. But in tricking the brain . . . it revealed an new sensory modality . . . fields. Since our reality is comprised of fields . . . this is noteworthy. Your examples above are silly. There IS no presence detectable by the brain in a normal state. The brain is tricked into sensing an artificial field. If you both had helmets on . . . you would both be sensing artificial fields. They prove nothing other than the brain can sense fields.

If we were smart enough . . . and we are making enormous strides in this area . . . we could artificially stimulate the optic areas of the brain with the correct stimuli and cause the brain to interpret it as seeing the color yellow. The brain would interpret it as yellow . . . but there would be no actual yellow to see. The brain would be tricked artificially. The same thing is true when the brain is tricked by a weak artificial field and interprets it as the presence of God and oneness.

What this evidence provides is support for those of us who alter our brain state and detect the presence of God . . . WITHOUT any artificial stimuli. When we alter our brain state in meditation or truly devout prayer . . . we tune our consciousness so that it is somehow resonant with the consciousness field of God. Hence we sense God . . . and there is NO artificial stimuli present to account for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NOTaTHEIST View Post
No, what you sense is something you are calling "God". It may not represent anything beyond the confines of your brain, or it might be in response to an external stimuli most reasonable people would not call a god.
So the god is producing some type of radiation that can be tested? If so, this seems like a material process and not worthy of the "god" label.
I am making a logical extrapolation from the FACT that our brain senses a God presence under the artificial stimulation of low level EM fields. This indicates that the brain DOES respond to field stimuli. Since 95+% of our reality is non-baryonic (not what you would call material) fields. It is hardly stretching credulity to presume that when we enter these altered states we are attuning our brains to receive this ubiquitous source of field phenomena and interpreting it as God.
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Old 03-14-2014, 03:53 PM
 
63,391 posts, read 39,647,364 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by old_cold View Post
Oh come on....this reasoning is so faulty even an 'uneducated ignorant ' person like me can see it.
There are so many chemicals and processes within one's own body that mental aberrations can occur with no outside influence or artificial stimuli necessary.
IOW...you can 'do it' to yourself. Pretty basic idea in the field of psychiatry.
The reason you prefer it your way is so that you can claim you've progressed beyond a state of understanding we peons have not reached.
Your persistent negative interpretations of me, my views and my motives does you no justice, old_cold. I am discussing this newly discovered sensory modality to fields. I find it especially noteworthy because our consciousness is a resonant neural field and because our reality is entirely fields manifesting as energy/mass. The fact that 95+% of our reality is non-baryonic fields and atheism is based on the less than 5% material (baryonic) field manifestations discovered by science . . . belies any basis for confidence that God doesn't exist.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA View Post
And consistently denying, decrying (as 'beliefs) or just ignoring the proven (as much as any rational person should need) existence of a reality that does not need a god to operate, but does very well through physical reactions.
My body exists and the bulk of it (considerable these days) does not need my consciousness to operate either. What exactly does that prove?
Quote:
That essentially is the weak point in Mystic's argument, which would be false enough in just saying that the god -argument is just as valid as the non - god argument, but apparently it is supposed that there is a better case for "God". I suppose if you believe it to start off with - a very un-rational place to start an argument - that would make sense, but being rational (or Mystic would say not having experienced what he has), it doesn't make sense to me.
It is the existence of consciousness . . . a VERY non-materialistic phenomenon . . . that does not make sense in your materialist world, Arq.
Quote:
P.s Gosh. It's not every day you find a response to a post that came later. Creepy
How DID you manage that, Arq??? Is old_cold a sock-puppet of yours?
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Old 03-14-2014, 05:04 PM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,727 posts, read 13,268,032 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
The caliber of your argumentation has seriously declined recently, Mordant. I don't have to produce God for any reason other than to assert God as the default. But NEITHER of us can assert ANY default because we have no positive proof of a Source for our reality. It is ALL preference based on differential knowledge and experiences, period.
You don't have to produce anything, Mystic ... my point is that it is not possible to investigate god claims like we can investigate source-of-Christmas-present claims. You don't have to produce god for me but you can't produce him either.

Your argumentation has changed recently, yerself. You have seized upon this "no default is valid, it's all preferences" argument. I don't buy it. There are many things I don't have any data at all concerning, and disbelieving in them, or at least discarding any concern for them as not likely to be relevant or useful, is an entirely rational default. I don't withhold belief because I prefer to be an unbeliever. I withhold it because belief is not justified in this instance.

Without a default of skepticism we are wide open to bias of the very sort caused by personal preferences. You clearly prefer god and you're free to indulge that preference in the privacy of your meditation mat, but not in debate about metaphysics and philosophy. Rational discourse requires evidence. In the absence of evidence no claims or assertions can be admitted. In the absence of admitted claims one must withhold belief.

It is not even a question of defaulting to god or not-god. It is a question of whether belief is justified or indeed justifiable, regardless of if the topic is god or fairies or inner tubes or debentures.

What should we credit? What line do we cross that makes it fair to label us as credulous?
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Old 03-14-2014, 05:52 PM
 
63,391 posts, read 39,647,364 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant View Post
You don't have to produce anything, Mystic ... my point is that it is not possible to investigate god claims like we can investigate source-of-Christmas-present claims. You don't have to produce god for me but you can't produce him either.
Your argumentation has changed recently, yerself. You have seized upon this "no default is valid, it's all preferences" argument. I don't buy it. There are many things I don't have any data at all concerning, and disbelieving in them, or at least discarding any concern for them as not likely to be relevant or useful, is an entirely rational default. I don't withhold belief because I prefer to be an unbeliever. I withhold it because belief is not justified in this instance.
The basis of your rejection of God is based on failure to produce Him . . . even though we can NOT know whether or not reality has a Source. It is extraordinarily arrogant and presumptuous to then assert positively that there is No Source (God) for our obvious reality . . . by assuming it as default. How can we use our ignorance as the support for the default of the non-existence of a Source for our reality? It certainly can justify your preference for lack of belief . . . but not a default.
Quote:
Without a default of skepticism we are wide open to bias of the very sort caused by personal preferences. You clearly prefer god and you're free to indulge that preference in the privacy of your meditation mat, but not in debate about metaphysics and philosophy. Rational discourse requires evidence. In the absence of evidence no claims or assertions can be admitted. In the absence of admitted claims one must withhold belief.
It is not even a question of defaulting to god or not-god. It is a question of whether belief is justified or indeed justifiable, regardless of if the topic is god or fairies or inner tubes or debentures.
That is absolutely true for your beliefs. It is true for everyone's beliefs. BUT . . . it is NOT a basis for asserting what the true state of our reality is . . . nor whether or not the Source of our reality exists in your preferred state.
Quote:
What should we credit? What line do we cross that makes it fair to label us as credulous?
Just qualify your assertions about reality and God to the same standard you apply to us theists . . . "I don't believe" . . . NOT "until you show me proof there IS a God "no God" is the default."
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Old 03-14-2014, 08:13 PM
 
Location: Mill Valley, California
275 posts, read 433,030 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SteakGuy View Post
No theist is claiming to be able to show you incontrovertible proof of God so your challenge is incoherent by definition. You are demanding we accept a challenge which isn't coherent with our beliefs.
God doesn't want to be proven so we have to go on Faith as God wants it.
This is not The Age Of Miracles (although there are Miracles), this is The Age Of Faith.
If you wish to make a comment on something that I DID say, I will be happy to reply. However, nothing you noted above has anything to do with my OP whatsoever so it remains unclear how you could conclude that my OP, which you quoted in your post, is somehow incoherent. Care to try again?
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Old 03-14-2014, 09:10 PM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,079 posts, read 20,479,780 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
..

My body exists and the bulk of it (considerable these days) does not need my consciousness to operate either. What exactly does that prove? It is the existence of consciousness . . . a VERY non-materialistic phenomenon . . . that does not make sense in your materialist world, Arq.How DID you manage that, Arq??? Is old_cold a sock-puppet of yours?
Yes it does..if one thinks of consciousness in your 'unified field' terms. Everything is part of this 'consciousness' which I would call 'physical reaction'. In more developed animals it leads to problem -solving. Most of it is simply operating on instinct and just holding our particles together. It is all what you would rather loosely call 'vibration'.

If that proves anything, it is that there is no need to postulate a 'God' behind it. What we understand about it makes makes unthinking physical processes a perfectly adequate one.

Of course most people see animal consciousness as something different, but I am trying to accommodate your terminology and show that it does not constitute any good reason to postulate a 'God', for the reasons I have given. There is no planning, without which there is no reason to seeit as anything but blindly reacting physics- even if it has evolved to self -awareness in us.

Thus consciousness is as materialistic as anything else. It it you who is trying to make it something different and mystical -which so far as I can see undermines your whole Unified Field theory as explaining anything we'd call a 'God'. It rather supports materialism that does not need one.

I do not do sock - puppets. I simply responded to a post quickly enough that I was able to piggy-back an earlier one of mine before it lost the 'edit' option.

Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 03-14-2014 at 09:19 PM..
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Old 03-14-2014, 09:47 PM
 
63,391 posts, read 39,647,364 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
Your persistent negative interpretations of me, my views and my motives does you no justice, old_cold. I am discussing this newly discovered sensory modality to fields. I find it especially noteworthy because our consciousness is a resonant neural field and because our reality is entirely fields manifesting as energy/mass. The fact that 95+% of our reality is non-baryonic fields and atheism is based on the less than 5% material (baryonic) field manifestations discovered by science . . . belies any basis for confidence that God doesn't exist.

My body exists and the bulk of it (considerable these days) does not need my consciousness to operate either. What exactly does that prove? It is the existence of consciousness . . . a VERY non-materialistic phenomenon . . . that does not make sense in your materialist world, Arq.How DID you manage that, Arq??? Is old_cold a sock-puppet of yours?
Quote:
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA View Post
Yes it does..if one thinks of consciousness in your 'unified field' terms. Everything is part of this 'consciousness' which I would call 'physical reaction'. In more developed animals it leads to problem -solving. Most of it is simply operating on instinct and just holding our particles together. It is all what you would rather loosely call 'vibration'. If that proves anything, it is that there is no need to postulate a 'God' behind it. What we understand about it makes makes unthinking physical processes a perfectly adequate one.

Of course most people see animal consciousness as something different, but I am trying to accommodate your terminology and show that it does not constitute any good reason to postulate a 'God', for the reasons I have given. There is no planning, without which there is no reason to seeit as anything but blindly reacting physics- even if it has evolved to self -awareness in us.

Thus consciousness is as materialistic as anything else. It it you who is trying to make it something different and mystical -which so far as I can see undermines your whole Unified Field theory as explaining anything we'd call a 'God'. It rather supports materialism that does not need one.
I shouldn't be surprised by your picking up on the philosophical connotation of the term "physical." You are a bright fellow, Arq. Of course mixing philosophically abstract terms with the more common rhetoric is what can produce confusion and misunderstanding. Using the philosophically sophisticated denotation of the term "physical" or "material" . . . you would be correct . . . EVERYTHING would be considered "material." But this does not allow you to shoehorn the unified field into your original misunderstanding of materialism as a philosophy. The unified field is ALL that there is, period. It is a consciousness field (God's) . . . since consciousness exists and a field allows manifestations resonant with or compatible with it. Consciousness has the requisite attributes of a thinking, reasoning, planning, entity and ours resides within it and has to be compatible with it.
Quote:
I do not do sock - puppets. I simply responded to a post quickly enough that I was able to piggy-back an earlier one of mine before it lost the 'edit' option.
Ah so.
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Old 03-14-2014, 10:42 PM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,079 posts, read 20,479,780 times
Reputation: 5927
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
I shouldn't be surprised by your picking up on the philosophical connotation of the term "physical." You are a bright fellow, Arq. Of course mixing philosophically abstract terms with the more common rhetoric is what can produce confusion and misunderstanding. Using the philosophically sophisticated denotation of the term "physical" or "material" . . . you would be correct . . . EVERYTHING would be considered "material." But this does not allow you to shoehorn the unified field into your original misunderstanding of materialism as a philosophy. The unified field is ALL that there is, period. It is a consciousness field (God's) . . . since consciousness exists and a field allows manifestations resonant with or compatible with it. Consciousness has the requisite attributes of a thinking, reasoning, planning, entity and ours resides within it and has to be compatible with it.
...
Well,there, it seems to me that you have shoehorned the consciousness that has developed in us into a more general idea of an everything -Field (if I may put it that way) that is no more than vibration - energy.
It overlooks the rather probable idea that it has evolved along with other aspects of life-forms.
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