RCOFIELD:
I’ll post this on the other thread as well, ready to make the jump.
Yes my previous post was a bit snippy and dismissive, my broadband modem is dying (new one on the way) and some of my attempts at posting were being lost in outer space. I hate when the fruits of my brilliance just up and disappear, and I hate repeating myself… ;-)
Conscience/conscious, yeah.
“to what extent do you disagree?”
I could restate as follows:
For sake of argument, most everyone I have ever met seems to have a gag reflex/ick factor reaction to blood, guts, gore.

Better?
GR

GLADERUNNER,

These threads usually have a 14 day "life." If this one holds to that, it will time out sometime today.

I you would like to continue our conversation (I know I would) what do you think about jumping here:

http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/valerie_elverton_dixon/2011/01/rethink_not_reload.html

That is, once this one times out. Sometimes they run for an extra day or two.

Let me know.

Peace

GLADERUNNER,

"I don’t completely disagree that there seems to be an innate (natural/instinctive) revulsion to acts of brutality (blood, gore, rotting flesh, dismembered limbs, evisceration, etc.) and that repeated exposure can harden the conscious toward them."--GR

That does seem to be a more reasonable position that you indicated in your previous post. I guess my question would be to what extent do you disagree? Do you not agree that it rises to the level of something we can know with "a reasonable degree of certainty"?

"I simply wanted to point out that I do not know it to be true for all people in all places in all times at the same level."--GR

I'm not contending that it is true for all people "at the same level." I think we can allow for varying degrees of influence without throwing out the entire postulate.

What think ye?

BTW: You did mean "conscience" rather than "conscious" in your above statement, didn't you?

CARSTONIO,

You still around?

RCOFIELD:
I don’t completely disagree that there seems to be an innate (natural/instinctive) revulsion to acts of brutality (blood, gore, rotting flesh, dismembered limbs, evisceration, etc.) and that repeated exposure can harden the conscious toward them.
I simply wanted to point out that I do not know it to be true for all people in all places in all times at the same level.
I suppose our differences lie in the source of these ‘instincts’ which is more toward the core of the discussion.
“but it is rather obvious you have made up your mind.”
I have a certain set of beliefs based on knowledge, experience and observation. I doubt this is any different from you. If an alternative was offered that provided a better, more compelling explanation, I would certainly consider it, since I am not bound by promise, fear of damnation, or by expectations of eternal reward for my faithfulness toward them.
I am fascinated by those that cling to mythological/superstitious explanations for such things, especially among educated, intelligent and articulate adherents. I am not unfamiliar with it, at all, just mystified by it.
I often wonder how much of it is based not necessarily by knowledge, but by hope alone. I also wonder what compels a person to latch on to, with a death grip, to concepts of immortality, cosmic justice and heavenly reward as if there were anything but raw desire as motivation or evidence.

Regards;
GR

GLADERUNNER,

Well...the only point I was trying to establish was that there seemingly exists an innate revulsion to acts of brutality in virtually all people. The only way this revulsion can be suppressed is by repeated exposure to brutality, which, over time, hardens the conscience of those thus exposed. There seems to be enough evidence of this to deem it at least a probability if not a point that could be accepted with a reasonably high degree of certainty.

I have a number of additional arguments from what I believe to be reasonable evidence to support my contentions concerning morality, but it is rather obvious you have made up your mind. I doubt any of them would have much influence on your current beliefs if we can't agree on the above seemingly obvious point.

Thanks for the civil exchanges. I genuinely enjoyed them.

Peace

RCOFIELD:
“So, in summary, you are saying you see no evidence that could produce a reasonable degree of certainty that the vast majority of humanity has, at some point in their life, an innate revulsion to brutality?”
1. I do not claim to have omniscient knowledge, including of things infinite and eternal or even the specific and minute characteristics of ‘the vast majority of humanity’.
2. You snuck in the word ‘brutality’ one man’s ‘brutality’ can be another man’s justified a$$-kicking..
3. ‘innate revulsion’. ? Why not just ‘revulsion’?

All I said was, and I don’t feel compelled to keep modifying it until it fits more neatly into your template, is that by all appearances, different people in different cultures at different times have different value systems. Some of these values are long-term and widespread, some are not. I see no compelling reason to accept the theory that there is one universal golden, fixed set of morality for all people at all times in all places.

GR

Peterhuff:
2.
“do you think that it is more reasonable to believe life comes from B/being or that life comes from matter when you consider and witness all that you see”
Life comes from being? I can’t say that I know what that means. If you are asking, do I believe an infinite and invisible supernatural being decided to create the universe and all life, then created humanity, then etched vague moral codes in their souls, then led the Jews out of Egypt, turned a woman into salt, made a guy live in a fish…. See the problem. I can accept that I do not know exactly started the universe. I would even agree that there were probably forces at work for which we have no current, solid understanding as to the ultimate origin questions. But that’s a long way from the other baggage. Your religion's creation claims seem no more reasonable than the thousands of other claims out there.

“do you believe that science has actually proved that creatures evolve not just within kind/species, but from other kinds/species”
Science ‘demonstrates’, science offers explanations for physical phenomena. It doesn’t ‘prove’ in the absolute, narrow, true/false sense that you are using it.
I see many aspects of various evolutionary theories (there’s more than one you know) that seem plausible. Would I martyr myself for the cause of any of them. No. Show me a better theory and I’ll think about it, as much as bother thinking about those things. Once again though, scientific minutiae is not my line of expertise nor of great interest.

“Next question, how do you know that you are not the one walking in darkness rather than me?”
I don’t. Who said it was dark? We have different worldviews. Yours makes sense to you, mine, to me. Neither of us have decided to choose the ‘dark side’ we’re simply following our beliefs and preferences.

You actually offered up scripture as evidence for something? Really? Have you not been paying attention?
Read the book, saw the movie. Rejected
;-)

GLADERUNNER,

Let me re-phrase that:

So, in summary, you are saying you see no evidence that could produce a reasonable degree of certainty that the vast majority of humanity has, at some point in their life, an innate revulsion to brutality?

Peterhuff:
1.
“Okay then, what is the object or reality that you use to determine intellectual concepts such as goodness?”
As best as I can state it, good=beneficial, pleasing, and/or rewarding.
I will restate that I am using these terms in non-absolutist terms, and that each of these terms is itself of a fluid nature. There is more or less beneficial, more or less pleasing, etc.

“For you truth changes because we are subjective and some people like one preference and others like another.”
You continue to use ‘truth’ as if it a physical, fixed object that is universally viewed, measured and agreed upon Rejected.
You keep using the word ‘preference’ as if it is a trivial process devoid of actual reasoning or importance. Rejected.
“Logically I have pointed out that your idea of goodness is illogical. I have given you three laws of logic, the law of excluded middles, the law of contradiction and the law of identity to show you that two belief structures that state different things about goodness cannot both logically be true or good”
You keep using medieval Aristotelian logic to attempt to prove or disprove another persons values. Rejected.

“but the concept two plus two equals four cannot be tasted, heard, seen, etc. Therefore do you doubt that it is true, even absolutely true?”
Now you are just being ridiculous. 2+2 can be tested, and demonstrated. It is reliable and consistent.

“It is reasonable to believe that the universe had a beginning? “
Current scientific theory seems to point to a ‘beginning’ point of this universe. However this gets muddled when you add the factor of time itself, which is also a part of this universe. After reading that much, I got sort of bored. I do not know what constitutes the beginning of the universe, when it was (or even if ‘when’ has meaning since time itself is a component of the universe). Frankly I don’t give it a lot of thought. Only two groups of people seem to give very much thought to it, scientists, whose job it is to study such things and religious people who claim that it proves their preferred god’s existence.
“Science has proved that in probability this is not the case”
Would you like to rephrase this? And be careful, in science ‘prove’ doesn’t mean what you are trying to make it mean.

(Cntd.)

GLADERUNNER,

So, in summary, you are saying you see no evidence whatsoever that the vast majority of humanity has, at some point in their life, an innate revulsion to brutality?

Hi Gladerunner,

You said:
"I see no compelling reason to believe that there is a single moral code, fixed for all time, and accessible to all people of all places and times simply through contemplation or reasoning." - GR

There are lots of reasons, of which we are barely scratching the surface.

Since you mentioned reason, let's be reasonable here. It is reasonable to believe that the universe had a beginning? Not to long ago most people believed the universe was eternal. Science has proved that in probability this is not the case. It seems to have begun to exist. Do you find that reasonable to believe?

Next question, do you find it more reasonable to believe that Mind is behind the universe or blind, indifferent, random chance and happenstance (as he uses his mind to think of the possibilities)?

Next question, do you think that it is more reasonable to believe life comes from B/being or that life comes from matter when you consider and witness all that you see (without all the baggage that is supposed with philosophical naturalism)?

Next question, do you believe that science has actually proved that creatures evolve not just within kind/species, but from other kinds/species just because we have similarities and inhabit/share a common environment?

Next question, how do you know that you are not the one walking in darkness rather than me?

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." (John 1:1-5)

We probably both agree that there was a beginning, but it is how things have been made that we are in disagreement, and you cling to your subjective, relative to the individual, truth that is on shaky ground, because of its foundation that can mean what the individual wills it to mean and that relies on subjective, limited reasoning that believes man is the measure or all things.

Hi Gladerunner,

Again you are confusing imagination with truth. The two do not necessarily go together. Truth is what actually is. Yes you can imaging a horse being a cow, by mistaken identity, but that in reality is not what a horse is. Just because you blur the line does not mean that it no longer exists, or as you want it. And there are places for those who can no longer separate reality with fiction and imagination.

"Now, do you agree with or disagree with the definition 'truth is a property of propositions that correspond to the way things are?' Or can truth be what corresponds to the way things are not?” - Me

"You are repeating yourself. I have stated time and again what I consider truth to be and have also repeatedly stated that the tests used to determine ‘truth’ about physical objects and concepts do not necessarily/proportionately translate to metaphysical/intellectual concepts." -GR

Okay then, what is the object or reality that you use to determine intellectual concepts such as goodness? You draw attention to disagreements among cultures and groups and say that because there are such disagreements it proves (as much as a subjective and relative being can prove anything) that truth in relation to goodness is relative/subjective. For you truth changes because we are subjective and some people like one preference and others like another.

Logically I have pointed out that your idea of goodness is illogical. I have given you three laws of logic, the law of excluded middles, the law of contradiction and the law of identity to show you that two belief structures that state different things about goodness cannot both logically be true or good. Now you have talked around it and explained to me in your mind how you can picture a horse being a cow or possible even imagine a square circle (have you tried that one out in your mind yet?), but what is imagined does not necessarily equal what is real. You know certain truths because they correspond to what is real and you can verify them physically, but the concept two plus two equals four cannot be tasted, heard, seen, etc. Therefore do you doubt that it is true, even absolutely true?

"Can a cow be a horse in my mind? Certainly! It can even be an animal that does not actually exist in nature. Can a cow be a horse in physical reality? No." -GR

The only way a cow can be a horse in your mind is if you have a wrong concept of a cow, and that is exactly what you have about goodness, if you believe that it can mean whatever a person believes it to mean.

"I never mastered philosophy and philosophical debate primarily because I did not find that it ever solved any real problems." - GR

Well I'll have you know that it is the thing that evolutionary science is made of - natural philosophy. People presuppose that things came into existence either by God or by some other means. Science itself starts with theories that are tested for validation. But the point is no human was there for beginnings.

Peterhuff:

“I'm Canadian, eh.”
Sorry about that, I’ll type slower so you can keep up. ;-)

“Ronald Nash's, Life's Ultimate Questions”
Never heard of him.

“it proves that relativism is true. Is that true?”
I’m not a philosopher, or even a student of philosophy. I assume to you, ‘relativism’ means a specific thing. The exact definition or the extent of that term’s implications are something I can neither affirm nor refute. I have stated my worldview in about twenty different ways already, I don’t see the need to restate it, or apply some academic philosophical label to it.
“Now, do you agree with or disagree with the definition 'truth is a property of propositions that correspond to the way things are?' Or can truth be what corresponds to the way things are not?”
You are repeating yourself. I have stated time and again what I consider truth to be and have also repeatedly stated that the tests used to determine ‘truth’ about physical objects and concepts do not necessarily/proportionately translate to metaphysical/intellectual concepts. In my mind I can fly, eat fire and walk through walls without pain or hazard. Can I fly, eat fire or walk through walls in the physical realm? How can I prove or even demonstrate the truth that I can walk through walls in my mind? Can a cow be a horse in my mind? Certainly! It can even be an animal that does not actually exist in nature. Can a cow be a horse in physical reality? No.
I never mastered philosophy and philosophical debate primarily because I did not find that it ever solved any real problems. It deals with esoteric concepts and uses linguistic acrobatics to imitate mathematics. But it is only an imitation. The entire school of western philosophy seems to be a long winded, arbitrarily complex methodology employed to ‘prove’ a specific and predetermined conclusion.

I see no compelling reason to believe that there is a single moral code, fixed for all time, and accessible to all people of all places and times simply through contemplation or reasoning.

Regards;
GR

Hi Gladerunner,

You said:

"Read the constitution lately? We the people, majorities, representative legislation. Our culture/society making rules for themselves based on a plurality/majority consensus." - GR

No I haven't read it lately, I'm Canadian, eh. (^8

But how about the Declaration of Independence?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

“For me it is true that there is an absolute universal standard of truth and for you there is not.” _Me

"That appears to be the state of things. Note however, that both of us interpret truth in different ways. You in one way, I in another." - GR

Okay, we are back to this again.

I'm going to be using arguments from Ronald Nash's, Life's Ultimate Questions. They don't originate with me.

Your premise is that since there are disagreements between cultures about the nature of truth or goodness, it proves that relativism is true. Is that true?

To you truth can be both true (A) and false (non-A) at the same time and in the same sense, depending on where you live. So in the USA what you term good, same-sex marriage, is termed bad in another country, say Saudi Arabia.

Now, do you agree with or disagree with the definition 'truth is a property of propositions that correspond to the way things are?' Or can truth be what corresponds to the way things are not?

If it corresponds to the way things really are then truth is objective and independent of human preference (our likes and desires) and as such our feelings about truth don't alter it or change the truth.

If it does not, then my truth being different from your truth could believe that A, a circle, and B, a square, can be both round and square at the same time and in the same sense, or I could believe that A, a dog, is B, a cat, or C, a human being.

Furthermore, is stating that truth is relative relatively true or absolutely true? If it is relatively true then it is a self-defeating statement because it can change on the whim of the individual. No argument can be wrong if truth is relative. You have nothing to object to but your dislikes.

Are the laws of logic necessary to make sense of language or to communicate universally across the human race? If so then this is not a relative truth. It applies to everyone everywhere. Deny it and a horse becomes a cow or river to me. Now try and understand what I am saying. Hey, I make my own truth.

What you are doing is blurring the lines of truth and virtue, because without objective standards what is the difference between a truth and a lie? Your likes and dislikes as opposed to your neighbors likes and dislikes.
It is all relative, right? All human knowledge is a result of what the mind does with that knowledge. There is nothing else to base it on.

Hi Gladerunner,

You said:

"Read the constitution lately? We the people, majorities, representative legislation. Our culture/society making rules for themselves based on a plurality/majority consensus." - GR

No I haven't read it lately, I'm Canadian, eh. (^8

But how about the Declaration of Independence?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

“For me it is true that there is an absolute universal standard of truth and for you there is not.” _Me

"That appears to be the state of things. Note however, that both of us interpret truth in different ways. You in one way, I in another." - GR

Okay, we are back to this again.

I'm going to be using arguments from Ronald Nash's, Life's Ultimate Questions. They don't originate with me.

Your premise is that since there are disagreements between cultures about the nature of truth or goodness, it proves that relativism is true. Is that true?

To you truth can be both true (A) and false (non-A) at the same time and in the same sense, depending on where you live. So in the USA what you term good, same-sex marriage, is termed bad in another country, say Saudi Arabia.

Now, do you agree with or disagree with the definition 'truth is a property of propositions that correspond to the way things are?' Or can truth be what corresponds to the way things are not?

If it corresponds to the way things really are then truth is objective and independent of human preference (our likes and desires) and as such our feelings about truth don't alter it or change the truth.

If it does not, then my truth being different from your truth could believe that A, a circle, and B, a square, can be both round and square at the same time and in the same sense, or I could believe that A, a dog, is B, a cat, or C, a human being.

Furthermore, is stating that truth is relative relatively true or absolutely true? If it is relatively true then it is a self-defeating statement because it can change on the whim of the individual. No argument can be wrong if truth is relative. You have nothing to object to but your dislikes.

Are the laws of logic necessary to make sense of language or to communicate universally across the human race? If so then this is not a relative truth. It applies to everyone everywhere. Deny it and a horse becomes a cow or river to me. Now try and understand what I am saying. Hey, I make my own truth.

What you are doing is blurring the lines of truth and virtue, because without objective standards what is the difference between a truth and a lie? Your likes and dislikes as opposed to your neighbors likes and dislikes.
It is all relative, right? All human knowledge is a result of what the mind does with that knowledge. There is nothing else to base it on.

Peterhuff::
“They had their share of worthless world-views that offer no hope for the future and relativistic truth claims that took them down dead-end philosophies that have no ultimate explanatory nature to them.”
No disrespect intended, but: Are you now saying that people in other cultures in fact DO have different worldviews? There are cultures where there is no apparen, inherent knowledge of fixed, universal morality and the innate awareness of the Christian God as creator/redeemer?
You seem to be saying that the good news needs to be packaged up and taken to places and peoples that were unable to recognize what should be so obvious.
I’m confused.
BTW, if you have helped feed, clothe and house the poor, then I certainly respect that. I am not questioning your character, or charity, only your academic claims of innate, universal morality.
GR

RCOFIELD:
2.
“My question stands: Why?”
Why am I repulsed at the sight of a dead opossum on the highway? Why does the stench make me gag? Surely it’s not a matter of morality, possums are just nasty, disease carrying, slow moving rodents.(and they don’t even fry up all that well) Why does their blood and guts make me queasy? Why does the blood and guts of ANY mammal cause a large number of people grave disgust? I don’t even like hooking worms and gods forbid I actually catch a fish and have to clean it. I’m not sure what that says about universal morality though. The first apostles were fishermen weren’t they? Why didn’t they gag cleaning fish? Blood and guts revulsion doesn’t seem to me to be a morality issue.

“Are you familiar with the hill-dwelling "dung gatherer" caste in India?”
Nope. There’s thousands of cultures with which I can claim no authoritative or first hand knowledge. I’ve only been with enough different cultures to determine that we are not all alike, and don’t all share fixed values.
Why did you need to do mission work? Weren’t they already aware of the absolute code of universal morality? ;-)

RCOFIELD:
1.
“Fancy foot-work notwithstanding, you're dodging.”
Not dodging at all, simply not being led down a fake path. Hypothetical scenarios can only produce hypothetical conclusions. Hypothetical situations require us to make judgments and assume actions that have no testable or verifiable relationship to actual reality. Hypothetical situations are usually used to fill a vacuum of actual knowledge or experience.
This is why I avoid hypothetical traps. They’re often slanted and rigged to lead a person, using his own prejudices and perspective, to pass judgment or make conclusions without the benefit of verifiability.

“In all likelihood they have both taken place at some point in time”
And what exactly happened? The fact that it might have happened somewhere, some time adds no information at all to the hypothetical situation if you can not tell me what actually happened in reality. And, if you can only provide one or two actual examples we still end up with only anecdotal information.
“What would Jesus do?” Is exactly like that. Some people think Jesus would vote Republican and support individual gun ownership and lower taxes for the upper classes. I’m just not biting ‘cause I really don’t know for sure.

“Many grown men, even from the respective cultures, would react with some degree of queasiness if not outright revulsion to such brutality”
That seems reasonable to me, but I can’t really, honestly say that is actually the case. Can you?
And the fact they are repulsed, are you claiming to know exactly why? (see next-to-last paragraph about possums.)

“I guarantee you they weren't unaffected the first (or even the second or third or fourth) time they witnessed such brutality.”
You seem to be speaking with some sort of authority or expertise in the matter. Do you actually have any?

“here remains some point where the reactions I described are common to all children.”
I do not know that. What is the justification for your absolute certainty?
(Cntd.)

Hi Gladerunner,

I would just like to comment on one of your thoughts to RCofield before getting back to our discussion.

You said:
" I must ask you in all sincerity, have you ever been among impoverished, foreign, third-world (or worse) conditions and communed at length with those for whom squalor, disease, social unrest and brutal tribal customs were the norm?
Do you really think you can accurately imagine and predict the nature and thoughts of those for whom there is no electricity, no running water, no hope for education or meaningful employment or even a hot meal more than once in a blue moon? Can you really imagine a foreign culture at all?"

Yes, I was born in a third world country and I have seen impoverished, malnourished, starving Africans for the first fourteen years of my life before coming to Canada (Back twice since -worked one year in SA, and lived Apartheid).

I've seen the effects of tribalism and communism at work in Africa. We boarder the Congo during political unrest in the sixties and my mother work for the Special Branch. I've witnessed the corruption of power in many of these nations and my 84 year old uncle, who lived just outside of Marondera, Zimbabwe, saw his wife brutally murder by the hired help and a few years later the farm he had worked for fifty years or so was confiscated by the Zimbabwe government under President Robert Mugabe.

I have also served as a short term missionary in Davoa, the Philippines, with the poorest people in that city. They live in squalor, running sewers along the streets, excretement washing up on the beaches where young kids swim and play, where Dengue fever and other tropical diseases are prevalent, where tuberculosis is still prevalent. We lived and shared and ate with these poor Muslims for two weeks without once preaching the gospel because a few years earlier they had shot a Christian and laid him out in the street in the figure of a cross. OMF had been serving these people for years to better their lives out of genuine concern for their wellbeing.

Yes, I'm out of touch with such poverty now but that has not always been the case.

In 2005 our short term missions group went to Kenya and invested in the Mully Children's home, an orphanage, also going into the heart of Nairobi's poorest slums in which a few months later there were mass riots in which people were killed. The funny thing about Africa is that it is more receptive to Christianity than North America or Europe. Millions are coming to faith in the Lord.

They had their share of worthless world-views that offer no hope for the future and relativistic truth claims that took them down dead-end philosophies that have no ultimate explanatory nature to them. Corruption in almost every country in Africa after the effects of Christianity had worn off, many adopting their own view of good and evil, right and wrong. Disease and bloodshed on mass scales as one butcher was replaced by another one with a relativistic outlook to life.

GLADERUNNER,

Fancy foot-work notwithstanding, you're dodging.

You know full well that neither of my hypothises are outside the realm of possibility. In all likelihood they have both taken place at some point in time by simply adjusting the variables only slightly.

Many grown men, even from the respective cultures, would react with some degree of queasiness if not outright revulsion to such brutality, let alone my two young examples. Only the most case-hardened mind could remain completely unaffected, and that takes time and exposure. I guarantee you they weren't unaffected the first (or even the second or third or fourth) time they witnessed such brutality.

Regardless of what age or at what point of external influence you draw the line, there remains some point where the reactions I described are common to all children.

My question stands: Why?

And yes, I've seen third-world conditions first-hand in doing foreign mission work, more than once or twice under the threat of being assaulted and possibly even murdered. Are you familiar with the hill-dwelling "dung gatherer" caste in India? So I'm not talking out of the top of my hat here.

RCOFIELD:
2.
I was raised in a very rural area. Though we were not farmers, almost everyone else I knew were. Farm boys (and girls) from a very early age were exposed to slaughters aplenty. Most of my classmates, even in elementary school, didn’t quite share my quivers at the site of a bucket full of wide-eyed pig heads. Even within a small rural, close-knit community, there were some for whom the sight of oozing, steaming blood, dripping from a freshly butchered carcass caused shrieks of fear and disgust in some, and just another day in the barn for others.
And this is again what I’ve been trying to explain. Inserting our culturally based ideas, concepts, experiences and even gag-reflex, assuming that everyone in the world shares a common and universal disgust-point is almost completely, almost absolutely laughable.
I must ask you in all sincerity, have you ever been among impoverished, foreign, third-world (or worse) conditions and communed at length with those for whom squalor, disease, social unrest and brutal tribal customs were the norm?
Do you really think you can accurately imagine and predict the nature and thoughts of those for whom there is no electricity, no running water, no hope for education or meaningful employment or even a hot meal more than once in a blue moon? Can you really imagine a foreign culture at all?
Do you really believe that young Muhammad is wandering the filthy, war torn streets right now, just one or two intellectual Aristotelian syllogisms away from figuring it all out correctly?

Regards,
(Puking a little)
GR

RCOFIELD:
The hypothetical situations..
I was just going to be completely dismissive of them. Here’s why.
Hypothetical situations can only result in hypothetical conclusions. It would be like debating which brand of antihistamine Dagwood Bumstead would use if he ever needed to use one. Our conclusion would be based not so much on Dagwood, because he doesn’t actually exist. It would instead be based on our own knowledge and assumptions transferred to Dagwood’s character. We know of X number of available medicines, we may have used a couple of them. What is the likelihood that we would ever reach a conclusion that included a product outside our own experiences or knowledge?
Highly unlikely.
You have offered up a 4-5 yr old Muslim boy, the son of a radical and violent Jihadist father. Though you say the boy has never SEEN the violence, he has still been living with, for the very formative part of his short life, with a radical, violent Jihadist. I’m having a little trouble seeing dad in a cardigan, puffing a nice pipe, putting on his slippers and reading the business section of the metropolitan paper while sipping a fine brandy whilst gloating over his son’s latest crayon creation, ala Ward Clever.
Nor can I see the father as a calloused hand, limping, hard working jocular and quietly spiritual man that still finds the time to have a catch with his son on sunny spring afternoons.
And what about mom? Does dad maintain swift and absolute authority over her dress, her speech, her ideas? Does he beat her when she disagrees with him?
As for the home. A three bedroom ranch in the suburbs? Or are they living in a hovel, a tent or a cave? Do they have enough food to eat, access to fresh water and sanitation? Has the boy had anything to eat in the last few days or any diseases recently? Are there any siblings that lived beyond infancy? Does the boy have a ball and a bat? Who are his heroes and villains? Does he get cake for his birthdays?
All these cultural issues, which you have not specified, among many others, makes any rational supposition about what this boy nearly moot. He doesn’t really exist in the first place, and his culture is so foreign to me that I’m forced to try to imagine situations and options that I do not actually know anything about and you want me to tell you what this boy is thinking?
How can I possibly do that?
What you are rally asking me to do is take my fears and horrors and insert them into this non-existent boy’s hypothetical situation.
I’ll tell you right now, I have always been squeamish when it comes to blood and guts. Even to this day I curl my nose, gag, and puke a little, or a lot, when exposed to freshly exposed animal innards. Your situation is horrific to me, but that’s irrelevant to the hypothetical situation you present. You seem to want me to say that because I go all girly around blood and guts, that this boy will too. It just doesn’t work that way in real life.
(Cntd.)

Peterhuff:
Peterhuff:
2.
“Is it what the majority deems as good, what the gatekeepers deem as good, what the tyrant or individual deems as good?”
Read the constitution lately? We the people, majorities, representative legislation. Our culture/society making rules for themselves based on a plurality/majority consensus.
Again, my worldview does not necessarily reflect my hopes, dreams or ideals, they reflect the reality I see in front of me. Do I WISH all people could just get along? Absolutely! Do I WISH there was a universal (or at least more common) standard of good and evil that we could all agree on? Yes. Do I think such a thing exists? Not that I can see.

“So in some cultures they love their enemies and in others they eat them or exterminate them?
Exactly. Fortunately for us, thanks to hundreds of thousands of years of trial and error, cultural/social evolution, those that choose to eat each other have been vastly outnumbered by those that don’t.

Thanks for responding.
GR

Peterhuff:
1.
Welcome back!
“For me it is true that there is an absolute universal standard of truth and for you there is not.”
That appears to be the state of things. Note however, that both of us interpret truth in different ways. You in one way, I in another.
“We all make up our own truth.”
It’s not like we each start with a clean slate. From the moment of birth we are immersed in a culture of family, in whatever form that may be. We are surrounded by the sights, sounds, emotions and noise that make up our world. From the time we toddle we are scolded, guided and steered, before we even perfect our own language (which is also the product of cultural surroundings.) we become primarily what our environment endows us with. Our normality becomes define by the normality with which we are most familiar.
“That is how a group can justify flying planes into buildings or a culture can justify exterminating 11 million unwanted/unfit people”
Exactly. Is this not what reality seems to be indicating?

“I definitely believe that most sane people know deep down (it is written on their consciousness) that certain things are morally wrong,”
That is a statement of belief. You stated is as such. How is your belief more valid than mine?
“objective standard in order to justify goodness”
Why does goodness have to justified against a fixed standard? What about humor? Must there be an ultimate humor for us to laugh? Must there be an ultimate sadness for us to justify tears?
“however the problem is that man suppresses the truth of God to practice what he wants to do”
Which god? There are many gods that claim to be the true god(s).

“He wants to live on his own terms without any ultimate authority”
Quite the contrary, in my opinion. The majority of the world’s population reach for spiritual guidance in one form or another, seeking something bigger than themselves for guidance. The nut really only comes in getting everyone to agree to the same interpretation of what that spiritual guide is, or is telling us.

“Because a group of people whom you associate with or share a common culture with say it is wrong?”
Do you not see that this is exactly how things are? My community has a set of standards, my state does, as does my nation. Other nations and the communities within them have their own cultures/standards.
“They are a law unto themselves. So which is it? Which is good?”
Why do you keep asking that? Have I not been clear? Your question presumes a central, universal, and immutable standard of good. I have repeatedly said that is not a concept that I agree with or see any compelling reason to agree with. If I cannot accept/understand the concept of a single/universal standard for good, why do you keep insisting that I use it to make judgments?
(Cntd.)

Peterhuff:
1.
Welcome back!
“For me it is true that there is an absolute universal standard of truth and for you there is not.”
That appears to be the state of things. Note however, that both of us interpret truth in different ways. You in one way, I in another.
“We all make up our own truth.”
It’s not like we each start with a clean slate. From the moment of birth we are immersed in a culture of family, in whatever form that may be. We are surrounded by the sights, sounds, emotions and noise that make up our world. From the time we toddle we are scolded, guided and steered, before we even perfect our own language (which is also the product of cultural surroundings.) we become primarily what our environment endows us with. Our normality becomes define by the normality with which we are most familiar.
“That is how a group can justify flying planes into buildings or a culture can justify exterminating 11 million unwanted/unfit people”
Exactly. Is this not what reality seems to be indicating?

“I definitely believe that most sane people know deep down (it is written on their consciousness) that certain things are morally wrong,”
That is a statement of belief. You stated is as such. How is your belief more valid than mine?
“objective standard in order to justify goodness”
Why does goodness have to justified against a fixed standard? What about humor? Must there be an ultimate humor for us to laugh? Must there be an ultimate sadness for us to justify tears?
“however the problem is that man suppresses the truth of God to practice what he wants to do”
Which god? There are many gods that claim to be the true god(s).

“He wants to live on his own terms without any ultimate authority”
Quite the contrary, in my opinion. The majority of the world’s population reach for spiritual guidance in one form or another, seeking something bigger than themselves for guidance. The nut really only comes in getting everyone to agree to the same interpretation of what that spiritual guide is, or is telling us.

“Because a group of people whom you associate with or share a common culture with say it is wrong?”
Do you not see that this is exactly how things are? My community has a set of standards, my state does, as does my nation. Other nations and the communities within them have their own cultures/standards.
“They are a law unto themselves. So which is it? Which is good?”
Why do you keep asking that? Have I not been clear? Your question presumes a central, universal, and immutable standard of good. I have repeatedly said that is not a concept that I agree with or see any compelling reason to agree with. If I cannot accept/understand the concept of a single/universal standard for good, why do you keep insisting that I use it to make judgments?
(Cntd.)

Hi Gladerunner,

You said,

"I have standards, lots of them. I just don’t see any reason to believe that everyone else on the planet that ever was and ever will be, shares them with me equally. In fact I know quite a few people on these very forums that don’t. Just ask peterhuff or that TTWS- guy on the other posts. I don’t think they think like me at all."

So to you truth is in the eye of the beholder. We all make up our own truth. For me it is true that there is an absolute universal standard of truth and for you there is not. My truth (X=X) is different from your truth. For you it does not. It can equal anything you deem it to equal. Good can be bad depending on how you look at it or care to define it.

You are the one implying that we all have our own standards and that our environment, culture, peer groups, etc., usually determine what we believe. That is how a group can justify flying planes into buildings or a culture can justify exterminating 11 million unwanted/unfit people.

'It is what we believe is good or will be for the good of others of like mind!'

I definitely believe that most sane people know deep down (it is written on their consciousness) that certain things are morally wrong, that there has to be an objective standard in order to justify goodness, however the problem is that man suppresses the truth of God to practice what he wants to do (Romans 1:18). He wants to live on his own terms without any ultimate authority.

On that basis of preference then what makes my belief that is opposite to yours wrong? Just because you believe it is wrong. That is what makes it wrong! Because a group of people whom you associate with or share a common culture with say it is wrong?

What you are telling me is that you determine the standard, as per your first sentence above, and that you base it on another subjective standard that some other subjective person/people have put in place in your culture based on their preference(s), that was based on someone else's, and so on it goes.

For you in particular, that standard is what your culture deems as 'good.' For others in your culture it is what their particular sub-group/culture deems as good. And for some in your culture it is what they themselves believe to be good. They are a law unto themselves. So which is it? Which is good? Is it what the majority deems as good, what the gatekeepers deem as good, what the tyrant or individual deems as good? It is irrelevant really because there is no fixed standard and when you are dead nothing ultimately matters that you know of, so believe whatever you want to or are forced to by others.

It's all based on personal preference; nothing more than feelings. So in some cultures they love their enemies and in others they eat them or exterminate them? What is your preference?

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death." Proverbs 14:12

RCOFIELD:
3.
Then there’s that year I spent on a long-term project, partnered with a guy from India. He’d been in the states for ten or twelve years, adorable family, doting parent, salt of the earth, nice guy. We went to lunch every day and early on I asked him about the statue on his dashboard, turns out it was of Ganesh. He’d talk on and on about Ganesh’s lineage and powers, I was truly fascinated. I got to tell him about ‘traditional’ Midwestern values… yeah, I bet that’s got you shaking. I was explaining Christianity to him. I tried to keep it mainstream, you know, peace, love, eternal reward, the beatitudes, transubstantiation, the communion of saints, papal infallibility (ever try to explain ex cathedra and magisterium to a 40 year old Hindu?) and he’d look at me like I was talking Klingon. I’m pretty sure he hadn’t read the same books either. He actually once said: “They need a god to tell them not to kill each other?”
What kind of test were you thinking of, maybe a multiple choice quiz, online survey?

As for you hypothetical situations. I’m not quite finished thinking about them yet. They have been pretty strong seeds for contemplation though. I’m going to try to organize my thoughts a little better, drink some wine, engage in banal chats with the wife, walk the dog. I may wait until tomorrow to post my answer. I may even bounce them off the ladies in my book club in our meeting in the morning. Yeah, you caught me, I’m a reader…

I do want to add that you have provided the most challenging, civil, entertaining and thought provoking discussion I’ve experienced in a very long time. Please understand that I mean none (hardly any) of my remarks as personal attacks on you, your choices, or your character.

Regards;
GR

RCOFIELD:
2.
“For all you seem to be willing to commit to, maybe they should have been given a medal of honor posthumously.”
I’m pretty sure that there are those that would like to award them just such a medal…That's tough, they’re stuck with those virgins in eternity they were promised instead. Not a bad deal in my mind, depending on a man’s personal opinion of virgins.

“You then conclude that if they are not cognizant/accepting/recognizing of the immorality of such, then we cannot say that such actions are immoral for them.”
Hmmm, sort of… immoral for them…thinking… If they are not aware of the immorality, if they do not recognize/respect/align themselves with our standards of morality then I highly doubt that they consider what they did as immoral. WE may consider it immoral based on our standards, but why should we assume they do if they if they don’t share our standards?
“Are you sure you don't accept ANY absolutes, or is it just my absolutes that are giving you heartburn?).......:-)”
I (hardly ever) accept or intend absolutes. I just have to be careful with wording since we don’t know each other very well. Take my wife, (please). If I tell her that a certain ABBA song is the best song ever, she doesn’t at all assume that I actually mean that in pure, absolutist terms, because she knows I don’t necessarily mean it that way. Nor does she think any ABBA song could ever qualify as the best anything… she’s just stubbornly anti-ABBA. We almost split up over this very issue….. but I digress.
“How might we test your contention that these cultures, etc. “do not recognize,” or “are not cognizant” or “do not accept” the premise that such behavior is innately immoral?”
There’s a test? Sheesh.. I’m not prepared…
I suppose one of us could go live in a couple of foreign cultures for three or four years and hang with the people, get to know them, work alongside them. I’ve already done that (determined that there are significant differences in moral/worldview perspective) with equally foreign, yet admittedly friendlier cultures in Asia. (Look up Shinto sometime, it's wild and nothing at all like classic monotheism.)
When my son and his buddies got back from deployment in Iraq a few years ago, they seemed pretty convinced that there was at least a tiny difference in moral perspective between them and the guys planting the roadside bombs outside their operating base in Mosul. My son said it best. “Dad, I won’t say I hate them as people, but I’m pretty sure they don’t read the same books we do.”
(Cntd.)

RCOFIELD:
1.
“is always, actually, certainly, universally and morally wrong, can we?”
Nope, nor can I say it is certainly, universally and morally right. You are asking me to express/claim knowledge of infinity, eternity and universality. I really don’t feel qualified.

“A rather debilitating problem when one has no fixed point of objective standard.”
I have standards, lots of them. I just don’t see any reason to believe that everyone else on the planet that ever was and ever will be, shares them with me equally. In fact I know quite a few people on these very forums that don’t. Just ask peterhuff or that TTWS- guy on the other posts. I don’t think they think like me at all.

“That renders your moral indignation of no more consequence (weight) than the 9/11 atrocity.”
Once again, you are comparing apples to emotions. I’m not being deliberately dismissive, I simply can’t figure out how to do it. Moral indignation is an emotional response. Flying planes into buildings is an actual physical act. One certainly led to the other in this case, but I just don’t see how to measure which one is bigger, heavier or taller.

“the differing personal preference—and hence the atrocity—is of no real consequence with the framework of your reasoning.”
You’ve lost me here.

“Then you have no way of knowing which is ultimately right—their actions or your moral indignation.”
Ultimately right? I’m at a loss again… what exactly is ‘ultimately right’?

“For all you know their murderous mission was the right thing to do and your moral indignation was utterly trivial.”
These last couple of statements seem to imply that it is not my standards that can ever ‘ultimately’ matter, that there is a universal, fixed standard that is the undeniable gold standard by which these things are actually measured against in all cultures and for all times. Am I getting this right?
“If you can't know with certainty (whoops! I meant “a reasonable degree of certainty”) why waste the energy on moral indignation?”
It’s my energy to ‘waste’…. What’s it to you pal ? ;-)
I don’t need certainty, at any particular level to have an emotional response to a particular situation. I can certainly have fear without a certainty of mortal peril. Love without certainty of reciprocation or expectations of perpetuity, happiness without ‘ultimate’ happiness, and I often laugh at jokes that are only barely funny. I don’t need ‘ultimates’ or absolutes to have feelings or to offer reactions.
(Cntd)

GLADERUNNER,

Part 1 of 3

I must say that despite my disagreement with you concerning the source of moral standards you do have a commendable sense of humor.

I'll not respond directly to everything you posted as I am running a bit short on time. I want to get to my point fairly quickly, so here we go.

“People have different standards, therefore the actions of others may seem to us lewd, atrocious, foul and even evil, as ours certainly also do to them.”--GR

But we cannot say without equivocation that Muslims (or anyone else) strapping C4 to their chest and running into marketplaces, flying planes into buildings filled with peaceful individual, and indiscriminately sawing other folk's heads of with a rusty machete is always, actually, certainly, universally and morally wrong, can we?

“I never said that ;-)”--GR

You didn't have to any more than I had to say mono-theism. There never were any stripes from my perspective. ;-)

“Not necessarily ‘sinister’.”--GR

But to be avoided even at the expense of reason, right?

“I can’t objectively compare the weight/altitude of a concept/belief against the weight/altitude of a specific physical action.”--GR

Indeed. A rather debilitating problem when one has no fixed point of objective standard. That renders your moral indignation of no more consequence (weight) than the 9/11 atrocity.

“Career, investment strategy, choice of medical provider, wife, worldview are all a little more deliberate and thoroughly thought out.”--GR

Maybe a little better thought out, but at the root still—in exactly the same way as 9/11 perpetrators/your moral indignation—a matter of personal preference. Ultimately, the differing personal preference—and hence the atrocity—is of no real consequence with the framework of your reasoning.

GLADERUNNER,

Part 2 of 3

“According to my moral standards they were wrong to do what they did, thus, moral indignation on my part. According to their moral standards they were doing what was right, thus, no moral indignation on their part. Moral indignation, like morality itself is relative.”--GR

Then you have no way of knowing which is ultimately right—their actions or your moral indignation. For all you know their murderous mission was the right thing to do and your moral indignation was utterly trivial. If you can't know with certainty (whoops! I meant “a reasonable degree of certainty”) why waste the energy on moral indignation? For all you seem to be willing to commit to, maybe they should have been given a medal of honor posthumously. Who can possibly know, right?

Your modified response to my premise #3 & 4:

“‘We cannot say that the abuse and murder of other humans is ALWAYS (or universally) immoral......BECAUSE......both history and contemporary times tell us that there are some times/places/cultures where some people do not recognize the validity, are not cognizant, or do not accept the very premise, of the innate immorality of such behavior.’”--GR

Ok. Let's test your “because” reasoning.

You observe that other cultures often do not SEEM (notice my correction of YOUR absolute statement—we “cannot”/people “do not”--...gasp!) to be cognizant/accepting/recognizing of the premise of the innate immorality of the abuse and murder of other human beings. You then conclude that if they are not cognizant/accepting/recognizing of the immorality of such, then we cannot say that such actions are immoral for them.

(As an aside, you seem to be absolutely certain of this, despite your knee-jerk reactions to absolute statements I have made. Are you sure you don't accept ANY absolutes, or is it just my absolutes that are giving you heartburn?).......:-)

Anyway, back to my point. Is your postulate accurate, or does the possibility exist that you have either overlooked something or are interpreting the data incorrectly? How might we test your contention that these cultures, etc. “do not recognize,” or “are not cognizant” or “do not accept” the premise that such behavior is innately immoral? Let's start by testing your “cognizant” statement, as it comprehends “recognize” and may even have some bearing on the validity of “accept.”

GLADERUNNER,

Part 3 of 3

Let's use a hypothetical 4-5 year old Muslim boy. I chose the age of 4-5 years because it is commonly accepted that a child is becoming cognizant by this age. He has not yet been exposed to extreme violence due to his tender age. One day his father, a radical jihadist, says “come, little Muhammed, I want you to witness something you have never seen before.” He carries the young boy into a dark room, where, to shorten the hypothetical, the child witnesses the brutal beheading of an “enemy” of Islam.

Two questions: 1) What do you think this young boy's response would be to what he has just witnessed? 2) Why would this little boy react this way?

Second hypothetical: A 12 year old son of a slave owner in the early 19th century. He was born on a plantation and has witnessed the occasional abuse of slaves, but nothing heavy-duty. One afternoon his father calls him into the barn where a slave is tied to a post. The slave has sorely displeased the owner and is to be beaten. The slave-owner informs his son that he is now old enough to witness such beatings and “learn the ropes.” The slave is beaten until the flesh on his back hangs in bloody ribbons, all the while screaming, weeping, voiding his bowels, and begging for mercy that is not forthcoming.

Obviously the 12 year old boy, just like the 4-5 year old boy, recoils in unimaginable horror. He runs from the barn wailing in horror, vomiting as he runs through the barn door, and wetting himself as he flies into his mother's arms. Why would this young man react this way?

If you will, respond to this and I will take up my argument from there. Sorry for the graphic descriptions.

RCOFIELD:
3.
“Is this a sufficient summary of your position as it relates to premise #3 &4:”
Modified, per your request.
‘We cannot say that the abuse and murder of other humans is ALWAYS (or universally) immoral......BECAUSE......both history and contemporary times tell us that there are some times/places/cultures where some people do not recognize the validity, are not cognizant, or do not accept the very premise, of the innate immorality of such behavior.’
It’s not just ‘ignorance of the law’, it’s also whether or not the laws (moral and otherwise) of other times/places/cultures actually apply.

Here in the U.S. we drive on the right side of the road. In ignorant, uncivilized, backwater countries such as the U.K, they drive on the left. Which country is right? They surely can’t both be. Imagine the potential chaos if BOTH systems were right. (rhetorical comment, used for analogy only, not as a direct or proportional interpretation.)

Oh yeah… I apologize for the snarkiness of some of my responses. I mean no disrespect. Sometimes I am snarky as a reaction to, or because…. Well, okay, sometimes I just like being snarky.

Peace and blessings to you brother…
(Oops! assuming gender. Please correct me if am wrong, not that it really, ultimately matters, you can tell me a little at a time if that is better for you.) ;-)

GR

RCOFIELD:
2.
On a more serious note…

“So...can you say with any “reasonable degree of certainty” that your moral indignation at their actions is more justified than their (the 9/11 perpetrators) actions”
My moral indignation (intellectual/emotional concept) is justified in that their actions are anathema to/by my standards.
Their actions (physical, measurable event) are indeed justified to them, according to their standards.
I can’t objectively compare the weight/altitude of a concept/belief against the weight/altitude of a specific physical action. (Which weighs more, a dream about a porcupine or a porcupine?)

“If not, aren't we just talking about personal preference?”
Not nearly as whimsical and trivial as ‘personal preference’ often implies. My worldview is based on culture, knowledge, experiences, observation, contemplation and study. Coke or Pepsi is a ‘personal preference’ in my mind (correct answer =RC). Boxers/briefs, same way. (I’m not tellin’) Career, investment strategy, choice of medical provider, wife, worldview are all a little more deliberate and thoroughly thought out.

“In other words, were they right in their actions and you wrong in your moral indignation—or were they wrong in their actions and you right in your moral indignation”
According to my moral standards they were wrong to do what they did, thus, moral indignation on my part. According to their moral standards they were doing what was right, thus, no moral indignation on their part. Moral indignation, like morality itself is relative.

“You can't reasonably have it both ways”
I fail to see why not. I certainly can’t rationally justify moral indignation over my doing something that I also consider a good thing, that’s just silly. But certainly someone, somewhere, would probably see what I did as ‘bad’ and be morally indignant about it. It happens all the time (ask my wife). Some Dutch newspaper prints a cartoon that you and I shrug our shoulders, or maybe even giggle about it, but at the same time some guys from the middle east considers that same act to be one of the most extreme blasphemy according to the sacred and immutable tenants of their divine scriptures.

(Cntd.)

RCOFIELD:
1.
Welcome back, I was up all night waiting for a response. (kidding)

Just a few trivial rebuttals before I pounce on the main course.
“Subjective standards of morality are exactly the cause of the atrocities we both find repulsive.”
I think of them as an ‘explanation’ for the atrocities: Why do the terrorists strap C4 to their chest and run into marketplaces? Because they firmly believe they are doing god’s work.

“the daily atrocities we see committed based on aberrant moral standards”
I think this statement could be paraphrased (not putting words in your mouth): People have different standards, therefore the actions of others may seem to us lewd, atrocious, foul and even evil, as ours certainly also do to them.

“you will see that there is not nearly the baggage you thought and that the conclusion is far more reasonable than you are now willing to admit.”
Gee, now you are presupposing what I will be thinking… ;-)

“Well, I'm not shooting from the hip. I've already told you I don't do “drive-by-debate.”
Drive-by debate, snipe and run, is not for me either. What I meant was that I don’t have a strategy in place, I’m reacting to information/assertions as they are presented to the best of my ability with the filtered information being presented.
You have what I consider the affirmative position. You are presenting (laying out) a proposition. That indeed requires strategy and planning. On the other hand, I, not knowing what your full strategy or proposition is, am reduced to reacting to your assertions. I know the topic, have studied various proposals and strategies, and yes indeed I will occasionally misread what is being presented (admittedly a piece at a time) with that which I have seen in the past. I hear hooves, I tend to assume horses, not zebras. I will try to restrain myself, but the stripes seem to be fading.

“Opinions are like butt-holes. Everybody has one”
Oh thanks, remind me of the tragedy of my uncle’s rectum-ectomy… he no longer has one.

“Having said that, it should be rather obvious that my position is that of mono-theism”
Yes it is.
“I think it's rather obvious you are coming from a position of secular agnosticism, though some of your responses seem almost anti-theistic.”
I never said that ;-)
“I'm trying not to presume what particular baggage you come to the table with”
You don’t want to see my baggage, no sane person would….

“almost has the appearance that you think there is some “sinister theistic motive” in everything I say”
Not necessarily ‘sinister’.

(Cntd)

GLADERUNNER,

Part 1 of 3

“You certainly have not claimed a source, but you certainly seem to be uncomfortable with mine.”--GR

Indeed I am uncomfortable with your “source.” Subjective standards of morality are exactly the cause of the atrocities we both find repulsive.

“If it is not the shared conclusion between my worldview and yours, that humans should be treated as humans, what exactly is the issue?”--GR

Objective standards of morality. The “how” (of arriving at moral standards) has everything to do with the “is” (the daily atrocities we see committed based on aberrant moral standards).

“You have called me out several times for assuming something about your position without ever telling me whether my assumptions were actually correct or incorrect.”--GR

Your assumptions thus far have been incorrect because you are not only assuming what my position is, you are trying to append a whole lot of presupposed baggage (straw-men, really) to that position that simply doesn't exist. That's why I requested that we take this slowly. When I finally arrive at my conclusion (if we keep at it here) you will see that there is not nearly the baggage you thought and that the conclusion is far more reasonable than you are now willing to admit.

“I’m not playing “Guess my Religion” here, I really don’t care one way or another whether you’re Catholic, Evangelical, Lutheran, Muslim or Pagan, my own assertions and worldview or arguments for them don’t change much based on your theology, or lack thereof.”--GR

Then why not dispense with playing “Guess My Conclusion,” and simply deal honestly with my progression of arguments—one at the time?

“I’m not ‘laying out a strategy’ here, I’m just shooting from the hip.”--GR

Well, I'm not shooting from the hip. I've already told you I don't do “drive-by-debate.” There is enough of that going on here that I don't need to throw my “two cents” into the mix. I'm bringing my whole dollar to the table—ten cents at the time, mind you—but I'll eventually get the whole buck into play. The problem with the “two cents” approach is that you only get an impossibly convoluted amalgamation of what amounts to nothing more than opinion. Opinions are like butt-holes. Everybody has one, so they aren't really worth much. I'm interested in more than opinions.

GLADERUNNER,

Part 2 of 3

“I don’t think I’m withholding or obfuscating my own position, I don’t see any need to. I am a bit puzzled, but not prohibitively so, about your reluctance to tell me what your basis for your view, or actual interpretation, of morality is.”--GR

I have nowhere obfuscated my position. The fact that I have not yet stated my conclusion does not qualify as “obfuscation.” I will built my argument one brick at the time until I have enough in place for my conclusion to make sense. Again, I have already told you this: I try to lay a foundation and then build one argument at the time until I have an entire house. I'm not “withholding” the house, I'm trying to build it. Of course, thus far, I'm having to work with a trowel in one hand to build and a sword in the other hand to defend myself, but I'm certainly accustomed to that on these threads.

Having said that, it should be rather obvious that my position is that of mono-theism. Likewise, I think it's rather obvious you are coming from a position of secular agnosticism, though some of your responses seem almost anti-theistic. The point being, I am trying to treat your position with respectful disagreement based on what you say. I'm trying not to presume what particular baggage you come to the table with, but rather let that become obvious through your own posts as we progress in our discussion—and deal with it THEN. May I request that you reciprocate?

“So in my head I’ve admittedly assumed certain things based on what you’ve said or the way you said them. Guilty. Either clear the air or quit griping about my readily admitted inability to read your mind accurately.”--GR

You don't have to read my mind to understand what I am saying, do you? Why not just deal with my arguments rather than psycho-analyze me? It almost has the appearance that you think there is some “sinister theistic motive” in everything I say and you are reacting to what you think you have perceived rather than what I have actually said. :-)

ME: “So which is it? Is it immoral or nay?”

YOU: “Aye for me, nay for them.”

So...can you say with any “reasonable degree of certainty” that your moral indignation at their actions is more justified than their (the 9/11 perpetrators) actions? If so, why? If not, aren't we just talking about personal preference? In other words, were they right in their actions and you wrong in your moral indignation—or were they wrong in their actions and you right in your moral indignation. You can't reasonably have it both ways.

GLADERUNNER,

Part 3 of 3

“Kudos.”--GR

Not looking to “score points” on peripheral issues, just seeking clarity. That point spoke directly to the assumptions you have been making.

“I have a notion or two in my head to be sure, but I’m quite happy to be challenged with something unexpected. My only alternative is to go back to the same old trite debates with the barely-literate young-earth crowd.”--GR

This is precisely the point I was trying to make above. If I just jumped in here and said “GOD DID IT” with the requisite “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” mantra of mindless fundamentalism, you would (rightly) dismiss me as “barely-literate” and that would be the end of the discussion. Right?

Do I believe “God did it?” I do indeed. And my position is no less based on “knowledge, experience and observation” than is yours. You professed relative neutrality on the “God-hypothesis.” I'm not neutral on that issue, and I have good reason not to be. That is what I am trying to communicate to you. So, if you will allow me to present my evidence and reason for such—slowly, thoughtfully, and rationally, I would be appreciative.

“Please feel free to return to the 4 premises at your discretion. You’re driving.”--GR

Thanks. I appreciate that. So here goes:

“I rejected #3 it on the grounds that the word ‘immoral’ was used by you as if based on something other that what it appears to be in reality, relative to time place, culture. If you look at news reports it certainly appears to me that there are a lot of people in lots of places that don’t share our value system. Yet your statement, especially when coupled with #4 seems to claim that we all share a common set and always have, and that those thugs we see in Pakistan and Afghanistan are actually cognizant of the innate immorality of their behaviors rather than merely acting on their own sense of morality.”--GR

Is this a sufficient summary of your position as it relates to premise #3 &4:

“We cannot say that the abuse and murder of other humans is ALWAYS immoral......BECAUSE......both history and contemporary times tell us that there are some times/places/cultures where humans are not cognizant of the innate immorality of such behavior.”

If that is not sufficient feel free to modify it so that it accurately reflects your position.

Peace, brother.

RCOFIELD:
2.
“So which is it? Is it immoral or nay?”
Aye for me, nay for them.

“YOU: "I never did. I only said ‘’you seem to assume’ ???”
Oops, you’re right I did say that once. You get the extra technical-foul points for that. Apologies. That’s the problem with absolute statements though ain’t it?… it only takes one exception to knock it out of the park. Kudos.
“You seemed to conclude where I was going from the beginning on this issue and appear to be playing the part of the skeptical contrary”
I’m not sure exactly what a ‘skeptical contrary’ is, but what I’m doing is no act. I’m afraid that what you see is all there is. I do admit to trying to anticipate a move or two ahead of the game, if that’s against the rules then I apologise. I have a notion or two in my head to be sure, but I’m quite happy to be challenged with something unexpected. My only alternative is to go back to the same old trite debates with the barely-literate young-earth crowd.
Please feel free to return to the 4 premises at your discretion. You’re driving.
GR

RCOFIELD:
1.
“I have claimed no "source." Your insistence that I am implying such says more about your presuppositions than it says about mine.”
You certainly have not claimed a source, but you certainly seem to be uncomfortable with mine. If it is not the shared conclusion between my worldview and yours, that humans should be treated as humans, what exactly is the issue?

“When did you agree that it was immoral to treat any humans as something other than fully qualified humans”
Too subtle perhaps, I added virtual air quotes: other than fully qualified humans is ‘immoral’. The same way I’d say sarcastically: Yeah, he’s ‘special’!
What I was trying to convey is that you and I seem to be in agreement that treating humans as less than human is not in line with our standards of morality.
“You rejected my premise #3 which did not contain the qualifying phrase”
I rejected #3 it on the grounds that the word ‘immoral’ was used by you as if based on something other that what it appears to be in reality, relative to time place, culture. If you look at news reports it certainly appears to me that there are a lot of people in lots of places that don’t share our value system. Yet your statement, especially when coupled with #4 seems to claim that we all share a common set and always have, and that those thugs we see in Pakistan and Afghanistan are actually cognizant of the innate immorality of their behaviors rather than merely acting on their own sense of morality.
I cannot be responsible for misunderstanding you if you are withholding information that would help clear up that misunderstanding.
You have called me out several times for assuming something about your position without ever telling me whether my assumptions were actually correct or incorrect. I’m not playing “Guess my Religion” here, I really don’t care one way or another whether you’re Catholic, Evangelical, Lutheran, Muslim or Pagan, my own assertions and worldview or arguments for them don’t change much based on your theology, or lack thereof. I’m not ‘laying out a strategy’ here, I’m just shooting from the hip. I don’t think I’m withholding or obfuscating my own position, I don’t see any need to. I am a bit puzzled, but not prohibitively so, about your reluctance to tell me what your basis for your view, or actual interpretation, of morality is. So in my head I’ve admittedly assumed certain things based on what you’ve said or the way you said them. Guilty. Either clear the air or quit griping about my readily admitted inability to read your mind accurately.
(cntd)

GLADERUNNER,

ME: “And I find it utterly astounding that an intelligent, articulate, 21st century individual such as yourself cannot agree that we can know with a reasonable degree of certainty that it is, and always has been, morally wrong to treat humans as if they are sub-human.’"

YOU: "Funny that, we actually agree on a huge percentage of the standards, we’re really just bickering over the source."

I have claimed no "source." Your insistence that I am implying such says more about your presuppositions than it says about mine.

YOU: You and I both agree that to treat humans as something other than fully qualified humans is ‘immoral’."

When did you agree that it was immoral to treat any humans as something other than fully qualified humans?

YOU: "Why does it matter so much WHY I believe in that standard? Why must I agree with the phrase ‘and always has been’ for us to get along and simply agree to agree?"

Slick, but no cigar. You rejected my premise #3 which did not contain the qualifying phrase "and always has been," even offering contemporary examples of cultures where it is "not immoral" to treat humans as something less than human. Notice:

YOU: "I reject this (premise #3) on the basis that it does not seem to fully, accurately describe reality. Certain cultures do indeed still consider some people as less than fully qualified humans. They appear to do so without moral conflict. For those societies, I cannot agree that it is for them, morally wrong to treat some humans as less-than fully qualified humans, as their cultural concept of morality does not define it as immoral."--GR

So which is it? Is it immoral or nay?

YOU: “Because YOU ARE MAKING THE UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIM of the universality of a single, fixed moral code (and universal awareness/knowledge thereof) for all peoples of all times.” (emphasis added)

ME: “May I ask you to show me where I have made that claim?”

YOU: "I never did. I only said ‘’you seem to assume’

???

You seemed to conclude where I was going from the beginning on this issue and appear to be playing the part of the skeptical contrary to avoid admitting to what you presume I will conclude. Even to the point that you now seem to be contradicting yourself (see above).

Am I wrong? If I am, may we return to my 4 premises and resultant conclusion?

Peace, brother.

RCOFIELD:
2.
“Your only avenue of justifying your moral indignation at such atrocities is to appeal to an international consensus—a universal “status quo” that “evolves” and tips at the 50.00000001% mark of the general world population agreement. OR, you simply hide behind a more secure prison system and a stronger standing army.”
I offered up no ‘solutions’, especially global ones. I have at best given certain examples of how it is possible, on an anecdotal/personal level to survive in a world where different standards exist. I never said it was perfect, or elegant, or easy, or even desirable for the world to be multi-cultural in the first place.
Until a better system than locking people up is found, yes, I’d like to see prisons stay in place. Yes I’d like to keep an Army at the ready, to protect our country from invasion or attack. Until a better solution is found, tested and implemented I’m fine with keeping a standing army for national defense. What should we do exactly, disarm and just cross our fingers?

“Pure, undiluted Darwinian natural selection/survival of the fittest”
Poppycock. I have been telling how things appear to be and have appeared to be from my perspective. I have not done any forecasting as to how it will/should be. I have not even said that I actually prefer my philosophy over another other than it seems to fit the reality I see a bit more accurately than others. If all I have to eat is potatoes, then I’ll eat potatoes and just dream of cake. This is just the world as I see it, not at all like I might wish it to be. Oh, and gee, you dropped the Darwin bomb… bringing up ‘Darwinism’ as if it were a nasty thing further leads me to assume certain things about your unrevealed perspective. I can’t help it, I tend try to read subtleties and motivations in people based on what they say and do.

“And I find it utterly astounding that an intelligent, articulate, 21st century individual such as yourself cannot agree that we can know with a reasonable degree of certainty that it is, and always has been, morally wrong to treat humans as if they are sub-human.’
Funny that, we actually agree on a huge percentage of the standards, we’re really just bickering over the source. You and I both agree that to treat humans as something other than fully qualified humans is ‘immoral’. Why does it matter so much WHY I believe in that standard? Why must I agree with the phrase ‘and always has been’ for us to get along and simply agree to agree?

“May I ask you to show me where I have made that claim?”
I never did. I only said ‘’you seem to assume’ I have offered you several overt opportunities to deny my possibly erroneous assumption, to correct my mistaken inference, including at that very spot. Yet still, you have not. If it keeps on sounding like a duck, I’ll probably keep assuming that it is a duck until it indicates otherwise.

Cheers!

RCOFIELD:
1.
“On what grounds are you contending that your moral standard is better?”
I’m not. I assigned no value to ours/their moral code other than ‘different’.

“If you are consistent with your reasoning, you should not experience moral indignation because they did not violate their moral standards”
Why not? The fact that they violated my sense of morality angered me. The fact that they murdered innocent people angered me. The fact that they did not violate their own code doesn’t influence, at all, my indignation.

“You have consistently argued “status quo” as the ground of judging morality”
Judging morality? Where? Other than ours vs. someone else’s being different?

“Of course, you want to insist that they abide by your “status quo”-established moral standard, don't you?”
I wish that theirs was more like ours when it comes to the value of human life, sure. Then maybe those people would not have died that day.
‘Insist’ is something I never said.

“What gives you the right to force your moral standard on them?”
Once again you are attributing things to my posts that simply aren’t there. Where did I indicate that I wanted to use force, of any kind, to make them change to my way of thinking?

“Which it does, indeed, seem that you do, as you offer the ever-ominous and always effective (sic) threat of “prisons and standing armies.”’
You’re starting to slide off the rails.
Where did ‘always effective’ come from? We have standing armies to protect our country from those that wish to do us harm. We have prisons to lock away those that break our laws.

“What gives you the right to force your moral standard on them”
We have commonly accepted, and in this country legislated, (voted upon by the people), laws concerning certain behaviors. We lock up thieves, rapists and murderers because they have violated our common standards of acceptable behavior. This is exactly how the system best deals with varying moral standards, they choose amongst themselves and decide what is acceptable or not, BASED ON A PLURALITY/MAJORITY, not my values, or yours alone.

“You feel moral indignation. Why? They didn't violate their moral standard”
I feel moral indignation anytime, anywhere, the value of human life and liberty are trivialized. REGARDLESS of what the murderers, terrorists, or thugs believe. Their belief system is irrelevant to me in this analogy as to my sympathies/feelings toward the victims, and though their moral code may justify the actions to the thugs themselves, that is a completely separate issue. You and I value all human life as having more value than some other people’s moral codes do. That certainly doesn’t mean we just shrug off everything because they have differing levels of human worth.
(cntd)

GLADERUNNER,

Part 1 of 2

ME: “You should have experienced no moral indignation when you watched it unfold on your local news-cast.”

YOU: “Really? Wow…. I was expecting a little better than this. Do I really need to point out that I, like most people in the U.S. certainly experienced enormous moral indignation at the events? My moral standards as well as those of many cultures around the world were certainly violated. But as for the terrorists themselves, was their moral code violated? I can only assume that no, they were not. Their morality if we are to accept the stories, is that they were in fact insuring for themselves a virgin-plentiful eternal afterlife.”--GR

And you missed the point entirely. If they did not violate their “moral standard,” on what grounds did you feel moral indignation? Why, on the grounds of the fact that they violated your moral standard, of course. Do you not realize what you just did? You just posited that your “moral standard” is better than theirs. You wanted them to adhere to your moral standard. On what grounds are you contending that your moral standard is better? Why, because the consensus in our country is that such things are morally reprehensible. But in their country of origin the consensus is that what they did was morally commendable.

Simple question: Why is your consensus superior to theirs? If you are consistent with your reasoning, you should not experience moral indignation because they did not violate their moral standards. But my moral standard is better than theirs, say you. Why? You have consistently argued “status quo” as the ground of judging morality. Of course, you want to insist that they abide by your “status quo”-established moral standard, don't you? Which it does, indeed, seem that you do, as you offer the ever-ominous and always effective (sic) threat of “prisons and standing armies.” What gives you the right to force your moral standard on them?

Flip the situation around. Say they killed 3,000 of their fellow countrymen in their own country of origin because they happened to disagree with the tyranny of Muslim rule. The “status quo” has established that such atrocities are morally commendable in said country. You feel moral indignation. Why? They didn't violate their moral standard. Yet you would want them held accountable to your moral standard. On what grounds? Because yours is better? Why? If you were sitting across the table from one of these monsters, how would you justify your contention that your moral standard is better than his? That his planned actions are not acceptable to the “status quo”-established moral standard of your country? That you would put him in prison and then have him executed if he carried out his murderous intent? Good luck with that.

GLADERUNNER,

Part 2 of 2

Your only avenue of justifying your moral indignation at such atrocities is to appeal to an international consensus—a universal “status quo” that “evolves” and tips at the 50.00000001% mark of the general world population agreement. OR, you simply hide behind a more secure prison system and a stronger standing army.

When you strip away all the smoke and mirrors, that is what you are arguing. Pure, undiluted Darwinian natural selection/survival of the fittest. You really don't want to live in a world where such becomes the exclusive basis of moral standards.

And I find it utterly astounding that an intelligent, articulate, 21st century individual such as yourself cannot agree that we can know with a reasonable degree of certainty that it is, and always has been, morally wrong to treat humans as if they are sub-human.

If you simply refuse to agree to that statement, let me know and I will take another avenue of argumentation on this particular issue. I have several warming up in the bull-pen.

“If you feel I am misrepresenting your method of reason, how so?”--RCO

“Because you are making the unsubstantiated claim of the universality of a single, fixed moral code (and universal awareness/knowledge thereof) for all peoples of all times.”--GR

May I ask you to show me where I have made that claim? You have, from the moment we engaged on this topic, presumed that. I have not made that claim.

“You seem to assume that my moral code is exactly the same as some whack-job, suicidal, religious-fanatic terrorist or slave beater.”--GR

If ever there were a reasonable degree of certainty as to the existence of a straw-man, that is a straw-man. :-)

Peace, my fellow human.

RCOFIELD:
“reasoning doesn’t help that much either”
In context, I was saying that discerning between two presented religious ideologies is not made a lot easier by ‘reasoning’ alone. As evidenced by how many intelligent and intellectual people are found in various different religions. If reasoning were all that was required then would reasonable people not all (or at least nearly all) drift to the same religion?
AND that classical Western philosophies, methods of reasoning will by themselves rarely ever result in a belief an eastern polytheistic religions and v/v.

RCOFIELD:
“it was not morally wrong for the hi-jackers of 9/11 to fly planes into the WTC to kill "infidels" who they considered less than human.”
According to my knowledge and understanding, including my upbringing and culture, it was a very, very bad thing to do. I apparently value human life much higher than some other people do, not just the hijackers, but also the street thugs in the inner cities, the warlords in Somalia, etc.

“You should have experienced no moral indignation when you watched it unfold on your local news-cast.”
Really? Wow…. I was expecting a little better than this.
Do I really need to point out that I, like most people in the U.S. certainly experienced enormous moral indignation at the events? My moral standards as well as those of many cultures around the world were certainly violated. But as for the terrorists themselves, was their moral code violated? I can only assume that no, they were not. Their morality if we are to accept the stories, is that they were in fact insuring for themselves a virgin-plentiful eternal afterlife.

“If you feel I am misrepresenting your method of reason, how so?”
Because you are making the unsubstantiated claim of the universality of a single, fixed moral code (and universal awareness/knowledge thereof) for all peoples of all times. You seem to assume that my moral code is exactly the same as some whack-job, suicidal, religious-fanatic terrorist or slave beater.
My ‘method of reason’ says specifically that people in different cultures in different times/places/circumstances adhere to differing levels/interpretations of morality. The terrorists actions were consistent with their moral code but in stark violation of yours and mine.
My method of reasoning fully explains why we need prisons and standing armies. Because not everyone thinks like we do.

GLADERUNNER,

"I do not see how this slays any method of reasoning by swordsmanship or any other form of metaphorical weaponry."--GR

Then your offering to Peter Huff that "reasoning doesn’t help that much either" was an irrelevant argument, right?

If Aristotelian logic, Aquinan logic, and Chinese logic....and GLADERUNNER logic "doesn't help that much," what was your point?

RCOFIELD:
“Would you be more agreeable to my premises and conclusion if I worded them as follows?”
Nope. Your points 3 and 4 are still rejected for exactly the same reasons as stated before. They simply do not reflect an accurate interpretation of history, and culture.
It was not the absence of the statement ‘with a reasonable degree of certainty’ that I rejected them, it was for the sheer lack of evidence/substantiation supporting your claim of immorality.
Once again you seem to be asserting/implying that there was somewhere, a fixed (same now as then), externally sourced (since they didn’t seem to ever mention it amongst themselves) moral code in existence and authority that these societies were either knowingly violating or completely ignorant of. Such a claim will need to be substantiated. I accept the notion of ‘external influences’ as a possible, reasonable source for morals, knowledge, etc. (as I understand the term) but not out of blind faith or just on someone’s say-so. If you told me that that ‘external influence’ was in fact a fire-breathing unicorn, I’d probably be at least a little suspect.

“thought it was you who was concerned that this dialog not turn into a game of semantics”
I am still concerned about it.

GLADERUNNER,

“3)It is morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human’”--RCO

"I reject this on the basis that it does not seem to fully, accurately describe reality. Certain cultures do indeed still consider some people as less than fully qualified humans. They appear to do so without moral conflict. For those societies, I cannot agree that it is for them, morally wrong to treat some humans as less-than fully qualified humans, as their cultural concept of morality does not define it as immoral."--GR

Then, using you own method of reasoning, it was not morally wrong for the hi-jackers of 9/11 to fly planes into the WTC to kill "infidels" who they considered less than human. You should have experienced no moral indignation when you watched it unfold on your local news-cast.

“4) It has ALWAYS been morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human””--RCO

"I reject this on the same basis as 3.) Historically almost all societies treated some people as less than human. In addition, historical records outlining the treatment of slaves, women and captured or defeated peoples did not indicate moral reservation or conflict. Thus there is no indication that the moral codes of those cultures included slavery, etc. as a no-no."--GR

Then, using your own method of reasoning, it was not morally wrong for slave owners of bygone years to maim and kill their slaves, whom they considered sub-human. You have no reason to experience moral indignation when you watch "Roots."

If you feel I am misrepresenting your method of reason, how so?

If not, are you sure you want to stand by what you have said?

I know with "a reasonable degree of certainty" that your position cannot be maintained with integrity within the context of your own conscience.

If I were a betting man, I would bet my house that your conscience betrays your philosophy.

RCOFIELD:
“And your knowledge, experience, and observation are conditioned by external influences, no?”
To a degree, yes, certain external influences are at least partially responsible for my perspective and knowledge. I concede that very thing as evidenced by the fact that since I was raised in the rural Midwest, English is my only schooled and usable language. If I had been born, raised and schooled in Thailand, I do think this would have turned out the same way.

I do not dismiss from reasoning, yours or mine ‘any and all’ (yet another absolute) forms of external influence. I do not see how this slays any method of reasoning by swordsmanship or any other form of metaphorical weaponry.
I also don’t see where I ever actually dismissed ‘any and all forms of reasoning’, based on anything. Perhaps it would help if you would actually say what you actually mean by ‘external influences’. But allow me to assume that you will clarify that later on in the process of baiting this linguistic/semantic trap you seem to be trying to build.
Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to jump ahead.

GR

GLADERUNNER,

Would you be more agreeable to my premises and conclusion if I worded them as follows?

1)We know with a reasonable degree of certainty that slaves are human

2)We know with a reasonable degree of certainty that slaves have ALWAYS been human

3)We know with a reasonable degree of certainty that it is morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human

4)We know with a reasonable degree of certainty that it has ALWAYS been morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human

5)Hence, we know with a reasonable degree of certainty that it has ALWAYS been morally wrong to treat slaves as sub-human

Please note that I contend that all five of these points can, with a reasonable degree of certainty, be considered true irregardless of public/societal opinions or norms.

(I thought it was you who was concerned that this dialog not turn into a game of semantics?!)

Peace, brother.

RCOFIELD:
‘please condense them to an understandable reject/because statement.”
I will make an attempt to, but I do so reluctantly. I chose my words deliberately and carefully in order to be precise and clear. Reducing the word count risks reducing exactness. I reserve the right at all times to refer back to the original statements as presented.
Your original points:

“3)It is morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human’”
I reject this on the basis that it does not seem to fully, accurately describe reality. Certain cultures do indeed still consider some people as less than fully qualified humans. They appear to do so without moral conflict. For those societies, I cannot agree that it is for them, morally wrong to treat some humans as less-than fully qualified humans, as their cultural concept of morality does not define it as immoral.

““4) It has ALWAYS been morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human””
I reject this on the same basis as 3.) Historically almost all societies treated some people as less than human. In addition, historical records outlining the treatment of slaves, women and captured or defeated peoples did not indicate moral reservation or conflict. Thus there is no indication that the moral codes of those cultures included slavery, etc. as a no-no.
In addition to my earlier comments I also reject it on the basis of an unknowable absolute concept: ‘ALWAYS’. I do not claim omniscience and therefore cannot assert a knowledge of all things for all times.

I hope this helps.
GR

GLADERUNNER,

"I have only ever contended that we are not (apparently) able to reason/know with ABSOLUTE certainty. I am in fact, quite comfortable with many, many degrees of ‘reasonable certainty.’"--GR

So...we can't know with any degree of reasonable certainty that it is morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human?

And...we can't know with any degree of reasonable certainty that it has ALWAYS been morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human?

GLADERUNNER,

ME: "You are aware that the same principles you just delineated can be equally applied to your own philosophy, right? If you are going to dismiss any and all forms of reasoning on the basis of external influences, then your own form of reasoning falls to the same sword."

YOU: "I am simply taking positions based on knowledge, experience and observation on individual assertions as they are presented."
==========================

And your knowledge, experience, and observation are conditioned by external influences, no?

Your method of reasoning still falls by the same sword with which you slay all other methods of reasoning.

GLADERUNNER,

"(Not easily distracted.)"--GR

Than you didn't miss my the post prior to that one? :-)

Peace.

RCOFIELD:
“It seems to me that your position is self-defeating. If we can know nothing with any reasonable degree of certainty (as you seem to be contending) we can never be certain, to any reasonable degree, that we can know nothing with with any reasonable degree of certainty”
I have only ever contended that we are not (apparently) able to reason/know with ABSOLUTE certainty. I am in fact, quite comfortable with many, many degrees of ‘reasonable certainty.’

“You are taking the position of philosophical skepticism”
If my position resembles, even to a great degree, ‘philosophical skepticism’ then it is only coincidental. I am not schooled in philosophy or its specificities or necessarily constrained to its declared borders. I cannot defend the school of ‘philosophical skepticism’, nor can I promise to adhere to its strict definition.
I am simply taking positions based on knowledge, experience and observation on individual assertions as they are presented.

Regards;
GR
(Not easily distracted.)

GLADERUNNER,

"I stand by my statements as I have presented them. Your 'summarizations' have altered the wording and thus the actual meaning. I have agreed to your request to control the pacing of the debate, please reciprocate by allowing my words to stand as I have presented them."--GR

Those summations of your rejection of my premises were my honest assessment. If they are wrong, please condense them to an understandable reject/because statement.

The possibility remains that I misunderstood you, hence the question "are these a fair summary of your rejections?"

GLADERUNNER,

“Reasoning doesn’t help that much either. If you are using Aristotelian logic as ‘perfected’ by Aquinas, your logic and reasoning reflect the biases and blatant presuppositions of medieval, western philosophy. A Chinese philosopher, using that culture's notions and concepts of ‘reason’ would neither use the same philosophical tools nor necessarily arrive at the same conclusions.
Without being taught or raised in a specific religious code by priests and prophets and like-minded community (culture) do you actually believe you could, or would independently reason your way to those exact same beliefs (truth)?”--GR to PETERHUFF

You are aware that the same principles you just delineated can be equally applied to your own philosophy, right? If you are going to dismiss any and all forms of reasoning on the basis of external influences, then your own form of reasoning falls to the same sword.

It seems to me that your position is self-defeating. If we can know nothing with any reasonable degree of certainty (as you seem to be contending) we can never be certain, to any reasonable degree, that we can know nothing with with any reasonable degree of certainty.

That should cause you to immediately remove yourself from any form of debate.

You are taking the position of philosophical skepticism (we can know nothing with certainty) all the while arguing that your position is one of methodological skepticism (the sorting out of true/false claims). You can't have it both ways.

(Don't let this distract too much from our discussion of morality/slavery).

RCOFIELD:
"Is that a fair assessment of your rejection of my 3rd and 4th premises?"
I stand by my statements as I have presented them. Your 'summarizations' have altered the wording and thus the actual meaning.
I have agreed to your request to control the pacing of the debate, please reciprocate by allowing my words to stand as I have presented them.

regards;
GR

GLADERUNNER,

To summarize you rejection of my 3rd and 4th premises:

You reject the premise that it is morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human (my 3rd premise)......BECAUSE......some contemporary cultures consider some humans “less-than-equal.”

You reject the premise that it has ALWAYS been morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human (my 4th premise)......BECAUSE......history shows that many cultures/institutions did indeed treat humans as sub-human.

Is that a fair assessment of your rejection of my 3rd and 4th premises?

Freestinker, you don't get off the hook that easily. Just as I question the claim "Gods exist as a matter of irrefutable fact," I also question the claim "Gods don't exist as a matter of irrefutable fact." Granted, the former claim has a far greater burden of proof because of the extraordinary nature of the claim. But any atheists who reject even the possibility of things existing beyond human detection must still justify that rejection.

Also, what you mean by a "god emotion"? There are a few deists whose beliefs in gods have nothing to do with what other believers call "religious experiences."
Posted by: Carstonio | January 10, 2011

==========

Carstonio,

I never claimed gods do not exist. I cliam in all likeliehood the probably do not exist but like you I'm still open to the possibility however remote it may be.

I use the phrase "god emotion" to suggest that if supernatural gods do not exist as actual beings, then the term "gods" refers to a human idea or concept as you put it. I also suggest that the idea or concept of gods may be the result of human emotions such as fear or awe.

So in this sense gods are real and they do exist, even if just in the minds or hearts of believers.

In short, gods are most likely just human beliefs and nothing more. Without humans to create and believe in them, gods would very likely cease to exist.

Peterhuff:
“No, I'm not saying there is only one option or another. There is only one true option. All the rest are false. Truth is narrow. What I am saying is truth is either/or. It can't be both/and. What you are saying is that truth can be both/and. It can be true that a dog is both a dog and also a cat”

This is only true from an absolutist/academically-philosophical(esoteric) point of view. Certainly a dog cannot be a cat, but there you are talking about specific physical objects that can be quantifiably measured and definitively compared. The abstract concepts themselves are not universal, quantifiable or demonstrably comparable. Truth is an abstract concept that can only reasonably be debated logically after we assign this concept of ‘truth’ to something that is quantifiable and demonstrable. When you employ the do cat/dog example you are doing that. We are then not at all talking about the nature or value of true/false (abstract) you are literally talking about cats/dogs (demonstrable physical objects). Evidences of physical objects do not prove, nor are they directly applicable to metaphysical concepts.

“ that you can have your truth and I can have mine and although they oppose each other both can be true”
You are completely dismissing/ignoring perspective and gradation. You are also positing, without substantiation, that there is such a thing as an absolute truth. If there is indeed a single, immutable, unchangeable truth then it apparently not obvious or intuitive. The default reasoning in humanity seems to fall toward something less than a universal concept of this absolute truth. We are apparently not wired to be able to unquestionably recognize it, or even adequately define it. The result is that the only truth(s) we are aware of and can recognize as truth(s), is completely relative to time/place/culture/circumstance.
If two people from different cultures espouse the absolute truth of their religion (abstract concept), and those religions exclude the possibility of any other religion both being the ‘true religion’ then certainly both men cannot, be ‘right’. How does an outsider accurately discern the proper belief system? There is also the possibility that neither of them are right, since we only have their own claims, doctrine and dogma with which to measure/validate them.
Reasoning doesn’t help that much either. If you are using Aristotelian logic as ‘perfected’ by Aquinas, your logic and reasoning reflect the biases and blatant presuppositions of medieval, western philosophy. A Chinese philosopher, using that culture's notions and concepts of ‘reason’ would neither use the same philosophical tools nor necessarily arrive at the same conclusions.
Without being taught or raised in a specific religious code by priests and prophets and like-minded community (culture) do you actually believe you could, or would independently reason your way to those exact same beliefs (truth)?

RCOFIELD:
2.

“4) It has ALWAYS been morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human”
(Once again, I struggle to ignore the phrasing.) I do not agree that it has always been morally wrong to treat humans as subhuman as world history overwhelmingly and conclusively shows that this behavior was commonly and widely accepted and even institutionalized for thousands of years by nearly all societies, and is not even directly condemned in most ‘moral’ religious texts. Captured and defeated peoples were treated as less than equal humans, as were women. In ancient societies the death penalty was meted out for less-than-capital offenses without moral disgust or hesitation by those doing the stoning. Some lives were indeed worth less than others and even priests and prophets showed no guilt or remorse over their torture and execution. Even more recently otherwise ‘great men’ like Thomas Jefferson treated his slaves as possessions, less than fully-human. Our own constitution officially valued African Americans as being 3/5 human. If treating other humans as less than human is/was ALWAYS morally wrong then this code of morality was neither apparent to nor reflective of the status quo. I cannot accept the premise then, since the vast recorded histories of societies at our disposal simply do not bear out that premise. Even among the religious and pious the common concepts of the terms ‘savages’ and ‘heathens’ and ‘heretics’ reflects this common judgment. Our own indigenous natives were commonly seen as little more than agrarian apes that did not deserve equal dignity or our respect, but rather needed to be 'enlightened to rightful Christian thinking as much as this could be possible considering the unsophisticated nature of the savage mind, or otherwise moved out of the way, by force if necessary, to make room for the blessings and promises of providence.’
To say that treating humans as less than humans ‘has always been morally wrong’ is only accurate from our current, evolved perspective of ‘morality’. Monday morning quarterbacking.

If I have failed to directly address your points, please let me know. I usually strive to spend at least 5% of my verbiage on the actual assertions I am challenging. apologies for shorting you. ;-)

RCOFIELD:
1.
Applying the brakes as you requested. (without actually retracting any of my statements/assertions.)
“I offered a conclusion (#5) supported by 4 premises (#1, #2, #3, #4). You stated that you disagreed “to a point” with premises #3 & #4, yet never established what the “point” was.”
Sure.
‘3)It is morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human’
It is my opinion that it is currently, generally, and to a great extent, widely considered wrong (immoral) to treat humans as sub-human by most (not all) contemporary cultures. My own personal values as defined by knowledge, experience and culture align with that assessment. I do not accept that this is true for all cultures, even in this day and age. ‘Infidels’ are certainly considered less-than-equal humans, as are individual citizens of tyrannical sates. Other cultures still practice or cling to a caste system. Thus the morality of treating others as less than human is at least relative to culture.
I jumped ahead because of the inference from the phraseology you employed. It appeared (and this is how I stated it last night) that you were implying that morality is a static gift given to all humanity from an external source. If I am mistaken about that interpretation, please let me know. I do not believe (am not compelled by sufficient evidence to accept) that ‘morality’ is inherent, or fixed. It appears to me through study of history, sociology, psychology and anthropology that society evolved and developed similar, but different ‘moral codes’ over vast periods of time as societies arose from primitive hunter-gatherers to inter-dependent tribes, cities and nations.
I agree to your point, to a degree. At this point in time it is generally accepted that treating humans as sub-humans is ‘wrong’ (not a successful or valuable quality.) This is not a mere subtle wording difference. It is in fact a complete chicken vs. egg-style opposing position, the debate being more properly framed as ‘Which came first, the moral code or humanity/society?’
(cntd)

GLADERUNNER,

A cursory word-count on your last post reveals that you spent less than 3% of your time directly addressing the postulate I offered in my previous post.

In the course of your post you 1) Attributed arguments to me that I have not made. 2) Presupposed the structure of the arguments attributed to me that I have not made, and 3) Concluded that you find “no compelling reason to believe” a rather weak argument that you fabricated on my behalf. :-)

You seem to be presupposing what my presuppositions are and arguing against them in advance.

I offer to you the same protest you offered to Peter Huff yesterday: “You are putting words in my mouth.” None of this qualifies as objective skepticism.

To recap, I offered a conclusion (#5) supported by 4 premises (#1, #2, #3, #4). You stated that you disagreed “to a point” with premises #3 & #4, yet never established what the “point” was. You simply jumped to discounting arguments that I have not made.

When you said earlier that you really didn't have any objection to the use of the term “moral” per se, I took you at your word. However, assuming that to be your point of disagreement, if you have some kind of reflexive negative reaction to my use of the word “moral” in premise #3 & #4, simply drop that word from the premises. If you have the same reflexive negative reaction to my use of the word “moral” in my conclusion, feel free to drop it from the conclusion as well.

If you disagree with my premise that it is wrong to treat humans as sub-human, it stands to reason that you should offer reasons WHY you disagree with this clearly stated premise.

If you disagree that it has always been wrong to treat humans as sub-human, it stands to reason that you should offer reasons WHY you disagree with this clearly stated premise as well.

To simply disagree with my conclusion (#5) without demonstrating how I fail to support it with my premises (#1-4) is to merely disagree on the grounds of your own yet-unknown (to me) and yet-unsupported presuppositions. That in no way proves my conclusion wrong.

Bearing in mind that I have hardly even begun to construct my argument, I would humbly request that you hold any critique of what you presume my arguments will be until I make those arguments in the manner you are presuming I will make them. Would that not be commensurate with the accepted rules of civil debate and dialog?

Also, I would request that you keep in mind that I don't do “drive-by-debate.” I try to construct my arguments from the ground up, laying a foundation and building on it one argument at the time. Most on these threads don't have the wherewithal to stay the course with this type of dialog. I don't perceive that you are one of those. I hope that I am right.

Peace, brother.

RCOFIELD:
Thanks for getting back...
I disagree (to a point) with the following:
3)It is morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human
4)It has ALWAYS been morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human.
This seems to imply an eternal fixed c entral, universal moral code, that implicitly could only be fixed, eternal and universal if it came form an all-powerful, all pure god of some kind. I’m not convinced. There’s a lot of other plausible possibilities. It sounds a lot like we are getting ready to descend into a ‘god must necessarily exist for X to possibly exist/have happened” thread. If so, simply jump ahead and show me the babelfish. Show me the one thing that survives all other reasonable possibility that also shows that all the thousands of other religious theories are so obviously, also wrong. That’s two distinct steps of non-acceptance. 1. The moral code is divinely authored, 2. That you are a subscriber to the one and only one possible deity.

“I contend that all five of these points are absolutely true irregardless of public/societal opinions or norms.”
There’s that phrase again, ‘absolutely true’.
No, I see no reason to accept that humankind has a fixed code of ‘absolute’ behaviors or truths etched into their soul by an all-knowing, all seeing cosmic deity that also turns women into salt, sicks bears on children, shoves guys into fish and yet still loves the smell of burning cattle.

Note I did not say your theory is impossible, or even highly unlikely, only that I find no compelling reason to believe that your claim of a specific-deity-based moral code is inherently superior to or any more believable than all/most/many other religious moral codes. Nor is it inherently superior or more believable/reasonable than current anthropology/sociology contends.

You seem to be saying that humanity inherited a standardized, gilded moral code from on high. I see no reason to believe that they didn’t just make it up themselves as they went along. It’s a much simpler explanation, no magic required.

More later, the tireless taskmaster demands my attentions.
Cheers.

Hi Gladerunner,

Just a quick thought before I'm out the door.

You said:

"You keep tossing out these immature, false dichotomies, that there is only either one option or one other. That simply isn’t true."

No, I'm not saying there is only one option or another. There is only one true option. All the rest are false. Truth is narrow. What I am saying is truth is either/or. It can't be both/and. What you are saying is that truth can be both/and. It can be true that a dog is both a dog and also a cat, that you can have your truth and I can have mine and although they oppose each other both can be true.

Peterhuff:
3.
“True, but in order for you to know truth it would have to be what actually is - an absolute.”
I do not claim ultimate ‘truth’ I accept/consider things as true based on knowledge, experience and available evidence.
Truth, as an inviolable constant is a definition reserved for, and unique to religions and religious academics/philosophers. Not even law or science considers ‘truth’ as severe, rigid and binary as your cult defines it.
“Yes, 'considered true' does not necessarily equate to what actually is true. How would you test it for actuality?”
Once again nothing I perceive of or consider ‘true’ needs to pass an eternity or infinity test. It merely needs to be consistent, predictable and reliable and devoid of significant valid evidence to the contrary.
I look at my watch, it says ‘noon’. I look up at the bank clock it say the same, I go inside and see five clocks all showing pretty much exactly the same exact information. I have no other sense or reason to believe that it is NOT noon. I accept as ‘fact’ or ‘truth’ that it is indeed noon. Do I have absolute infallible knowledge that it is noon? Nope, but I don’t need it. Absolute precision is not necessary either. If the official atomic clock says it was in fact 12:00:00 plus .0000035 seconds, I’m really not too concerned.
Most of the ‘truth’ in life is exactly like this.

“Again, it is either true or it is not.’
Impotent philosophical gibberish in that it denies all possibility of degrees of truth. Once again an esoteric realm reserved for the religious/philosophical community.
True/false merely proposes a rather arbitrary limit of only two possible states of a thing.
A light bulb can be on and off at the same time. (electrical current running through the filament, only not enough to produce the bright visible light frequencies we consider ‘light’ at a high enough power level for us to easily/universally discern it as such.)
If you can show me something that has only two possible states then I’d be more inclined to consider your postulations. If you cannot actually show me, say if it is a strictly philosophical/intellectual concept, then I simply have no reason to blindly accept your arbitrary claim of the number of possible states of that thing.

GLADERUNNER,

Part 1 of 2

Regarding your post at 1:55 PM I must confess I am still in the dark as to the “about five things” that I failed to get back to you on. If you'll be more specific I'll be happy to try and respond to your concerns.

You asked me earlier: “Where are the defining ‘objective’ parts inherent and unique to Christianity?” I responded that I was trying to lay a foundation here to answer that exact question, but that it would take time. I requested that you bear with me. I hope that you will.

NOTE: I am going to use ALL CAPS at several points here. I'm not shouting, just trying to emphasize the point. (I HATE that this tread doesn't allow html tags.)

One of the reasons I wanted to narrow our discussion to the slavery/morality issue speaks directly to your question. I think you are sitting directly on top of a sound argument from reason for the existence of God on this issue. This will take several exchanges to unfold, but I think it is worth the effort.

“...let’s look again at slavery. There were indeed times and places where humans were treated as little more than livestock. The societies, specifically the slave owners, apparently had no concerns of ‘moral consequence’ since they saw the slaves merely as less than fully qualified humans. Societies’ attitudes shifted away from this attitude over the millennia and only when those nations/societies accepted the notion of the human-ness of the slaves did they attribute moral consequence to their treatment.”--GR

I want to focus on what you termed “the notion of human-ness.” If I understand your above argument correctly, you are positing that slavery became morally “wrong” ONLY BECAUSE SOCIETIES/NATIONS BEGAN TO ACCEPT THE HUMANITY OF SLAVES. You then stated the following:

“....if you will notice that the bottom line of the abortion debate is essentially that same argument, WHETHER THE fetus/SLAVE IS ACTUALLY A HUMAN BEING and thus qualified for our sympathies/moral indignation at their treatment.”--GR

I then posed the question “On what ground/basis would slaves in contemporary society be “qualified for our sympathies/moral indignation at their treatment?”

In your response to that question you offered the example of South African apartheid, apparently contending that such atrocities become morally “wrong” (or worthy of moral consequence) when public opinion reaches a “tipping point.”

GLADERUNNER,

Part 2 of 2

I think you are missing a vital point here. On the issue of slavery, it is not “public opinion” or shifts in “social norms” that actually makes the abuses of slavery morally “wrong.” You said yourself that there has probably been opposition to slavery for as long as there has been slavery, hence slavery has been viewed as morally wrong (at least by some, if not most) in every known era of human history. While shifts in public opinion certainly determine the ACCEPTABILITY or UNACCEPTABILITY of things such as slavery within a given culture, said public opinion is not the GROUNDS or BASIS on which slavery “becomes” morally “wrong.”

I will offer your own argument as support of the above. You contended that slavery became “of moral consequence” “WHEN SOCIETIES ACCEPTED THE NOTION OF THE HUMAN-NESS OF SLAVES.” Notice that your use of the term “accepted” presupposes (rightly) that slaves have always been human. If they have always been human, shouldn't it have always been morally “wrong” to treat them as sub-human? I posed that question earlier and you avoided it. Reason would seem to beg that it be answered, and that in the affirmative.

So, here is my postulation:

1)Slaves are human
2)Slaves have ALWAYS been human
3)It is morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human
4)It has ALWAYS been morally wrong to treat humans as sub-human
5)Hence, it has ALWAYS been morally wrong to treat slaves as sub-human

Please note that I contend that all five of these points are absolutely true irregardless of public/societal opinions or norms.

If you agree the above five statements, and don't mind doing so, let me know.

If you disagree with these statements, and you don't mind doing so, please state what specific part or parts you disagree with and why.

Assuming that we can come to more or less agree with the above, I will then move to the next level of my argument.

Peace, my fellow human.

Peterhuff:
2.
“. . .God, and not just any idea of God, but the Christian God then your ideas of origin must present something that is more plausible.”
Not true at all. I don’t know the precise method of ‘origin’, I never claimed to. I’ve read hundreds of creation stories/theories. I am not any more or less convinced of their validity than I am with the Christian version. I do not need to disprove or even offer up a ‘more plausible version’ of the Mayan creation theory to simply not accept the Mayan version as absolute fact. You keep tossing out these immature, false dichotomies, that there is only either one option or one other. That simply isn’t true. I am simply no more compelled to believe your version than I am the Mayan version, or the Norse, or the Roman, or even the various Hindu versions (which are MUCH more interesting).

“But the contents are evidence/proof that its words are trustworthy/reliable”
So the words in the bible say that the words in the bible are true therefore they must be true.
Really? Wow, well, that does it. . . Nobody has EVER claimed truth of something that wasn’t actually true. Kind of like those ads on TV for those bracelets that use ‘natural frequencies’ to improve health, balance a posture… It must be true since they say it is! (insert gullibility quotient here)

“Claims to eyewitness accounts are not something that can be easily dismissed”
Eyewitness accounts are dismissed all the time as being easily biased and unreliable.
“unless you can provide a more logical explanation”
Once again I don’t have to do any such thing. I don’t have to categorically accept a bizarre concept about alleged events simply because I have no other explanation as to how those alleged events could have happened.

“There are only three or four ways of looking at origins,
1) It always existed.
2) It came into being.
3) It is an illusion.
4) I don’t care.”

You forgot a very important one: “We don’t know for sure.”
Even if you were to completely discredit ‘the big bang’ (and better people than you have tried) you are still no closer at all to making a convincing argument as to why your version of origin is any more credible than all the other religion-based theories. You seem to assume that if you can find a crack in Big Bang’s armor that Christianity automatically wins the creation debate, it doesn’t, it still has all those other religious theories waiting in the wings.

Peterhuff:
1.
“Having no ‘fixed, universal, immutable truth’ does not tell me how you know what you believe is certain/true”
You are simply refusing/unable to understand my answer.
I do not need to hang such absolutist labels on things. Certainty is merely qualified assumption/expectation based on knowledge and experience. Gravity, a thing which I do not know everything about is neither good or bad, it simply is what it is as I understand/experience it. I count on its ‘truth’ based on the same thing, knowledge and experience. Am I absolutely positively convinced beyond all doubt that gravity is what I know it to be? Of course not, as I said, I don’t know everything. I don’t need a certified lifetime guaranty to assume that if I let go of this hammer I’m holding that it will most likely, probably fall toward the earth. I do not need to know with absolute certainty that it will, it’s quite sufficient to know that so far, every time I have dropped anything heavier than air, that it has fallen to earth. Why is that not enough truth / certainty for you?

“That is where logic and reason comes into play. You would have to show me your evidence that His words are indeed works of fiction, or at least that it is more plausible to believe this.”
I need do no such thing. You are showing me an ancient, edited/abridged text, and telling me that it is the story of the one true and universal god, the mother of all creator gods. And that he also doesn’t like condoms but he can turn people into pillars of salt. AND that I should worship him or be tortured for eternity. I look around and I see a LOT of ancient texts claiming very similar/equally bizarre things. The burden of proof is entirely yours if you wish for me to believe that yours is the one and only true accounting. Otherwise they all look the same.

“Can you prove the Holy Spirit does not exist?”
You are making the assertion that it does exist. Once again your assertion is not universally accepted. I don’t need to prove its non-existence, only doubt it existence unless/until convinced otherwise. Since you are going to eventually attribute additional actions and behaviors to this magical ghost, it is you that must fill in all the blanks about its existence/nature. It’s entirely your creature that you are trying to convince me of, your burden to prove.

“Also the statement “I am the truth” is at best a claim, not at all an un-denied fact.” – GR
YOU: “How do you know this? It is an assumption you make. As I said before, if it is true it is an undeniable “
Because myself along with billions of others are not convinced of its validity, we deny its truth. Therefore it is not ‘undeniable’ it has been denied, by the majority of people that have ever lived. Aside from that hundreds of other god-thingies have uttered similar words, and as you say, they can’t all be right.

Hi Gladerunner,

I'm running out of time before I have to get ready for work so this could be my last post for a couple of days - the dreaded midnight shift.

“Well then you would have to demonstrate that something that is not fixed or absolute can be true” - Me

"No, you have made the extraordinary claim that truth is fixed and absolute. I have maintained time and time again that many things that are considered ‘true’ are so merely as 1. A matter of perspective." - GR

Yes, 'considered true' does not necessarily equate to what actually is true. How would you test it for actuality?

"2. Able to be considered less than absolutely ’true’ as new information is discovered. 3. An intangible thing, such as your god can be equally true to person A. and false to person B." - GR

'Considered' yes, but actually true, no. Again, it is either true or it is not.

"4. that many things like ideas, thoughts and beliefs are potentially neither true or false, but merely imaginings beyond verifiable measurability." -GR

True, but in order for you to know truth it would have to be what actually is - an absolute. It can't at the same time and same sense be true and false.

"But we’re just dancing in the ether again…" -GR

Maybe you are. (^8

Hi Gladerunner,

I'm still working on your earlier posts.

“how do you know that your truth is true. As a relativist it could change in a minute or it might not be true at all.” -Me

You never answered my question, just side stepped/avoided it by pointing to my ‘extraordinary claims.’ Having no ‘fixed, universal, immutable truth’ does not tell me how you know what you believe is certain/true.

“I reject your extraordinary claim of a fixed, universal, immutable ‘truth’, since you have failed to demonstrate that one actually exists. I have no discernable fixed, universal, immutable ‘truth’ (as you describe it) in my worldview.” - GR

Well then you would have to demonstrate that something that is not fixed or absolute can be true. You have already admitted in your quantum quagmire that you just don’t know in an earlier post. As I explained, truth is defined as what is real, what is certain. I’m asking for your justification for the certainty in your world-view in knowing anything. I’ve explained that presupposing God and His revelation to His creatures would logically answer how anything can be known as certain and without Him it is just your best conjecture that relies on the way you define ‘best.’.

“Yes, I do as a necessity for there to be anything as certain or true.” -Me

“So you need an absolute to exist in order for your absolutes to exist. Can you hear yourself? This is like ‘God must exist since I can’t imagine any other possibility.’
Your needs, your ‘logic’ your ‘reason’ requires God as you describe him, in order for those tools to be valid.” GR

Well, if you can propose how we subjective human beings can know certainty without presupposing God I’m listening. Logically show me otherwise.

Both of us work from our ultimate highest authority. If it wasn’t then you would have to be mad to believe or rest your faith on.
“ Then you are using that very logic and reasoning, which requires God to exist, as the initial premise AND the conclusion, that God exists.
You’re doing squealing, smoky donuts in the philosophical parking lot. Circles, nothing but circles.” – GR

And you reason and use logic (or irrationality and illogic), which from your viewpoint requires not knowing/ disbelieving that God exists, which in turn presupposes a conclusion too, that there is no evidence for His existence and that you as a man are the measure of all things, things that you have no answer for. There is no neutrality in the construction of a world-view. You have built yours on basic core beliefs, one being that there is no evidence for God. So you funnel everything through this core belief. You make seeming comparisons between Santa, Odin and the Christian God that are really flimsy.

Hi Gladerunner,

I'm still working on your earlier posts.

“how do you know that your truth is true. As a relativist it could change in a minute or it might not be true at all.” -Me

You never answered my question, just side stepped/avoided it by pointing to my ‘extraordinary claims.’ Having no ‘fixed, universal, immutable truth’ does not tell me how you know what you believe is certain/true.

“I reject your extraordinary claim of a fixed, universal, immutable ‘truth’, since you have failed to demonstrate that one actually exists. I have no discernable fixed, universal, immutable ‘truth’ (as you describe it) in my worldview.” - GR

Well then you would have to demonstrate that something that is not fixed or absolute can be true. You have already admitted in your quantum quagmire that you just don’t know in an earlier post. As I explained, truth is defined as what is real, what is certain. I’m asking for your justification for the certainty in your world-view in knowing anything. I’ve explained that presupposing God and His revelation to His creatures would logically answer how anything can be known as certain and without Him it is just your best conjecture that relies on the way you define ‘best.’.

“Yes, I do as a necessity for there to be anything as certain or true.” -Me

“So you need an absolute to exist in order for your absolutes to exist. Can you hear yourself? This is like ‘God must exist since I can’t imagine any other possibility.’
Your needs, your ‘logic’ your ‘reason’ requires God as you describe him, in order for those tools to be valid.” GR

Well, if you can propose how we subjective human beings can know certainty without presupposing God I’m listening. Logically show me otherwise.

Both of us work from our ultimate highest authority. If it wasn’t then you would have to be mad to believe or rest your faith on.
“ Then you are using that very logic and reasoning, which requires God to exist, as the initial premise AND the conclusion, that God exists.
You’re doing squealing, smoky donuts in the philosophical parking lot. Circles, nothing but circles.” – GR

And you reason and use logic (or irrationality and illogic), which from your viewpoint requires not knowing/ disbelieving that God exists, which in turn presupposes a conclusion too, that there is no evidence for His existence and that you as a man are the measure of all things, things that you have no answer for. There is no neutrality in the construction of a world-view. You have built yours on basic core beliefs, one being that there is no evidence for God. So you funnel everything through this core belief. You make seeming comparisons between Santa, Odin and the Christian God that are really flimsy.

PART 2

“That statement by Jesus must be either true or false. It can’t be both true and false” –Me

“'Logically' speaking, perhaps.” -GR

Perhaps? Even here you doubt/question whether something must be either/or, but to you maybe BOTH true AND false at the same time. X=dog, X=cat – yes? It either is true or it isn’t true. It can’t be both true and false. There is no logical perhaps to it that I can fathom.

“That may satisfy you, but you discount an endless number of other possibilities. These words of Jesus, could be works of fiction. They could have been transcribed incorrectly, heard incorrectly, copied incorrectly or out of context.” – GR

That is where logic and reason comes into play. You would have to show me your evidence that His words are indeed works of fiction, or at least that it is more plausible to believe this.

“They may have been said, but maybe it wasn’t Jesus that said them.” –GR

Then the burden of proof is on you to disprove that Jesus said these words. We have eyewitness accounts that claim inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Can you prove the Holy Spirit does not exist? There are many avenues we could go down in laying down the proofs as Christians.

“Also the statement “I am the truth” is at best a claim, not at all an un-denied fact.” – GR

How do you know this? It is an assumption you make. As I said before, if it is true it is an undeniable fact.

“The rest of your logic crumbles immediately since you presuppose Jesus Is/was ‘the truth’. That’s absurd since you are trying to convince us of is whether there is in fact an immutable, absolute truth, presenting as evidence an extraordinary claim by an entity in whose very divinity we don’t even agree.” – GR

I haven’t been down that road with you yet. I have just presented it as a statement of fact that is true if the Bible is in fact God’s revelation to mankind. I have not laid down the proof for it as yet, except in trying to show that God must be presupposed as necessary in order to know things as certain. I could go further into this argument by testing the core foundation of your belief – what it rests on and supposedly originates from. That is what I am about right now. If you discount an almighty being – God, and not just any idea of God, but the Christian God then your ideas of origin must present something that is more plausible. I've never seen that from an atheist yet.

PART 3

The bible does not prove the bible. Jesus does not prove Jesus.” –GR

But the contents are evidence/proof that its words are trustworthy/reliable. Prophecy is evidence its words are trustworthy/reliable. The unity is evidence/proof that its words are trustworthy/reliable. Claims to eyewitness accounts are not something that can be easily dismissed unless you can provide a more logical explanation.

The purported NEED (actually, desire) for absolute truth/good/justice is not evidence of its actual existence.
The only way your ‘logic’ works at all is if all the debaters are already convinced that god exists, which is ridiculous if the very thing you are debating is whether or not god exists.
This is the very thing that Carstonio has, quite eloquently, been trying to tell you for several days.”

He/you may be trying to tell me that the evidence for God’s existence is ridiculous, but we have barely touched that evidence as of yet. We are still working on why his measure is the grounds for basing anything concrete on. His statements are mere assertions, just like you claim mine are, because neither one of us has put our evidence on the table and examined it yet. I am still trying to establish how he can know what he states with any degree of certainty, given a world-view that works outside the scope of God’s existence, therefore is must work on philosophical naturalistic grounds. There are only three or four ways of looking at origins,
1) It always existed.
2) It came into being.
3) It is an illusion.
4) I don’t care.
We are working on the idea that there was an origin that most scientists propose as being the Big Bang. We started down the road of causation, but I don’t see any logical explanations to this yet.

There is still a long way to go in opening this reasoning up.

Saying something does not necessarily make it so. That is true for both of us.

PART 4

“If I threw down a quote, or an entire book of quotes that all say that ODIN, was actually the one true god, would you accept that as evidence of the truth of the statements? I can lay out mountains of books about thousands of gods, all making similar extraordinary claims.” - GR

Most of these gods are based on myths. They are man made inventions. I can agree with that. Some of the human writers of the Bible claim that Christianity is not based on myth, but in fact eyewitness evidence. We can look at that later.

In your correspondence with RCofield and myself in regards to slavery I am suspicious that you even opened that link I posted for you regarding the Christian basis for slavery/servanthood, because you seem bent on comparing it to the slavery practiced in the South, or even in South Africa during Apartheid, not the ANE (ancient Near East) as related to the God of the Bible.

Btw, I lived in that part of the world. My uncle still lives in Fish Hoek and my mother was born in Queenstown, South Africa. I have experienced South Africa and its peoples as well as having lived and worked in South Africa for a year. We used to vacation there for extended periods of time, since my granny and aunt would invite us down for a stay.

“You accept NONE of these other texts as factual, you call them superstition and ‘man-made gods’ yet there is nothing even remotely remarkable or unique about your texts, your scriptures.
The nut of it is that there is simply no rational reason to accept your version of god over anyone else’s, or at all, unless, and only unless you ALREADY believe it is as you say it is.” – GR

As a matter of fact there is lots of remarkable, rational and unique aspects contained in the Bible. I’d be glad to take up that argument later.

Peterhuff:
“Well then you would have to demonstrate that something that is not fixed or absolute can be true”
No, you have made the extraordinary claim that truth is fixed and absolute. I have maintained time and time again that many things that are considered ‘true’ are so merely as 1. A matter of perspective. 2. Able to be considered less than absolutely ’true’ as new information is discovered. 3. An intangible thing, such as your god can be equally true to person A. and false to person B. 4. that many things like ideas, thoughts and beliefs are potentially neither true or false, but merely imaginings beyond verifiable measurability.
But we’re just dancing in the ether again….

“If you can propose how we subjective human beings can know certainty without presupposing God or thinking His thoughts after Him I’m listening. Logically show me otherwise”
You are the one demanding and claiming the existence of ‘certainty’. You are using that word as if it too were an undeniable absolute. That’s your worldview, not mine. In my world certainty is also relative. I am relatively certain that the sun is up outside. I am relatively certain it will rise again tomorrow. I am less certain the same could be said about a day in January a billion years from now. I am relatively certain that my car has enough gas to get me to town. I do not know it for sure, since I can only assume based on knowledge based on past performance and experiences. That level of relative certainty doesn’t frighten me into staying home. I’m certain enough that I will drive into town later without stressing too much over all the billions of improbable ways I could be wrong. (gnomes draining the tank?)

“And your reasoning and logic, which requires not knowing or disbelieving that God exists presupposes a conclusion too,”
Can you say the same thing about Orion? That you are merely pre-supposing the conclusion that he does not exist?

“that there is no evidence for His existence”
There is simply not enough credible evidence for me to believe in your god, unicorns, Ganesh, Thor, or forest nymphs. Should any of that change I will gladly reconsider.

“and that you as a man are the measure of all things, things that you have no answer for.”
Of course there are things I have no answer for. One would have to claim omniscience to do otherwise. Do you claim to have an answer for all things? Well, how nice for you. Though ‘God-did-it’ is not really a complete answer, it offers no knowledge whatsoever about the actual things we don’t know, it just defers all that unknown/secret/hidden knowledge to something we cannot see. You’re just putting all the hidden mysteries into an inaccessible box.

“You have built yours on basic core beliefs, one being that there is no evidence for God”
One for which there is no credible evidence. There is also no credible evidence that Robin Hood ever existed, I do not need to ‘funnel everything’ through that belief. Do you?

RCOFIELD:
ME: “Where are the defining ‘objective’ parts inherent and unique to Christianity?”
YOU: “That is exactly the question I am trying to lay the foundation to answer. For it to be done properly and convincingly, though, takes time, especially in this venue. So bear with me.”
YOU: “Thanks for the concession and the time spent clarifying your position on the issue of morality.Before responding in depth I would like to pose a quick question and get your feedback”

Hi Gladerunner,

I apologize for the error in a statement I made that I later realized I had over analyzed in my tired state last night concerning tastes.

Here is the statement again:

"Taste is not a value. Taste is a sense/sensation/ experience. Good is a value. Truth is a value. Justice is a value."

Yes, tasted used in the sense of preference can also be seen as a choice between right and wrong, good and bad. As such it would be something that a person valued.

But my argument still stands on subjective preference as something that is based not necessarily on goodness but on a shifting idea that cannot be defined as concrete since it means so many different things to so many people.

Dog can be defined in your world-view, but goodness can mean opposites depending on who is using it.

“how do you know that your truth is true. As a relativist it could change in a minute or it might not be true at all.” -Me

“I reject your extraordinary claim of a fixed, universal, immutable ‘truth’, since you have failed to demonstrate that one actually exists. I have no discernable fixed, universal, immutable ‘truth’ (as you describe it) in my worldview.” - GR

Well then you would have to demonstrate that something that is not fixed or absolute can be true. You have already admitted in your quantum quagmire that you just don’t know. As I explained, truth is defined as what is real, what is certain. I’m asking for your justification for the certainty in your world-view in knowing anything. I’ve explained that presupposing God and His revelation to His creatures would logically answer how anything can be known as certain.

“Yes, I do as a necessity for there to be anything as certain or true.” -Me

“So you need an absolute to exist in order for your absolutes to exist. Can you hear yourself? This is like ‘God must exist since I can’t imagine any other possibility.’
Your needs, your ‘logic’ your ‘reason’ requires God as you describe him, in order for those tools to be valid.” GR

Yes, logically an absolute standard/reference would have to exist to know anything absolutely. If you can propose how we subjective human beings can know certainty without presupposing God or thinking His thoughts after Him I’m listening. Logically show me otherwise.

“ Then you are using that very logic and reasoning, which requires God to exist, as the initial premise AND the conclusion, that God exists.
You’re doing squealing, smoky donuts in the philosophical parking lot. Circles, nothing but circles.” – GR

And your reasoning and logic, which requires not knowing or disbelieving that God exists presupposes a conclusion too, that there is no evidence for His existence and that you as a man are the measure of all things, things that you have no answer for. There is no neutrality in the construction of a world-view. You have built yours on basic core beliefs, one being that there is no evidence for God. So you funnel everything through this core belief.

GLADERUNNER,

"Yes I did... I think you are just avoiding me. I've posted tons of replies to your comments, you can drill down to them as easily as I can. I'm feeling a bit diss'd.
;-)"--GR

I went back over our dialog yesterday when you first posted your concern and the only thing that I found that I have not responded to directly was your last offering on the slavery/morality issue.

Other than that, I think I have responded (at least cursorily) to everything you have posted thus far. If I have overlooked something it was certainly not intentional. If you will, help me out. What am I missing?

It has certainly not been my intention to dismiss you. I have found our dialog to be stimulating thus far.

Peace, brother.

RCOFIELD:
"Did you see my question to you @ January 11, 2011 10:49 AM?"
Yes I did... I think you are just avoiding me. I've posted tons of replies to your comments, you can drill down to them as easily as I can. I'm feeling a bit diss'd.
;-)

Peterhuff:
4.
“how do you know that your truth is true. As a relativist it could change in a minute or it might not be true at all.”

I reject your extraordinary claim of a fixed, universal, immutable ‘truth’, since you have failed to demonstrate that one actually exists. I have no discernable fixed, universal, immutable ‘truth’ (as you describe it) in my worldview.

“Yes, I do as a necessity for there to be anything as certain or true.”
So you need an absolute to exist in order for your absolutes to exist. Can you hear yourself? This is like ‘God must exist since I can’t imagine any other possibility.’
Your needs, your ‘logic’ your ‘reason’ requires God as you describe him, in order for those tools to be valid. Then you are using that very logic and reasoning, which requires God to exist, as the initial premise AND the conclusion, that God exists.
You’re doing squealing, smoky donuts in the philosophical parking lot. Circles, nothing but circles.

“That statement by Jesus must be either true or false. It can’t be both true and false”
'Logically' speaking, perhaps. That may satisfy you, but you discount an endless number of other possibilities. These words of Jesus, could be works of fiction. They could have been transcribed incorrectly, heard incorrectly, copied incorrectly or out of context. They may have been said, but maybe it wasn’t Jesus that said them. Also the statement “I am the truth” is at best a claim, not at all an un-denied fact. The rest of your logic crumbles immediately since you presuppose Jesus Is/was ‘the truth’. That’s absurd since you are trying to convince us of is whether there is in fact an immutable, absolute truth, presenting as evidence an extraordinary claim by an entity in whose very divinity we don’t even agree.
The bible does not prove the bible. Jesus does not prove Jesus. The purported NEED (actually, desire) for absolute truth/good/justice is not evidence of its actual existence.
The only way your ‘logic’ works at all is if all the debaters are already convinced that god exists, which is ridiculous if the very thing you are debating is whether or not god exists.
This is the very thing that Carstonio has, quite eloquently, been trying to tell you for several days.
If I threw down a quote, or an entire book of quotes that all say that ODIN, was actually the one true god, would you accept that as evidence of the truth of the statements? I can lay out mountains of books about thousands of gods, all making similar extraordinary claims. You accept NONE of these other texts as factual, you call them superstition and ‘man-made gods’ yet there is nothing even remotely remarkable or unique about your texts, your scriptures.
The nut of it is that there is simply no rational reason to accept your version of god over anyone else’s, or at all, unless, and only unless you ALREADY believe it is as you say it is.

GLADERUNNER,

Did you see my question to you @ January 11, 2011 10:49 AM?

CARSTONIO,

Did you see my response to you @ January 11, 2011 2:04 AM?

Peterhuff:
3.
“So if two cultures both have different views of abortion, one good and one bad, they cannot both be true logically”
There you go again, using mathematical terms to try to define/prove intellectual concepts. Monkey wrenches and clouds.

“But in the relative world in which you live how can you ever be certain?”
I am ‘relatively’ certain of many, many things. I am ‘absolutely’ certain of hardly anything at all. I will suggest that there is as much actual uncertainty in your belief system as mine… (God willing.)

“Yes, and in my world-view that claims there is an absolute objective standard that is possible to define something as objectively good, presupposing that God exists, that is possible.”
Rejected, on the grounds of lack of evidence.

“What happens if you take the values that you have adopted in America and move to India where the culture has a different concept of good? Now whose values will you accept since it is considered immoral to have the values you have been brought up with?”

Wow, you’re really not seeing this at all are you?
I have stated before that I HAVE lived in foreign lands amongst those with vastly different cultures. Once again you are putting words in my mouth, I never said other cultures were ‘immoral’.
Only a complete narcissist would assume that the world will adapt to his will and ways around his footsteps.
If I visit a neighbors house, I am respectful of his rules and policies for that house, regardless of whether I have the same set of standards or not, that’s simple respect. Same if I visit another culture. I do not have to accept or adopt every tenant of that culture, there is a huge neutral position that quite can easily be navigated; simply show respect for the culture. If you conduct business with someone that doesn’t share your belief system does war break out? Does blood get let?
It is simply not necessary for one to either surrender to, or wipe out, differing worldviews. There’s plenty of room for everyone if we can just agree to get along most of the time.

Have you ever actually spent time with people form other cultures? How’d that work out for you?

Peterhuff:
2.
Bombard away.

“Btw, how do you get empirical VALUES”
If a thing can be empirically measured, then it can be assigned values. My coffee cup can hold 12 ounces of coffee, I can confirm this with physical measurements. It’s a 12-ounce coffee cup, that is one of its empirical values.

“Good is a value. Truth is a value. Justice is a value.”
In one sense of the word. I would argue if you were to imply that they are absolute ‘fixed’ values though. They are subjective/relative.

“Is your last statement (above) relatively true or absolutely true? How can truth be relative? It either describes what is real or it does not.”
Sheesh, you really want to do this? Is THIS what bothers you? These sophomoric, pointless, and endless, self-serving esoteric arguments over the essence of nothingness? You think there is some sort of victory to be found in this tired, verbal tic-tac-toe tournament?
You have defined ‘truth’ for yourself. You seem to see it as a fixed, never-changing golden stake in the ground. You also seem to think that all things, objects or concepts can be neatly categorized as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or as ‘true’ or ‘false’. You seem to fail to see the overwhelming evidence/preponderance of (shades of) gray matter in the universe, both intellectually and physically.
If you can function with that perspective then that’s just fine, do so. I’m only here to let you know that yours is not the only possible or commonly accepted worldview. Yours is not more ‘right’ than mine, just different.
If you wish to debate the ‘truth’ of unicorns vs. the ‘truth’ of forest nymphs, by all means knock yourself out. I will say this though, unless one of those creatures ever actually comes forward, you’re merely speculating, and any debates you have prior to that are entirely pointless and prove nothing. You can’t ‘logic’ or ‘reason’ something into existence.

“Good to you is in the eye of the beholder or culture. So how can something that is not fixed on an objective reality be good, be true? It becomes a choice based on personal tastes and preferences. Truth or goodness becomes what you prefer as it did with what Hitler preferred and as such you find a way to justify it to yourself.”
That’s is exactly what I am saying . ‘Goodness’ and ‘badness’ are merely labels, not divinely fixed map points.

“do you really think that Santa and Jesus are comparable where the evidence and reasoning is concerned?”
Exactly the same. Santa is like training wheels for the more convoluted Jesus myth.

(Cntd.)

Peterhuff:
1.
“Justice implies rightfully executing judgment. If their rightness is different from yours then what gives you the right to condemn them or judge their standard as wrong”
You’re using terms that I have not employed. I have not said that other cultures were ‘wrong’. I have in fact been rather insistent that other cultures are merely ‘different’.
“Nothing unless there is a universal code of ethics in which something is universally right or wrong”
I agree, you assigned the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, not I.
“In a relative world we all make our own standards or bend to those that are forced on us by others. ”
Yet another false dichotomy. There is another, and perhaps many more options. We all have standards, true. But each day each of us that interface with others with different standards, even only slightly different, compromise, or interact in spite of those differences. Right and wrong, good and bad, and universality are virtually meaningless in this intercourse except in extreme cases.
Our standards are our standards. We arrive at them through our culture, our upbringing and education. There are fairly common standards, then there are some rather specific to time, place and culture. If we all lived on our own remote islands, the different standards would not be much of an issue. Since we do NOT live on remote islands, chances are good that we’ll interact, personally or professionally with people from other cultures. We need not ‘force’ our standards on them, nor they us. All we need do is find common ground and work from that platform. No ‘good’ or ‘bad’ judgments required.
It is foolish however to think there is no judgment actually going on, obviously most people are biased toward their own standard set. But there is no need whatsoever to imagine that this means we should go to war or forcefully jam our rules down any one else’s culture.
The only ‘good’ I can assign to interactions with other cultures is the mutually beneficial outcome of those interactions, WITHOUT one culture needing to disassemble their own set for the sake of the other, either by force, surrender or coercion.
I am required to wear a suit for monthly meetings, I am not required to wear a suit on the regular job sites. Neither standard set is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, just different. I can manage both without my own personal opinion causing conflict.
You seem to insist on making everything ‘good’ or bad’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It really doesn’t have to be that way at all.
(cntd)

Final post tonight Gladerunner. Please do not feel obligated to reply right away. I'm working for the next two days so I would prefer to see you address RCofield first.

“Just because something is believed true does not necessarily mean that it is.” – Me

“I couldn’t agree more.” –GR

But as a relativist (excuse the label but it does seem to fit by what you are describing to me) how do you know that your truth is true. As a relativist it could change in a minute or it might not be true at all.

“But to know as certain absolute, immutable, universal truth logically it would have to come from. . . ” – ME

“The problem with this assertion is the initial premise. You are claiming the existence of ‘certain absolute, immutable, universal truth’. - GR

Yes, I do as a necessity for there to be anything as certain or true.

“To believe that two distinct social conventions can both have a different idea of goodness that is contrary to the other and that both of these can be right or relatively true goes against the laws of non-contradiction that state that A cannot be both A and non-A” - Me

“You are trying to apply physical laws (mathematical logic) to metaphysical notions.” – GR

Not physical laws, logical laws or concepts that apply to truth. There is a big difference. And how can a law be physical? Do you mean laws that govern the physical world?

“Which is like trying to use a monkey wrench to adjust a cloud. Wrong tool.” – GR

Not at all. Let me show you why. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” – John 14:6.

In order for this to be true Jesus would have to be speaking truthfully and be the only way to eternal life. If He is the truth then He cannot also be lying. A = truth. A does not equal a lie.

To put it another way: The Law of Identity states that A is A. A cannot not be A, or to put it another way, truth cannot be true and not true simultaneously.

The Law of Contradictions states that A cannot be both A and not not-A. So truth cannot be true and false simultaneously and in the same sense.

The Law of Excluded Middle states that A is either A or not-A. That statement by Jesus must be either true or false. It can’t be both true and false. Jesus is either the only way or He is not the only way. He cannot be both the only way and also not the only way.

“ Scholastic philosophy is full of examples like this. You are saying that broccoli cannot both taste good and bad. A value; taste or ‘goodness’ is relative.” _GR

Yes, a taste is relative to the person tasting, but it is EITHER good tasting OR it is not good tasting in relation to that persons tastes. So it is EITHER true OR it is not true to that persons tastes as to their preference. It cannot be both good AND bad to that persons tastes, or true and false to that persons tastes. So at that particular time and in that particular situation what that person is tasting is either or. It can’t be both.

Hi Gladerunner,

“So I think we should establish if you believe in the laws of non-contradiction, for that is what both logic and communication is based on” – Me

If you are asking if an object, belief, idea, can only be stated as having one of two possible states, good/bad, true/false, no. I do not subscribe to that at all. Aristotle seems to have presumed a binary universe.” -GR

I’m asking if truth can be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense.

“I’m not a philosophy student/master, so pardon my ignorance, but doesn’t the laws of non-contradiction also carry a caveat? “. . . in the same respect and at the same time”
It is my contention that we, individuals and as groups in agreement assign values to objects and behaviors. These values are not fixed, but are relative based on time and respect.” –GR

Yes, a caveat, in the same sense and same time or simultaneously. So abortion cannot both be good and not good simultaneously, or at the same time and same sense. So if two cultures both have different views of abortion, one good and one bad, they cannot both be true logically. What you are saying is that they can. But in the relative world in which you live how can you ever be certain?

“Hitler did was no better or worse than what Mother Teresa” – Me

“You have assigned a label, ‘good’ to MT. You have assigned a label ‘bad’ to Hitler. You’re in luck, most of the world agrees with you.” GR

Yes, and in my world-view that claims there is an absolute objective standard that is possible to define something as objectively good, presupposing that God exists, that is possible. If (and I use this as a question mark for your frame of reference) He does and we are barely touching on the evidence yet, I can truly know that something is good because God is the ultimate measure. That is His nature.

In your world-view goodness is subjective and changing so it can never be a definite value. There is no fixed basis for goodness. That is the point I continue to make. Your values are blurry and uncertain. Why is what you believe actually ‘good?’ Others have a different standard that says your standard is bad. Whose is actually ‘right’ - yours, theirs, nobodies?

What happens if you take the values that you have adopted in America and move to India where the culture has a different concept of good? Now whose values will you accept since it is considered immoral to have the values you have been brought up with?

Hi Gladerunner,

I went through your arguments and came up with about six pages of responses. I don't want to bombard you.

I did find faulty reasoning in your arguments on numerous occasions.

I'll supply a few for now and them bring in others later.

“How can it change from being true to being false?” – ME

“I think you are again assigning empirical values to non-empirical concepts. A subjective thing, a belief, can easily be ‘true’ to one person and ‘false’ to another.” –GR

Btw, how do you get empirical VALUES? Is that not an oxymoron? Empirical implies what can be seen and tested physically; values implies non-physical concepts.

No it can’t be true to one person and not to another. Truth is what conforms to what is real/objective, so what does not conform to what is real is not true. It is a falsehood.

A value; taste or ‘goodness’ is relative.” _GR

Taste is not a value. Taste is a sense/sensation/ experience. Good is a value. Truth is a value. Justice is a value.

Is your last statement (above) relatively true or absolutely true? How can truth be relative? It either describes what is real or it does not.

In a chance universe, one that denies God and is believed to have come about by unintentional natural happenstance, how does physical unthinking matter arrive at a state where it has being, mind, and intention, that it can meditate on goodness and truth? I mean how absurd a world-view that has zero explanatory capability without borrowing from the Christian framework, and yet denies its Creator.

In the universe that God created truth is what conforms and confirms to what is real, what He made. In your universe truth is what you believe and can change depending on the person. Reality is what the person makes it, for it changes and is relative to the individual or culture. At least that is what I get you as saying. Good to you is in the eye of the beholder or culture. So how can something that is not fixed on an objective reality be good, be true? It becomes a choice based on personal tastes and preferences. Truth or goodness becomes what you prefer as it did with what Hitler preferred and as such you find a way to justify it to yourself.

Btw, in another example you cite Santa as a belief that you once thought was true and you give your reasons, but do you really think that Santa and Jesus are comparable where the evidence and reasoning is concerned?

Hi Gladerunner,

“So we are back to the premise that judging another cultures values of good would be immoral since each culture has the ‘right’ to determine that good for themselves” - Me

"No, not at all. You are applying the label ‘immoral’ to judgment of others’ cultures, I did not. We tend to judge other cultures based on our own standards. Other cultures may see things differently." - Gladerunner

Justice implies rightfully executing judgment. If their rightness is different from yours then what gives you the right to condemn them or judge their standard as wrong? It is right for them. Nothing unless there is a universal code of ethics in which something is universally right or wrong. Your standards are no better or no worse than any other cultural standard unless there is such a measure that is universal. All you have is just a preference between peoples. And even among your people groups there is great division.

Your relative standard is 'good' because you believe it to be 'good.' Why 'should' what you believe be of any significance to me or the standard for others? In a relative world we all make our own standards or bend to those that are forced on us by others. There is nothing to base goodness on other than our particular preferences.

GLADERUNNER,

Did you see my question to you @ January 11, 2011 10:49 AM?

CARSTONIO,

Did you see my response to you @ January 11, 2011 2:04 AM?

Peterhuff:
3.
“So we are back to the premise that judging another cultures values of good would be immoral since each culture has the ‘right’ to determine that good for themselves”
No, not at all. You are applying the label ‘immoral’ to judgment of others’ cultures, I did not. We tend to judge other cultures based on our own standards. Other cultures may see things differently.
On a personal level:
You enter a room with a lot of chairs, the DMV or something like that. You see in one area a group of adults mostly reading or texting or just staring off into space. Another section of the room is occupied by tattooed, shaved head, leather clad rowdies who are yelling, making rude gestures and generally acting up. Where do you sit? You are making a judgment of whom you would rather be around. There’s nothing inherently or objectively moral or immoral about your judgment, you merely choose to associate, abide with or interact with one group more so than the other. Is your decision good/bad, immoral/moral?
We as a nation and individually can observe other cultures and decide whether we wish to associate, trade or partner with them. If those other cultures seek benefit from a relationship with ours then they too will realize that they either have to ignore certain differences if they are petty or less important than the desired benefit, or in certain circumstances change some of those differences.
China wants to play in the global economy. In order to do so however they had to tolerate cultural differences and adapt to, at least in part, certain capitalistic ideals they once considered completely foul. Societal compromise. It’s not perfect, it’s often not pretty, but the only other alternative is outright war.
Our nation/society gets along quite well with many cultures that are all but completely foreign to our own. S. Korea, Japan, India as prime examples. I have lived in some of these places and can assure you that there are many, many differences in individual and cultural thought. What to do about it? We could invade those countries and force them to be more like us. (this is the old fashioned way) Or we could reserve judgment and just share/get along based on our common, mutual benefit. Is that in your mind immoral?

Peterhuff:
2.
“So I think we should establish if you believe in the laws of non-contradiction, for that is what both logic and communication is based on”
If you are asking if an object, belief, idea, can only be stated as having one of two possible states, good/bad, true/false, no. I do not subscribe to that at all. Aristotle seems to have presumed a binary universe.
I’m not a philosophy student/master, so pardon my ignorance, but doesn’t the laws of non-contradiction also carry a caveat? “. . . in the same respect and at the same time”
It is my contention that we, individuals and as groups in agreement assign values to objects and behaviors. These values are not fixed, but are relative based on time and respect.

“Hitler did was no better or worse than what Mother Teresa”
You have assigned a label, ‘good’ to MT. You have assigned a label ‘bad’ to Hitler. You’re in luck, most of the world agrees with you.
When Hitler rose to power, he was not immediately lovingly embraced by his nation, he was accepted simply as the better of various evils. Germany was a real mess, politically and economically, after WWI. Hitler took the pulse, devised a plan and spoke to the peoples’ pains and struggles. The ugly stuff that came later was more like a frog in a pot of water, the temperature was ramped up slowly. As the economy started recovering, industry started producing, the mood of the people improved, they were getting paychecks again. Sure, they knew they were building tanks, bombs and u-boats, but at least their families could buy food again.
There’s an old saying ‘Mussolini made the trains run on time.’ About that same era and a similar culture. The Italian people accepted Mussolini because he solved problems that were important to people. I do not know for sure if anyone ever called Mussolini, or Hitler ‘good’ but surely you have once or more come across a situation where good and bad were not so clear, that really the only options available were nearly equally detestable.
Assigning such rigid labels to people can only really done in retrospect, as a label we apply based on the results of their actions. This exemplifies the perspective-based and analog nature of value assessments.
Aside from that, your strawman of extreme comparisons is weak. You asked if Hitler was no better or worse than MT. How about this. Was my uncle Phil no better/worse than my Uncle Tim? Hint: Neither ever killed anyone or were ever accused of any crimes. They both completed high school, married, had kids and pursued careers in business. Which was better/worse than the other?
Your only logical answer to this would be ‘I don’t know’ since you don’t have enough information to make a sound, immutable judgment. As more information was given to you your judgment might even vary, might it not?
And to get even more esoterically nonsensical, what affect does your judgment(s) actually have on my uncles? Might someone else judge them differently?

Peterhuff:
1.

“Is truth not absolute, fixed?”
Not that I can tell. There are some solid things out there, gravity, magnets, electricity, mathematics, etc. that are pretty reliable and can be counted on for consistency and predictability. But even with those physical concepts as we drill down to the quantum level we are finding out new information about them. Concepts, beliefs, ideas, ideals are not readily subject to empirical measurement so we can’t really determine how absolute or universally true they are.
“How can it change from being true to being false?”
I think you are again assigning empirical values to non-empirical concepts. A subjective thing, a belief, can easily be ‘true’ to one person and ‘false’ to another.
Santa Claus used to be ‘true’ to me. Stories were constructed and widespread, my parents persuaded me to believe it as true, even to the point of lying and deceit. I had no doubt whatsoever that when the TV weatherman reported that they’d detected a fast moving craft heading in from the north pole on Christmas Eve that Santa was indeed on his way. All the evidence was presented to me and reinforced by the very people I trusted most. Then rumors spread, doubts emerged and lo and behold when new, conflicting information was confirmed, the whole Santa universe collapsed. ‘True’ became ‘false’.

“Just because something is believed true does not necessarily mean that it is.”
I couldn’t agree more.

“But to know as certain absolute, immutable, universal truth logically it would have to come from. . . ”
The problem with this assertion is the initial premise. You are claiming the existence of ‘certain absolute, immutable, universal truth’.

“To believe that two distinct social conventions can both have a different idea of goodness that is contrary to the other and that both of these can be right or relatively true goes against the laws of non-contradiction that state that A cannot be both A and non-A”

You are trying to apply physical laws (mathematical logic) to metaphysical notions. Which is like trying to use a monkey wrench to adjust a cloud. Wrong tool. Scholastic philosophy is full of examples like this. You are saying that broccoli cannot both taste good and bad. A value; taste or ‘goodness’ is relative. It varies with perspective, culture, time and place.
My home county sees alcohol as ‘bad’ (prohibits the sale). Our neighboring county does not. Is alcohol good or bad?

Hey GLADERUNNER,

"So far you’ve left open about five things that you were going to get back to me on. Still waiting."--GR

I'm sorry. What did I miss? (I may have too many "conversations" going on in these threads..... :-) )

RCOFIELD:
So far you’ve left open about five things that you were going to get back to me on. Still waiting.

“On what ground/basis would slaves in contemporary society be “qualified for our sympathies/moral indignation at their treatment”?”
I recall South Africa before the end of apartheid. The evening news would recount stories and show visible abuses by the white minority and the ‘less-than-fully-human’ majority. Though not exactly slavery, it was essentially pretty close. Many op-ed pieces in papers, documentaries, and even rock stars joined the battle to raise awareness and apply pressure towards the SA government. Over the course of several years, due to this pressure as well as international sanctions and rebukes, SA conceded and held free elections. At long last the voice of the majority was officially acknowledged.
I don’t know who started it, but the situation in SA was deemed simply unacceptable by much of the free world (those places that had denounced/eliminated their own forms of apartheid/racial slavery decades/centuries earlier) The pressure built until SA had little choice but to change its ways if it wanted to maintain its place in modern society.
There are still atrocities in the world, Somalia is a powder keg, Sudan is struggling with cessation, etc. these backwaters have a choice. If they want to participate in modern civil society they have to make certain concessions, or else be left to wallow in their own swill.
I don’t think there is a single tripping point, a definitive event or occurrence that automatically flips the tide of public opinion, it appears to be much more subtle. Enough graphic images and stories from these places will eventually, hopefully, cause a groundswell of disdain.

“And could you give me a general idea of what you mean when you use the term “moral indignation”?”
Sure. When our standards/values are significantly violated to the point that it arouses us to consider taking some form of action. As we look and news from bloody child-soldiers in Somalia, for example. Or even closer to home, images of dogs/cats rescued from squalid conditions, or when we see zealots protesting at the burials of soldiers, etc. It’s not the same level for everyone, some people can look at these things and go along their merry way. Others see these things as a call for action. The word ’moral’ is not anathema to me. I agree that we, individuals and societies, have certain well-established as well as unwritten standards of acceptable behavior. Many common ones, many not. My only issue with tossing the word around too loosely is that many religions use the word to indicate a fixed set of divinely inspired absolutes.
Atheism does not, at all (as far as I know. We (atheists) don’t have central authorities releasing ‘bulls’ on these things.), question/deny the existence of morals or morality, just the divine origin and immutable absoluteness of them as espoused by many religious doctrines.

PeterHuff,

Rather than answer every one of your points in detail, which would take several posts, I will attempt to answer more generally...

I use absolutism to mean arguing or thinking in either-or terms. This ignores possibilities that don't fit into that binary framework. And as usually practiced, it describes the disfavored choice in illogical or caricatured terms, to create a straw man for the favored choice.

That's what I see in the argument that only alternative to a creator god is "something from nothing." The latter goes against the principles of thermodynamics, and is really a misapplication of a theological concept. And that's also what I see in the claim that nothing makes sense without such a god. That doesn't explain how the god came into being. The postulation implies that the god itself must have come from nothing.

My general point about possibilities is that we don't have the information to flatly rule out the possibility of anything. When I state a possibility, I'm offering it as something to be considerered, not something that's definite or even likely. The burden is on any claim that a possibility should be ruled out.

You state that "By definition God is the greatest Being there is or else He would not be God." But different religions and different believers define their gods in different ways, and it doesn't matter whether we're talking about a single god or many gods. No one person or religion has a monopoly on what defines a god. If one is going to assert a single god, then at a minimum one must show why the assertions of multiple gods are wrong. The point of my first post in this thread is that when believers and atheists argue "god or no god," both are working from the same set of assumptions.

Hi Carstonio,
"Logically thinking comes from being, so how does being come to be? Does being ultimately come from nothing?" - ME

“We don't have the answer to the former question. The latter question assumes that there was a nothing, and we shouldn't make that assumption.” – Carstonio

If you don’t have the answer then how sure are you that it is not God that being comes from? You witness beings coming from beings. Where do you see beings coming from non-beings

"You make assumptions that evolutionary science or astrophysics has sufficient answers to the problem of origins" - ME

“Incorrect. Just because I criticize one assumption doesn't mean I make an opposite assumption.” – Carstonio

Well what are you doing then? Either you believe that life and the universe arose from blind indifferent chance factors or you believe that an ultimate supernatural Being, hence outside of the natural realm, created the universe and life, or you have no opinion which appears not to be the case since your come at this from a definite presuppositional stance, or everything is just illusion? Which do you believe it is?

PART 2

"basically what I read you as saying is who cares. Yet here we debate." – Me

“I care about knowledge, and I care when people make speculations and mislabel them as knowledge. I emphasize that saying that god postulations amount to speculations does not amount to labeling the postulations as false. It means that we have no way of knowing whether the postulations are correct or incorrect.” – Carstonio

You believe I’m speculating, but how do you know since you don’t know God and you have admitted you have no way of knowing? If you believe you have no way of knowing then you have defeated the idea of God before even beginning. The world and everything in it is created and belongs to God. Therefore there is the natural realm that shows His existence as well as His self-disclosure in the form of the Bible. Both these evidences point to Him and we can investigate those claims further if you are up to it.

"I contend it is a huge and foolish philosophical assumption that you are leaping to in saying it doesn't matter." - Me

“That's not quite my position. I'm saying that postulations that gods exist or that they don't exist are based in emotion, where people wish they exist or wish they don't. The correct answer to a question has nothing to do with one's emotional investment in the answer.” – Carstonio

I’m not talking about gods, just God.

That is your assumption that the existence of God is based on emotion and nothing but. That is similar to the Freudian concept of the native alone on the volcanic island in which the volcano starts to rumble, so he invents a sky hook – a god – to appease his fears.

PART 3

"you believe something that you can't prove" - Me

“And what do you assert that I believe? My larger point is about rejecting the concept of belief - an assertion is either true or false.” – Carstonio

Rejecting the concept of belief is a belief in itself. You believe that God is based on emotions and that there is no evidences for Him for starters. As for concept of belief, if you are capable of rational thoughts then you have a belief, and you are since you are quite capable of communicating with me. The question is what that belief is centered on and what are its core tenets?

"I am making the statement that God is necessary to prove it or anything ultimately.” - Me

“No, that's an assumption, the same one that ultimately drives intelligent design.” – Carstonio

At the moment it is a statement based on evidence that I have not offered you yet, so to you it is an assertion. Are you denying that intelligent design is a feasible philosophical explanation – you an intelligent being who is designing your own argument in reply to mine?

"If there is not then nothing ultimately matters, truth can be whatever you want it to be, you can just make it up and believe whatever you like." – Me

“Not only is that an assumption, it embodies the falsehood of absolutism.” - Carstonio

The falsehood of absolutism? Are you absolutely sure of that? You can’t deny the absolute without stating it. If you are not absolutely sure then how can you know that absolutism is false? If you are absolutely sure then you have just stated an absolute and your argument is self-refuting. It self-destructs.

PART 3

"you believe something that you can't prove" - Me

“And what do you assert that I believe? My larger point is about rejecting the concept of belief - an assertion is either true or false.” – Carstonio

Rejecting the concept of belief is a belief in itself. You believe that God is based on emotions and that there is no evidences for Him for starters. As for concept of belief, if you are capable of rational thoughts then you have a belief, and you are since you are quite capable of communicating with me. The question is what that belief is centered on and what are its core tenets?

"I am making the statement that God is necessary to prove it or anything ultimately.” - Me

“No, that's an assumption, the same one that ultimately drives intelligent design.” – Carstonio

At the moment it is a statement based on evidence that I have not offered you yet, so to you it is an assertion. Are you denying that intelligent design is a feasible philosophical explanation – you an intelligent being who is designing your own argument in reply to mine?

"If there is not then nothing ultimately matters, truth can be whatever you want it to be, you can just make it up and believe whatever you like." – Me

“Not only is that an assumption, it embodies the falsehood of absolutism.” - Carstonio

The falsehood of absolutism? Are you absolutely sure of that? You can’t deny the absolute without stating it. If you are not absolutely sure then how can you know that absolutism is false? If you are absolutely sure then you have just stated an absolute and your argument is self-refuting. It self-destructs.

PART 4

“Just because one craves meaning is no reason to assume that gods exist. That ignores the possibility that gods exist but meaning doesn't. It also ignores the possibility that meaning could be created by humans instead.” – Carstonio

There again you are making a lot of assertions too. What do you base those assertions on? How do you get meaning from matter? How do you get mind, a thinking being, from matter? Are these not your own set of assumptions/assertions that defy logic?

“The idea that human-created meaning is ultimately no meaning at all is an absolutist one.” – Carstonio

Is that an absolutely true statement or is it subject to change? You are asserting these things but how do you know?

"we interpret the evidence either by 1) a philosophical naturalistic cause, or 2) supernatural cause." - Me

That's another false dichotomy. The concept of "supernatural" is not valid because it rests on the assumption of a natural/supernatural divide, where things such as gods or miracles amount to suspensions or violations of physical laws. It ignores the possilibility that gods may be part of the universe instead of on the other side of a divide.” – Carstonio

You say a false dichotomy? Where does truth come from? Are you making an absolute statement, since you state it as if it MUST be true? A cause is greater than its effect and everything that had a beginning has a cause. By definition God is the greatest Being there is or else He would not be God. By definition the Christian God is eternal and without cause, which solves the problem of being from within the universe since the universe had a beginning, and God did not, unless of course you want to argue that the universe did not and go against the most believed scientific evidence. Is that where you want to go?

PART 5

"logically God is the only sufficient answer to origins because only by presupposing God can you make sense of origins." - Me

“But the question of whether something exists or doesn't exist is an empirical matter and not a logical one.” – Carstonio

No, it is not an empirical matter but certainly a logical matter. First show me how energy and matter can produce thinking beings, or any life for that matter. It has not been show logically to be possible that I am aware of. If energy and matter always existed then show me how this is possible and logical. Show me how it is possible for unintentional processes to create anything.

“That's like claiming that one can prove the existence of black holes or other planets through logic. One can treat the concept of a first cause as a proposed hypothesis, but it remains speculation unless one can test it or falsify it.” - Carstonio

What is that first cause that you can test? Surely there must logically be one, or are you positing that something came from nothing? Can you show me how that is logically possible?

"You either have a uncaused first cause or an infinite regression of causes, for surely you are not going to argue that something came from nothing?" – Me

PART 6

“That's more absolutism. Specificially, the idea that the only alternative to a first cause is "something from nothing." It's possible that there was a nothing, but again that remains speculation.” – Carstonio

Yes God is absolute. How is it possible that there was nothing and that nothing came into being? How can nothing come into being, logically now? It is wild speculation that requires a lot more faith to believe than anything that I believe.

“I must emphasize that my points apply equally to the assertion that gods don't exist. Metaphorically I'm standing here with my arms folded, asking for more proof than simply speculation or logical argument. Otherwise there's no reason to take a position either way.” – Carstonio

Where do you want to start, with the Bible, God’s natural revelation of Himself – the universe and planet earth, or with the presuppositional argument from impossibility of the contrary? The last argument we have been engaged in for some time now for I have been asking you how you can make sense of ultimately anything without first presupposing God.

Hi Gladerunner,

“In order for there to be such a thing as truth there would have to be a reality - something real - in which that truth is based on.” – Me

“This concept of ‘truth’ as a fixed object, an absolute, immutable, universal stake in the ground is foreign to me.
Truth for me is merely a commonly accepted knowledge or notion, that best fits the information available at this time and place. “ – GR

Well this brings up other issues in the field of epistemology, on how you know what you know. I’m not as efficient in thought as RCofield who sets up an argument really well, and knows how to progress and follow it through to a certain conclusion, so I’ll save this for later. We’ll just see how each of us makes sense of things.

Is truth not absolute, fixed? How can it change from being true to being false? Common acceptable knowledge is not always true. Does not science work on testing hypothesis for truth in which commonly held positions are constantly changing as our knowledge increases, and supposed truths are proven false. Just because something is believed true does not necessarily mean that it is.

But to know as certain absolute, immutable, universal truth logically it would have to come from an omniscient, eternal Being, a Being who knows all things, and He would have to have revealed it to His creatures, or they would have to think His thoughts after Him. This in part is the claim that the Bible makes among other things, such as “in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Colossians 2:2b-3)

You will never know God personally outside of Christ, just things about Him. To have that relational interaction with God is possible only through Christ because to come into His holy presence requires that intercessory and mediated work of Christ Jesus.

PART 2

“You've blurred the distinction because if all goodness is is preference then which preference out of the six to seven billion are you going to set as your standard” – Me

“Once again you understate reality. Just look around the world. There are indeed varying sets of social values. This does not necessarily lead to chaos, but it certainly can cause inter-tribal/cultural/national strife and.
Many societies now live under some form of self rule, elected representation. That is as you say ‘goodness by preference’ the preference, not just of one person, but by a plurality of the values of the self governed. Tyrannies are tyrannies, but even they have established social value standards, many of which are very much like those founding self-governed societies, primarily because they work for the benefit of both self-governed and tyranny governed states. Unrestricted murder, theft, etc. have been proven over time and in many places to be detrimental to society and individuals within that society.” – GR

No, I don’t think I understated reality concerning ethics in relation to goodness. I understand that there are many different views of what goodness is in your world-view. Postmodernity/relativism/subjectivism is having its way.

What is the reality of goodness? To believe that two distinct social conventions can both have a different idea of goodness that is contrary to the other and that both of these can be right or relatively true goes against the laws of non-contradiction that state that A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same sense or B is not non-B. Goodness is non-goodness depending upon which culture you live in. Is that logical?

So I think we should establish if you believe in the laws of non-contradiction, for that is what both logic and communication is based on.

PART 3

“You are arguing that taste determines good or better or best and I am arguing that it can't because there would be nothing innately good or bad about Hitler's Germany or Mother Teresa's Calcutta” – Me

Gladerunner, my thoughts are in [brackets].

"Not merely ‘tastes’. That minimizes significantly what is really going on. What actually determines a society’s morality is common agreement. [Based on tastes. Well in your world-view some subjective person somewhere had to originate the thought as to what goodness was and convince others that such a ‘notion’ was in fact mutually beneficial based on his/her feelings, yet so many wars are fought over such feelings.] No one person’s tastes are the determining factor (except in a complete monarchy). [In my world-view I can agree with that statement because mankind is made in the image and likeness of God, and have that moral compass/consciousness in which many suppress that truth of God, the ultimate Monarch, but in a natural philosophical world-view, which would be one that is believed by those who deny/suppress the truth of God, a mindless, irrational, unintentional, chance process is ultimately responsible for morality – go figure.] Much like my analogy of the newlyweds, a couple, tribe, civilization develops rules of conduct for itself. [Yes and those rules of conduct are based on the ideas that originate from subjective minds and is subject to change.] Some, the big ones, are made into laws, for which there is stated punishment for the violation, and a system of ‘justice’ that society uses to enforce and adjudicate these laws. [Justice implies doing what is right. Your ‘right’ is subject to change depending on which culture you live in. In one right is right and in another it is wrong. Go figure – right is wrong???] In olden times, there was typically a tribal leader, king or chieftain, a central authority that made the laws and meted out judgment. As civilization grew and progressed, forms of representative governance and self rule evolved. Even today this is not complete, we still have dictatorships and non-elected governance in some places. [It’s a lot more common than that]
What makes something good or bad is common standards as determined by societies. These standards certainly differ from place to place and evolve/change over time. [So we are back to the premise that judging another cultures values of good would be immoral since each culture has the ‘right’ to determine that good for themselves, so what Hitler did was no better or worse than what Mother Teresa did and what Hitler did is just not something that you may personally believe is good, but it is justified by the society that he lived in, after all it is just the morally accepted behavior of that culture or that group.]

CARSTONIO,

I remain appreciative of the civil exchanges.

“I'm talking about instances where no conclusion is testable or falsifiable, and I'm criticizing the idea that one should simply concoct a conclusion in such cases. Which leads to my next point...”—CARSTONIO

I am in no way advocating the “concocting” of conclusions. That is self-evidently self-defeating.

However, the “God-hypothesis” is testable by the means a combination of logic, reason, and observable effects.

Further, it is falsifiable by proving that all things attributed to God are, in fact, attributable to a cause or causes other than God. You seem to be insisting that “difficult to falsify” = “not falsifiable.” Those are simply not equal statements. I know that is a tall order on the “falsifiable” side, but keep in mind that either conclusion (God or no God) does not require perfect resolution of every question but only that degree of verification that meets the requirements of probability and reason—which is true with any hypothesis, be it scientific or philosophical.

“Would you provide examples? Most often the god explanations for events are merely arguments from incredulity - "We don't know what caused X, so it must have been a being with the power to cause anything." “—CARSTONIO

I agree that arguments from incredulity prove nothing. To begin by immediately offering examples of observable effects of the existence of God would be to run the risk of being accused of “arguments from incredulity” when that is simply not the case.

Rather, may I propose that you allow me to start from a fixed point, work from that point using reason and logic to argue toward the existence of God, and then argue from the point of God back to the observable evidences? If you are agreeable to that let me know.

YOU SAID: “I misspoke earlier. To clarify my statement, it may be possible for things like emotions to exist if minds didn't exist, but we don't know how it's possible, so we shouldn't assume that minds can only be created by other minds. Again, that's the same problem with creationism and intelligent design.”

I ASKED: “Excluding the presupposition-laden example of evolution theory, are you aware of any instance where order and complexity are evident absent a mind?”

YOU RESPONDED: “I'm not making that assumption but simply questioning the opposite assumption.”

What assumption are you referring to? You clearly stated that “we shouldn't assume that minds can only be created by other minds.” My question does not call for any assumptions. I am merely questioning you as to what observable evidences you would offer as a basis for your statement.

One loose end here that I am curious about:

YOU: “Wind is certainly physical.”

ME: How so?

Peace, brother.

GLADERUNNER,

Thanks for the concession and the time spent clarifying your position on the issue of morality.

Before responding in depth I would like to pose a quick question and get your feedback.

On what ground/basis would slaves in contemporary society be “qualified for our sympathies/moral indignation at their treatment”?

And could you give me a general idea of what you mean when you use the term “moral indignation”?

Thanks.

Hi Dr Dan,

"There is a group of people who have the answer about "God's Time". It is May 21, 2011. That is as logical and believable as all of the dialogue about the existence or non existence of "God". All of those wasted words between Athiests and Christians comes down to the definite answer. Those who believe in "god" will be saved on May 21st. Those who don't believe will be around on May 22nd and there will be no more dialogue about who was right! Or, if the May 21st people are right, there will be no one around to have a discussion. And all of those words about who was or is right were just wasted. Oh well? There is still time for more exchanges. Go for it would be philosophers!" - Dr D

That is awfully presumptuous to lump all Christians into this camp and make that the disqualifier that you will judge Christianity by. You are jumping to faulty conclusions. Their are other positions out there (and in my opinion more biblical in their interpretation) such as the Preterist or partial-preterist view that see the fulfillment in part or in whole of the Olivetti Discourse. This view holds that every book of the NT was written before 70AD and the destruction of the Temple and city.

Dispensational Premillennialism, more along the lines that you are arguing from, is a view that was made popular by Darby and Scofield.

http://www.forerunner.com/eschatology/X0004_4._Disp_Rebuttal.html

drdankan1

You wrote, "I have an answer to the post that Thomas Baum states:I have said many times on here that I have no "proof" and I have also stated that it will be God, not me, Who will supply the "proof" and God will supply this "proof" in due time, God's Time"

There is a group of people who have the answer about "God's Time". It is May 21, 2011."

This isn't the first group to give a "date" and probably will not be the last, someone even mentioned that the person that came up with this date also came up with a previous date which didn't quite pan out.

When the "big surprise" happens, I think that those that believe in the "rapture" will be among the most surprised on earth.

By the way, the "big surprise" will be the "proof" of the reality of God that the whole world will somehow witness.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

"The entire field of scientific inquiry necessarily requires the forming of a possible conclusion and then testing the veracity of said conclusion."

I'm talking about instances where no conclusion is testable or falsifiable, and I'm criticizing the idea that one should simply concoct a conclusion in such cases. Which leads to my next point...

"My point was that God, just as gravity, wind, etc., can be known by the observance of His effects. "

Would you provide examples? Most often the god explanations for events are merely arguments from incredulity - "We don't know what caused X, so it must have been a being with the power to cause anything." That doesn't answer the question of what caused X, but instead replaces one unanswered question for another. Part of intellectual responsibility is avoiding "must have" thinking and the automatic exclusion of possibilities, and that doesn't mean that all possibilities are of equal likelihood either.

"Any explanatory, ultimately-causative agency would, by definition, be rather broad, whether one views it as natural or supernatural (or some combination of the two). This in no way makes the 'God-hypothesis' unfalsifiable. It just makes it quite difficult to falsify."

It's unfalsifiable because it's compatible with all possible observations. By attempting to explaining everything, it ultimately explains nothing. And I mean not just the First Cause idea but also the idea that such a being causes everything to happen.

"are you aware of any instance where order and complexity are evident absent a mind?"

I'm not making that assumption but simply questioning the opposite assumption.

I have an answer to the post that Thomas Baum states:I have said many times on here that I have no "proof" and I have also stated that it will be God, not me, Who will supply the "proof" and God will supply this "proof" in due time, God's Time"

There is a group of people who have the answer about "God's Time". It is May 21, 2011. That is as logical and believable as all of the dialogue about the existence or non existence of "God". All of those wasted words between Athiests and Christians comes down to the definite answer. Those who believe in "god" will be saved on May 21st. Those who don't believe will be around on May 22nd and there will be no more dialogue about who was right! Or, if the May 21st people are right, there will be no one around to have a discussion. And all of those words about who was or is right were just wasted. Oh well? There is still time for more exchanges. Go for it would be philosophers!

RCOFIELD:
I agree to narrow the discussion to any point you wish.
On the topic you chose: “Were the slaves of by-gone years human? It is indisputable that they were human.”
I’ll offer an analogy that I presented earlier but did not elaborate on at the time.
‘In 1920 the eighteenth amendment to the U.S. constitution went into effect, banning the manufacture, sale and distribution of alcohol. Alcohol=bad. In 1933 The amendment was repealed. Alcohol=good?
It’s not as easy as that is it? This society’s standards changed, though the nature of alcohol and its effects did not. Its level of acceptance changed’

As with slavery the value certain societies have assigned to certain objects and behaviors is fluid. That slaves were once seen as less-than-fully-qualified humans says nothing much at all about the slaves themselves, and everything about the attitudes of the societies in which the slaves were subjugated. As is the case with alcohol in the U.S. For hundreds of years alcohol was made, sold and consumed in the U.S. Then the temperance movement happened, an active campaign to ban the substance. Enough popular support was aroused to call for the banning, constitutionally, of the manufacture and sale. Liquor was still liquor, the effects of alcohol were no different, it was simply that the society that judged it deemed it bad enough to be banned. Then a few years later this mood shifted again. The ban was lifted, the kegs flowed freely. Once again nothing about the alcohol itself changed, only the public attitude and policy (moral value).
Slaves were always living, breathing people. Society’s attitudes towards slaves and the institution of slavery itself has evolved/changed.
This morality, the values assigned toward these things changed with time/place/understanding. In other words the morality toward alcohol and slavery is relative to the society that assigns values to them.
We can see the same about more current issues, say gay marriage. Fifty years ago it wasn’t even really being debated as a possibility. Today, it’s actually the law of the land in a growing number of states. Did the nature of a homosexual/homosexuality change? No. It is society’s attitude toward it that has changed. Morality is relative.

If there is a ‘fixed moral standard’ I am unaware of it. I am aware of many, many attempts to establish one for all humanity, but not of the universality, the global acceptance, of any.
There are many ‘commonly accepted’ behaviors throughout mankind and its cultures and institutions, but that does not indicate to me that there is one and only one master set.

I hope this better clarifies my thinking.

CARSTONIO,

Thanks for the reply.

ME: "Having 'no answer' has never been a permanently acceptable position scientifically, so why should it be an acceptable position philosophically?"

YOU: “How so? Can you provide an example of the former? I've never heard any scientist advocating for making conclusions about causes simply to have a conclusion.”

The entire field of scientific inquiry necessarily requires the forming of a possible conclusion and then testing the veracity of said conclusion. Can you imagine where we would be if scientists didn't pose possible answers and then test them for veracity?

“The principle here is to refrain from claiming to know things that one doesn't know.”--CARSTONIO

Agreed.

“We shouldn't assume a natural/supernatural divide. It may be possible that gods may be as "natural" as anything else in the universe and not on a separate plane. A cause is a cause is a cause.”--CARSTONIO

Interesting statement. More consistent with the biblical Christian world-view than you may be comfortable with. :-) I may have been guilty of assuming that you presumed an exclusively natural first-cause of the universe. It's been know to happen.

“Wind is certainly physical.”--CARSTONIO

How so?

“Gravity has many unknowns about it but we can observe its effect. That's in part how black holes were discovered."--CARSTONIO

My point was that God, just as gravity, wind, etc., can be known by the observance of His effects.

“I wasn't arguing that gods should be directly or indirectly observable, but instead suggesting that the god hypothesis is invalid because it doesn't allow for observations that would prove it false. It's so broad as to cover any possible observations, which really means that it doesn't explain any observations.”--CARSTONIO

Any explanatory, ultimately-causative agency would, by definition, be rather broad, whether one views it as natural or supernatural (or some combination of the two). This in no way makes the “God-hypothesis” unfalsifiable. It just makes it quite difficult to falsify.

“Can you offer examples? I've had others offer examples that turned out to be assumptions, such as the one that drives intelligent design (the assumption that order can only be designed).”--CARSTONIO

I think I can, otherwise I would not be a Christian.

“I misspoke earlier. To clarify my statement, it may be possible for things like emotions to exist if minds didn't exist, but we don't know how it's possible, so we shouldn't assume that minds can only be created by other minds. Again, that's the same problem with creationism and intelligent design.”--CARSTONIO

Excluding the presupposition-laden example of evolution theory, are you aware of any instance where order and complexity are evident absent a mind?

Your turn.

Peace, brother.

STINKY,

"Exactly! When pressed for hard evidence to support their supernatural claims, invariably believers offer analogies of other human emotions and concepts, ironically admitting that their gods are likewise nothing more than just another human idea. Just like love and joy, the god emotion is absolutely real but real only in the sense that any other human emotion is real."--STINKY

"Universally accepted by believers. Yes, absolutely! That's exactly the point. Now give us an example of some universally accepted observable evidence for the existence of your god.... cue the sound of crickets chirping ..."--STINKY
----------------------------------

Ok, sport. Why don't you dazzle us all by positing your hypothesis for the first-cause of the universe. (With requisite observable evidences, of course.)

GLADERUNNER,

Part 1 of 3

“Apologies for the delay.”--GR

No apology necessary, my friend.

As is usually the case when two people engage on these threads who have convictions about their respective positions, our dialog is trending toward the impractical and unmanageable. I would like to propose a solution to this, but first I will respond in-full (with the exception of one point) to your last series of posts. I'll append my proposed solution at the end.

“Their (non-physical things) subjective objectivity perhaps. If you have an intellectual / emotional concept that we commonly can agree to as to definition and constraints, then for the sake of that exchange we can accept the concept as true....etc.”--GR

Fair enough. It would be unreasonable of me to ask you to accept anything that you could not subject to reasonably objective verification.

ME: “In other words, on the best evidence available to you, you have faith in your wife's love for you. “

YOU: “You are planting a word-seed that I’m reluctant to accept. You called it faith, I did not. I believe her when she says she loves me because there is no compelling reason not to. That is one definition of ‘faith’ but not the only one.”--GR

Ok. Faith/belief—I can work with either one.

ME: “In a round-about way, you have defined the biblical concept of faith.”

YOU: “And there it is. Religious definitions of faith are often different. For example; According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the word 'faith' has a definition several thousand words long, with subheadings and footnotes. Most of it is nothing at all like how I use/understand the word.”--GR

I agree that there can be varying “definitions” of faith. The reason I specified the “biblical” concept of faith (as opposed to the “religious”) in the context of that exchange is simply this. Hebrew 11:1 defines faith as follows:

GLADERUNNER,

Part 2 of 3

He. 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Notice the terms “assurance” and “conviction.” All the evidence available to you gives you assurance that your wife loves you. Likewise, all the evidence available to you enables you to have a level of “conviction” that your wife loves you. And this “hope” and “conviction” exist despite the fact that her love (a non-physical thing) for you is a “thing hoped for” AND a “thing not seen.” You can call that belief or you can call it faith (in the biblical sense). I'll not insist on the latter in our discussion if it makes you uncomfortable.

“There is also a difference, even in secular usage between 'faith' and 'blind faith'. The former meaning a belief in something without logical/physical proof, the latter, a belief in something in spite of any and all contradictory information.”--GR

Indeed, it is nothing short of magical to see secularists “define” something that they THINK is alien to their world-view. As for “faith,” I gave the biblical definition above. As far as “blind faith” is concerned, either of the secular definitions you give above work equally well. The two are hardly distinguishable.

“Also, if what I have described about my wife’s love for me, you asked earlier if I’d considered the possibility that even though I sensed/felt love, that she might indeed be lying to me or manipulating me. I conceded that this was indeed possible. Could the same be said about a religious person’s faith? Is it possible that their feelings or interpretations of the sensation they call god’s love might also be merely the result of lies or manipulation?”--GR

It is certainly possible, if a religious persons “faith” is based on nothing more than “feelings” or “sensations.” You have already demonstrated that you base your belief that your wife loves you on far more than mere feelings or sensations. Any person who bases their religious beliefs on mere feelings or sensations lacks intellectual integrity at the most basic level and could indeed be described as one who believes on the basis of nothing more than “blind faith”....or “blind belief” (whichever you prefer). The point being, “religious” folk don't have the market cornered when it comes to such.

“I did, she laughed. I’m pretty sure that she loves me. (but not 100%, absolutely, positively, undeniably sure.) ;-)”--GR

Bravo! The evidence DOES indeed seem to indicate that she loves you. :-) We are both blessed men.

GLADERUNNER,

Part 3 of 3

Here is my proposal to make your conversation more manageable. Why don't you choose a particular element of what I have said thus far that you would like to explore further? I could do the same. This would help us be a little more focused and enable us to start fresh without having to respond to a half-dozen or so individual points in every post. Of course this too will eventually “evolve” to the point it becomes unmanageable, but we could do another “reset” then as well. What are your thoughts on this?

If you agree, the particular point that I would like to discuss further with you would be the following exchange:

ME: “Were the slaves of by-gone years human? It is indisputable that they were human.”

YOU: “Sure, now. This goes to my earlier point that terms and concepts are subject to change over time. In centuries past slaves were NOT considered fully-qualified human by those that made the rules. There have probably been people that disagreed with that assessment as long as slavery existed ( I would imagine the slaves themselves) however the commonly accepted social norm (even biblically) for many centuries was that slaves were valued as something less than equal-human compared to the slaveholders. The nature of the individual slave was not different, it was the socially accepted, commonly agreed upon values of those times and places that were. Morality, the common value system has evolved.”

ME: “We have, by your own argument, established that there is at least one fixed moral standard.”

YOU: “No we haven’t.”

Peace, brother.

Freestinker, you don't get off the hook that easily. Just as I question the claim "Gods exist as a matter of irrefutable fact," I also question the claim "Gods don't exist as a matter of irrefutable fact." Granted, the former claim has a far greater burden of proof because of the extraordinary nature of the claim. But any atheists who reject even the possibility of things existing beyond human detection must still justify that rejection.

Also, what you mean by a "god emotion"? There are a few deists whose beliefs in gods have nothing to do with what other believers call "religious experiences."

RCOFIELD wrote: "We can’t touch, taste, hear, smell, or see the human mind, the human will, the human intellect, or even human emotions such as love, joy, peace, patience, hatred, sadness, depression, etc."

CARSTONION replied:
"Sure, but those are emotions and concepts, not beings or other object, so that's not an accurate comparison. We're talking here about the proposition of one or more beings on a plane of existence that cannot be detected from this one. The things you named are "real" but they likely wouldn't exist if humans didn't exist. I see no point to comparing those things to "God" unless you're suggesting that it's merely a concept as well."

=========

Exactly! When pressed for hard evidence to support their supernatural claims, invariably believers offer analogies of other human emotions and concepts, ironically admitting that their gods are likewise nothing more than just another human idea. Just like love and joy, the god emotion is absolutely real but real only in the sense that any other human emotion is real.

Quarters placed under pillows by parents are “universally accepted observable evidences” for the existence of the tooth fairy?

=========

RC,

Universally accepted by believers. Yes, absolutely! That's exactly the point.

Now give us an example of some universally accepted observable evidence for the existence of your god.

... cue the sound of crickets chirping ...

RCOFIELD:
Part 2.

“In other words, on the best evidence available to you, you have faith in your wife's love for you. “
You are planting a word-seed that I’m reluctant to accept. You called it faith, I did not. I believe her when she says she loves me because there is no compelling reason not to. That is one definition of ‘faith’ but not the only one.

“In a round-about way, you have defined the biblical concept of faith.”
And there it is. Religious definitions of faith are often different. For example; According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the word 'faith' has a definition several thousand words long, with subheadings and footnotes. Most of it is nothing at all like how I use/understand the word. There is also a difference, even in secular usage between 'faith' and 'blind faith'. The former meaning a belief in something without logical/physical proof, the latter, a belief in something in spite of any and all contradictory information.

Also, if what I have described about my wife’s love for me, you asked earlier if I’d considered the possibility that even though I sensed/felt love, that she might indeed be lying to me or manipulating me. I conceded that this was indeed possible. Could the same be said about a religious person’s faith? Is it possible that their feelings or interpretations of the sensation they call god’s love might also be merely the result of lies or manipulation?

“Yiiiikes! Whatever you do, man, don't make those statements to your wife.... :-)”

I did, she laughed. I’m pretty sure that she loves me. (but not 100%, absolutely, positively, undeniably sure.) ;-)

"Having 'no answer' has never been a permanently acceptable position scientifically, so why should it be an acceptable position philosophically?"

How so? Can you provide an example of the former? I've never heard any scientist advocating for making conclusions about causes simply to have a conclusion. If someone says he is thinking of a number and refuses to tell me what the number is, I have no way of finding out what that number is, so I shouldn't form any conclusions about that number. The principle here is to refrain from claiming to know things that one doesn't know.

"But no more speculative than presuming a natural but unknown cause."

We shouldn't assume a natural/supernatural divide. It may be possible that gods may be as "natural" as anything else in the universe and not on a separate plane. A cause is a cause is a cause.

"non-physical things that cannot be directly observed by empirical data/sensory perception (ie. Gravity, wind, mind, will intellect, etc.). "

Wind is certainly physical. Gravity has many unknowns about it but we can observe its effect. That's in part how black holes were discovered. I wasn't arguing that gods should be directly or indirectly observable, but instead suggesting that the god hypothesis is invalid because it doesn't allow for observations that would prove it false. It's so broad as to cover any possible observations, which really means that it doesn't explain any observations.

"He can be detected by 'effect evidence.'"

Can you offer examples? I've had others offer examples that turned out to be assumptions, such as the one that drives intelligent design (the assumption that order can only be designed).

"your statement presupposes that mind/intelligence can exist without an intelligent first-cause. That is a logically untenable position."

I misspoke earlier. To clarify my statement, it may be possible for things like emotions to exist if minds didn't exist, but we don't know how it's possible, so we shouldn't assume that minds can only be created by other minds. Again, that's the same problem with creationism and intelligent design.

RCOFIELD:
Apologies for the delay.
Part 1.

“Do you recall the primary reason the souls on the Mayflower, Hollander, and Huguenot left their respective societies? “
There were lots of people leaving (primarily) Europe for lots of reasons. Taxation, tyranny, religious intolerance, social intolerance, poverty, etc. Above all things, regardless of the circumstances or individual motivations, the goal was to start a new life in a place that offered some breathing room and a new beginning.

“Were the slaves of by-gone years human? It is indisputable that they were human
Sure, now. This goes to my earlier point that terms and concepts are subject to change over time. In centuries past slaves were NOT considered fully-qualified human by those that made the rules. There have probably been people that disagreed with that assessment as long as slavery existed ( I would imagine the slaves themselves) however the commonly accepted social norm (even biblically) for many centuries was that slaves were valued as something less than equal-human compared to the slaveholders. The nature of the individual slave was not different, it was the socially accepted, commonly agreed upon values of those times and places that were. Morality, the common value system has evolved.

“by your own argument, established that there is at least one fixed moral standard.”
No we haven’t

“So, if I can demonstrate to you non-physical things of which you can feel/sense their effects, you logically should have no problem with at least considering them objectively, right?”
Their subjective objectivity perhaps. If you have an intellectual / emotional concept that we commonly can agree to as to definition and constraints, then for the sake of that exchange we can accept the concept as true.
If you tell me that the tingling in my spine when I get startled or excited is called ‘ploxyflop’ and you sufficiently describe it and express that it also occurs to you, then we are in agreement on the truth/meaning of the word ‘ploxyflop’ and can now use it in correspondence with each other without need for further investigation into the biology of the sensation. Like if I say ‘car’ and you hear ‘car’ we both have concepts of what that means, probably a fairly common one. We agree to the overall concept, not necessarily the finer points, the individual images in our respective minds may not be exactly the same.
If you were to speak of an autumn sunset and the sense of awe that it caused in you, I would agree up to the point that I am familiar with the sensation myself. Awe becomes an agreement of perspective of overall concept, not necessarily the minutiae of the biology/psychology actually at work. We agree on ‘awe’ as a concept, not necessarily on the fact that we KNOW it to be EXACTLY the same in each of us.

"Logically thinking comes from being, so how does being come to be? Does being ultimately come from nothing?"

We don't have the answer to the former question. The latter question assumes that there was a nothing, and we shouldn't make that assumption.

"You make assumptions that evolutionary science or astrophysics has sufficient answers to the problem of origins"

Incorrect. Just because I criticize one assumption doesn't mean I make an opposite assumption.

"basically what I read you as saying is who cares. Yet here we debate."

I care about knowledge, and I care when people make speculations and mislabel them as knowledge. I emphasize that saying that god postulations amount to speculations does not amount to labeling the postulations as false. It means that we have no way of knowing whether the postulations are correct or incorrect.

"I contend it is a huge and foolish philosophical assumption that you are leaping to in saying it doesn't matter."

That's not quite my position. I'm saying that postulations that gods exist or that they don't exist are based in emotion, where people wish they exist or wish they don't. The correct answer to a question has nothing to do with one's emotional investment in the answer.

Part 2...

"you believe something that you can't prove"

And what do you assert that I believe? My larger point is about rejecting the concept of belief - an assertion is either true or false.

"I am making the statement that God is necessary to prove it or anything ultimately. "

No, that's an assumption, the same one that ultimately drives intelligent design.

"If there is not then nothing ultimately matters, truth can be whatever you want it to be, you can just make it up and believe whatever you like."

Not only is that an assumption, it embodies the falsehood of absolutism. Just because one craves meaning is no reason to assume that gods exist. That ignores the possibility that gods exist but meaning doesn't. It also ignores the possibility that meaning could be created by humans instead. The idea that human-created meaning is ultimately no meaning at all is an absolutist one.

"we interpret the evidence either by 1) a philosophical naturalistic cause, or 2) supernatural cause."

That's another false dichotomy. The concept of "supernatural" is not valid because it rests on the assumption of a natural/supernatural divide, where things such as gods or miracles amount to suspensions or violations of physical laws. It ignores the possilibility that gods may be part of the universe instead of on the other side of a divide.

"logically God is the only sufficient answer to origins because only by presupposing God can you make sense of origins."

But the question of whether something exists or doesn't exist is an empirical matter and not a logical one. That's like claiming that one can prove the existence of black holes or other planets through logic. One can treat the concept of a first cause as a proposed hypothesis, but it remains speculation unless one can test it or falsify it.

"You either have a uncaused first cause or an infinite regression of causes, for surely you are not going to argue that something came from nothing?"

That's more absolutism. Specificially, the idea that the only alternative to a first cause is "something from nothing." It's possible that there was a nothing, but again that remains speculation.

I must emphasize that my points apply equally to the assertion that gods don't exist. Metaphorically I'm standing here with my arms folded, asking for more proof than simply speculation or logical argument. Otherwise there's no reason to take a position either way.

Peterhuff:
I’ll start with what I believe is the nut of the issue.
“You are arguing that taste determines good or better or best and I am arguing that it can't because there would be nothing innately good or bad about Hitler's Germany or Mother Teresa's Calcutta”

Not merely ‘tastes’. That minimizes significantly what is really going on. What actually determines a society’s morality is common agreement. No one person’s tastes are the determining factor (except in a complete monarchy). Much like my analogy of the newlyweds, a couple, tribe, civilization develops rules of conduct for itself. Some, the big ones, are made into laws, for which there is stated punishment for the violation, and a system of ‘justice’ that society uses to enforce and adjudicate these laws. In olden times, there was typically a tribal leader, king or chieftain, a central authority that made the laws and meted out judgment. As civilization grew and progressed, forms of representative governance and self rule evolved. Even today this is not complete, we still have dictatorships and non-elected governance in some places.
What makes something good or bad is common standards as determined by societies. These standards certainly differ from place to place and evolve/change over time. Good and bad are simply labels we apply to behaviors according to its position on the somewhat flexible XY graph of social standards.
What does NOT exist very often in any society, if at all, is complete anarchy, a total lack of social values. i.e. consider the concept of ‘honor among thieves’.

“You've blurred the distinction because if all goodness is is preference then which preference out of the six to seven billion are you going to set as your standard”
Once again you understate reality. Just look around the world. There are indeed varying sets of social values. This does not necessarily lead to chaos, but it certainly can cause inter-tribal/cultural/national strife and.
Many societies now live under some form of self rule, elected representation. That is as you say ‘goodness by preference’ the preference, not just of one person, but by a plurality of the values of the self governed. Tyrannies are tyrannies, but even they have established social value standards, many of which are very much like those founding self-governed societies, primarily because they work for the benefit of both self-governed and tyranny governed states. Unrestricted murder, theft, etc. have been proven over time and in many places to be detrimental to society and individuals within that society.

“In order for there to be such a thing as truth there would have to be a reality - something real - in which that truth is based on.”
This concept of ‘truth’ as a fixed object, an absolute, immutable, universal stake in the ground is foreign to me.
Truth for me is merely a commonly accepted knowledge or notion, that best fits the information available at this time and place.

CARSTONIO,

Part 1 of 2

Thanks again for the dialog.

“The ancient Greeks and Norse would disagree. I'm not sure this means that a "god" is whatever a particular religion says it is, or if the definition is loose enought include both Yahweh and Apollo.”--CARSTONIO

Philosophically, the Christian God is defined as Ultimate Being, that is, Self-Existent/Necessary being—depending on nothing outside Himself for His existence and being “necessary” as a first-cause explanatory principle. By definition such a God would be without rival or competitor.

“I was addressing the claim that one cannot rule out "God" if one has no definite answers otherwise. While I agree with the claim in the technical sense, the claim implies to me that having no answer is unacceptable for some reason.”--CARSTONIO

Having “no answer” has never been a permanently acceptable position scientifically, so why should it be an acceptable position philosophically?

“I wouldn't use that label (agnostic) for myself, because I had understood agnosticism to mean deeming gods and no gods as equally likely.”--CARSTONIO

“Agnostic” is from the Greek “gnosis,” meaning knowledge. To be “agnostic” on the issue of the existence of God is to claim “no knowledge,” or to claim that though there may be a God or gods we simply CAN'T know. The position of pure atheism is that of asserting that there certainly is NO God. You don't seem to fall into the latter category. Am I reading you wrongly?

“Sure it could have been one or more gods, but that would be purely speculative.”--CARSTONIO

But no more speculative than presuming a natural but unknown cause. Unless, of course, one is completely committed to philosophical naturalism, which would engender an entirely fresh set of problems. :-)

ME: "To contend that the God hypothesis excludes even the possibility of evidence because He cannot be “detected” by sensory perception seems inconsistent to me."

YOU: “How so? Are there hypotheses about gods that include the possibility of sensory detection?”--CARSTONIO

It seems inconsistent to me in that most people accept (on the grounds of “effect evidence”) non-physical things that cannot be directly observed by empirical data/sensory perception (ie. Gravity, wind, mind, will intellect, etc.).

CARSTONIO,

Part 2 of 2

“Sure, but those are emotions and concepts, not beings or other object, so that's not an accurate comparison. We're talking here about the proposition of one or more beings on a plane of existence that cannot be detected from this one.”--CARSTONIO

The christian “God Hypothesis” does indeed claim that God exists in the physical plane through non-physical attributes and that He can be detected by “effect evidence.” That renders my comparison a valid one.

“The things you named are "real" but they likely wouldn't exist if humans didn't exist. I see no point to comparing those things to "God" unless you're suggesting that it's merely a concept as well.”--CARSTONIO

Setting aside the obvious exceptions of, say, gravity and wind, your statement presupposes that mind/intelligence can exist without an intelligent first-cause. That is a logically untenable position.

Peace, brother.

Hi GLADERUNNER,

Hope you had a good weekend.

Am interested to get your response to my three-part post beginning @ January 7, 2011 5:40 PM.

Hi Gladerunner,

Ok, I'm burning the midnight oil so I will try to make this brief and then catch up later.

"That does not make your object not-exist (false). Just not universally accepted as an immutable, absolute truth." -GR

In order for there to be such a thing as truth there would have to be a reality - something real - in which that truth is based on. I'll apply it both to an empirical object and an intangible, non-physical idea/l. Do you agree with that statement?

"A specific apple exists or does not. A concept, a belief, an idea, a thought exists beyond that level of verifiability that exists for the apple or your birthday." - GR

Is that concept/statement in itself verifiable then? It seems you are using your sword indiscriminately and hacking of part of your own being. Is your statement true?

"If the truth-object is outside our ability to objectively (empirically) measure, then the standards of measure by which we verify the truth of the existence of the apple are not necessarily available to us." -GR

Then how do you know anything outside of empiricism at all as being true? It seems you are cutting off the branch you are sitting on from the wrong side.

That would apply to your very reasoning. It is a non tangible and not open to empirical investigation of the five senses in that it can't be heard, tasted, felt, smelt or seen. Show me reason/logic that I may empirically verify it.

"In which case we cannot inherently and confidently use the same precise term to the same level of certainty for both an apple AND a belief." -GR

No, maybe not from your point of view. I challenge that ultimately it cannot make sense of itself.

"It is simply not logical/reasonable to use the same yardstick for a physical object and a metaphysical object. The rules and definitions of one science do not always or necessarily apply to the other. The rules and tools to define and verify a natural object likewise would not be the same used to define and verify a supernatural one.
THAT is why the definitions are important." -GR

The only yardstick that you seem to have in regards to value judgments is preference. You are arguing that taste determines good or better or best and I am arguing that it can't because there would be nothing innately good or bad about Hitler's Germany or Mother Teresa's Calcutta. You've blurred the distinction because if all goodness is is preference then which preference out of the six to seven billion are you going to set as your standard? Your own?To murder or not would just be a preference enforced by those in control, just as tyranny. But as long as you can get by under the radar then murder or not ultimately doesn't matter.

But don't call your values good. You can't show me a standard that is anything other than fluctuating and at the will of those in control. Why is what you say true? Because you 'feel it?' Because you 'like it' your way?

No, because you are made in the image and likeness of God and know His standard.

Hi Carstonio,

"How can you rule out God when you have no definite answers to how the universe came to be?" -Me

Logic depends on mind. Without mind there would be no such process as reason. You are using it now, so how did it come to be? Logically thinking comes from being, so how does being come to be? Does being ultimately come from nothing? What caused it?

"That statement makes the assumption I was criticizing earlier, the idea that a god could and did create the universe." -Carstonio

You make assumptions that evolutionary science or astrophysics has sufficient answers to the problem of origins, or the problem is of no significance. Your whole world-view could rest on faulty reasoning and basically what I read you as saying is who cares. Yet here we debate.

I contend it is a huge and foolish philosophical assumption that you are leaping to in saying it doesn't matter.

"But the larger problem is the apparent assumption that we need definite answers for the origin of the universe. We don't." -Carstonio

You pose that we don't need a definite answer for the origin of the universe, but your very world-view is caught up in the fact that you believe something that you can't prove. I am making the statement that God is necessary to prove it or anything ultimately.

The point is that the correct way of looking at origins, thus science ultimately, depends on whether or not there is a Creator. If there is not then nothing ultimately matters, truth can be whatever you want it to be, you can just make it up and believe whatever you like. If there is a Creator then the issue could be of prime importance, especially if that Creator is the Christian God.

"Scientific theories such as the Big Bang are intended not as definite answers but as proposed explanations for observed data." - Cast

Yes, observed data. We observe the effects of origins, but origins is not a repeatable process in science. The Big Bang is a reasoned conclusion from the evidence. No human being was there to witness it so we interpret the evidence either by 1) a philosophical naturalistic cause, or 2) supernatural cause. The question is which makes more sense, or for that matter which can make any sense out of origins, once the veneer is stripped away.

RCofield is having that very debate with Walter on another post and logically God is the only sufficient answer to origins because only by presupposing God can you make sense of origins. It is the argument from cause. You either have a uncaused first cause or an infinite regression of causes, for surely you are not going to argue that something came from nothing? Logically in an infinite regression of causes you would never arrive at the present, so that leaves, by process of elimination, an uncaused first cause.

RCofield is doing a great job of showing Walter the utter absurdity of any cause that does not presuppose God as the uncaused cause.

Rats, I forgot that this thread doesn't allow BLOCKQUOTE tags. Let me try again...

"Such a “god” wouldn’t be much of a “god,” would it? "

The ancient Greeks and Norse would disagree. I'm not sure this means that a "god" is whatever a particular religion says it is, or if the definition is loose enought include both Yahweh and Apollo.

"But if we don’t know how the universe came into existence, doesn’t it stand to reason that we could not possibly know whether or not we NEED to know?"

I was addressing the claim that one cannot rule out "God" if one has no definite answers otherwise. While I agree with the claim in the technical sense, the claim implies to me that having no answer is unacceptable for some reason.

"Then you would be agnostic, correct? "

I wouldn't use that label for myself, because I had understood agnosticism to mean deeming gods and no gods as equally likely.

"Something was the first cause of the condensed matter and energy, and something had to “light the fuse,” right? :-)"

Sure it could have been one or more gods, but that would be purely speculative.

"To contend that the God hypothesis excludes even the possibility of evidence because He cannot be “detected” by sensory perception seems inconsistent to me."

How so? Are there hypotheses about gods that include the possibility of sensory detection?

"We can’t touch, taste, hear, smell, or see the human mind, the human will, the human intellect, or even human emotions such as love, joy, peace, patience, hatred, sadness, depression, etc.

Sure, but those are emotions and concepts, not beings or other object, so that's not an accurate comparison. We're talking here about the proposition of one or more beings on a plane of existence that cannot be detected from this one. The things you named are "real" but they likely wouldn't exist if humans didn't exist. I see no point to comparing those things to "God" unless you're suggesting that it's merely a concept as well.

RCofield, thanks for your praise of my civil tone.

Such a “god” wouldn’t be much of a “god,” would it?

The ancient Greeks and Norse would disagree. I'm not sure this means that a "god" is whatever a particular religion says it is, or if the definition is loose enought include both Yahweh and Apollo.

But if we don’t know how the universe came into existence, doesn’t it stand to reason that we could not possibly know whether or not we NEED to know?

I was addressing the claim that one cannot rule out "God" if one has no definite answers otherwise. While I agree with the claim in the technical sense, the claim implies to me that having no answer is unacceptable for some reason.

Then you would be agnostic, correct?

I wouldn't use that label for myself, because I had understood agnosticism to mean deeming gods and no gods as equally likely.

Something was the first cause of the condensed matter and energy, and something had to “light the fuse,” right? :-)

Sure it could have been one or more gods, but that would be purely speculative.

To contend that the God hypothesis excludes even the possibility of evidence because He cannot be “detected” by sensory perception seems inconsistent to me.

How so? Are there hypotheses about gods that include the possibility of sensory detection?

We can’t touch, taste, hear, smell, or see the human mind, the human will, the human intellect, or even human emotions such as love, joy, peace, patience, hatred, sadness, depression, etc.

Sure, but those are emotions and concepts, not beings or other object, so that's not an accurate comparison. We're talking here about the proposition of one or more beings on a plane of existence that cannot be detected from this one. The things you named are "real" but they likely wouldn't exist if humans didn't exist. I see no point to comparing those things to "God" unless you're suggesting that it's merely a concept as well.

peterhuff:
Truth. Part 2. Previous post on truth should be to peterhuff as well!

”Our disagreement or misunderstanding of truth does not make truth false.”
But it is vital to the claim of truth, if that claim of truth implies universal truthfulness. Truth is a label we apply to things that by all appearances, known knowledge or verifiability seem to be indisputable and undeniable. Truth in itself is still only a value judgment we have made based on our interpretation of available data.
If truth is something else to you, then we disagree on the initial premise and continued rational debate is moot. You will be using ‘truth’ differently than me, and therefore even if the existence of the object you are labeling as true is not in dispute, the label ‘truth’ has different meanings, one may sufficiently apply to the nature of object, one may not.
So unless we agree on the definition of truth, it is not the object itself that is being necessarily questioned, it is the label we apply (specifically, implied absoluteness and immutability) to it that is in dispute.
Your object may have passed all your tests for that label according to your terms, but it is possible that I could reasonably assert that though the object appears to be as you claim it, it does not pass all the tests required for me to apply that objective/absolute label according to my understanding of the term. That does not make your object not-exist (false). Just not universally accepted as an immutable, absolute truth.
A specific apple exists or does not. A concept, a belief, an idea, a thought exists beyond that level of verifiability that exists for the apple or your birthday. If the truth-object is outside our ability to objectively (empirically) measure, then the standards of measure by which we verify the truth of the existence of the apple are not necessarily available to us. In which case we cannot inherently and confidently use the same precise term to the same level of certainty for both an apple AND a belief.
It is simply not logical/reasonable to use the same yardstick for a physical object and a metaphysical object. The rules and definitions of one science do not always or necessarily apply to the other. The rules and tools to define and verify a natural object likewise would not be the same used to define and verify a supernatural one.
THAT is why the definitions are important. In less than scholarly philosophical terms it’s called the Roseanne Roseannadanna problem: "Oh. That's very different. Never Mind"
(If indeed your were born in '56 then this reference shouldn't be too vague.)

RCOFIELD:
Sorry for your work schedule, I understand though.
Here’s the thing about ‘truth’. Your statement about the time/place of birth is certainly a form of truth. It is verifiable and as far as I know, there is no reason to doubt its ‘truth’, no one is questioning it or offering up valid/reasonable counter-claims. If you were to take this truth to the Social Security office however, note that you would be asked to verify it, it is not universally acceptable by claim alone. You will be asked to present documentation, something official/certified by an acceptable agent before that office will accept the information as truth. This truth is true to you, but not to that office without verifiability.
It’s interesting that you used birth data for your analogy. My own father, born in his sharecropper parents’ home the 1920’s in the desolate/impoverished rural south has a birthday as well. He always celebrated his birthday on March 17. Until he applied for a passport when in his 50’s. It was a long process, the state he was born in had to do an extensive record search, as his birth predated modern mandated record keeping. It turns out that his birth was officially recorded in state records as March 11. We do not know where the error originated, his parents had long since passed on, the original source document, a family bible, no longer existed. When is his birthday? What is his truth? What was ‘true’ his entire life is indeed now suspect. We simply don’t know. His parents were nearly illiterate, there were no medical professionals in attendance. He simply lived his entire life with a certain birthday being as true to him as yours is to you, then one day it was called into question as new evidence was presented to challenge the claim.
They cannot both be his birthday. One is true, one is false.
The good news is that your birthday is not you. You would not disappear into a quantum quark if you found out, as my dad did, that this truth was indeed less than true. You, like my dad would continue to live life without significant consequence based on the newly discovered information. Your birthday is not you, it is a piece of verifiable and challenge-able data about you. Data/information is subject to validity. It is not an absolute, immutable object, it is simply a representation of the best possible data at a particular point and time. The truth of your data may never be challenged or disputed, in which case it is accepted as true, and that acceptance by you and for whomever else that data may be useful will consider it truth.
As for me though, an alleged empiricist, and admittedly a former Missourian, listening to your claim of birth, I’d say ‘Show-Me’ before I accepted it as a truth.
So indeed true is true, unless it is determined at a later time not to be. It is not necessarily true for eternity since all of eternity is not available to us as knowledge.
Truth is truth only as long as it is true.(relative)

CARSTONIO,

Thanks for the civil dialog. It is appreciated.

“True. My point was that both believers and atheists seem to rule out the possibility that gods exist who did NOT create the universe.”—CARSTONIO

Yeah. Such a “god” wouldn’t be much of a “god,” would it?

“I would say that they WANT to know, which is not the same thing as having a NEED to know.”—CARSTONIO

But if we don’t know how the universe came into existence, doesn’t it stand to reason that we could not possibly know whether or not we NEED to know?

“Of course. I don't see why that should surprise you. It would be intellectually irresponsible of me to dismiss such a possibility.”—CARSTONIO

Then you would be agnostic, correct? That would definitely distinguish you from most on these threads.

“It may or may not be testable in the practical sense, but it is falsifiable because it allows for the possibility of new data that would prove it false. That is not true of the god-creator hypothesis, which doesn't involve any data. That doesn't mean it's false, it simply means that it's speculative.”—CARSTONIO

I would contend that the Big Bang (and the data indicative of it) itself may well be data relative to the god-creator hypothesis. Something was the first cause of the condensed matter and energy, and something had to “light the fuse,” right? :-)

“That's not an accurate comparison since they weren't dealing with the proposition that beings exist who are forever beyond human detection. The proposition excludes even the possibility of evidence. I've never heard anyone propose the idea of gods who can be detected with the senses.”—CARSTONIO

That presumes that God is forever beyond human detection. To contend that the God hypothesis excludes even the possibility of evidence because He cannot be “detected” by sensory perception seems inconsistent to me.

For example, there are a number of things that we accept as reality which elude our physical senses. We can’t touch, taste, hear, smell, or see the human mind, the human will, the human intellect, or even human emotions such as love, joy, peace, patience, hatred, sadness, depression, etc. Not trying to be cute, but when is the last time you saw a truckload of gravity? Or tasted a box of wind?

We accept the reality of these things on the basis of the evidences of their effects, not because we can see, touch, taste, hear, or smell them.

So with God.

Peace.

"Peter was simply pointing out that you have declared that you do not know how the universe came to be. Hence, it would be illogical for you to rule out the possibility that God created it."

True. My point was that both believers and atheists seem to rule out the possibility that gods exist who did NOT create the universe.

"at the very least SCIENTISTS disagree with your above declaration that we don't need to know. "

I would say that they WANT to know, which is not the same thing as having a NEED to know.

"Are you admitting to (a god-created universe) being a possibility?"

Of course. I don't see why that should surprise you. It would be intellectually irresponsible of me to dismiss such a possibility.

"Then the obvious question would be: Is the Big Bang hypothesis testable and therefore falsifiable?"

It may or may not be testable in the practical sense, but it is falsifiable because it allows for the possibility of new data that would prove it false. That is not true of the god-creator hypothesis, which doesn't involve any data. That doesn't mean it's false, it simply means that it's speculative.

"Could you imagine where we would be if, say, Pasteur or Edison had taken that approach? I’m sure they had their nay-sayers who told them you 'can’t know.'"

That's not an accurate comparison since they weren't dealing with the proposition that beings exist who are forever beyond human detection. The proposition excludes even the possibility of evidence. I've never heard anyone propose the idea of gods who can be detected with the senses.

CARSTONIO

PETERHUFF asked: “How can you rule out God when you have no definite answers to how the universe came to be?”

You replied: “That statement makes the assumption I was criticizing earlier, the idea that a god could and did create the universe.”

I don’t think that assumption is in the question there posed. Peter was simply pointing out that you have declared that you do not know how the universe came to be. Hence, it would be illogical for you to rule out the possibility that God created it.

“But the larger problem is the apparent assumption that we need definite answers for the origin of the universe. We don't.”-- CARSTONIO

We don’t “need” those answers? Says who?

“Scientific theories such as the Big Bang are intended not as definite answers but as proposed explanations for observed data.”-- CARSTONIO

So…at the very least SCIENTISTS disagree with your above declaration that we don't need to know.

“Of course a god could have created the universe.”— CARSTONIO

Are you admitting to that being a possibility?

“The issue is that any proposed explanation for the origin has to be testable or at least falsifiable, and a god explanation is neither.”-- CARSTONIO

Then the obvious question would be: Is the Big Bang hypothesis testable and therefore falsifiable?

“A god explanation amounts to simply having an explanation for its own sake, as if having no explanation is to be avoided at all costs.”—CARSTONIO

If the Big Bang is not testable and therefore falsifiable (it is, after all, still only a “proposed explanation,” as you pointed out), how does the “God Theory” differ from the “Big Bang Theory”?

“If we don't or can't know if an explanation is correct or incorrect, then it's worse than useless. Why not simply accept that we don't have any explanation and live with that fact?”-- CARSTONIO

That statement and question are both completely antithetical to scientific inquiry. Could you imagine where we would be if, say, Pasteur or Edison had taken that approach? I’m sure they had their nay-sayers who told them you “can’t know.”

Peace

How can you rule out God when you have no definite answers to how the universe came to be?

That statement makes the assumption I was criticizing earlier, the idea that a god could and did create the universe. But the larger problem is the apparent assumption that we need definite answers for the origin of the universe. We don't.
Scientific theories such as the Big Bang are intended not as definite answers but as proposed explanations for observed data.

Of course a god could have created the universe. The issue is that any proposed explanation for the origin has to be testable or at least falsifiable, and a god explanation is neither. A god explanation amounts to simply having an explanation for its own sake, as if having no explanation is to be avoided at all costs. If we don't or can't know if an explanation is correct or incorrect, then it's worse than useless. Why not simply accept that we don't have any explanation and live with that fact?

Hi Gladerunner, Freestinker,

I'm working 7am to 7pm shifts this weekend so I am going to ponder your thoughts until Sunday or Monday evening. Gladerunner, all you have shown me is relative subjective personal tastes. Without an objective criteria what makes your particular thoughts about good good? What makes one social convention better than another? If that is all you have to offer then what Hitler did is no better or worse than what Mother Teresa did, it just depends how you look upon it. Is this a correct assessment of your position?

As for truth, whether it is relative to an individual/society, place/culture or time, or absolute to all people, cultures, places and times, if it is true it is true. You can't have a truth that is false.

If I was born in Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia in 1956, that truth is relative to me but it is true. At no time in my life can that be false. What is true is always true. It can't be false if indeed that is where and when I was born. And if it is true then it is absolutely true. I either was or was not born in Lusaka in 1956. That statement is either true or it is false.

ME: “How can truth ever be false?”

GR: "Quite simply. If you and I do not agree on the precise definitions of the words ‘truth’ and ‘false’ then it is likely we will have differences in opinion about what is true and what is false when we are talking about non-physical, non quantifiable, intellectual concepts."

Our disagreement or misunderstanding of truth does not make truth false.

Regardless of our opinions, truth is true whether or not you and I can agree upon it. How can truth be otherwise. Please answer this question.

Again you are confusing truth with opinion and belief. They don't necessarily go together.

GR: "But the philosophical debate is all merely academic and semantic.
In the real world, societal, and even personal values (truths) are not carved in granite obelisks on a mountaintop. They are cultural, traditional, relative to time/place/circumstance and anything but universal."

But the point over and over again is if it is true is is true. It can't be otherwise.

Sorry this is so rushed. I haven't really separated your individual points. I'll address both Freestinker's and your other arguments later.

GLADERUNNER,

Part 1 of 3

Thanks for the responses. I genuinely am enjoying the dialog.

“Nope. Not at all. Our own Founding Fathers voted with their feet to leave a society that they found intolerable/offensive/unacceptable....”--GR

The external influences you offer were not exactly what I had in mind, but in retrospect that question was probably about three steps ahead of where I want to go with this. Let's put it on the back burner and work our way back to it, if that's OK with you.

Although I must say that I find your reference to our founding fathers “vot(ing) with their feet to leave a society they found intolerable/offensive/unacceptable...interesting. Do you recall the primary reason the souls on the Mayflower, Hollander, and Huguenot left their respective societies? The answer to that question is the seed-bed from which this nation's government sprang.

“I didn’t say that. I don’t recall addressing ‘moral consequence’ at all.”--GR

PETER posed the question: “Which society has the 'right' idea of abortion, the one that condones it or the one that condemns it?” To which you responded: “Which is better/more right, corn flakes or snowflakes? ‘Right’ is also subjective to time/place/culture.” That seems to indicate that you view aborting/not aborting a child is no more 'right' (or wrong) than choosing cornflakes for snowflakes—that the choices are amoral. Have I misunderstood you?

“Not to equate abortion with other things, but simply as a comparison of the process, let’s look again at slavery.....” etc.--GR

I think you unravel your own argument here. You seem to make the case that, in days gone by, slaves were treated as animals since their owners did not view them as fully human. Modern societies now accept the “human-ness” of all humans, hence it is no longer acceptable to treat any human as an animal.

Assuming that you agree that all humans are human... :-) ..., a glaring question arises: Were the slaves of by-gone years human? It is indisputable that they were human. And they were, in your own words, “qualified for sympathies/moral indignation at their treatment.” This seems to me a rather obvious problem with the whole “relative morality” position. Do you not agree?

GLADERUNNER,

Part 2 of 3

Your own example here clearly demonstrates the universality of moral standards. Slaves didn't just become human in the 19th century. Nor did inhumane treatment of said slaves just become immoral in the 19th century. The inhumane treatment of humans was/is immoral in all places, cultures, and times—hence, we have, by your own argument, established that there is at least one fixed moral standard.

I'll come back to the abortion issue with you at a later date.

“Can you do so without assuming your own conclusions? ;-)”--GR

I think I can. May I depend on you to point it out for me anytime I ere? :-)

“But you can feel/sense its effects.”--GR

Ahh! So you do accept the veracity of some things that you can't verify by the empiricist's view of scientific method and/or sensory perception. My point is that you cannot physically see your wife's love. You feel its EFFECTS, but you can't touch, see, smell, hear, or taste it. It is, in the final analysis, a non-physical thing. (Don't take that and run with it. This venue is neither the time nor place... :-) ) So, if I can demonstrate to you non-physical things of which you can feel/sense their effects, you logically should have no problem with at least considering them objectively, right?

“My wife could be lying, she could be manipulating, but doing so for twenty years? Why?
The only reason I can think of to lie to or manipulate someone is to derive personal benefit. So she’s getting something positive out of it. So am I. So it’s at least a mutually satisfying symbiotic relationship. One could do worse. I may indeed be a dupe to her fiendishness, but I’m at least a dupe that feels loved. Is that so bad?”--GR

Yiiiikes! Whatever you do, man, don't make those statements to your wife.... :-) Her response to you would be further proof of my contention that you cannot physically quantify genuine love!

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘proof’ here’s how I use the word when talking about ‘scientific methodology: Proof--'The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true.' All the evidence and argument at my disposal compel me to believe my wife loves me. If by proof you mean ‘absolute, irrefutable, or impossibly otherwise, then we are not using the scientific method’s accepted definition of ‘proof’.”--GR

GLADERUNNER,

Part 3 of 3

Agreed. Part of my intention with that analogy was to demonstrate that you were not a pure, sensory-perception “empiricist.” No one ever is, though many atheists claim to be. In the final analysis you BELIEVE your wife loves you because you feel/sense the “effects” of her love, but you cannot hold her love in your hands. You have sufficient reason to believe your wife loves you, but by your own admission you don't know that as an “absolute, irrefutable, or impossibly otherwise” fact. In other words, on the best evidence available to you, you have faith in your wife's love for you. In a round-about way, you have defined the biblical concept of faith.

“Where are the defining ‘objective’ parts inherent and unique to Christianity?”--GR

That is a very well-framed question, and one which any Christian worth their salt should be both glad to answer and capable of answering. That is exactly the question I am trying to lay the foundation to answer. For it to be done properly and convincingly, though, takes time, especially in this venue. So bear with me.

“My main argument here would be with the term ‘universally observable evidences.’ as well as the ‘reasonableness’ of the act of faith. This could easily devolve into a semantics debate as well.”--GR

I know that of which your speak. I don't do semantics.

Your turn.

Peace, brother

FREESTINKER,

“While not empirically verifiable, with a combination of a number of universally accepted observable evidences (quarters for teeth) and a reasonable act of faith based on those evidences, I concluded that the Tooth Fairy almost certainly does exist!”--FS

Quarters placed under pillows by parents are “universally accepted observable evidences” for the existence of the tooth fairy?

I think that in your haste to break out the time-worn "tooth fairy" straw-man (or straw-woman?) on me you didn't quite think that one all the way through. :-)

RCOFIELD:
“You can't put it under a microscope and look at it. You can't hold it in your hands. You can't hear it with your ears, smell it with your nose, or taste it with your tongue.”
But you can feel/sense its effects.
My wife could be lying, she could be manipulating, but doing so for twenty years? Why?
The only reason I can think of to lie to or manipulate someone is to derive personal benefit. So she’s getting something positive out of it. So am I. So it’s at least a mutually satisfying symbiotic relationship. One could do worse.
I may indeed be a dupe to her fiendishness, but I’m at least a dupe that feels loved. Is that so bad?

“Yet the possibility remains that she may be using me as a source of financial security”
In that case, she’s the obvious idiot.

“By the same token, neither can you empirically “prove” that your wife loves you.”
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘proof’ here’s how I use the word when talking about ‘scientific methodology:
Proof: “The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true”
All the evidence and argument at my disposal compel me to believe my wife loves me.
If by proof you mean ‘absolute, irrefutable, or impossibly otherwise, then we are not using the scientific method’s accepted definition of ‘proof’.

“The exact same thing is true of the objective truth-claims of scripture and Christianity.”
I disagree. Scripture and Christianity just as easily qualify as subjective truth-claims. There are many different scriptures, many different ‘truth claims’ among many different religions. Where are the defining ‘objective’ parts inherent and unique to Christianity?

“by a combination of a number of universally accepted observable evidences and a reasonable act of faith based on those evidences”
My main argument here would be with the term ‘universally observable evidences.’ as well as the ‘reasonableness’ of the act of faith. This could easily devolve into a semantics debate as well.

RCOFIELD:
Good to hear from you friend!
“Are you saying that societies establish their own standards of morality internally with NO external influences whatsoever?”

Nope. Not at all. Our own Founding Fathers voted with their feet to leave a society that they found intolerable/offensive/unacceptable. They then set about to create/define a new society (nation) based on experiences, political philosophies and concepts that already existed elsewhere either in reality or merely in writing. However, even within the new nation, with it’s newly defined standards, many of the old customs, traditions and non-constitutionally specified moral compass points remained within the society itself. I cannot imagine a society abandoning all previous/existing standards for a completely different set.
Other external factors that can affect a society’s standards include geography, climate, proximity to other societies, and even the population density.

“And to abort a child or not abort a child is of no more moral consequence than choosing between cornflakes and snowflakes?”
I didn’t say that. I don’t recall addressing ‘moral consequence’ at all. Not to equate abortion with other things, but simply as a comparison of the process, let’s look again at slavery. There were indeed times and places where humans were treated as little more than livestock. The societies, specifically the slave owners, apparently had no concerns of ‘moral consequence’ since they saw the slaves merely as less than fully qualified humans. Societies’ attitudes shifted away from this attitude over the millennia and only when those nations/societies accepted the notion of the human-ness of the slaves did they attribute moral consequence to their treatment. I won’t argue ‘scale’, abortion vs. slavery here, but if you will notice that the bottom line of the abortion debate is essentially that same argument, whether the fetus/slave is actually a human being and thus qualified for our sympathies/moral indignation at their treatment.
Change the attitude, convincingly elevate the human-ness of the object and the end of the ‘slaughter’ will soon follow. How to do that? I really don’t know.

“And I might also point out that every argument (premise) you have offered thus far already assumes your conclusion”
Am I biased toward my conclusion? Well, yes. Guilty. I am offering up parables of my beliefs and showing their plausibility by example.
“My point is simply that there may be (indeed, are) explanations for the examples that you are using (other than there being no fixed moral standards).”
Can you do so without assuming your own conclusions? ;-)
You can start with what those ‘fixed moral standards’ are and where they can be universally found and agreed upon. In my mind, if they are universal, but simply concealed or non-apparent to everyone, then they are in fact relative to the intellectual/reasoning filters as defined by that individual’s perspective of /time/place/culture.

RCOFIELD wrote:
"Conversely, your truth-claim that your wife loves you is an objective truth-claim. While not empirically verifiable, it can be reasonably accepted as true by a combination of a number of universally accepted observable evidences and a reasonable act of faith based on those evidences.

The exact same thing is true of the objective truth-claims of scripture and Christianity."

RC,

When I was a kid I believed in the Tooth Fairy. Every time I lost a tooth, I left it under my pillow. Each night the Tooth Fairy would come while I was sleeping and would leave a quarter in place of my tooth, just as Tooth Fairy scripture had predicted. Many of my friends observed the same phenomena though none of us ever observed the Fairy itself. How could we? The Tooth Fairy only comes AFTER you fall asleep and no one had ever been able to catch the all-knowing Tooth Fairy in the act. While not empirically verifiable, with a combination of a number of universally accepted observable evidences (quarters for teeth) and a reasonable act of faith based on those evidences, I concluded that the Tooth Fairy almost certainly does exist!

The exact same thing is true of the objective truth-claims of scripture and Christianity.

PETERHUFF wrote:
"If I was you I would be more interested in which is the true God. It would be preposterous to believe that different gods that each refute what the other said where all responsible for this universe. Argue with any person that believes in a different god than you do and you will find that their belief is totally different from what you believe. That is not to say that there are not elements of truth smattered in there.
When I argue with a Muslim we both disagree on the nature, death, resurrection and life of Jesus, among other things such as their works righteous theology. We state opposite beliefs. Logically we both can't be right in our beliefs. It goes against the laws of non-contradiction that you and I operate by every day in order to make sense of anything. This is eternal life: that they may know You, the ONLY TRUE GOD, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17:3)"

Peter,

If you were me, you would be most interested to determine if any gods exist at all, before trying to figure out which ones actually do exist. If none exist, why go any further? Your approach begs the question, do any gods exist at all?

My conclusion is probably not. So I stopped there.

-------

PeterHuff wrote:
"It is not unsubstantiated with the Christian God, although I would agree with your assessment of all other gods, for all other gods are man made inventions."

Peter,

You and I are both atheists. I just believe in one less god than you do!

-------

PeterHuff wrote:
"Idle speculation on your part.
There are many evidences/proofs but I contend that your world-view will not allow you to accept the Christian God without Him first drawing you to Him. Your nature will otherwise resist Him with every ounce of your being because it is against Him and does not want to submit to His goodness."

Peter,

With gods, all we have is idle speculation. Yours is no less idle than mine. I'd be happy to learn that gods are real, happy to some extent even to learn that your God is real but I'm not as easily persuaded as you are because I have nothing to lose if gods do not exist. Unlike you,, my worldview, morality and my happiness are not tied in any way to the question.

PETERHUFF:
Part 4.
(Cntd.)

“How can truth ever be false?”
Quite simply. If you and I do not agree on the precise definitions of the words ‘truth’ and ‘false’ then it is likely we will have differences in opinion about what is true and what is false when we are talking about non-physical, non quantifiable, intellectual concepts.
This is the exact academic ether that scholastic philosophers have been writing/screaming within for centuries. ‘What is truth?’ is one of the core questions in these debates. (which indicates, if nothing else, that ‘truth’ is not inherently obvious, universally understood, or easily definable.)
But the philosophical debate is all merely academic and semantic.
In the real world, societal, and even personal values (truths) are not carved in granite obelisks on a mountaintop. They are cultural, traditional, relative to time/place/circumstance and anything but universal.
Your religion has an idea, a notion, a concept, a definition of ‘truth’. Your ‘society’ (defined here as those who also subscribe to your value set) quite likely agrees with your definition. That does not mean, however, that that definition is universal, or inherent for all mankind. You may want it to be universal, but that desire simply does not make it so. You may believe it is inherent, (etched into your soul) but that is a belief rather unique to your society’s agreed upon (or mandated) set of standards, not a provable or demonstrable fact.

“Can you explain whose idea of good is actually the ideal good that goodness can be measured by?”
Once again, concepts and semantics. I am not familiar/comfortable with the term ‘ideal good’. I imagine it’s rather like those coffee mugs, the ones that say ‘World’s Greatest Dad.’ Why on earth is there more than one of them? Who actually is the world’s greatest dad? What is the standard that would measured against for anyone’s dad to be declared the world’s greatest?
There are some dads that I consider good, some bad, but not everyone would agree with me. Because, as I have repeated ad nauseum, truth, good, right, morality are all relative.
Can you tell me who’s ideal/definition of ‘ideal good’ can be universally agreed upon? Then, and much more importantly, what do we do with those people/societies that do NOT agree with your definition?

That’s all for now.
Thanks.

GLADRUNNER,

Don't mean to disrupt you here (you seem to have really hit your sermonic stride on this one), but I have a quick question.

Are you saying that societies establish their own standards of morality internally with NO external influences whatsoever?

And to abort a child or not abort a child is of no more moral consequence than choosing between cornflakes and snowflakes? Have you really thought that one out thoroughly?

And I might also point out that every argument (premise) you have offered thus far already assumes your conclusion (no fixed moral standards). You are actually trying to use your conclusion to "prove" the veracity of your arguments. That's bassackwards. :-)

My point is simply that there may be (indeed, are) explanations for the examples that you are using (other than there being no fixed moral standards).

PETERHUFF:
Part 3.
“A qualitative value must have an objective measure in order for it to be known”
Poppycock. I do not need to know or define the exact characteristics of a thing to make a decision about its value. I don’t like broccoli, I don’t need a strict set of criteria, chemical analysis or rigid code of predetermined or divine standards to know that I do not like it. I tried it, I didn’t like it, it is simply not acceptable to me. I am also aware that my dislike is not universal so I have no reason to require a universal ban on broccoli.

“God has placed that value in the hearts/conscience of man”
That statement is not universally accepted. Your community (church/religion) has agreed upon it, but most of the world has not. (more on the absolute-ness of 'truth' later)

“How would you know good unless there was something in which good can be measured by that does not change?”
Good is a subjective measure based on time/place/circumstance. It is not binary. Slavery was ‘good’ for plantation owners, not so much for the slaves. In the U.S. we as a society debated this issue, fought over it, started a war over it. Those that believed that slavery was bad, won, those that thought it was good lost. A new standard of ‘good’ was set for this society.
In 1920 the eighteenth amendment to the U.S. constitution went into effect, banning the manufacture, sale and distribution of alcohol. Alcohol=bad. In 1933 The amendment was repealed. Alcohol=good?
It’s not as easy as that is it? This society’s standards changed, though the nature of alcohol and its effects did not. It’s level of acceptance changed. The people decided this and did so using the legal and legislative mechanisms they established for themselves. No ‘one person’ made the rules. Society decided for itself, observed and lived with (or outside) those rules, then later decided that the new rule did not have the desired effect, so they changed the rule again.

“Which society has the 'right' idea of abortion, the one that condones it or the one that condemns it?”
Which is better/more right, corn flakes or snowflakes?
‘Right’ is also subjective to time/place/culture. Your religion may make certain absolute statements about ‘right’, but so do most other religions, and they don’t always agree. Other religions and cultures might very well consider your ‘right’ to be completely 'wrong'. How do you propose we settle this issue globally? How do we get the world to accept your religion’s definition of what is right? (Hint: Jesus told you guys how to do it. Matt 28:19)

““So your statement contradicts itself and therefore self-destructs””
High school debater, I’m guessing.

“Can you explain how something true can be relative?”
Gladly, I love this one…
I love my wife. I have no doubt about that, therefore it is true. Certain other people do not love my wife. ‘Truth’ is indeed relative to time/place/perspective.

(Cntd.)

PETERHUFF:
Part 2.
Negotiations, deals, agreements, fights, compromises, all occur to sort out what is or is not acceptable and under what circumstances.
Have you never seen this? It is not a matter of ‘one person’ setting standards except in extreme (totalitarian) circumstances. At a workplace, what about dress codes, coffee making and whether or not Facebook or listening to music is acceptable behavior? These codes vary significantly from one place to another, yet society still exists.
“That is all you have - preference. Now the question is whose, Hitler's or Mother Teresa's? Preference is what wars are fought over.”
That’s an idiotic straw man… Those are not the only choices at all, those are simply absurd extremes. Yes those extremes do happen, but not everywhere, not all the time. Hitler set standards, when he tried to spread those standards to other societies, they fought to the death to maintain their own standards. Some countries gave up without a fight, they decided that the new standards, as bad as they were, were better than starting a war. That was their level/standard of morality.
So a society, whether that society is an island, a home, a city block, a city, state or nation, adapts standards and rules based on it’s needs and subjective and varying cultural values. Some of these standards are common, some are unique, some are even rare.
Where do these standards originate? Lets go back to the newlyweds.
Each spouse entered the relationship with a set of values and standards(that they grew up with). Many of these most likely shared between the two, or else they would not have hooked up for very long in the first place. So there are many standards already in common, so there’s really no need to insert into the wedding vows: “I promise to never kill you or chop off your limbs” since that’s a big one and quite likely already common between them.
It’s the little things, side of the bed, crumbs on the couch, TV shows to watch, dishes, laundry, walking the dog, stocking up the pantry that are going to lead to discussion and debate, and ultimately compromise. Those couples that can make this work, sort out all this stuff, and can live contentedly within this structure will be more likely to sustain the marriage than those cannot. Agreed?
What we have going on is a macro-model of societal evolution. People come together, sort out differences, those that do so successfully thrive, those that do not are more likely to fall apart.
(Cntd.)

PETERHUFF:
Part 1
“So what makes that behavior 'right' or good or bad? Someones opinion? Whose?”
It depends. In a totalitarian situation, someone, by brute force typically, makes the rules. In some societies it is more oligarchic, a group, perhaps with a central leader, sets the standards.
A contemporary version of how societies set their own rules of morality can be found in the discussion of porn. ‘Community standards’ are considered when zoning for adult entertainment businesses. Reflecting that one community’s ‘morality’ is different than another’s. Another example, Dry counties, those that do not allow the sale of alcohol. Etc.
“You are equating and confusing moral preference with moral good”
You are using the word ‘good’ as an objective term and it is not. What is morally good for one person may not be so for another.
“In order for there to be good there must be an objective measure against which to measure good by”
Not at all, since ‘good’ is not itself objective.
“If each culture has a different standard then by which culture can we determine that what is believed to be good actually is?”
As if there is only one ‘good’. It is not a black/white/ good/evil distinction that needs to be made, it is what best works that has been the most successful measure, and that is not absolute or objective either.
“Good becomes a blur that is determined by one person foistering their preference on another, or a leader and his/her cabinet determining what 'good' will be for his/her people by his/her preference on that society.”
Maybe to you, good becomes a blur, but I doubt that it is true for many people. You speak as though good is like a lamp that is either on or off. It’s not, it’s more like the volume control on your TV. There’s a minimum level to hear anything even in the quietest rooms, but should the AC be running or if there’s more street noise coming in, or you have a head cold that setting would change depending on time/place. These adjustments are likely to be minor though, there’s no reason to twist it up to eleven just because an eleven exists.
Let’s SIM for a moment, starting with an Island. You land on this island and discover you are the only inhabitant. What moral standards are needed? Is running around naked okay? Is screaming loudly okay?
Now a few weeks/months later, another unfortunate soul arrives, also stranded. Both feel lucky to be alive at all, neither is a snarling homicidal maniac, just regular guys. How long will it be before they discuss ‘moral’ issues. Sharing of food/water needs to be worked out, there may be some chores, like looking out for rescue ships, etc. that can be settled upon.
Even in this micro-society, standards are being negotiated and put in place. This is not at all unlike getting married where two people, formerly living alone move into a common home, together.
(Cntd.)

GLADERUNNER

“But WAIT! There’s ,more!”--GR

Well, now! THAT sure did take an ugly turn, didn't it? In the interest of keeping as much “egg” off my face as possible, could you maybe append “TBC” when “there's more”? :-)

You contend that you can prove empirically that your wife loves you. Let's test that theory. I'll substitute wife and myself in the test for obvious reasons.

“Nope. She says she loves me,...”--GR

My wife says the same thing. She could by lying.

“....her actions and attitudes do not belie or even seem to contradict that admission.”--GR

The same can be said about my wife's actions and attitudes toward me. But I could be mistaking her attitudes and actions. She could have motives that I am not aware of.

“The fact that she likes to make me laugh, she asks about my thoughts and seems genuinely interested in my feelings/emotions (as rare and understated as they are).”--GR

Ditto. But my wife could be manipulating me.

“She chooses to live with me and spend time around me, etc.”--GR

Ditto again. Yet the possibility remains that she may be using me as a source of financial security.

My point is simply this: You cannot empirically quantify love. You can't put it under a microscope and look at it. You can't hold it in your hands. You can't hear it with your ears, smell it with your nose, or taste it with your tongue. In the end, though there seems to be every indication that my wife truly loves me, I have to believe that, to some degree, by a measure of faith. Not a “blind leap” of faith, mind you, for there does seem to be evidence that she loves me, but a degree of faith nonetheless. But I cannot prove that she loves me using the scientific method of empiricism. By the same token, neither can you empirically “prove” that your wife loves you.

“There’s no microscope needed. I don’t need to test a tree’s DNA to recognize a tree if it’s right in front of me.”--GR

The tree is a physical object and can be empirically verified. You wife's love for you has no physical properties and therefore cannot be empirically verified.

The list of such things that we can know, virtually beyond any doubt, but cannot verify empirically is almost endless.

Your “Best Burgers in the State” analogy is, in the final analysis, a subjective truth-claim. It's veracity is subject to an almost endless list of personal preferences. As such, it may or may not be true, depending on the preferences of the individual making the determination.

Conversely, your truth-claim that your wife loves you is an objective truth-claim. While not empirically verifiable, it can be reasonably accepted as true by a combination of a number of universally accepted observable evidences and a reasonable act of faith based on those evidences.

The exact same thing is true of the objective truth-claims of scripture and Christianity.

Your turn.

PS Freestinker,

Great science hey?

PS, Freestinker, please notice his language of speculation and his philosophic imagination at work.

Btw Freestinker, here is the video I was thinking about earlier on Richard Dawkins and the multi-universe theory,

http://richarddawkins.net/videos/573222-this-remarkable-thing

Hi Gladerunner,

I stated:

“My second thought is that you do not understand biblical slavery and the concept behind it.”

Your response:

"Oh please, go for it… enlighten us about how 'biblical slaves' had it so much better than other slaves."

Slavery as pictured by most people is different than that which God put in place for His people. Someone became bonded to someone else in the Hebrew culture to pay a debt or survive poverty. The debt was considered paid in full on the seventh year. It was not the harsh kind of slavery that was practiced by the Egyptians on the Israelites. God reminded His people not to practice this kind of slavery.

There is a lot more to it than this. RCofield, Walter and I had an extended dialog on this five to ten threads ago. RCofield explained it beautifully to Walter. I think it actually left Walter without a reasonable defense. If you are interested in exploring this more thoroughly may I suggest you check out the work of Glenn Miller. I think you will learn a great deal about it.

http://christianthinktank.com/qnoslave.html

Hi Gladerunner,

My question:

“ so how can 'right' be determined without a moral absolute?”

Your response:

"Socially accepted behavior. Which may vary from house to house, village to village, culture to culture, time to time. Enforced by social standards and practices which also varies between times/places. Sometimes laws may be enacted about the big ones, regarding murder/theft/violence towards others, sometimes merely by finger-wagging and gossip and social pressures alone."

So what makes that behavior 'right' or good or bad? Someones opinion? Whose?

You are equating and confusing moral preference with moral good. In order for there to be good there must be an objective measure against which to measure good by. If each culture has a different standard then by which culture can we determine that what is believed to be good actually is? This is one of the strongest arguments against atheism in my opinion. Good becomes a blur that is determined by one person foistering their preference on another, or a leader and his/her cabinet determining what 'good' will be for his/her people by his/her preference on that society.

Ravi Zacharias (building on a debate between G.K.Chesterton and an atheist) asked, 'In some cultures they love their neighbors and in others they eat them. Which do you prefer?'

That is all you have - preference. Now the question is whose, Hitler's or Mother Teresa's? Preference is what wars are fought over.

A qualitative value must have an objective measure in order for it to be known. God has placed that value in the hearts/conscience of man who is made in His image and likeness.

How would you know good unless there was something in which good can be measured by that does not change?

Which society has the 'right' idea of abortion, the one that condones it or the one that condemns it?

ME: “If morality is nothing more than preference, then what makes it right”

"It is not a binary battle between the extreme positions of universal absolute and individual personal preference, there are other options." -GR

Which are?

“So your statement contradicts itself and therefore self-destructs” - ME

"Or it could just be more clearly stated for you as ‘morality is relative, there is no one universally accepted code of morality’." - GR

Is that relatively true or completely true?

Are you stating a moral absolute when you say 'there is no one universally accepted code of morality' because you state it as if you are stating something that is universally known?

Can you explain how something true can be relative? Can you explain whose idea of good is actually the ideal good that goodness can be measured by?

How can truth ever be false?

Hi TWMatthews,

You said:

"There is nothing irreducibly complex about the human eye. In fact, even Behe had to admit that his cellular pump, which he claimed to be irreducibly complex, could in fact be reduced to simpler and still functioning components." - TWM

Simpler maybe, but nevertheless designed. Many people thought his argument about the irreducible complexity of the mouse trap was shot down. Just because someone came up with a DESIGN that did not need everything that Behe proposed as needed for a mouse trap to function by CHANGING THE DESIGN they reasoned that what he said had been refuted. But the point I am making is THEY CHANGED THE DESIGN but it was still irreducibly complex in the redesign they made. Without one of the newly designed features the trap would still fail to work.

PETERHUFF:

“ so how can 'right' be determined without a moral absolute?”
Socially accepted behavior. Which may vary from house to house, village to village, culture to culture, time to time. Enforced by social standards and practices which also varies between times/places. Sometimes laws may be enacted about the big ones, regarding murder/theft/violence towards others, sometimes merely by finger-wagging and gossip and social pressures alone.

“If morality is nothing more than preference, then what makes it right”
See above. It is not a binary battle between the extreme positions of universal absolute and individual personal preference, there are other options.

“My second thought is that you do not understand biblical slavery and the concept behind it.”
Oh please, go for it… enlighten us about how 'biblical slaves' had it so much better than other slaves.

“So your statement contradicts itself and therefore self-destructs”
Or it could just be more clearly stated for you as ‘morality is relative, there is no one universally accepted code of morality’.

Hi getjiggly1 (if you are still around),

Do you realize your argument fall flat on its face?

You state:

"Ah Fishcrow, enough with the "moral absolutes" bs. Of course there are no "moral absolutes.""

It is a self refuting statement. Once you state there are no moral absolutes you are stating a moral absolute, that there are none, except of course the one you state, which is one more than none. So your statement contradicts itself and therefore self-destructs.

"Morality changes with changes in culture, values, and history. In ancient Greece it was absolutely "morally" acceptable to have a preteen male concubine. In Biblical times it was "morally" acceptable BY THE PEOPLE WHO PURPORTEDLY WROTE THE BIBLE to have slaves and slaughter innocent women and children so long as they were the enemy's women and children. Your argument does not compute."

Two thoughts, one is that morality does change with different cultures and groups, so how can 'right' be determined without a moral absolute? If morality is nothing more than preference, then what makes it right? Hitler's Germany, by your view, can be seen as morally 'right' as Mother Teresa's Calcutta. Now, which would you prefer to live in?

My second thought is that you do not understand biblical slavery and the concept behind it.

RCOFIELD:
But WAIT! There’s ,more!

“Presuming that you are happily married, have you ever tried to “prove” that you wife loves you by the use of the scientific method, a slide rule, and a microscope?
Nope. She says she loves me, her actions and attitudes do not belie or even seem to contradict that admission. Once again though, you’re the one that said I was an empiricist, not me.

:-) There are lots of things that we accept without empirical evidence.”
However there is empirical evidence now that I think about it… I can see/catalog her actions toward me. The fact that she likes to make me laugh, she asks about my thoughts and seems genuinely interested in my feelings/emotions (as rare and understated as they are). She chooses to live with me and spend time around me, etc. There’s no microscope needed. I don’t need to test a tree’s DNA to recognize a tree if it’s right in front of me.

“by that method of reasoning any concept that is controversial and difficult to understand should be rejected. You really don’t want to go too far down that road, do you?”

Not necessarily rejected, but certainly held up for scrutiny.
I pass a sign nearly every night that says: “Best Burgers in the State, 43 miles ahead.”

There’s several ways to handle this bit of information.
1. Accept it without question, since it is written.
2. Reset my trip odometer (to make sure the distance is precisely accurate.)
3. Eat burgers at every other possible place in the state for comparison purposes.
4. Ignore the information as basically useless since the claim is too bold to just accept as fact outright, and therefore inherently suspect.
5. Ponder the discrepancy in that the information conflicts with another sign pointing a different direction making the same claim for another restaurant in another town. (Either claim is equally plausible/implausible, yet cannot, by definition both be correct.)
6. Reject the reliability of the information since ‘best’ is offered as an objective claim, but is actually a term completely subjective to differences in perspective, tastes, culture, etc. thus is entirely up for interpretation and not at all definitive or universally agreed upon.
7. Accept the credibility and entirety of the claim since part of it is testable, i.e. There is a burger joint EXACTLY 43 miles form the sign, therefore it must make the best burgers in the state, since if A is true, B must be as well since they share the same information source.
8. Reject/ignore the information since I don’t really care for burgers that much anyhow.
Etc, etc….

There’s a lot of real estate between a simple, binary accept/reject policy for me. And it is usually analog, not binary.

Hi Freestinker,

"...I prefer to use the notation god(s) or gods to refer to the supernatural claims of theists. Using the plural form without caps is a much more accurate word for what is really in question." -FS

If I was you I would be more interested in which is the true God. It would be preposterous to believe that different gods that each refute what the other said where all responsible for this universe. Argue with any person that believes in a different god than you do and you will find that their belief is totally different from what you believe. That is not to say that there are not elements of truth smattered in there.

When I argue with a Muslim we both disagree on the nature, death, resurrection and life of Jesus, among other things such as their works righteous theology. We state opposite beliefs. Logically we both can't be right in our beliefs. It goes against the laws of non-contradiction that you and I operate by every day in order to make sense of anything.

"This is eternal life: that they may know You, the ONLY TRUE GOD, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17:3)

"This construct immediately challenges the initial unsubstantiated assumptions of most theists (that there is only one god and it is their god) right from the start." -FS

It is not unsubstantiated with the Christian God, although I would agree with your assessment of all other gods, for all other gods are man made inventions.

"Gods might very well exist but maybe just the Greek gods? Or maybe just the Toothe Fairy. How the hell are we ever going to know exactly how many exist and which ones they are?" -FS

Idle speculation on your part.

There are many evidences/proofs but I contend that your world-view will not allow you to accept the Christian God without Him first drawing you to Him. Your nature will otherwise resist Him with every ounce of your being because it is against Him and does not want to submit to His goodness.

GLADERUNNER,

That was a delightfully frank series of posts, distinctly unlike the canned rhetoric of most atheists I have encountered. I am intrigued. Give me a little time, as I have a rather busy evening ahead of me, and I will get back to you.

I think we have a few points of common ground from which to work.

RCOFIELD:
Part 4.
Scientifically, to discard any theory though, one must be prepared to bring up an alternative theory and be prepared to back that up with at least as much evidence, measurable, demonstrable, physical evidence as was contained in the theory being discarded.
Many similar arguments like yours could be made against the political theory of democracy. In practice it is far from perfect, is certainly corruptible, it is like the proverbial sausage factory, not something pleasant to look at too closely. It is a system where everyone, regardless of how ignorant, morally bankrupt, or politically arrogant gets to have a voice in its societies’ governance. It fails to fairly deal with minority groups since almost by design, it is a system comprised largely of majority rule.
Yet we keep it in place. In fact most of us living in ‘democracies’ prefer it, and would fight for it. With all of its flaws, its failures and its imperfections why would we even want to hold on to it?
The simple answer: It’s ugly, but it catches fish. It has even be said that it is the worst imaginable system, except for all the others.
Which brings us to my final point for this current screed.
’I don’t know.’
Because I got bored researching eyeball evolution (though the Mexican cave fish article was pretty engaging) I was perfectly prepared to answer one of your complexity points with ‘I don’t know’. But I thought you might not understand the concept as I do, it’s happened before.
When debating pure young-earth creationists in the past (not accusing you of any such thing) I would answer something that way and they would declare immediate and conclusive victory. They took it as a sign that because I couldn’t account for or explain every hair on my dear mother’s back that I was surrendering the case, that my ignorance on some subtopic or incredibly complex detail was proof itself of the absurdity of the entire theory.
Anyway, while debating those guys I figured out that I could describe two boxes. Any questions we had about nature that were not demonstrably answered would be tossed into either the box labeled ‘I don’t know’ or the one labeled ‘God did it’. The eventual point was to demonstrate that each box would eventually, probably, contain the same questions, the only real difference being who filled each box. What it further demonstrates is that neither box actually contained an observable answer to the question asked. ‘I don’t know’ admits lack of knowledge. ‘God did it’ doesn’t actually answer the ‘how’.
So when you ask “How did the eyeball come to be? I could answer (unapologetically) ‘I don’t know’ and the Creationist could answer “God did it” and neither of us has actually provided a demonstrable explanation of how the eye actually came to be. Both are essentially admissions of personal ignorance of the details of the creation/development of the eye, and little more.

RCOFIELD:
Part 3.
Moon phases were discovered to be related to tides, an important bit of knowledge especially for sea-bound cultures. Patterns and structures in nature were being studied and recorded. Better tools (and weapons) were built, crops were crossbred and even planned. No longer was mankind dependant on solely what he could wander around and pick up. He could plant crops, domesticate animals, and form more stable, non-nomadic societies. Nature was not simply random or only supernaturally controlled/manipulated.
At no point in our history has scientific knowledge been complete or perfect, far from it. But to deny scientific method, even presupposed or flawed, is to ignore the very methodology that has allowed mankind to thrive and advance.
Even primitive savages utilized science like gravity and inertia; they just didn’t have a word or the requisite mathematics or technology to completely understand the full potential of these forces. Those societies that embraced the incomplete and often experimental early sciences easily out-reproduced and overran those that did not. The clever, curious fellow who first tied string to bow and launched a crude arrow (a very incomplete and gappy science at the time) was probably more influential to the future course of human history than all the studied philosophers the world has ever known.
The first persons to determine, through experimentation and working on little more than crude hypothesis (presumption) that many common, fatal diseases and their spread could be significantly mitigated by implementation of basic sanitation methods, have saved more lives and extended the productive lifespan of humans far more significantly than all priests, prophets and conjurers in all the religions throughout history, combined.
By itself, any field of science can be examined closely and found lacking, it’s hardly an intellectual superpower to be able to find potential flaws, inconsistencies and unanswered questions in any scientific endeavor. The more important point is that any science, in spite of being, even to this day, raw, rough, inexact, seriously imperfect, and cosmically incomplete, is still better, by virtually any measure than the only other offered alternatives.
Though debating about the complex construction of an eyeball is interesting for a while, the fact that evolution does not perfectly explain it (yet?) does not mean that evolution theory itself is baseless, only that it is incomplete and imperfect. Had the world’s first bow maker failed to sling a sharp stick further or faster than it could be thrown, should he have discarded the feeble, flawed technology? Should Edison have given up after one, a hundred, or even two thousand failed incandescent filaments? Perhaps instead he should have merely prayed for light?

RCOFIELD:
Part 2.
As for evolution, well, I’m not a biologist/botanist either. If in fact a true babelfish was found that confounded all scientific explanation and could not be explained as anything other than a work of a mystical, supernatural being, well, I might even change teams.
Once again, whether birds ‘evolved’ from amphibian/reptilian-ish dinosaurs or were actually always as they are, is once again not a vital lynchpin in my admittedly rather self-centered intercourse with discernable reality.
What I am trying to say is that I have no rigid allegiance to evolution theory. If it turns out to be erroneous, I’m fine with that. If it has gaps, fine. Which organisms or cultures, or races or tribes I am descended from simply does not matter as much to me as does what I am going to do with my life in the body, time and place I find myself. I am sure it is important to scientists, they want to understand the minutiae of nature and fit the microscopic puzzle pieces together. Sometimes they strive to learn from their investigations in order to improve life, humanity, and some of these efforts have led to many technologies and processes that have actually benefitted mankind.

Science, in any aspect, is not perfect, it is not complete, and it is not infallible. It doesn’t explain everything. The parameters can change, science itself evolves, unapologetically. To borrow from an ad for a certain fishing lure: “It’s ugly, but it catches fish”.
Science (including evolution) is best, and can only be truly appreciated when compared to the alternatives.
For thousands of years of human societies the only explanations offered for disease, death, weather, conflict, flood, famine pestilence, were ‘religious’. In one form or another, across the world, cultures developed and many even thrived in spite of the fact that they assumed that lightening was a tool/weapon thrust by an angry deity, that floods and volcanoes were the result of failure to properly appease various vengeful gods. Many of these gods, including the judeo-christian god desired/demanded earthly bloody sacrifice, either human or animal in strict ritualistic ceremonies in order to stave off pestilence, famine and flood.
Priests and prophets who could somehow prove to be in those gods’ graces were very powerful. They essentially ruled tribes and kingdoms specifically because of their apparent ability to appease or interpret the words and actions of their gods.
Then somebody started to notice things. A crude scientific method developed. Calendars were created that measured/demonstrated the cyclical nature of seasons. Though not surgically precise, floods, monsoons, and variations in temperature could be roughly predicted. Other observations showed that cloud formations and activity could be used to predict the direction, strength and potential of individual storms. Certain common rocks could be heated, and strong, malleable metals could be extracted.

RCOFIELD:
Thank you for your kind words and your continued civility.

Part 1.

“An atheist that recognizes the limitations of reason”
Yes, of course. I didn’t know that was rare. I have to give due credit to my own ignorance for it though. I was never schooled in philosophy or ‘reason’. As I have been investigating it though through these little debates, I’ve learned myself up quite a bit, and simply found problems and inconsistencies with some of the academic and scholastic definitions, arguments and premises. These observations are not new or unique, I’ve been able to find plenty of similar published criticisms that predate my own birth by a hundred or so years.

As for ‘empiricism’ ( I had to look it up to be sure) I suppose that is an adequate enough label for my ‘philosophy’ in many aspects of my relationship and understanding with the physical universe. However I’ll remind you, since I am not schooled in philosophy, I may stray from the label from time to time, unfamiliar as I am of its exact boundaries. ;-)

As for the meat of the debate, I’ll try to clarify a few things before ripping your individual arguments to shreds… (just kidding)
In my relationship with the universe, I do indeed tend to defer a majority of acceptance to those things that may be classified ‘empirical’. I accept gravity, magnetism, most aspects of biology, botany and taxidermy on things that are observable, testable, demonstrable or evidentiary. I’ve never ‘seen’ electricity, gravity, etc. directly, but I do agree with the vast majority of the science involved because it appears, at least within the known universe, to be consistent predictable and rather reliable. I do not presume to understand all the micro-physics involved, but I don’t need to for the vast majority of my interactions with these forces.
I’ve never actually seen a supernova, but I have seen photographs, and know enough about photography, telescopes and even radio telemetry and microwave technology to accept the information commonly posited by the peer-driven scientific community to accept their findings. I generally accept these notions of supernovas, black holes, etc. because frankly, they have better equipment and more education about such things than I do. I do not accept them merely as a matter of ‘faith’ though. Their explanations work, seem generally consistent and truth be told, in the self-centered macro world of my mortal life, what is or is not happening a bazzilion light years away doesn’t really seem to matter all that much compared to my squeaky brakes, the tensions with the boss, and the never-ending quest to maintain a stable family life.
So if some other scientist finds contrary evidence, I’m interested academically, but not really personally invested.

"I find it interesting and ironic that whenever atheists tangle with believers in forums like this, most of the atheists seem to make the same assumptions about supernatural as the believers. Both sides start from the premise of a single omnimax god that created the universe and created humanity."

=======

Carstonio,

I agree. That's why I prefer to use the notation god(s) or gods to refer to the supernatural claims of theists. Using the plural form without caps is a much more accurate word for what is really in question.

This construct immediately challenges the initial unsubstantiated assumptions of most theists (that there is only one god and it is their god) right from the start.

Gods might very well exist but maybe just the Greek gods? Or maybe just the Toothe Fairy. How the hell are we ever going to know exactly how many exist and which ones they are?

"How can you rule out God when you have no definite answers to how the universe came to be?"

=======

PeterHuff,

I haven't ruled god(s) out, I just haven't ruled them in! :)

Carstonio

You wrote, " As an example, I would like to know the rationale by both sides for rejecting polytheism or spirit religions. The ancient Greeks and Norse did not believe that their gods created the universe, and the latter did not believe their gods to be omnipotent and omniscient."

I can't speak for anyone else, but since I met Dad and the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit revealed to me that the Catholic Eucharist is Jesus and I've also met satan and experienced hell and spiritual death, to mention some of what I have been thru, this is why I speak of God being One and yet a Trinity and a Being of Pure Love.

I find it rather sad, to put it mildly, that some, including those that actually know God's Name, think of God as a loser.

It doesn't seem to me to be even remotely "Christian" to be happy about going to the "good place" and not caring one iota that some would go to a place beyond horrible, way beyond, for ever and ever and ever... , and yet this is exactly what many seem to believe and, even much worse, what some seem to be looking forward to.

If God were even remotely like what some "Christians" present God to be, I ask, who, with even the most tiniest shred of decency, would want to have anything to do with such a thing?

I thank God that God's Plan is, ultimately, for EVERYONE to be in God's Kindgom.

Whether one believes in God or not, there is a statement attributed to God: "My Ways are not your ways and My Thoughts are not your thoughts".

See you ALL in the Kingdom.

Hope you're doing fine.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

Of course there is a God. He wrote a book. Problem is what will he do to us when we pass? Some think we will go up to heaven – somewhere up there in the vacuum of space- and live happily ever after next to Jesus or Mohammad. Some may not make it and be confined to a place called hell and burned everlastingly. The Jesus believers consider that their belief system is correct and all the Mohammad believers will go to hell. The Mohammad believers think that the opposite will happen. Obviously very rational thinking is going on here. Me, I prefer Zeus.

"I find it interesting and ironic that whenever atheists tangle with believers in forums like this, most of the atheists seem to make the same assumptions about supernatural as the believers. Both sides start from the premise of a single omnimax god that created the universe and created humanity. I would have expected at least one atheist to accuse believers of trying to control the terms of the debate. It seems apparent that both sides are working from the same set of cultural and theological assumptions when there's no need to do so. As an example, I would like to know the rationale by both sides for rejecting polytheism or spirit religions. The ancient Greeks and Norse did not believe that their gods created the universe, and the latter did not believe their gods to be omnipotent and omniscient.

Posted by: Carstonio | January 6, 2011 6:21 AM"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It is not the case of atheists and the believers working from the same premise. The atheists are here to show the truth claims of the believers are without substance. So we have to refute and demand the believers to show evidence for their truth claims. Refuting or demanding evidence for other truth claims would actually be ducking the proposition of the believers. If and when we run into people of the persuasion you cited we certainly will challenge them on their grounds.

PETERHUFF & TWMATTHEWS,

This thread is getting extremely crowded. For the sake of sanity, may I suggest that we take our particular discussion here:

http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/max_carter/2011/01/first_faith_challenge_of_2011.html

Let me know what you think.

I find it interesting and ironic that whenever atheists tangle with believers in forums like this, most of the atheists seem to make the same assumptions about supernatural as the believers. Both sides start from the premise of a single omnimax god that created the universe and created humanity. I would have expected at least one atheist to accuse believers of trying to control the terms of the debate. It seems apparent that both sides are working from the same set of cultural and theological assumptions when there's no need to do so. As an example, I would like to know the rationale by both sides for rejecting polytheism or spirit religions. The ancient Greeks and Norse did not believe that their gods created the universe, and the latter did not believe their gods to be omnipotent and omniscient.

Hi TWMatthews,

"If God is omniscience why didn't he anticipate what the serpent would do once he had Eve all alone? Didn't he see that coming...?" - TWM

You are making the assumption that God did not anticipate it, not me. The definition of omniscience is all knowing.

He gave Adam and Eve the freewill to experience His love and that relationship with Him. They chose to reject it and do their own thing as He knew they would, and yet before the foundation of the world there was the plan to send the Son so that man can have that relationship with Him.

"...Before Eve ate of the fruit, it is my understanding that both her and Adam were completely innocent -- not knowing right from wrong. Is that right?" - TWM

Not knowing evil. The understanding of good and evil came with disobeying God. All that God had created was good, very good. By God's standard that must be perfect. But the creature/man is limited even if he is made in the image and likeness of God. If he wasn't limited in knowledge then there would be no distinction between God and what God has made, yet there is, for there is only one God.

So man's limited understanding of knowing only good changed when he took the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

"So, if Eve did not know what was right from what was wrong, how could she be expected to know that when God told her something that this was "right" but when the serpent told her something, then that was "wrong" to listen to him/it?"

She knew only good until the point of taking the fruit; then she also knew what was evil.

I'm speculating here, maybe RCofield can give you a better answer, but if she and Adam had chosen to 'walk with God' and continued in their relationship she would have learned to trust God in His goodness, instead of another creature that He had made that had already chosen to rebel against God.

"It looks like humanity got a bum rap because God, who should have anticipated what the serpent would do, didn't. Eve, who didn't know one voice was bad while the other was good, listened to the wrong voice and God punished humanity forever for that."

God did anticipate it. Read Ephesians 1:3-11 or Romans 8:28-39 for starters. What better way for God to show both His love and mercy, in saving those who would believe, as well as His justice - always doing what is right in punishing evil or what goes against His nature, His goodness, the way He is.

"...it really shows that believers don't want to hold God accountable for anything bad, despite what it looks like." -TWM

Looks can be deceiving. We cannot fathom much of what is real and true with our finite minds and yet God sees how every detail of every event is related because He lives in the eternal present or outside of time. He knows every aspect of His creation, for He made it, we don't.

As Christians we recognize and understand that God is good, there is no evil in Him. We take Him on His authority, not ours. That is part of submission.

Hi NWMatthews,

Nice to exchange views with you again.

You said:

"Actually, it's Hawking that claims multiple universes uniting quantum and string theories." -TWM

But it was Richard Dawkins I was thinking about, but I can't find the exact link in which he talks about the imaginary multi-universe with highly speculative language - nothing that is provable by science, just speculation. No doubt it was borrowed from Stephen Hawkings. Here is another link.

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html

"That is a big difference between a believer and a nonbeliever. Believers claim to "know" that which they can't possibly know." -TWM

How do you know that?

I asked how you could rule out God when you have no definite answers to how the universe came to be?

You said:

"Because we know when time started with the big bang. We don't know whether this particular universe had anything "before" that since time didn't exist, there is no before." -TWM

So far God is the best explanation since you have nothing scientific to base your speculation on as to what was before the 'Big Bang.' You have not yet been able to make sense of it, as I claim with any path that we could possibly venture down, without first presupposing God. But presupposing and knowing Him are two different things.

There was no 'before' for the physical universe of space time and matter. Many scientists have stated the universe exploded out of nothingness. I can dig up some quotes. But every thing that began to exist has a cause. The Big Bang is an effect. What is that cause?

We can also rule out, philosophically that is, an eternal universe since in an infinite universe we would never arrive at this point in time that we call 'today.'

Epic Fail here Brad. You should have actually read the study before commenting on it in such a ridiculous way. Here is an article I just wrote about it after going through the study. Check it out:

Are atheists angry with God? - http://exm.nr/eOQB02

GLADERUNNER,

Part 1 of 3

Your arguments are considerably more cogent than most on this thread. Though I don’t necessarily agree with all of your conclusions, I do appreciate the civil dialog.

“‘Rational debate’ may be ‘based on’ but it is not the ‘same as’ mathematics. Mathematics provides for demonstrability, testability. ‘Reason’ does not necessarily do so.”—GR

Hmm…An atheist that recognizes the limitations of reason. You are a cat of a different stripe than most atheists that I have encountered. I find your above statements intriguing. I’m sure I will have opportunity to revisit them in due course.

“Yet the probability of a cosmic, invisible, all-powerful creator-being, spitting into dust and creating not just an opossum, but an entire universe, is MORE likely?”—GR

Statistical probabilities only measure probability within the natural universe. At least as far as we know, anyway.

“The problem with assigning raw ‘probability’ to evolution theory is that it discounts external influences and the underlying mega-data buried deep in all DNA.”

You are presupposing that the “external influences” were favorable for beneficial mutations. Unless, of course, we appeal to the fact that organisms exist as evidence for evolution—but then that would be a circular argument, wouldn’t it?

“Yes I know, I stayed within a species. I’m not trying to solve/prove the whole theory here, just making a smaller point.”—GR

Indeed you did “stay within a species.” Take out the purposeful human manipulation (a far cry from “natural selection”) through the breeding process and your presupposition of evolution and all you have is adaptation within a species. This certainly does not prove speciation.

“And in science there is nothing wrong with being presumptive.”—GR

There is when your supporting premises are formulated BY your presupposed conclusion.

“If your attempt to prove the existence of your god involves beating up science with science, then you’re using the wrong weapon.”—GR

For the record, that is not what I am attempting to do here. I have a whole other set of arguments for the existence of God. I’m simply trying to hold the “scientific evidence” being offered here to the standards of the scientific method. Being an apparent empiricist, I’m sure you would agree to the necessity of that.

GLADERUNNER,

Part 2 of 3

“Science only tries to explain, in physical terms that which is observed in nature. If your god resides outside of that nature, then you have nothing to worry about. We may indeed just be looking at his toolkit.”--GR

I agree with all three of your above statements without reservation.

“Evolution was not ‘presupposed’ as you imply.”—GR

It does seem to be in every example you have given thus far.

“Evolution, which is only our best explanation currently available, came about and was greatly debated and criticized. Mountains of ‘evidence’ supporting it were required before it became commonly acceptable.”—GR

Yet every argument in favor of evolution I have encountered to date does seem to presuppose evolution. I’ve heard this “mountains of supporting evidence” postulated too many times to count. Yet, when the postulators are called upon to state their evidence it always seems to start by assuming evolution and working out from there. Even pawpaw Darwin was influenced to presuppose evolution in the formation of the theory.

“And yes I suppose we often presuppose it now, but should actual new evidence (not just a lack of evidence) come forth, as in the past, science will steer toward another, better theory.”—GR

But wouldn’t you agree with me that there is a tipping point of no return if enough “evidence” is amassed in “favor” of the theory BY the theory? In other words, is it possible to arrive at a point when one will no longer entertain any other explanatory possibilities? Assuming you agree that this is possible, isn’t that more than a little dangerous?

“Certainly one can. We are talking about organisms that have evolved, in billions of organisms, over tens of millions of years. It is not about the odds that one pair of rats creates a rat with wings, but that of billions of rat-matings over millions of years.”—GR

What you are arguing here may be nothing more than adaptation, but a couple of questions here. Aren’t you just multiplying variables (especially when you bring in DNA)? And aren’t statistical probabilities reduced rather than increased with the addition of variables? And it should be noted here that our discussion to date has not even scratched the surface of the impossible number of variables necessary for speciation.

“What apples and oranges? How is Jesus different from Robin Hood?”—GR

You’re kidding, right? Have you not read the respective books? :-)

GLADERUNNER,

Part 3 of 3

“If it involves supernatural activity, yes. If it involves evidence that cannot be tested, demonstrated or measured, then yes, I’ll reject it as being evidentiary of being anything other than articles of imagination, or simply as an unknown.”—GR

This seems to be a pretty strong affirmation of empiricism. Presuming that you are happily married, have you ever tried to “prove” that you wife loves you by the use of the scientific method, a slide rule, and a microscope? :-) There are lots of things that we accept without empirical evidence.

“As for the ‘person and nature of god’, religions, even denominations within a religion cannot even agree on these abstruse concepts. How is a squint with only a slide rule and a microscope supposed to?”—GR

So…by that method of reasoning any concept that is controversial and difficult to understand should be rejected. You really don’t want to go too far down that road, do you?

“Once again, probability only estimates statistical likelihood, not actual outcome. We see evidence, lots of it that says organism A is very much, mostly like organism B except for the sequencing of a few, a very, very, few chunks of DNA.”—GR

Notice your method of argumentation: Organisms with similar DNA actually exist. Because there are similarities in the DNA structure of these organisms, they must have evolved. Your conclusion (evolution) is not supported by your premise (existing organisms with similar DNA). Rather, you presuppose evolution, which then becomes your explanation for the similarities in the DNA of organisms.

By that same method of reasoning we could “prove” that a Rolls Royce “evolved” from a Yugo. They both exist. You place them side by side. You notice the similarities. Both have four wheels, a steering wheel, an engine, transmission, etc. Hence, you conclude that a Rolls Royce “evolved” from a Yugo. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? We both know that both cars were designed by designers who used similar features because they were conducive to building a car.

Now let me show you how your presupposition of evolution keeps you from admitting to another explanatory possibility. Organisms with similar DNA actually exist. Because there are similarities in the DNA structure of these organisms, they must have been created by a designer who used DNA sequencing. Being a good designer, he used DNA sequences that worked well with slight variations in said sequences to create entirely different species of organisms. Hence all organisms are created.

How does that Rolls Royce/Yugo example look now?

Peace, brother

Hi TWMatthews, RCofield,

RCO, I'm with you on the circular argument that TWM is presenting. When you get to the nuts and bolts of any argument it is extremely hard to avoid this circular reasoning.

One of the things that I find amusing about evolutionary science is that it take something we have in common or something similar in nature with another kind of creature and read into this a common ancestry. Another is a rare and non-repeatable event is assumed to have happened the way evolutionists believe it to have happened because of their starting presuppositions. Yet when we offer a rare and special event that is based on the same kind of evidence that they use - unrepeatable by science - they claim that our evidence, our proofs are non-existent.

It is funny how an eye that is designed for different functions can be read to be evolving from a common ancestor. What we see/witness as evolving has limits to that evolution and that evolution is to its own kind. The examples that Darwin used were all micro-evolutionary changes, something that Christians can agree with because God has created us to change within our kind.

The peppered moth is still a peppered moth. It just is able to adapt to its environment.

A finch still is a finch no matter how much its beak changes due to drought conditions.

Animal husbandry can breed changes within the boundaries that God has designed and no further.

The example used before on this blog were between two different breeds of dog, but a dog is still a dog.

A fruit fly, no matter how many generations it is bombarded by radiation in attempts to mutate it to a new kind is still a fruit fly.

This is what we witness, what we observe in science. The rest is philosophical naturalism. Darwin's magical ingredient is time coupled with chance - unintentional blind random happenstance.

Peterhuff, commenting on your responses to FreeStinker.

Peter: I'm glad you admitted that you don't know. This makes your belief one that rests on faith and philosophical presuppositions.

TWM: That is a big difference between a believer and a nonbeliever. Believers claim to "know" that which they can't possibly know.

Peter: How can you rule out God when you have no definite answers to how the universe came to be?

TWM: Because we know when time started with the big bang. We don't know whether this particular universe had anything "before" that since time didn't exist, there is no before.

Peter: And as for the universe always existing, you would be going against the best scientific evidence and speculation to this point in time, that I might add agrees with the Bible in one significant point; there was a beginning.

TWM: Actually, it's Hawking that claims multiple universes uniting quantum and string theories. I have to admit that the math and even the concepts are far beyond my comprehension. But these hypotheses are no different than Einstein's special relativity which was mathematically deduced, far before we had any instruments capable of verifying E=mc(2).

Hello Peter, I hope you are well.

Peterhuff: The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct persons and yet equally and inseparably one in nature, unity, eternity, omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence, to name just a few of the attributes that makes God God.

TWM: Let's talk a minute about the omniscience of God and maybe you can explain something to me. If God is omniscience why didn't he anticipate what the serpent would do once he had Eve all alone? Didn't he see that coming after all, at that time there were really only two humans under his care; not nearly the load of watching over 7 billion, right?

And another related question. Before Eve ate of the fruit, it is my understanding that both her and Adam were completely innocent -- not knowing right from wrong. Is that right?

So, if Eve did not know what was right from what was wrong, how could she be expected to know that when God told her something that this was "right" but when the serpent told her something, then that was "wrong" to listen to him/it?

It looks like humanity got a bum rap because God, who should have anticipated what the serpent would do, didn't. Eve, who didn't know one voice was bad while the other was good, listened to the wrong voice and God punished humanity forever for that.

That's like the baby sitter having one too many beers, the 3 year old knocks over a candle and burns the house down and everyone blames the baby. This is just one of a number of logical fallacies underlying the reasonableness of the whole Adam and Eve myth. In addition, it really shows that believers don't want to hold God accountable for anything bad, despite what it looks like.

RCOfield and Peterhuff,

Gentlemen, I finally went back to that other post only to find it would not let me comment further. Here's what I wrote:

To Peterhuff and RCO (yes, I'm finally able to respond to this post. My apologies for taking so long. I have been away for a number of days.)

RCO: I will answer that, but first let me turn the question around on you. By what standard do you (and your clients) discern the meaning of your software licensing agreements? I mean, if 1,000 people read your licensing agreements, it is not inconceivable that you could have literally dozens of different interpretations, right? Does that mean that your licensing agreements are completely ambiguous? I, for your sake, certainly hope not! I'll come back to this in a moment.

TWM: Perfect. This is the exact point I was going to make. Thank you for that. We have very clearly written documents and even those are subject to personal interpretation. That's why we have judges and courts -- to decide what the words mean and which laws, if any, apply.

Now, if you were to tell me that there is a judge up in the sky who tells us when we are making the wrong interpretation I would say you are dreaming. There's no evidence that God, the holy spirit or the blessed virgin Mary, is helping you or anyone else understand the bible. You used the word interpretation, preceded by a whole bunch of adjectives.

So the Pope's understanding of what is moral or immoral is based on his divine revelation and his literal/grammatical/historical/canonical interpretation of the bible. But I bet that there are many moral issues of which you and the Pope disagree. How is that possible? Is he not being guided by the same holy spirit that guides you? Are you misunderstanding things in spite of the best efforts of the holy spirit or is it just possible that men (and women) of faith can read the same pages of the same version of the same book, and come away with vastly different understandings.

Let me ask you a simple question: Is artificial birth control, like use of condoms, immoral?

More to come. In the mean, answer that simple question according to your best interpretation of what God has defined as moral and let me know whether birth control is immoral.

Hi Freestinker,

In response to RCofields husband, father, and grandfather illustration you said,

"Cute but you are still just a single "being" no matter how many roles you may have.
The Trinity claims to be three distinct beings AND one distinct being at the same time. Huh?" - FS
===============

You are a distinct person, so am I and yet we are both human beings by nature - one. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct persons and yet equally and inseparably one in nature, unity, eternity, omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence, to name just a few of the attributes that makes God God.

The One triune God has revealed Himself as such in the Bible from Genesis 1:1-3, 26-27; John 1:1-3; Matthew 28:19 and throughout the 66 different books.

Some of the early church fathers expressed the Trinity much clearer, but I don't have the quotes offhand.

"For all we know, the universe has always existed but at this point we just don't know ... cue the god of the gaps.
Next." - FS

I'm glad you admitted that you don't know. This makes your belief one that rests on faith and philosophical presuppositions.How can you rule out God when you have no definite answers to how the universe came to be? And as for the universe always existing, you would be going against the best scientific evidence and speculation to this point in time, that I might add agrees with the Bible in one significant point; there was a beginning. Time, space and matter had a beginning, as per Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. This notion from Richard Dawkins' that we live in multiple universes is pure speculation, as he has himself admitted. There is nothing to base it on but imagination, just like so much of evolutionary science is based on.
It all depends where you start as to how you construct your world-view, but only one can make sense of this world. The rest self-destruct.

RCOfield and Peterhuff,

Unfortunately, I don't always have to the time to respond to those items requiring a lot of thought. These particular posts about evolution are much easier and require less time. Plus, I was away for a number of days and despite the best of intentions, couldn't get back to that particular post for quite some time.

RCO: And your point is? These examples are not observable complete evolutions of the eye. You are making an incredible number of unobserved/unproven assumptions to even suggest such. As with most of your “defenses” of evolution theory, your conclusion is contained in your premises. Watch:

TWM: First of all, there is no such thing as complete evolution. That's your first mistake since evolution is on-going. There is no end because there is no predetermined design.

Second, there are literally thousands of different kinds of eyes in this world ranging from the most rudimentary which can do nothing more than detecting light to more advanced that can see faint images and even more advanced that can process images in color. My personal favorite, most advanced eye being the owl's which can see a mouse running at the back of center field in an enclosed professional baseball stadium with only a single candle lit at home plate. Is the owl's eye finished evolving? Nope.

RCO: See? You argue from one of the most prominent principles in evolution theory (natural selection)to produce “remarkably good evidence” for…(wait for it...)….evolution!

TWM: I think you are confusing the process (natural selection) with the outcome (evolution or changes in species resulting from a combination of natural selection, environmental change and genetic mutation).

RC: Now, let’s presume that I argued for the veracity of the bible using the bible as my “remarkably good evidence” for the veracity of the bible. Would that fly with you? No. Yet you do exactly the same thing to “prove” your position on evolution. That is weak, TW.

TWM: And you would be correct about the circular nature of your argument regarding the bible. But my argument is that the evidence for evolution or how species change over time is enabled by natural selection. I'm not confusing the two like you seem to be.

In the case of the differentiation between the eye position of prey versus predator, you'll find that those organisms needing a wider field of vision, characterized by eyes on both sides of their head, are almost always prey. Look around, you'll notice the distinction by some simple observation. And I guess that's the difference between your position and mine. You need a magical spirit to help you properly interpret the "truth". Science attempts to explain phenomena through observation and hypothesis. We don't need the holy spirit nor divine revelation. You too can form scientific theories simply by observing and noting. So, how many prey can you name that have front facing eyes?

SECULAR, (My old Satanic adversary)

"As usual true to your MO you are conflating and deliberately trying misconstruing my arguments to muddy the waters. If you cannot exhibit intellectual honesty, there is no point engaging you in any discussion. If you wish to believe the fairy tales of trinity, which are without any evidence be my guest. But don't foist it as some scientific knowledge. It is not."--SECULAR

You obviously didn't even understand my rebuttal to your argument. So, as per your MO, you simply dismiss it as "conflation." Then accuse me of intellectual dishonesty.

Yeah. Right.

BTW: I have never claimed "scientific knowledge" for the doctrine of the Trinity. Who is being "intellectually dishonest" here?

I'm sure, based on the tenor of that last post, that you are close to bugging out here, as per usual, so....see ya later.

Hey Peter,

Yeah, I got tired of waiting for the guys on the other thread to answer me, so I decided to jump in here and see if I could start an argument. It seems I have succeeded. I love it. :-)

Don't know if you saw it but Walter finally posted on the thread he had suggested jumping to. But he is waffling and trying to evade my arguments. I'm not going to let him off the hook though.

Peace, brother.

TW,

What’s the deal? Did you tire of our debate on the other thread? You never did respond to my last series of posts, though you said my arguments were well-thought-out and that you would respond. This is the third time you have “disappeared” in the middle of a debate only to “reappear” later with no seeming recollection of the previous discussion. What’s up with that?

Anyway, I’ll oblige you here, but could I be so bold as to ask that you reciprocate on the other thread?

“Try looking up flatfish and some types of jellyfish. The flatfish has a rudimentary eye with no lens for focusing. It can sense light but not "see" things as we understand the word see to mean.”—TWM

And your point is? These examples are not observable complete evolutions of the eye. You are making an incredible number of unobserved/unproven assumptions to even suggest such. As with most of your “defenses” of evolution theory, your conclusion is contained in your premises. Watch:

“The eye actually provides remarkably good evidence for evolution. We know, based on natural selection…”—TWM

See? You argue from one of the most prominent principles in evolution theory (natural selection)to produce “remarkably good evidence” for…(wait for it...)….evolution!

Now, let’s presume that I argued for the veracity of the bible using the bible as my “remarkably good evidence” for the veracity of the bible. Would that fly with you? No. Yet you do exactly the same thing to “prove” your position on evolution. That is weak, TW.

“This evolutionary difference between predator and prey seems obvious once you think about it.”—TWM

No, it only “seems obvious” if you presuppose evolution. Notice your very next statement:

“During evolutionary development, the prey with eyes resulting in even a slightly wider field of vision will have an advantage….”—TWM

See that? You presuppose that evolution explains the difference between predator and prey, and then proceed to “explain” how the “evolutionary development” of “prey” is evidence of evolution. That is a circular argument. Then, you cap it all of with this little gem:

“Or, you can say God designed it that way but then you would be ignoring literally tens of thousands of pieces of evidence in favor of evolution.”—TWM

LOL. Your “tens of thousands of pieces of evidence" only favor evolution if they are interpreted BY evolutionary principles. Again, in every point of your argument, your conclusion is already contained in your premises! That is extremely poor reasoning, not to mention that it completely ignores the requirements of scientific method.

Imagine a scientist stating a hypothesis in which everything proposed for the testing of his hypothesis already presupposes his hypothetical conclusion. What do you think his hypothesis will “prove” when tested? Why, his “conclusion,” of course. Does such a hypothesis "prove" anything. Not by a long shot.

Hi RCofield,

It looks like you have your hands full. (^8

I agree with your comment concerning TWM.

Don't we still have some unfinished discussion remaining on the other thread? You never responded to my last series of posts. -RCO

TWMatthews, I agree with RCO on the above statement. We appreciate your banter, but it seemed that you always cut out before the hard questions are addressed.

RCOfield said: And this does not even take into account that we have NEVER observed the complete (or even mostly-complete) "evolution" of an eyeball.

Try looking up flatfish and some types of jellyfish. The flatfish has a rudimentary eye with no lens for focusing. It can sense light but not "see" things as we understand the word see to mean.

Certain jellyfish have light sensing organs and a small lens. They can actually "see" objects. The real question about jellyfish amounts to how they can process an image with such a fundamentally underdeveloped brain. It usually takes a fairly advanced brain in order to process images and make sense of them. Our brain, for instance, receives visual data as inverted images. It's the brain that inverts it for us.

The eye actually provides remarkably good evidence for evolution. We know, based on natural selection that the eyes of a predator will be different in position from the eyes of prey. Simply observe cows and deer and you'll notice that most prey have eyes on either side of their head; this to give them a wider view of suspected threats.

While predators usually have eyes in the front so that they can focus on the attack.

This evolutionary difference between predator and prey seems obvious once you think about it. During evolutionary development, the prey with eyes resulting in even a slightly wider field of vision will have an advantage in seeing predators earlier. Hence, they may survive longer to pass along their "wide eyed" genes.

The same concept applies to predators except that with eyes in the front, they have a better chance of killing and eating more prey than a sibling with eyes less frontally oriented.

This same concept applies to everything from flying squirrels to fish with extended fins that can wallow between mud holes when a dry season took hold.

Or, you can say God designed it that way but then you would be ignoring literally tens of thousands of pieces of evidence in favor of evolution. But it's no wonder the US is 28th out of 29 developed countries in terms of understanding science and scientific principles. There aren't too many advances that I know of where the engineer said "it was at this point where God created the blu-ray laser".

That's quite a liberal factor you prescribe for beneficial mutations--given that there are thousands of known deleterious mutations for every known beneficial mutation.

Add to that your admitted "astronomically greater than 1.0." probability of said beneficial mutation even surviving...you just moved thhances of a beneficial mutation are whole equation into the nether-regions of probability 0.
---------------------------------------------
Relative probability is of any two mutations, one of them being a beneficial mutation. The survival chances of the beneficial mutation is by definition astronomically higher than that of deleterious mutations. Since it helps the organism in reproducing it survives. As opposed to the deleterious mutation causes the organism to cease thus not reproduce. As usual true to your MO you are conflating and deliberately trying misconstruing my arguments to muddy the waters. If you cannot exhibit intellectual honesty, there is no point engaging you in any discussion. If you wish to believe the fairy tales of trinity, which are without any evidence be my guest. But don't foist it as some scientific knowledge. It is not.

RCOFIELD II:
Cntd.

“One simply cannot come up with enough “rats” or years to offset the inexorable demands of statistical probability.” Certainly one can. We are talking about organisms that have evolved, in billions of organisms, over tens of millions of years. It is not about the odds that one pair of rats creates a rat with wings, but that of billions of rat-matings over millions of years. Each of those rats having millions of DNA bits, the vast majority of which are common to nearly ALL living organisms and not at all specific to being just a rat as we know a rat to be.

As SECULAR has pointed out, there’s more to it than a straight-line linear probability curve.

“Aside from the obvious apples/oranges comparison there”
What apples and oranges? How is Jesus different from Robin Hood? There’s about as much actual evidence to support the reality of either of them. Once again, I am not saying that neither of these fine fellows didn’t exist.

“A little “preemptive apologetics” there, huh”
Experience sir, experience… But as I said earlier, I’m not trying to prove the broad extents of all theories, just pieces at a time.

“atheists consistently reject commonly accepted standards of evidence when it comes to the person an nature of God.”
If it involves supernatural activity, yes. If it involves evidence that cannot be tested, demonstrated or measured, then yes, I’ll reject it as being evidentiary of being anything other than articles of imagination, or simply as an unknown.
Your use of ‘commonly acceptable’ is curious though. To what evidence do you refer, and by whom is it ‘commonly’ accepted?
I would demand no less evidence for a discussion of unicorns, Odin, Ganesh, or any other extraordinary claim. Show me why I should believe in them? Do you believe in them? Why not?
As for the ‘person and nature of god’, religions, even denominations within a religion cannot even agree on these abstruse concepts. How is a squint with only a slide rule and a microscope supposed to?

“you just moved the whole equation into the nether-regions of probability”
Once again, probability only estimates statistical likelihood, not actual outcome. We see evidence, lots of it that says organism A is very much, mostly like organism B except for the sequencing of a few, a very, very, few chunks of DNA.
What is the statistical probability of an infinite supernatural deity being responsible for creating light from nothing, dark from nothing, water from nothing, etc. AND also being a jealous god that loves the smell of burning cattle?

If you are going to use scientific methodology to disprove evolution, then the same theories must logically be applied to prove or disprove your opposing theory. Or else YOU are just pitting apples against oranges.

FREESTINKER<

"The Trinity claims to be three distinct beings AND one distinct being at the same time. Huh?"--FS

Ahhh. I see that the problem is not that the doctrine of the Trinity is nonsensical; you just don't what the doctrine states. You might want to brush up on that a bit.

"For all we know, the universe has always existed but at this point we just don't know ... cue the god of the gaps."--FS

Hmmm...So you're going with the "eternal universe" cop-out, eh? You do know, don't you, that you just stepped out of line with current scientific theory.

SECULAR, (My old Satanic adversary)

"The relative probability of a beneficial mutation in comparison to deleterious ones which is likely to be 1.0. Then the probability of it to survive, compared to the deleterious mutations, which is astronomically greater than 1.0. These two factors push evolution. I hope this clarifies the mechanics of evolution that drives it."

That's quite a liberal factor you prescribe for beneficial mutations--given that there are thousands of known deleterious mutations for every known beneficial mutation.

Add to that your admitted "astronomically greater than 1.0." probability of said beneficial mutation even surviving...you just moved the whole equation into the nether-regions of probability 0. And this long, long before the achievement of anything as highly specialized as the eye.

There just ain't enough years and there ain't enough intermediary "eyeballs."

And this does not even take into account that we have NEVER observed the complete (or even mostly-complete) "evolution" of an eyeball.

If religious beliefs were actually true, religions would not need to scare people into believing them. No one needs to threaten me into believing the earth is round and orbits the sun. If I don’t believe this, then it’s my problem.

But religions know that their beliefs are a house of cards that cannot withstand questioning, so they invent threatening terms like “heresy”, “blasphemy”, “sacrilege,” and “eternal damnation” to keep the flock in line.

These tactics are, so obvious to anyone who allows themselves to think about it, necessary ONLY because religious claims are outlandish and difficult to believe. The priesthood knows that without slavish believers they would have to go out and get real jobs (and pay taxes).

(RCOFIELD) I
Greetings.

“It is—when rightly used—based on the science of mathematics, probably :-) the purest and the most incorruptible of the sciences.”
‘Rational debate’ may be ‘based on’ but it is not the ‘same as’ mathematics. Mathematics provides for demonstrability, testability. ‘Reason’ does not necessarily do so.

“The mathematical improbability of such happening is completely off the chart”
Yet the probability of a cosmic, invisible, all-powerful creator-being, spitting into dust and creating not just an opossum, but an entire universe, is MORE likely?
The problem with assigning raw ‘probability’ to evolution theory is that it discounts external influences and the underlying mega-data buried deep in all DNA. If I presented a Shar-pei and a Great Dane, would a person that had no knowledge of breeding history imagine them to be the same kind of animal? Yet we know that with external influences one can eventually get a vast range of variations from dog DNA. Information buried in that DNA pops up infrequently but often enough to where subtle and sometimes significant differences can and do occur. And if those differences are mated with other differences you get significant change. What is the probability of mating two ‘purebred’ Dalmatians and eventually, over generations, getting a pit bull? It’s not probable, but it is not at all impossible.
Yes I know, I stayed within a species. I’m not trying to solve/prove the whole theory here, just making a smaller point.
“And your contention that the eye evolved is scientifically presumptive”
And in science there is nothing wrong with being presumptive. It’s how we work to resolve things. If we turn up evidence that the human eye actually fell from an alien spacecraft, or was built by woodland pixies and jammed into the skull sockets of ancient cavemen, we’ll re-examine and adapt the theory to include that new evidence.
If your attempt to prove the existence of your god involves beating up science with science, then you’re using the wrong weapon. Science only tries to explain, in physical terms that which is observed in nature. If your god resides outside of that nature, then you have nothing to worry about. We may indeed just be looking at his toolkit.

“The “evidence” only overwhelms those who interpret it while unrelentingly presupposing evolution.”
Evolution was not ‘presupposed’ as you imply. Evolution, which is only our best explanation currently available, came about and was greatly debated and criticized. Mountains of ‘evidence’ supporting it were required before it became commonly acceptable. And yes I suppose we often presuppose it now, but should actual new evidence (not just a lack of evidence) come forth, as in the past, science will steer toward another, better theory.

(Cntd)

Nowhere else? Try this: I, being one person, am husband, father, and grandfather. Caution: this may strain your “freestinking” abilities. :-)

----------

Cute but you are still just a single "being" no matter how many roles you may have.

The Trinity claims to be three distinct beings AND one distinct being at the same time. Huh?

===============

“Let's see the "evidence" then? I seriously doubt that your "evidence" is in any way "commonly accepted".”--FS
Ok. Let's start with a question: From whence came the universe?

--------

For all we know, the universe has always existed but at this point we just don't know ... cue the god of the gaps.

Next.

The 'data' this whole article is based upon is nothing more than an artifact of the study's methodology and phrasing itself.

It's pretty egregious.

Notably it tells atheists to answer a big subset of questions 'as if' they believed in a Christian type personal God.

Actually, when one takes into account all of the massive number of “factors” necessary in the “evolution” of the eye, the exact opposite is true: The mathematical improbability of such happening is completely off the chart. One simply cannot come up with enough “rats” or years to offset the inexorable demands of statistical probability.

Posted by: RCofield
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The argument of improbability that is advanced by the creationists, against evolution is a very naive argument. Take for instance what are the probabilities in a game of bridge that the four hands that were dealt happening. With a properly shuffled deck it is astronomically small. But the fact of the matter is it happens
every time it is dealt. Likewise in case of evolution, any mutation for that matter has very small probabilities. So a mutation that is beneficial to the organism is as unlikely as the mutation that is that is deleterious to the organism. That said the deleterious mutations do not survive over the generations. However, the beneficial ones propagate from generation to generation. In this process they accumulate the beneficial mutations and cull out the deleterious ones. Thus what seems like very very improbable event does actually happen as a sequence of events. One needs to look at the competing events, if you will. There are two components to this. The relative probability of a beneficial mutation in comparison to deleterious ones which is likely to be 1.0. Then the probability of it to survive, compared to the deleterious mutations, which is astronomically greater than 1.0. These two factors push evolution. I hope this clarifies the mechanics of evolution that drives it.

FREESTINKER,

“The Trinity is well-articulated? Well-articulated maybe but still illogical mush. Nowhere else can one be three and three be one and still be considered intelligible.”--FS

Nowhere else? Try this: I, being one person, am husband, father, and grandfather. Caution: this may strain your “freestinking” abilities. :-)

“Let's see the "evidence" then? I seriously doubt that your "evidence" is in any way "commonly accepted".”--FS

Ok. Let's start with a question: From whence came the universe?

SECULAR, (My old Satanic adversary)

"RCOFeild, the point I was making was in context to your claim that these tyrants were motivated by their atheism. The evidence I presented refutes your claim. That in no way suggests that the bloody acts are tolerable, none whatsoever. However as usual you are conflating things."--SECULAR

Precisely what "evidence" have you "presented" that "refutes" that these men were motivated by godlessness? Methinks it is you who are "conflating things."

"Yes. I'm sure, now that you point it out with such scintilating logic (sic), that their murderous intent had nothing whatever to do with their godlessness. What was I thinking?!

Riiight. I guess the fact that they were "equal opportunity offenders" elevates them several notches above the "religious" despots, huh? This "progressive zeitgeist" morality of yours is indeed breathtaking to behold."
-------------------------------------------
RCOFeild, the point I was making was in context to your claim that these tyrants were motivated by their atheism. The evidence I presented refutes your claim. That in no way suggests that the bloody acts are tolerable, none whatsoever. However as usual you are conflating things.

"My point was (and remains) that atheists consistently reject commonly accepted standards of evidence when it comes to the person an nature of God."

========

RC,

Let's see the "evidence" then? I seriously doubt that your "evidence" is in any way "commonly accepted". You have just as much evidence for the existence of your god as the Greeks did for the existence of Zeus and as I do for the existence of Santa Claus. Precisely none.

But go ahead, please humor us with your "evidence", commonly accepted or otherwise.

GLADERUNNER,

Part 1 of 2

Thanks for the interaction.

“Based on what knowledge can you assert that something ‘could not have possibly evolved’?”--GR

In the case of the eye (the “something” being discussed), the laws of reason and the laws of mathematics (as related to probability theory).

“Your statement of what could or could not have possibly evolved is scientifically baseless.”--GR

And your contention that the eye evolved is scientifically presumptive.

“It is nothing more than an ‘argument from incredulity.’ The unlikelihood of any one thing being or occurring does not demonstrate its nonexistence or impossibility, only its statistical unlikelihood.*”--GR

Your “*” actually makes my case for me. Arguing from incredulity is not excluded in rational debate. It is—when rightly used—based on the science of mathematics, probably :-) the purest and the most incorruptible of the sciences.

“However, as with evolution theory, if you spread it out over a population of billions of rats over millions of years, the ‘improbability’ factor becomes much less mathematically certain.”--GR

Actually, when one takes into account all of the massive number of “factors” necessary in the “evolution” of the eye, the exact opposite is true: The mathematical improbability of such happening is completely off the chart. One simply cannot come up with enough “rats” or years to offset the inexorable demands of statistical probability.

GLADERUNNER,

Part 2 of 2

“Evolution theory is incomplete, no one denies that.”--GR

Hmmm...I don't know about that “no one denies that” part. I suspect the forthcoming responses to my post here will prove my point.

“But the evidence we do have for it is overwhelming.”--GR

The “evidence” only overwhelms those who interpret it while unrelentingly presupposing evolution. That is hardly a credible approach, scientifically or rationally.

“I am an atheist. I do not reject the existence of Jesus. There may very well have been a man, called Jesus at the time and place spoken of in the Bible. In the same way, exactly, that I do not deny the existence of a man called Robin Hood as documented in the time and place as described in countless tales in medieval folklore. However, if that folklore included tales of Robin Hood strapping geese to his feet and then flying over a castle wall, well, that’s about the point where I start becoming skeptical. I still don’t necessarily doubt RH’s possible existence, just the miraculously, supernatural feats attributed to him.”--GR

Aside from the obvious apples/oranges comparison there, that sounds like an argument based on nothing BUT incredulity to me. I thought you said the argument from incredulity was hardly ever used in logical debate anymore?! :-)

“* I know what you’re thinking. That some atheists claim that ‘god cannot exist’ is also an argument from incredulity. I agree. However most atheists actually assert only that there is simply not enough evidence to support the existence of god as described in ancient texts and modern religions. That’s where most of us are.”--GR

.... :-) ..... A little “preemptive apologetics” there, huh? My point was (and remains) that atheists consistently reject commonly accepted standards of evidence when it comes to the person an nature of God.

Freestinker

It wasn't to me but you did ask, "And where, by the way, in Genesis I do you find any mention at all of the Trinity?"

It is alluded to in Gen I:26, Then God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...".

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

(Quoting Jefferson the Deist--it always amuses me when an atheist quotes a Deist) "Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity."

Baloney. The doctrine of the Trinity had been well articulated and ably defended for the better part of 1500 years before Jefferson made that statement

==========

RC,

When a Deist is right, I don't mind quoting him! I even quote Christians when they are right. ;)

The Trinity is well-articulated? Well-articulated maybe but still illogical mush. Nowhere else can one be three and three be one and still be considered intelligible.

And where, by the way, in Genesis I do you find any mention at all of the Trinity?

For clarification, the paragraph that begins with "What this study tells us" is a quote from Hirschfield's column.

A thoughtful entry by Hirschfield.

In my experience, most atheists aren't angry at "God." They're angry instead at the minority of believers who would consign the world to hell if it doesn't "get right with God," and at the ones who claim that the the victims of natural disasters had it coming.

What this study tells us is that there is a human desire to express outrage at the existence of evil and tragedy. There appears to be a need to ascribe authorship and even will on the part of that author, when we experience tough times.

While that need may or may not be natural, it's a need that we simply have to overcome in ourselves. That's because it's the same need that leads some believers to describe natural disasters as divine punishment. This doesn't mean overcoming belief in gods, it means that outrage at evil and tragedy is an insufficient reason to believe that gods exist. To put it more simply, wanting something to be so doesn't mean that it is so.

I suspect that some (not all) people who believe in gods really crave some level of control over their suffering or the world's suffering. What would such people do if, say, it turned out that gods exist but that such gods have nothing to do with suffering? What if gods didn't create the universe and have no power to cause events in the universe? What if gods aren't aware of human suffering or even of the existence of humans?

RCOFIELD:
“And it is also an organ that could not have possibly “evolved.””
Based on what knowledge can you assert that something ‘could not have possibly evolved’?
Your statement of what could or could not have possibly evolved is scientifically baseless. It is nothing more than an ‘argument from incredulity.’ The unlikelihood of any one thing being or occurring does not demonstrate its nonexistence or impossibility, only its statistical unlikelihood.* If we look at one pair of rats and say ‘it is not possible that those rats will produce an offspring that has appendages more like wings than arms’, well, you are right that this occurrence is so statistically
unlikely that it could be considered an impossibility. However, as with evolution theory, if you spread it out over a population of billions of rats over millions of years, the ‘improbability’ factor becomes much less mathematically certain. Evolution theory is incomplete, no one denies that. But the evidence we do have for it is overwhelming. Simply because we do not hold in our hands fossil evidence or photographs of every step in every phase of every organism does not explain away the tens of thousands of fossils and records that do show a lineage between disparate organisms.
The argument from incredulity is rarely used in real, logical debate anymore. Many ID’ers have stopped using this argument form altogether except when shouting from evangelical/fundamentalist pulpits where questioning of the weak argument by the masses is rare or not allowed.

“Christianity holds the dubious position of being a religion founded upon a person who, when atheists reject every conceivable source of evidence, simply never existed. What ARE we thinking?”
I am an atheist. I do not reject the existence of Jesus. There may very well have been a man, called Jesus at the time and place spoken of in the Bible. In the same way, exactly, that I do not deny the existence of a man called Robin Hood as documented in the time and place as described in countless tales in medieval folklore.
However, if that folklore included tales of Robin Hood strapping geese to his feet and then flying over a castle wall, well, that’s about the point where I start becoming skeptical. I still don’t necessarily doubt RH’s possible existence, just the miraculously, supernatural feats attributed to him.

* I know what you’re thinking. That some atheists claim that ‘god cannot exist’ is also an argument from incredulity. I agree. However most atheists actually assert only that there is simply not enough evidence to support the existence of god as described in ancient texts and modern religions. That’s where most of us are.

FWIW, I’ve never read any of Dawkins’ books.

TW,

“Secular support for Jesus is virtually nonexistent.”--TWM

Riiight. Christianity holds the dubious position of being a religion founded upon a person who, when atheists reject every conceivable source of evidence, simply never existed. What ARE we thinking?

“This is no organ that is irreducibly complex.”--TWM

Suuure. And it is also an organ that could not have possibly “evolved.” Dawkins' (and others) explanations of this “magical” process as it pertains to the eye is so filled with untested and untestable hypotheses (not to mention sheer speculation) it is rendered utterly laughable. The untold millions of “intermediate” stages of the “evolution” of the eye would hardly have produced “desirable traits.” The mathematical improbability of this process of the “evolving eye” is completely off the charts.

You guys will buy anything Dawkins happens to be pedaling, won't you?

TW,

Don't we still have some unfinished discussion remaining on the other thread? You never responded to my last series of posts.

“Putting aside the desperation in my writing, my personal experience has been that atheists are more compassionate and tolerant than believers.”--TWM

You need to get out more. :-) There are all kinds of studies and statistics that clearly demonstrate Christians to be substantially more charitable (compassionate) than secularists. The secularists TALK a good game on this point (when it suits their apologetic), but when the rubber meets the road it's just that—talk. Talk is cheap. Genuine compassion is costly.

As for tolerance—the secularist measure of all “virtue”--I find it amusing that those who preach the “gospel” of tolerance are themselves quite intolerant of Christians. The atheist vitriol on this very thread is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Have you not read some of the stuff being posted here?!

“Look at the state of acceptance between believers and nonbelievers and you'll find nonbelievers far more accepting. We don't have to love because we are commanded to love. We don't have to exclude because we are commanded to exclude. We are more apt to simply love people as they because deep down we believe most people are generally good.”--TWM

Yes. I can just feel the love and acceptance of the atheists on this thread. It just oozes and drips from every post. You seem to be quite the loving, accepting crowd. ;-)

“This is in stark contrast to your beliefs which consign human to the never ending apology for our shortcomings.”--TWM

You have no idea how far removed from biblical Christianity that statement actually is.

“What's your experience RC regarding acceptance of gay couples to your church?”--TWM

If you will oblige me by responding to my last series of posts on the other thread I would be happy to reply to that question.

Hey RCO,

Just got back from the holidays. I hope yours were healthy and fun-filled.

RCOfield: The deafening din of the atheists you "hear" on these threads is the sound of not-quite-certain consciences trying desperately to convince themselves that God does, indeed, not exist.

Putting aside the desperation in my writing, my personal experience has been that atheists are more compassionate and tolerant than believers. Look at the state of acceptance between believers and nonbelievers and you'll find nonbelievers far more accepting. We don't have to love because we are commanded to love. We don't have to exclude because we are commanded to exclude. We are more apt to simply love people as they because deep down we believe most people are generally good. This is in stark contrast to your beliefs which consign human to the never ending apology for our shortcomings.

What's your experience RC regarding acceptance of gay couples to your church?

JONSWITZER:Josephus certainly spoke of such a man "who went about doing good." It is in no way surprising that "secular" sources don't mention miracles.

Well, actually he didn't. Most scholars of that period have concluded that the few, meager references made about Jesus by Josephus were inserted by someone else, after the fact. They base this conclusion on the fact that the reference to Jesus as being more than a man, reads more coherently when that section is left out. It also appears to be inserted as if Josephus was describing the area and then all of a sudden had a thought about Jesus and then went back to describing the area.

Secular support for Jesus is virtually nonexistent.

JONSWITZER:
Evolution can not explain the human eye and its irreducible complexity.

There is nothing irreducibly complex about the human eye. In fact, even Behe had to admit that his cellular pump, which he claimed to be irreducibly complex, could in fact be reduced to simpler and still functioning components.

The eye is far from being irreducibly complex. Our eye has a lens, focusing muscles and most of all, connected to the brain which inverts the image that is presented from our eyes. And in fact if you fit people with helmets that invert the image again, after a day or two our minds will adjust for it and invert it again so that we see the world right side up.

This is no organ that is irreducibly complex.

Rabbi, congratulations on an overll a very good column. I would like to add that individuals who turn to God only in times of adversity and place him on the backburner during the vast majority of portion of the remainder of the time are enegaging in a very impolite practice. I mean, suppose you have someone showing up in your life only in times of their need and forgets you the vast majority of the time otherwise, are not going to garner as robust a response from you as someone who has been maintaining cordial relationship with you throughout both good and bad times of their life.

jonswitzer wrote:
"secular governments are responsible for the greatest genocides in the last hundred years. Certainly, Islam is responsible for the worst genocides in the last 50."

----------------------------------------

As of now there is a 3-way tie to the worst perpetrator of genocide in the last 50 years":
Christian USA
Jewish Israel
Hindu India

SECULAR (My old Satanic adversary)

"How come only for past 1500 years."

Because that was when it began to be attacked from OUTSIDE the christian community.

"Why wasn't it articulated from day one?"

LOL. How about Genesis chapter 1? Is that "day one" enough for you?

"RCofield you too, my claim was the atrocities, there certainly were, by the secularists like Stalin, mao, Pol Pot, et al were not motivated by their atheism but by their self aggrandizement and their penchant to not tolerate dissent."

Yes. I'm sure, now that you point it out with such scintilating logic (sic), that their murderous intent had nothing whatever to do with their godlessness. What was I thinking?!

"They went after both theists of all stripes and atheist with the same fervor and vigor. Unlike the theocrats, who persecute solely because the victim is not of their ilk."

Riiight. I guess the fact that they were "equal opportunity offenders" elevates them several notches above the "religious" despots, huh? This "progressive zeitgeist" morality of yours is indeed breathtaking to behold.

If logic were dynamite your collective arguments would not contain enough to blow your nose.

"Per the source it is nothing but "Mule Manure". Is this mockery over the top? Or should I not be saying such fool things, Jon."

You think THAT is high-octane intellectual mockery?! Were you raised by a community of mentally handicapped smurfs?

"Baloney. The doctrine of the Trinity had been well articulated and ably defended for the better part of 1500 years before Jefferson made that statement.

Posted by: RCofield | January 4, 2011 6:58 PM"
---------------------------------------------

Of course well articulated. But without the benefit of a single shred of evidence whatsoever. How come only for past 1500 years. Why wasn't it articulated from day one? I have the answer, someone thought of it much much later and pulled it out of the north end of a south bound mule. Per the source it is nothing but "Mule Manure". Is this mockery over the top? Or should I not be saying such fool things, Jon.

"Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71)
300,000 (Bangladesh)

Posted by: bloggersvilleusa"
---------------------------------------------

Try 3,000,000 for Yahya Khan of Pakistan. Mind you that was all accomplished in less than 9 months. Part of it is religiously motivated, as well. FYI see this url below:

http://www.viewpointonline.net/a-khaki-dissident-on-1971.html

Regarding Genocide by Muslim try past 1400 years. Off which about 125 million in just the sub-continent alone. BTW the genocide of Suharto was to some extent motivated by religion and you have quite conveniently skipped the East Timor, didn't you.

FREESTINKER,

(Quoting Jefferson the Deist--it always amuses me when an atheist quotes a Deist) "Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity."

Baloney. The doctrine of the Trinity had been well articulated and ably defended for the better part of 1500 years before Jefferson made that statement.

"secular governments are responsible for the greatest genocides in the last hundred years. Certainly, Islam is responsible for the worst genocides in the last 50."
- jonswitzer

---

Islam has never been responsible for any genocide. Top genocides of the last 50 years include:

Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79)
1,700,000

Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94)
1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)

Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78)
1,500,000

Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000

Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982)
900,000

Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994)
800,000

Suharto (East Timor, West Papua, Communists, 1966-98)
800,000

Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88)
600,000

Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1987)
570,000

Jonas Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002) 400,000

Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979)
300,000

Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71)
300,000 (Bangladesh)

Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97)
?

Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996) 220,000

Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000) 200,000

Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972) 150,000

Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-99)
100,000

Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79)
?

Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974) 70,000 (Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians)

Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala, 1982-83) 70,000

Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71) 60,000

Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990)
40,000

Fidel Castro (Cuba, 1959-1999)
30,000

Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968) 30,000

Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000) 25,000

Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe, 1982-87, Ndebele minority)
20,000

Rafael Videla (Argentina, 1976-83) 13,000

Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997) 6,000

Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973)
3,000

"However, secular governments are responsible for the greatest genocides in the last hundred years."
-------------------------------------------
RCofield you too, my claim was the atrocities, there certainly were, by the secularists like Stalin, mao, Pol Pot, et al were not motivated by their atheism but by their self aggrandizement and their penchant to not tolerate dissent. They went after both theists of all stripes and atheist with the same fervor and vigor. Unlike the theocrats, who persecute solely because the victim is not of their ilk (there RC the first use of ilk for your benefit).
-------------------------------------------
"Certainly, Islam is responsible for the worst genocides in the last 50."
-------------------------------------------
Try last 1400 years.
-------------------------------------------
"About Hitler and religion perhaps a Hitler Youth marching song (Grunberger, A Social History) will help: "We follow not Christ, but Horst Wessel,Away with incense and Holy Water, The Church can go hang for all we care, The Swastika brings salvation on Earth."
-------------------------------------------
Oh! sure one innocuous song nails the argument. Screw the Mein Kampf, screw the statements about "Diecide" persecuting the jews.
-------------------------------------------
"About your claim atheists do not claim moral superiority. That is completely true as atheism has little explanation for where morality comes from and cares little for it even now."
-------------------------------------------
You are dead wrong. We very much care about morality. But morality of your holy books is in short "in-group nepotism & out-group hate". Instead we are with the progressive zeitgeist. All progressive human morality has come about despite the religious moral injunctions.
-------------------------------------------
"Instead atheists claim intellectual superiority which for an atheist/rationalist is the highest moral standard. Their scientificating has found its height in Dawkins, Hitchens, Hawking etc. Mockery knows no bounds in their writings. In fact, your mockery of the religious here on this list proves the self-inflating egoism found among atheists."
-------------------------------------------
Yes Dawkins, et al are indeed mock religion fro the get go. Just like you would mock such nonsense as astrology, or the superstition of not crossing the path of a cat etc, etc. Why is it you be allowed to mock the superstitions that you consider as superstitions. We are at least equally mocking of all superstition. You are the hypocrite.
-------------------------------------------
"Please understand that I in no way deny the self-righteousness found among religionists. I merely refute your claim to ...humility about truth."
-------------------------------------------
We do not claim any humility. It is you all make claims of pseud-humility. At the same time your arrogance is in full display when you claim to know the mind of your sky-daddy.

AREYOUSAYING, (Indeed I am)

"As if no one but a "religious" person could have "faith". I have faith RNC Fox News will elect Mitt Romney president so he can order NASA to build an humongous spaceship so his Mormons can "hie to Kolob" (the nearby planet where they think god lives) and take you two and the rest of your ilk with them.
A "win-win" for us all."

You sound insulted that you have encountered an individual who believes in God on a discussion forum about faith. Don't you think that's juuuuust a little over the top?

Me thinks thou doest protest too much.

Peace

As Thomas Jefferson said:
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."

Ideas must be distinct before reason can act on them? Immediate error. As no one knows the distance between any idea and ultimate truth all ideas are provisional and indistinct. People act on ideas all the time whether relatively distinct or not and some of these actions just appear more reasonable than not. As for the trinity being indistinct, no man having had a relatively distinct idea of it, that is false: People generally acknowledge Christ died to save our sins, therefore we should walk in Christ to the best of our ability. Whatever one may say of Christianity as a metaphysical conceit it has a proven record for organizing society; modern Europe not to mention Gothic Cathedrals would have been impossible without the Christian idea, though atheists strangely disbelieve in the necessities of social evolutionary processes (society had to pass through religious stages before arriving at the modern) at the same time they throw evolutionary biology in religious people's faces. Finally, ridicule is far from or even the best weapon against unintelligible propositions: History demonstrates pure thinking, philosophy, science, invention, art are far more effective; it has never been demonstrated that the society that ridicules the most is the most profound. Jefferson was far from a worthy thinker.

BRAUNT,

"I have always been intrigued by how many self-proclaimed atheists spend so much time expressing their views on a blog clearly titled "On Faith.""

As am I. The deafening din of the atheists you "hear" on these threads is the sound of not-quite-certain consciences trying desperately to convince themselves that God does, indeed, not exist.

Posted by: RCofield

-----------------------

As if no one but a "religious" person could have "faith". I have faith RNC Fox News will elect Mitt Romney president so he can order NASA to build an humongous spaceship so his Mormons can "hie to Kolob" (the nearby planet where they think god lives) and take you two and the rest of your ilk with them.

A "win-win" for us all.

"Mockery knows no bounds in their writings. In fact, your mockery of the religious here on this list proves the self-inflating egoism found among atheists."

======

JonSwitzer,

It is possible that the mockery is well-deserved? I think so.

As Thomas Jefferson said:
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."

To some extent, the same is true for all gods of the human imagination, including yours.

But just remember that mockery is the highest form of flattery! ;)

"Sure I do. You are motivated by your God-given conscience, just like every other cognizant being on the planet."

======

RC,

Motivated my conscience, maybe but "God-given"? Think about it. Why would your god give me a conscience that completely rejects his very existence? That's one stupid god if you ask me.

So God-given? Probably not unless you have some very persuasive evidence to support your otherwise absurd claims.

1) That any god(s) exist at all.
2) That your particular god exists.
3) That any god, including yours, is responsible in any way for my conscience.

Good luck with that!

And yes, by now you certainly must realize that I smell exactly what you're stepping in. The foul odor of irrational superstition is pretty hard to ignore! ;)

I agree that the eye is reducibly complex. I was wrong on that.

However, secular governments are responsible for the greatest genocides in the last hundred years. Certainly, Islam is responsible for the worst genocides in the last 50. About Hitler and religion perhaps a Hitler Youth marching song (Grunberger, A Social History) will help: "We follow not Christ, but Horst Wessel,Away with incense and Holy Water, The Church can go hang for all we care, The Swastika brings salvation on Earth."

About your claim atheists do not claim moral superiority. That is completely true as atheism has little explanation for where morality comes from and cares little for it even now. Instead atheists claim intellectual superiority which for an atheist/rationalist is the highest moral standard. Their scientificating has found its height in Dawkins, Hitchens, Hawking etc. Mockery knows no bounds in their writings. In fact, your mockery of the religious here on this list proves the self-inflating egoism found among atheists.

Please understand that I in no way deny the self-righteousness found among religionists. I merely refute your claim to ...humility about truth.

rsl903

You wrote, "If 100% of humans suddenly didnt believe in gravity it wouldnt change the fact of its existence. The same principle applies to your god's existence."

This is correct, if no one believes that God Is and is a Being of Pure Love and is a Trinity does not change the fact that God Is.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

whynotajoke

You wrote, "As to the person who posted,"See you ALL in the KINGDOM", I don't know what you are talking about. I won't be able to see after I'm dead."

That was me who wrote that and how do you know that you "won't be able to see" after your physical death?

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

RCOFIELD:
“So...let me see if I understand you. When theists are the perpetrators of atrocities theism is the problem”
I’ll jump in with a possible explanation.
The various ‘crusades’ carried out in the early days by European Christian church-states were armed with a mandate to convert, persecute or wipe out heretics. Heresy meaning those that failed to supplicate to that particular religious code. Even American expansion, and the resulting ‘relocating’ of indigenous peoples, were driven in part by a Christian concept of ‘manifest destiny.’
Stalin, Mao, etc. to my knowledge wiped out those that were against, or merely a threat to their own power, regardless of religious beliefs or lack thereof.
I’m not saying one form of genocide is better than the other, just that there is ample argument that many, very many genocides have been carried out to expand a religion, very few, if any for the sole cause of expanding atheism.
Sometimes megalomaniacs are atheists, to be sure. Sometimes megalomaniacs use religion as a tool to expand their power. And sadly, too often really, religion, even Christianity, is the only stated reason for justifying terror/genocide. I am unaware of an instance genocide was based on the notion of wiping out all religions. Usually it’s one vs. another.

areyousaying

I wrote, "B_Al_Zebub

You wrote, "Jews, Muslims, Christians, same story - different language."

Not even close to the "same story".

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

You replied, "Oh, please, do enlighten us who don't see much difference by their actions."

If you read what I wrote in reply to B_Al_Zebub, you will see that I said, "Not even close to the "same story", I made no comment about the "actions" of anyone whether they be Jewish, Christian or Moslem so what you wish to be "enlightened" about has nothing to do with my reply.

If you had wanted to be enlightened about the "story" not being the same, I think you already know.

If not, in Christianity, God became One of us, in Islam, the god of islam claims Jesus as his prophet but denies Jesus's Divinity, in Judaism, Jesus is recognized as neither a Prophet nor as God-Incarnate.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

FREESTINKER,

"RC, you don't know anything more about what motivates atheists than you know about the existence of god(s), which is precisely nothing."

Sure I do. You are motivated by your God-given conscience, just like every other cognizant being on the planet.

Are you smelling what I'm stepping in? ;-)

SECULAR (My old Satanic adversary)

"So it is not fair to make the false equivalence between violence visited upon the humanity by atheists and theists. The former is due to megalomania, the latter is due to both megalomania and religion. The religion being the bigger culprit."

So...let me see if I understand you. When theists are the perpetrators of atrocities theism is the problem. Yet when atheists are the perpetrators of atrocities, atheism has absolutely, positively nothing whatsoever to do with it? And to contend otherwise is just....just...aw, it ain't fair, it just ain't fair!

Yeah...thaaat's impeccably logical...

"If god made the eye so perfect, by the way, then why do I need glasses to read this as I type it?"

Ummm...because your atheism has made you dim-sighted as well as dim-witted?

Oh, my. That was ugly, wasn't it. Bad, bad me. ;-)

"In fact Dawkins deals with the evolution of the eye in his video on "Climbing Mount Improbable" at around 22:00 Mins to 35:00 Mins."

Ahhhh. So you ARE a Dawkinsite. Have you finally decided to "own" him? A few months back you were plagiarizing him shamelessly without any acknowledgment whatsoever that you were using his arguments. Whence the change of heart? :-)

I bet you dollars to donuts that you can't respond to this without using the words "bigot" and "ilk" as least a half-dozen times.

About the atheistic leaders of the 1900's. I'm happy admitting that we can't be sure that their atheism drove their policies, provided you admit that we don't know that ugly policies of religious leaders throughout history were driven by their Christianity or other. That's the point, we can't blame religion or atheism but rather, human nature with its tendency toward greed, power and selfishness.

First of all Hitler was not an atheist. Whoever, accuses him of one, is willfully lying or is blissfully ignorant of his avowed goals. Moving on the other three, Stalin, Mao, & Pol Pot were driven by their hunger for power and their personal desire to be unopposed. Perhaps there were a insignificant few persecutions against theists for their faith. But the mass persecutions and killing field were motivated by their hunger for power and inability to deal with dissent.

On the other hand the history is well documented with the persecutions of people of other faiths by the rulers motivated purely by the ruler's faith. Perhaps there are other cases as well. The fact of the matter is far more of the persecutions by the theists are driven by the religion. The whole history of Islamic conquest is written in blood, motivated by the religion. So it is not fair to make the false equivalence between violence visited upon the humanity by atheists and theists. The former is due to megalomania, the latter is due to both megalomania and religion. The religion being the bigger culprit.

No one amongst the atheists have claimed any moral superiority. On the contrary it is the theists that constantly claim moral superiority for their superstition over the atheists.

Nevertheless, you cannot argue that Biblical teaching is inconsistent on this point. It maybe inconsistent with your philosophy of life, but it is not inconsistent with itself.

JonSwitzer,

The only way Biblical teachings can escape inconsistency with one another is by introducing completely vague and ambiguous concepts that completely defy reason.

Three gods or one?
The order of creation?
The time of creation?
Contradictions about Jesus in the four Gospels?
Omnipotent or jealous God?
Loving or spiteful?
Eye for an eye or love thy neighbor?
... and the list goes on and on.

The only way Biblical teachings can possibly hope to ecsape the inconsistent label, is for them to be so vague and ambiguous as to mean practically nothing at all.

In other words, the mush may be consistent but it's still just a bunch of mush.

To my fellow atheists,

Please consider that for us, gods are just human beliefs and nothing more. So when an atheist says they "hate god", what they really mean is they hate the belief.

Some of the atheists I know hate the belief but the rest of us just find them silly and amusing.

Bottom line: You don't have to actually believe in god(s) in order to hate the belief.

If the atheists in the survey say they hate god, it only means they hate the belief. If the so-called atheists actually held any belief in god(s), then they weren't really atheists in the first place, now were they?

Jswietli:

Agnostic is fine.

About the atheistic leaders of the 1900's. I'm happy admitting that we can't be sure that their atheism drove their policies, provided you admit that we don't know that ugly policies of religious leaders throughout history were driven by their Christianity or other. That's the point, we can't blame religion or atheism but rather, human nature with its tendency toward greed, power and selfishness.

About suffering. I'm not comfortable with you claiming that suffering is bad from an agnostic viewpoint. On what basis can anything be absolutely bad if there is no god? (Confucious referred to the Tau as an absolute standard, Christians to Biblical teaching).

Nevertheless, from a Christian viewpoint, suffering is redemptive. We are to consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of many kinds (James 1). We are told to take up our cross daily to follow Christ (Matt 16:24). We are to view these things as the discipline of the Lord which is unpleasant but valuable. In fact, we are told that when the righteous die, God takes personal care over their death (Ps. 116:15). One saint said it like this, "we desire life like water and death like wine." So, God's sovereign choice to use suffering to teach lessons or decide the end of life is consistent with Biblical teaching and the golden rule.

I realize you do not accept eternal rewards or punishments. Nevertheless, you cannot argue that Biblical teaching is inconsistent on this point. It maybe inconsistent with your philosophy of life, but it is not inconsistent with itself.

Jon, the eye is not even close to irreducibly complex. It evolved in many ways in many different animals over millions of years from a clump of light-sensitive cells to similar cells with primitive lenses to more advanced and nuanced lenses to the modern eyes of creatures all over the world (many of which still have those less sophisticated versions, or have lost them over time via, you guessed it, EVOLUTION).

If god made the eye so perfect, by the way, then why do I need glasses to read this as I type it? I guess I must be a bad person?

Posted by: getjiggly1 | January 4, 2011 1:52 PM

In fact Dawkins deals with the evolution of the eye in his video on "Climbing Mount Improbable" at around 22:00 Mins to 35:00 Mins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT1vXXMsYak

One great thing about this video is the byproduct. The by product is a wonderful illustration of the finding the Maxima and Minima using iterative techniques given a starting point. As a student I was convinced that using iterative technique we can only determine what is called the local Maxima or Minima, rather than global Maxima or Minima. Even in case of evolution (which is also a iterative process) what we find is that natural evolution without the benefit of hindsight or foresight only provides us with the local Optimas. I wished that the video was available for me to see when I was a student. Since I have seen the video I had shown it to a few engineers who still struggle with the concept of local and global extremas. I recommend it to even those who are not hot into evolution/creation debates, but scientifically curious. I tell you this is the kind of stuff wet dreams are made of, for me.

B_Al_Zebub

You wrote, "Jews, Muslims, Christians, same story - different language."

Not even close to the "same story".

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.
--------------------------------

Oh, please, do enlighten us who don't see much difference by their actions.

To add one more point #9 to Secular's list:

9) The danger of believing in superstitions in a nuclear age, and more precisely, the danger of some strong believer wanting to hasten the arrival of what they perceive to be the 'end days' via military and political actions.

I don't normally like to engage in religious discussions, but to save ourselves, literally, we need to try and change modern civilizations' outlooks (and tolerance of those outlooks) on religion, before some nutjob in a position of power inflicts his version of the Book of Revelation on us all.

This is why nonbelievers are frustrated - and scared.

As am I. The deafening din of the atheists you "hear" on these threads is the sound of not-quite-certain consciences trying desperately to convince themselves that God does, indeed, not exist.
Posted by: RCofield

RC,

You don't know anything more about what motivates atheists than you know about the existence of god(s), which is precisely nothing.

There are many thousands of gods. How many of them do you believe in? If it's just one then you are an atheist also. You just believe in one more god than I do.

By your logic, your post must be a sign of your conscience trying desperately to convince yourself that Zeus does, indeed not exist.

Just a 411 question. How is it that this article did not show up for me until about 30 minutes ago when other had seen it as early as 1;00PM yesterday? I do press F5 to refresh the page quite often. Is there any profile setting that I need to set?

Mr. Hirschfeild, you are being silly and ridiculous. We atheists do not hate the non-existent sky-daddy or sky-mommy of yours. What we abhor and are frustrated about are:

1) The silly superstitions horse manure, pig manure, or bull manures that endure from the early stone ages on till now.

2) The demand of your ilk that we must show respect to your superstition, rather than hold them up for ridicule and utter contempt, they deserve.

3) Such dogma and superstition, sans sky-daddy or sky-mommy, is held by you & your ilk in utter contempt & ridicule in all other areas of human thought. In fact you & your ilk hold non-orthodox religious beliefs of most native (under developed cultures, and short on numbers) in utmost contempt. Yet when we voice such contempt of your superstition we are labeled as bigots and secular fundamentalists, etc, etc.

4) It si not enough that you & your ilk adhere to the stupid superstitions, but you make concerted attempts to impose your superstitious tenets on the rest of the society.

5) Of course in some societies complete lack of liberties to any skeptic, even not avowed ones.

6) Then the charlatans like you (the so called priest class) who like leeches are the parasites on the community. Your ilk are woefully inadequately skilled to produce anything of economic value. Yet like leeches that suck the blood out of a being, you suck the limited resources of individuals and that of the society by continuing to propagate the crap that should have been left behind the dust heap of history.

7) Some of your ilk that stand in the way of the human progress by way of science and technology.

8) Above all it is your ilk that have been thwarting the social & cultural progress of human kind, in the name the decrypt vile texts called scripture.

Other that we are not angry at anything at all.

Fellow Atheists,rational thinkers and non-believers in the supernatural: Attention! The jig is up! We've been totally busted by these 2 geniuses:
********
RCofield wrote:
"BRAUNT,
"I have always been intrigued by how many self-proclaimed atheists spend so much time expressing their views on a blog clearly titled "On Faith.""

As am I. The deafening din of the atheists you "hear" on these threads is the sound of not-quite-certain consciences trying desperately to convince themselves that God does, indeed, not exist.
Posted by: RCofield
******************************
Braunt and RCofield -the modern day Holmes and Watson lol.

Jon, the eye is not even close to irreducibly complex. It evolved in many ways in many different animals over millions of years from a clump of light-sensitive cells to similar cells with primitive lenses to more advanced and nuanced lenses to the modern eyes of creatures all over the world (many of which still have those less sophisticated versions, or have lost them over time via, you guessed it, EVOLUTION).

If god made the eye so perfect, by the way, then why do I need glasses to read this as I type it? I guess I must be a bad person?

I would like to know how the question was asked of these atheists who supposedly are angry at God. Perhaps the question was worded in a way to skew the results, as is often the case with these studies.

BRAUNT,

"I have always been intrigued by how many self-proclaimed atheists spend so much time expressing their views on a blog clearly titled "On Faith.""

As am I. The deafening din of the atheists you "hear" on these threads is the sound of not-quite-certain consciences trying desperately to convince themselves that God does, indeed, not exist.

What Brad doesn't seem to realize is that for atheists, god(s) are just human beliefs (or opinions) and likely nothing more.

There certainly are some atheists who hate the belief, like Christopher Hitchens, but there are many others who think supernatural beliefs are just plain silly and nothing at all to be hated. Pitied maybe but certainly not hated. I'm in this camp of atheists.

Now when believers try to use these silly beliefs to justify restrictions on my liberty or oppress me in any way, well that's when I get downright hateful but the hate is directed squarely at the believers actions, not at their superstitions.

James10

You wrote, "I cannot fathom that the human conscience was just a matter of evolution.

Posted by: janet8

Can you fathom particle physics?"

Do you think that particle physics thinks about or "fathoms" human conscience?

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

Hi Jon -

Thx for responding.

To answer, first, no one is technically an athiest, since no one can prove a negative. So, let's use the term agnostic.

I'm not arguing whether Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao were guilty of terrible evil or not. You failed, however, to make the connection that their actions were driven by their religious beliefs or not. And it's you, not me, that's making a claim, so that the burden of proof is on you to make that connection. I apologize that I wasn't clear in that response, and responding to each of those cases individually is more than I care to write.

I don't know that the 2004 Tsunami killed indiscriminately or not. Given the large numbers of babies drowned in their cribs, to say nothing of anyone else, I'm guessing that it likely did.

As an agnostic, I think that any suffering, whether by nature or man's hand, is bad. One does not need a religious viewpoint to make that conclusion; the golden rule as laid down by both Confusius and Jesus Christ still applies. But when it happens by nature, it is indeed, just nature. To conclude anything else is irrational.

B_Al_Zebub

You wrote, "Jews, Muslims, Christians, same story - different language."

Not even close to the "same story".

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

nolarobert

You wrote, "Epicurus got it right when he wisely inquired,

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent."

If God were to prevent evil we would be nothing more than "puppets on a "do-good string".

Then, "Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent."

We can use "free will" for good or bad or indifference but to blame God for our use of it is to blame God for not making us puppets on a string.

Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?

Seems as if "evil" comes from the fact that we have a choice in what we do.

Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”"

If we think of GOD in such a puny way than I could see why someone would object to calling God, God.

I am speaking here of man's inhumanity to man of which history seems to be overwhelmed with.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

Jswietli: Contradictions? let's see if there might be any logical explanations for your contradictions. Shoot away.

Are you saying that Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao were NOT guilty of terrible evil? That would be fascinating.

Also, how do you know that the 2004 Tsunami killed indiscriminately? You know the moral character of all the killed?

Clearly, however, as an atheist, you would not think indiscriminate natural disasters killing anything is bad. Right? It's just nature.

As an atheist and a psychologist (retired), I am mildly amused by the contention that atheists are angry with god. Moreover, that we are 'more' angry with god than are theists. Yes, an amusing proposition, but totally unconvincing.

Mr. Hirschfield, provides us with none of the design protocol details of the research which he cites (i.e., design structure, statistical validity and reliability coefficients, etc.). Thus, the casual reader has no way of knowing the intentions, actions, and findings of the original authors of the research.

As a child, I once saw a rabbit on the same afternoon as an Easter egg hunt. Should I now conclude, without apparent evidence of replication, that rabbits deliver candy eggs? No, Mr. Hirschfield, the scientific method and rational minds are are far from convinced.

jonswitzer: "Evolution can not explain the human eye and its irreducible complexity. Are 85% of the human race who believe in God wrong and only the 15% atheists right?.." - YES.

"Sounds awfully elitist to think that those 15% after thousands of years of human history finally figured things out and have to force their "doctrine" on the rest of us." - NOT ELETIST, MERELY DIFFERENCE OF OPINION, BASED ON A REFUSAL TO BELIEVE IN A CONTRADICTORY BELIEF SYSTEM.

"Have not atheists also been guilty of human failure on a terrible scale? For example, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, Kim Jung Il, Hugo Chavez...?" - NO.

"Certainly we all need some explanation for both the wild internal joy at the amazing world/cosmos/start/seas/mountains/humanity." - NO, WE DO NOT. IT IS AGAINST HUMAN NATURE TO ADMIT IGNORANCE, BUT SOMETIMES, THAT IS THE CORRECT ACTION TO TAKE. THIS IS DIFFERENT FROM ADOPTING A CONTRADICTORY BELEIF SYSTEM TO EXPLAIN WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW, AND MAY OR MAY NOT EVER KNOW.

"..and an explanation for the intense suffering, war and hatred. " - AN EXPLANATION FOR SUFFERING, WAR, AND HATRED LIES WITHIN AN EXPLANATION OF THE NATURE OF HUMANS. A MORE INTERESTING AND POINTED EXPLANATION WOULD BE FOR NATURAL DISASTERS WHICH KILL INDISCRIMATELY, SUCH AS THE 2004 TSUNAMI.

"Evolution cannot explain the good and our appreciation for it. However, it hits the nail on the head when it describes the animal-like selfishness (only the strong survive) that drives much of the evil on the earth." AGREED. BUT A LACK OF EXPLANATION (OR UNDERSTANDING) DOES NOT JUSTIFY BELIEVING IN A DEITY.

Evolution can not explain the human eye and its irreducible complexity. Are 85% of the human race who believe in God wrong and only the 15% atheists right? Sounds awfully elitist to think that those 15% after thousands of years of human history finally figured things out and have to force their "doctrine" on the rest of us. Have not atheists also been guilty of human failure on a terrible scale? For example, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, Kim Jung Il, Hugo Chavez...? Certainly we all need some explanation for both the wild internal joy at the amazing world/cosmos/start/seas/mountains/humanity...and an explanation for the intense suffering, war and hatred. Evolution cannot explain the good and our appreciation for it. However, it hits the nail on the head when it describes the animal-like selfishness (only the strong survive) that drives much of the evil on the earth.

At least someone has the sense to point out that there is no proof either way. Regardless of how hard they try, neither any believer nor any non-believer can prove the existence or non-existence of a god. Believe what you will and for whatever reason you may have. For my part, I find no evidence to compel my to believe. Therefore: I do not believe in a god. The facts, though, are clear enough for me to know it would be outside the realm of reason for me to deny the possibility that a god exists. Any believers out there willing to do the same?

Hate = strong disagreement?? This ain't your mother's hate! Are atheists hateful for disagreeing with me? Are Buddhists hateful to disagreeing with me?

Hate = evil?? Should we not hate injustice, rape, lying, cheating, child abuse, oppression, genocide?

Religion = evil?? Is Nuclear Power evil for being used to kill? Is knowledge evil for being used to oppress and manipulate others? Is morality evil for being used by self-righteous hypocrites? Is religion powerful? Yes. Does that make it evil? No.

What is evil?
When is hate evil?

What a bunch of claptrap.

Anyone who would ascribe the suspension of critical reasoning necessary to believe in God, to anything else in life, should rightfully be kept apart from sharp objects and their own money. Yet, all sorts of otherwise supposedly enlightened individuals still have "reason" to believe in a deity. We used to be able to afford to do this as a society. But, given today's problems and today's risks, it's time to stop tolerating this idiocy. The Bible was written by people who didn't know what happened to the sun once it set, and now belongs on a shelf between "Batman" and "Cinderella".

Look, this world has severe problems, not the least of which is religious fundamentalism. The sooner we stop letting our thought process get clouded by these inane beliefs, the sooner we can find our way out of the multiple miseries that the world is currently in.

Shame on the Post for even allowing such a nonsensical article to be written.

Atheists can most certainly hate god(s)!

Seriously, most atheists I know conclude that god(s) are just human beliefs. For example, Christopher Hitchens falls into this category. He hates religion, or the belief in gods, not any actual supernatural beings themselves.

If he hated the invisible beings themselves, he wouldn't be an atheist now would he? So when an atheist says he hates god(s), he only means he hates the beliefs, nothing more. It doesn't imply that he actually believes in the god(s) themselves!

If we begin with the proposition that there is no proof of either the existence or non-existence of God, we are left with alternate possible outcomes. Comes now the aetheist who is mad at God. The aetheist says if there is a God, the deity is a monster who commits evil acts starting with imposing the burdens of mortality and ilness upon mankind without proper or prior consent. This makes the aetheist very angry. It could even lead one to say that Christ died for the sins of God not the sins of man. Oh dear!

However, if there is no God, there is nothing to be angry about. Hence the better choice is not to be angry and be an aetheist.

Anger at religion is misplaced. Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin and others show that religion is not THE cause of evil. Rather, there appears to be something in All of us that leads to evil. If a child of a single parent is abused should single parenthood be labeled the cause? If sex abuse happens in public schools should the public school be considered the cause? No, rather, what we find is that religious people tend to have the same faults that non-religious people have. Interesting.

Of course, Christianity claims this to be true. They claim that ALL have sinned and fall short...So, Christianity and Atheism agree on this point.

Where did hate come into this discussion? Atheists don't hate any more than anyone else, likely, in my opinion, less so than many "believers". And why are the "believers" so threatened by someone else's lack of belief? Even though the majority of the world's population "believes", and constantly remind each other so, the relatively small number of atheists drive them to distraction. I'm surrounded and inundated by religious rhetoric and dogma through almost every fiber of our culture, but it doesn't threaten my belief system. And yes, I do have a belief system. God just doesn't happen to be a part of it. As for this article: More of the same, inane religious "logic" driven discussion by someone who just doesn't get it that atheist DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD, so no, we're not angry at god because we - now listen carefully - DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD.

TO: janet8

Yes. You have no thoughts of your own. You don't "know in your heart", because your heart doesn't know anything. It was merely an expression that man created when they did not have the inability to provide any rationale justification for what they believe. Einstein could admit it. You can't.

This has to rank up there with dumbest post ever. I am an atheist and I don't hate god because there isn't a god. I don't waste my time hating an imaginary being. And the ranting and raving in some of these comments is a bit scary. How about live and let live.

For Gershwin2009, who wrote:

"NO, please believers get this once and for all, we are angry at people who believe they have god on their side whenever dealing with moral questions"

I do not believe I have God on my side, ever.

I try my best to be on God's side, always.

If we are to try to prove Jesus, then we would certainly start with whether or not such a man existed. Josephus certainly spoke of such a man "who went about doing good." It is in no way surprising that "secular" sources don't mention miracles. Are they to be considered less biased than the Apostles who died for what they believed? Hardly. Concerning the Apostle Paul: He said, 1 Cor 15:3-8 "3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born."

Finally, extensive mythological precursor to a dying/resurrecting God/son merely strengthens the argument. How does a broad based popular moral expectation that if God is good he would be willing to let his son die for our sins weaken the argument? The myths vary in details but the moral story remains the same.

So myths anticipating what Christ did certainly is not an argument for it not happening.

On the other hand we have over 5500 extant copies of the gospels and epistles some dating to within 50 years of their actual writing. In terms of historical/religious documents this is unprecedented anywhere. The likelihood of his existence is strong. Furthermore, Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 give predictions that even if they were not written when they claim, were still written significantly before Christ. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed that.

The question is then whether he was what he said he was. Either he was, or he was a lunatic, or he was a liar. Seeing that almost no one thinks there is a higher moral standard than the sermon on the mount, liar would be profoundly inconsistent. Furthermore, he lived with people who died for him with NO political agenda or monetary gain to be had. People might die for a lie if there were some personal benefit, not so likely if there were none. So, maybe he was a lunatic. Of course, then Josephus comments about a man who went about doing good would seem inappropriate.

The myth theory is interesting and should be part of the discussion. Nevertheless, its pillars are a bit flimsy. Their historical relevance hardly compare with the facts.

A mistake seems to have been made here. Atheists do not believe in God, so it makes little sense to say they are angry at God--as if mitigate their anger and they will become reconciled to God (in somewhat the same way a Christian angry at God for some reason can be cooled down and reconciled to God).

However atheists sure get angry about something they do not believe in! In fact they title themselves atheists--non-believers in God! Would anyone title himself a non-believer in something other than God? Think of all the false beliefs a person could take a stand against. Atheists might not be angry at God but they rail against the belief constantly...Of course it is all religion's fault.

One would think atheists would demonstrate more of the morality and consideration they say can exist without God. If Good and Evil exist in the first place...What I mean by that latter comment is that biology, the genetic sciences, seem to be demonstrating more every day that character in a person is much like character in a member of any species, quite inflexible, which means that the violent criminal is not as responsible for his actions as we assume, and the good person of course deserves no great accolade for his goodness because he is just genetically that way and made no strenuous effort to be good...

Good and Evil, morality, do not really exist if people are fated to their actions and cannot really change them. How can we condemn a person for being genetically what he is? That would be like saying a mean dog is bad when of course no moral change can be expected of it. The question is not whether man can be good without God, but whether the loss of religion and rise of biology will result in a world in which bad people cannot be blamed as much as we like, and the good people can no longer be so righteous about their morality.

Brad Hirschfield, what has happened to you?
Your writings used to be interesting, but this one start with a wrong premise, uses no logic , shows hate toward freethinkers and is boring. And please understand that the Hebrew Bible - together with man/all so-called sacred books- should not be taken literally.

RSL 903 (I wish you would give your real name and not hide behind a vague number).

Nevertheless, til now, I have not attempted to prove God in my postings. I have merely responded to the accusation that "religious" people are the cause of evil; to the accusation that God and Santa are equivalent beliefs; and finally to the charge that the religious push their beliefs on others (as if atheists do not).

So atheists are angry at people who believe in God? Is not that the height of intolerance? For the temerity to think differently than an aetheist? And, of course, by the atheists' twisted logic, it is intolerant for those who believe in God to criticize atheists.

How about a "moment of silence" (whatever that means) for those atheists that are intolerant and angry at the believers!

"Atheists angry at God?"

NO, please believers get this once and for all, we are angry at people who believe they have god on their side whenever dealing with moral questions, to paraphrase Mr. Hitchens.

You may say that some atheists (myself included) definitively show contempt and disrespect to organized religion.

There is NO god and thus it would be ridiculous to be angry and something that does not exist!

As an atheist, I can confirm that one cannot be angry at something that doesn't exist. I do, however, confess to a certain degree of anger at believers, and the false religions which have encouraged them in all manner of criminal behavior. Although Muslims are presently the worst offenders, Christians have been just as bad in the past. Criminals are criminals, no matter what god they claim to be obeying.

Does acknowledging God mean that Atheists believe in God? Atheists should not believe in religion and should not even acknowledge its existence. Those that deny God are those that believe in His existence. There are millions of people that don't believe in god or religion, but you never hear from them denying something that doesn't exist for them.

OK. Brad might actually be right here.

Think about it. If god(s) are just human beliefs and nothing more, then the atheists who "hate god(s)" just hate the beliefs, since that's all god(s) really are.

So in this case, atheists who hate the God of Abraham only hate that particular belief, not an actual supernatural being (because according to atheists, none exist).

Like several other posters have noted, it is simply not logical for an atheist or anyone else for that matter, to hate something that doesn't even exist.

I still hate fairies though because they just drive me nuts!

I don't understand this whole discussion. Atheism is a state of lack of belief in any deity. How can one possibly be angry at an entity one does not believe exists? If you're angry at "God," you clearly are not an atheist.

Posted by: nicekid | January 4, 2011 8:25 AM

------------

Precisely! This makes no sense, by definition!

GOD, GOD, GOD! Why in the hell are you folks arguing about something you each define differently? Its akin to cooking a meal while each of you use different types of measurement.

I have always been intrigued by how many self-proclaimed atheists spend so much time expressing their views on a blog clearly titled "On Faith." If you don't have faith in a Supreme Being, then why bother to argue the issue on this blog, unless the point is to merely antagonize those of us who do claim such faith? There are plenty of other blogs for which I would think atheists or other like-minded people could discuss their interests. ...

Posted by: braun

I suppose we could ask whey would someone who believes in God write an article about atheists? Or why would a person who believes in God read an article about atheists?

Why should people get a tax deduction for keeping Pat Robertson living in the manner he has grown accustomed to? For that matter why should anyone get a tax deduction to pay for the living expenses of any minister. Those deduction increase the deficit and places an additional tax burden on atheists. It's an accounting gimic to force atheists to pay for religion.

Did Jesus of Nazareth ask for a tax deduction? When shown the Roman coin did Jesus say: "Render unto Caeser that which belongs to Caeser and unto God that which belongs to God or did he say" .... "They should put "In God we Trust" on that coin."

Interestingly, there was another study some years back that showed that the more frequently people attended religious services the more likely they were to support torture. Atheists don't attend church that often and were at the bottom of the list.

Atheists might wonder what people who go to Church at taught there.

What's disappointing here is that neither Brad, nor any of the ranting posters here, have bothered to look up the source material for this article.

In a few minutes of research, I found that Dr. Exline didn't conduct any actual study. She cherrypicked data from five unrelated studies on general anger, and drew some conclusions without any actual controls, testable hypotheses or measurable data. The supposed study is just Exline's unsupported opinion.

This whole discussion shows nothing but intellectual laziness on the part of the post's readership; and really shoddy journalism on the part of Mr. Hirschfield.

jonswitzer wrote: "Einstein believed in God.I have studied Jesus...Santa was no Jesus. I have studied the claims of the Old Testament and it's "witness" of God's activity in their lives...Santa was no Hebrew God. No adult ever believed in Santa. However, St Nicholas from whom the myth came was an adult who gave gifts to the poor because he was like countless thousands/millions of other adults who believed in a good God who gave His own son as a gift. 85% of the world believes in a God. Thus the relevant question for the overwhelming majority is not "if" but "which".
**********************************
Oh Jon you love your percentages,dont you? Psst heres a clue. As far as people believing in anything it matters little whether a billion or a billion plus 1 or 85% of 10 billion BELIEVE in god. Doesnt make it true or real. If 100% of humans suddenly didnt believe in gravity it wouldnt change the fact of its existence. The same principle applies to your god's existence.
Studies of Jesus? Oh you mean this guy? From Wikipedia's Jesus Myth entry: New Testament scholar Robert Price, who argues it is quite likely there never was a historical Jesus, writes that the traditional Jesus myth theory is based on three pillars:
1.There is no mention of a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources.
2.The Pauline epistles, earlier than the gospels, do not provide evidence of a recent historical Jesus.
3.The story of Jesus shows strong parallels to Middle Eastern religions about dying and rising gods, symbolizing the rebirth of the individual as a rite of passage. He writes that Christian apologists have tried to minimize these parallels."
I would add that there are no contemporary written accounts of Jesus. No one (including Jesus H. himself) ever wrote a single word about him DURING his supposed lifetime. No one =0%. Cause I know you love those percentages.

I find it interesting that neither of the two links referenced by this posting give any numbers.

The story referenced in the first link points out that the study only involved college students, which is not a representative sample of the population in any case. That story actually stated that "People unaffiliated with organized religion, atheists and agnostics also report anger toward God either in the past, or anger focused on a hypothetical image - that is, what they imagined God might be like"
So first off, I don't think that is the same as saying 'atheists are more likely to be angry at God'.

One could easily conclude that if the study only involved college age students, that you are talking about a group who only recently reached an age where they could rationally consider such things and understand the distinction between things like atheism and agnosticism. You would be talking about a sample where many of them would have had their exposure to religion dominated by whatever their parents believed, for most of their lives. So if the questions asked were really 'have you *ever* been mad at god' a college age atheist might well state 'Yes, because the whole idea made no sense to me. Then I realized there was no god at all'. And that would produce the results in the study, but does not support the conclusion Hirshfield seems to reach.

James10 wrote:

"If you were to believe in God and that God is an all knowing being then it surely must be true that you have a pitiful human intelligence. Albert Einstein would be of pitiful human intelligence compared to God, would he not?"

------------------------

Yes, James, we all have a pitiful human intelligence compared to God, even Einstein.

As Einstein himself said:

"I'm not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what that is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the most intelligent human toward God."

Athesists angry at something/someone they don't believe in?

Smoke another one!

I dislike the fictional character of God, much that I dislike the fictional character of, oh, lets say Iago, from Othello. God in the Old Testament is an imperial dictator that creates and destroys, but never mends or comforts. God in the New Testament is a fickle entity that loves only those who love him, and tortures those who do not, or are simply unaware, for eternity. I also dislike the gods of the Greek, Norse, and Roman Pantheon, as they are all fickle jerks. And the author has no more proof that his version of god exists than that of anyone else, except that when he was little, his parents told him it was true.

I dislike how these fictional creations inform on our culture far more than more modern, and more moral teachings, and how as I child I had to slowly tear down my belief in these things, a much more painful process than if I had just been presented the world as it is by my parents.

Breaking NEWS:

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DEATH to: I S L A M i C -- S I S T E R H O O D too!

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DEATH to: PAKISTAN! (Not Secular Hurdu).

DEATH to: T U R K E Y! (Not Real Sekular)
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DEATH TO Al ISHLAMi's UMMAH in KAFIR Nations!
...

OK, I admit it, I hate Zeus. Does this make me an atheist?

Don't you have to acknowledge the existance of something before you can hate it? To deny something exists means there is a chance that it does exist. Athiests cannot say there is no God without believing there must be a God in the first place. Otherwise, why would they care what I believe in?

RSL903 wrote:

"...if you think about it,morality has to be independent of an authority source like a god. A quick example: murder is immoral,right? But if god commands you to murder innocents ( like he does in the bible) is that moral? No. One cannot be moral by blindly following a god's orders."

---------------------------

I had wondered that myself, then I read that when God commanded the murder of certain sects of people, they were actually demons not innocents. But of the innocents who may have been killed along with the evil, I found the following link, this is just an excerpt:

"In the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelites coming out of Egypt to take over the land of Canaan and kill all of the inhabitants. This is shocking to us. Skeptics point to this and say that there must be something foul about the Christian God. Yet, the Bible makes it clear that God is not arbitrary; the Canaanite society deserved its fate as it was thoroughly polluted by its wretchedly evil practices, including the horror of child sacrifice (Deuteronomy 9:1-6, 12:29-31, 18:9-14, 1 Kings 14:24, 2 Chronicles 33:1-9, Ezra 9:11).

Thus God used the Israelites to administer specific justice, just as he later used other societies to administer justice against the Israelites (book of Jeremiah). Instances such as this in the Bible are each a particular limited circumstance in time, for a particular purpose established by God.

But the skeptic presses the point by asking, "But weren't some of those people innocent?" We respond that there is further context to such violence. As mentioned in the previous section about the question of people who may never have heard about Jesus, there are no innocent people. We are all sinful by nature and deserving of God's wrath (see Christian Cram Course). But at the same time, we are confident that God's plans are greater than our limited understanding. Since the God of the Bible is merciful as well as just, we are confident that if there were truly innocent people who were killed under God's command that he would provide mercy and rest for them in heaven."

http://www.faithfacts.org/search-for-truth/questions-of-christians/how-can-a-loving-god-order-people-killed

Go to this link for a more thorough explanation.

Brad, I think that you are a misleading malevolent idiot.

As to the person who posted,"See you ALL in the KINGDOM", I don't know what you are talking about. I won't be able to see after I'm dead.

Einstein believed in God.

I have studied Jesus...Santa was no Jesus. I have studied the claims of the Old Testament and it's "witness" of God's activity in their lives...Santa was no Hebrew God. No adult ever believed in Santa. However, St Nicholas from whom the myth came was an adult who gave gifts to the poor because he was like countless thousands/millions of other adults who believed in a good God who gave His own son as a gift. 85% of the world believes in a God. Thus the relevant question for the overwhelming majority is not "if" but "which".

There is really only one article of faith that is central to atheism, which is that one must believe that there is no god. Therefore, no true atheist can actually be angry at god - having such feelings stands in direct contrast to the definition of atheism.

It's like arguing that a good portion of Christians don't believe in the divinity of Christ. Which is to say that this argument is stupid.

There is equal proof in the existence of santa claus and god. Neither has been seen. If you believe in god then you have to believe in the possibility of santa, since god makes all things possible. By extension, if you believe in god (which requires faith in the absence of proof) then you believe in the possibility of everything. There are NO rules

James10 wrote:

"Can you fathom particle physics?"

--------------------

This is from Rev. Seiichi Ariga, Christian Minister and Physicist:

"...quantum physics provides us with a far more precise map of a part of God's creation, and in this respect we get more precise knowledge and understanding of God at least indirectly, but I myself don't think science can ever decisively "prove" the presence or absence of God. To me, God is, like parents, somebody whom we trust and accept without proof. Today DNA may prove my own father being my real biological father, but I don't need such a proof, for I know my father, together with my mother, loved me and cared for me, and that is enough to me. Ultimately, acceptance of God is a matter of faith, not of scientific proof or anything as DNA."

http://www.renewingyourmind.com/Articles/Quantum_Physics.htm

(BTW, the dynamics of Particle Physics is governed by Quantum Physics)

Posted by: janet8 | January 4, 2011 10:22 AM

====================

You didn't answer the question I asked. I asked you whether you could fathom quantum physics. I certainly did not ask what Rev Ariga said about particle physics. You gave me some statement about particle physics being governed by quantum physics as some "proof" that you can fathom it.

You wrote the sentence: "I cannot fathom that the human conscience was just a matter of evolution."

Surely you have the capability of writing the sentence: "I can fathom that the human conscience was just a matter of evolution."

You recognize such a sentence exists. Therefore you must be able to fathom it.

But that's all immaterial unless you claim to be an all knowing being. Do you know everything? Can you imagine everything? Can you fathom everything?

I hope you're not so arrogant as to state if you cannot fathom it, it doesn't exist.

So is your statement: "I cannot fathom that the human conscience was just a matter of evolution." a proof of anything beyond your pitiful human intelligence?

If you were to believe in God and that God is an all knowing being then it surely must be true that you have a pitiful human intelligence. Albert Einstein would be of pitiful human intelligence compared to God, would he not?

"Self-declared atheists, according to the study, not only report getting angry at God, but report higher levels of anger than that experienced by believers. "
----------------------------------------

I have yet to meet a highly vocal atheist that isn't absolutely bonkers. This just proves out that observation.

Hey Hookedonthepost, are you also hooked on crack? Or are you as simple minded as the thought that Santa is the net that "captures" Christians. And to think that you believe Christians have a monopoly on all of the failings of human beings - like selfishness and hypocrisy. Considering your lack of understanding in human nature and the most prevalent religion in this country, I am sure you haven't succeeded in many of your endeavors. Stop reading the post and go back to school, dope!

Pretty pointless article.Seems like the author completely misses the point. I think afpre42 put it very succinctly.

The funny thing is that morality not only doesn't have to come from a god, it doesn't come from humans either. It is a byproduct of the fact that we are social animals:

http://bioblog.biotunes.org/bioblog/2007/03/26/morality-is-not-a-human-construct/

And it's clear that the questions in this "study" were framed to make it sound like most "atheists" actually believe in a god. The only real definition of atheism is not caring a whit about a mythical character. We're not mad at god, we're mad at the people who invoke a god as their justification for acting like jerks who are always trying to control the rest of us.

I have always been intrigued by how many self-proclaimed atheists spend so much time expressing their views on a blog clearly titled "On Faith." If you don't have faith in a Supreme Being, then why bother to argue the issue on this blog, unless the point is to merely antagonize those of us who do claim such faith? There are plenty of other blogs for which I would think atheists or other like-minded people could discuss their interests.

I understand that this is a public forum and people are invited to share their views, but it seems the arguments made here come down to those who believe and those who do not, with little discussion of the various types of faith or expression of faith that exist in the religious community. I suppose it would be like going onto a biology blog and arguing almost exclusively over creationism and evolution, while ignoring the greater realm of that facet of science.

Evolution can not explain the human eye and its irreducible complexity. Are 85% of the human race who believe in God wrong and only the 15% atheists right? Sounds awfully elitist to think that those 15% after thousands of years of human history finally figured things out and have to force their "doctrine" on the rest of us. Have not atheists also been guilty of human failure on a terrible scale? For example, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, Kim Jung Il, Hugo Chavez...? Certainly we all need some explanation for both the wild internal joy at the amazing world/cosmos/start/seas/mountains/humanity...and an explanation for the intense suffering, war and hatred. Evolution cannot explain the good and our appreciation for it. However, it hits the nail on the head when it describes the animal-like selfishness of only the strong surviving that drives much of the evil on the earth.

Religion by itself (whether or not you believe in god) is a form of mind control that the ruling class uses to exploit the masses. It is important to note that the African slaves who were brought over by the British were indoctrinated with Christianity and the promise of a rich after life if they were obedient and well behaved slaves. In today's growing wage slave economy why should Christianity or any other religion have any other purpose other than to make its subjects more accepting of the decreasing quality of human life???

~~~One cannot be moral by blindly following a god's orders.~~~

Again! One must KNOW God in order to have an accurate discussion.

If you do not know what 'God' is your discussion is obsolete...
"He. She. Gives orders"....WHAT?

Try taking religion out of the equation. Most of you are discussing religion and religious beliefs, which were in fact, created by man, for man. God is not religion.

Without God there are no moral absolutes.
Without moral absolutes, nothing can be absolutely morally wrong, which means no one can complain about the worst crimes against humanity because they're all relative. The holocaust, child predators, etc. - they become merely relative.
Athiests' eyes usually start spinning at about that point in the argument. They so want to say something is morally "wrong" and yet they deny themselves even that. They're not angry at God - they're angry at themselves.
-------------------------------
What is considered "moral" by anyone person is what your society tells you it is. It has nothing to do with a god. I don't think it is moral to disown your children for "dishonoring the family". Some cultures consider it a moral imparative to do so (ie. you must protect the rest of the family form the dishonor). Our society says killing in self defence is less bad than killing in anger but still a bad thing, some cultures give you the same penalty, while others have no penalty for the defense killing at all and its not even frowned upon. Some use religion as their reason, but then why are there so many variation if morality only comes from god.

By the way, our eyes are not "spinning" in confusion, we are just rolling them at you and your myths/superstition.

James10 wrote:

"Can you fathom particle physics?"

--------------------

This is from Rev. Seiichi Ariga, Christian Minister and Physicist:

"...quantum physics provides us with a far more precise map of a part of God's creation, and in this respect we get more precise knowledge and understanding of God at least indirectly, but I myself don't think science can ever decisively "prove" the presence or absence of God. To me, God is, like parents, somebody whom we trust and accept without proof. Today DNA may prove my own father being my real biological father, but I don't need such a proof, for I know my father, together with my mother, loved me and cared for me, and that is enough to me. Ultimately, acceptance of God is a matter of faith, not of scientific proof or anything as DNA."

http://www.renewingyourmind.com/Articles/Quantum_Physics.htm

(BTW, the dynamics of Particle Physics is governed by Quantum Physics)

Janet8 wrote: " I think one of the basic foundations of the human spirit created by God is the discernment in our conscience. Knowing right from wrong. Good from evil.
I cannot fathom that the human conscience was just a matter of evolution."
**************************************
Janet,
You are talking about morality which developed as humans evolved. I would recommend the chapter called The Roots of Morality in Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion for you to read and understand how morality ( or conscience as you term it) came to be.
Also, if you think about it,morality has to be independent of an authority source like a god. A quick example: murder is immoral,right? But if god commands you to murder innocents ( like he does in the bible) is that moral? No. One cannot be moral by blindly following a god's orders.

Ah Fishcrow, enough with the "moral absolutes" bs. Of course there are no "moral absolutes." Morality changes with changes in culture, values, and history. In ancient Greece it was absolutely "morally" acceptable to have a preteen male concubine. In Biblical times it was "morally" acceptable BY THE PEOPLE WHO PURPORTEDLY WROTE THE BIBLE to have slaves and slaughter innocent women and children so long as they were the enemy's women and children. Your argument does not compute.

I don't hate God as much as I hate Christians who pull their sheep in with a Santa myth and then reveal the ugly truth = demons, judgement, shunning, hypocrisy, selfishness, debauchery.

The continued existence of monsters like Dick Cheney is proof positive that there is no God but that the Devil is alive and well.

How can you be angry at that which does not exist?

I cannot fathom that the human conscience was just a matter of evolution.

Posted by: janet8

Can you fathom particle physics?

I'm quite tired of religious folks painting anyone not like them as God hating ie. "bad people".

As an agnostic, I am angry at the way many religious followers use their chosen religion to push their "morals" onto others. Choosing to believe (or not) in a story does not make you morally superior to anyone.

Religion already gets tax free status ie. my tax dollars help support your ministry. That's bad enough without having to put up with the hypocrisy.

Without God there are no moral absolutes.

Without moral absolutes, nothing can be absolutely morally wrong, which means no one can complain about the worst crimes against humanity because they're all relative. The holocaust, child predators, etc. - they become merely relative.

Athiests' eyes usually start spinning at about that point in the argument. They so want to say something is morally "wrong" and yet they deny themselves even that. They're not angry at God - they're angry at themselves.

Anger one if the three poisons of humanity as taught in Buddhism. Anger by itself is not destructive when used in a positive manner; i.e. angry at inequality or inhumanity.

Being concerned with the beliefs of non-Christians is just a waste of time. Even posters have acknowledged that they were not a part of the survey and do NOT fit the aggregate of those sampled for this article.

How can you be angry at something that does not exist in your mind? I think this article is a wast of time and should perhaps indulge themselves into the realm of anger and gain understanding of self-anger before claiming knowledge of the source of anger of others, leading to foolishness another of the poisons of Buddhism.

Greed, Anger, and Foolishness the Three Poisons of Buddhism and humanity.

Patrick

"Perhaps there is a God and perhaps there is not. While extremists on both sides of this debate hate to admit it, there is proof for neither conclusion".
- the article

---

Wrong. While it is true that there is no scientific proof for either conclusion, that doesn't mean that proof of God doesn't exist. The problem with this issue is that the sheeple have fully bought into the pretenses of scientism - the notion that we can only know truth through scientific means. That there are many other ways to learn truth - historical truth, for example - has been lost on a population that cannot understand that science can only provide truth for repeatable (hence testable) phenomena. Anything that can't be tested is not scientific truth; in the scientific lexicon anything that can't be tested is "mere anecdotal evidence".

Many commonplace phenomena that we know to be true cannot be demonstrated scientifically.

Consequently, the fact that people dream at night is not a scientific fact. Oh, sure, some scientific studies show some correlation between certain brain wave activity and a person's claim upon being immediately wakened during such a state that he was dreaming - but there is no scientific evidence of the validity of the "mere anecdotal evidence" provided by the alleged dreamer that he was dreaming in the first place.

The pretense of science to be ultimate truth is sheer arrogance. I know this to be true, but don't ask me to prove it "scientifically". "Sheer arrogance" isn't something that can be repetitively tested in a laboratory.

Mr. Hirschfield is clearly angry at Zeus, Odin, and Vishnu.

Less concern over atheist for whom are angry with God, (seems nonsenseable or ironic; since, they disbelieve), and more attention to how believers express or place their faith.

I believe in, and love God. God has answered my prayers, both big and small many times.

To atheists, I may seem foolish for my beliefs. So be it.

I know in my heart of hearts, that there is a God. Some will be angry at Him for negative circumstances in their lives, some will view these negatives as "picking up their Cross and following Him."

God has given us the free will to believe in Him or not to believe.

I think one of the basic foundations of the human spirit created by God is the discernment in our conscience. Knowing right from wrong. Good from evil.

I cannot fathom that the human conscience was just a matter of evolution.

I know the atheists on this blog will mock my beliefs, but as I wrote above, so be it.

Keep the faith!

"...Perhaps there is a God and perhaps there is not..."

Once again the author's nonsensical logic- I think both believers and atheists would agree that these are two mutually exclusive concepts.

That's ridiculous. By definition atheists don't believe in God so that would be like being angry at dragons or unicorns. They may be angry at some people who believe in God, or at religious organizations, or at a society which tries to force religion on them against their will, but that is not the same as being angry at God.

This is simply an idea cooked up by religious types who cannot come to terms with someone who does not believe god actually exists, obviously they must really just be mad at god, or hate christian values. It's just a way of villainizing atheists so they can be used as a punching bag. Most atheists actually don't even care what anyone else believes, let alone hating them for it.

Clearly the author is confused as to the definition of an atheist. I therefore can only believe his definition of God is also confusing. If you do not ‘know’ God you cannot have an accurate discussion about God and the existence thereof.
While I do not know Thomas Baum I must say that I agree with his posts on this blog.

"There's no definitive proof against Clark Kent/Superman."

Superman defies conservation of energy among many other physics problems. That is absolute proof that he doesn't exist. It is equal proof against the existence of most people's concept of god as well.

Not G-d, but I *am* pretty ticked off at Galactus.

I'm not angry at Santa Claus, but that Easter Bunny was pretty irritating last year.

Honestly, how can you be angry at something you don't believe in?

Nonsense, how can you be angry at something that you believe doesn't exist? By the way, the term atheist is a Christian term, and therefore shouldn't apply to a non believer. In the Muslim world a non believer is an infidel, also irrelevant to non Muslims. Each religion makes up it's own rules, and I think they are all believing in the same story interpreted by different languages and cultures over the centuries. Jews, Muslims, Christians, same story - different language. Single God and a great philosopher. Believe if you must, but there are so many nonsensical contradictions, mostly stemming from the middles ages that it just doesn't apply in an educated society. Just take away the philosophy of living in peace and harmony, and forget about hate.

For some time now, I have concluded that when someone states that he/she does not believe in God, they are really saying that they do not believe in the Christian Religion's concept of God. A God who promises Salvation only to Christians, despite the Christian belief that Christ died for the sins of all mankind. This statement is repeated every time we recite the Nicene Creed and say, that Christ's one oblation was a full and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of all mankind--all mankind must include all religions, and even those who do not follow any religion.

I believe this message is also repeated in Galatians, when it speaks of the heathens being blessed the same as Abraham, if they have faith.

Are adults angry at Santa Claus? How can you be angry at someone you don't believe exists? What an asinine article. The author needs to look up the word atheist in the dictionary before spewing all this nonsense.

In the era of hasty texting and haphazard blogs,I'm slowly getting used to reading amateur pieces written with frequent typographical and syntax errors. Still...I expect a little more from The Washington Post. Don't you guys have any proofreaders on staff?

Paragraph 3: "Was that not the case, at who is one angry?" ...Was, or "were?"

Paragraph 5: "That week connection to God when things go bad may be true..." Yeah, I know; "week" passed the spellchecker, so it must be OK.

Paragraph 9: "...it has no place in the life of a "good atheists." Even an auto-grammar-checker would complain about seeing a singular article "a" paired with a plural noun "atheists."

"Anger at God?" That is close to "making war on God," or moharreb, a criminal charge that carries the death penalty and is frequently used in Iran to kill political enemies. Clearly rabbis and imams are birds of a feather - in the case of the Iranians, shiite-birds (sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Personally, I don't have a religion but if I had to choose, I'd go Christianity in a heartbeat. They have the best music, by far ...

Seems like the atheists are awake in the wee hours....I know I was.

These are some smart folks responding to this silly article. Indeed: How can one prove the absence of god? Mr. H. apparently skipped his college logic (and English) course(s).

MT

Angry at God? What God? Which god? Why? It makes more sense to be angry at the evil and harm done in the world by the self-proclaimed agents of various gods, who have killed and harmed more people than any other single cause of misfortune on earth. Religions are worse than governments, and especially toxic when the two are combined. And then if you wrap in royalty and/or nationalism, there is a formula for wholesale slaughter!

"...anger goes back at least as far as Abraham..."

The common denominator of Jews, Muslims and Christians. Maybe atheists are really angry that disciples of these ancient religions continually fight amongst themselves and try to jam their dogma down others throats to totally control them.

I'm not an atheist but this certainly pisses me off.

I believe in many cases, as in my own, that it is not God that attracts Atheist's anger, it is the practitioners of the various belief systems that cause anger.

I get angry at fictional characters all the time. I hated almost every character in Fowles' The Collector. I despise Clark on "Smallville" because he's a lying, hypocritical, pompous prig.

On the other hand I've felt everything from profound respect to crushes to love for my favorite fictional characters from books, tv shows, and movies.

None of this love or hate means I think any of these characters are real. It simple means that something about the way they are portrayed is meaningful to me in some way. We don't do religion or consume fiction because it's real but because it strikes emotional cords both "positive" and "negative" in us.

Personally, I have never felt anger towards a "god", but I was never really invested in the concept at any point in my life. I can certainly see how other atheists would feel anger towards the concept, though. Some might feel it for more personal reasons because they experienced hardship in breaking free from a religion. Others might feel it because religion is so often a great force of evil in our world, and the figures cut by the most popular gods of our age are often murderously offensive to those who believe in justice and compassion for their fellow humans.

BTW, Mr. Hirschfield, I wonder if you are interested in growing a little. Again and again, you invoke the "no proof for or against" argument concerning your gods, though you must be aware that's not the point. There's no definitive proof against Clark Kent/Superman, either, but you don't believe in him. Good thing because I'm telling you, the kid is a sanctimonious little punk.

Thinly veiled attempt to patronize and discredit atheists. "Anger at God" is anger at what his followers have done in the name of their religious faiths -- has nothing to do with actual belief in the supernatural.

As an atheist, how can I be angry at something I doesn't believe exists? Its like being angry at santa claus or the tooth fairy...

This is just annoying. The writer suggests that Believers and Non-Believers are on an equal footing because neither can prove his case. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Without evidence, claims of the existence of a god are no more persuasive than claims of the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

No one knows that any gods exist. There is no evidence to support such a claim. I don't bother to believe in any gods because of that lack of evidence. I don't bother to get angry with such nonexistent gods, either, but I am quite willing to get angry at religious people who spread lies and hide behind their religious doctrines while doing so.

Seriously, who posted this inanity?! Not only is it rife with grammar and spelling errors (which already make me question the intelligence of the author), but it also makes no logical sense. The "study" you discuss itself begs a question: how well was it designed when the author couldn't even find subjects who could properly define their set of beliefs? What a moronic study, asking "atheists" if they are angry at God! Is the Post really publishing this drivel and linking it to the front page?

There sure are a lot of grammatical and spelling errors in this column. Are you angry at English?

Seriously, who posted this inanity?! Not only is it rife with grammar and spelling errors (which already make me question the intelligence of the author), but it also makes no logical sense. The "study" you discuss itself begs a question: how well was it designed when the author couldn't even find subjects who could properly define their set of beliefs? What a moronic study, asking "atheists" is they are angry at God! Is the Post really publishing this drivel and linking it to the front page?

The assertion that "...there is proof for neither conclusion," demands that those of us who don't believe must provide proof for the absence of God. With this flawed logic, Santa Claus must exist because we can't conclusively prove that he doesn't. In reality, the burden of proof is not on those who see no hand of God in the universe, but on those who do. This is the flawed logic that gets us into so much trouble. Anybody remember "weapons of mass destruction?"

It would be more helpful if Mr. Hirschfield had actually quoted the article he linked to, instead of paraphrasing to his advantage.

"People unaffiliated with organized religion, atheists and agnostics also report anger toward God either in the past, or anger focused on a hypothetical image - that is, what they imagined God might be like."

Note the phrases "in the past" and "hypothetical image" based on their indoctrination at the hands of their childhood religions. Very different from actually being angry at "God".

As an atheist (or perhaps anatheist) I get very angry at the hypothetical images of gods perpetrated on us by organized religion. I get even angrier at the images of the gods of the unorganized religions - those freelance evangelicals who have a perverted understanding of their own religious texts. And I'm at my angriest when those followers of organized religions parse their own texts to inflict injustice and cruelty on those they fear or misunderstand.

Sadly, Mr. Hirschfield is coming close to doing the same thing by miscasting the article he linked to in an attempt to discredit atheists.

This is the most foolish column. God goes back to Abraham ? then you do not know who created this universe 14 billion years ago.

No, they are just fed up with the holier than thou crowd that seeks to indoctrinate even dogs into the great christian mythology.

I don't understand this whole discussion. Atheism is a state of lack of belief in any deity. How can one possibly be angry at an entity one does not believe exists? If you're angry at "God," you clearly are not an atheist.

"Among the most interesting findings in Exline's study are the place of anger at God in the lives of self-declared atheists, and also the compatibility of simultaneous anger and positive feelings about God.
*************************************
Self-declared atheists who are angry at god? Ridiculous! That is analagous to believers in the Abrahamic god being angry at Odin or Zeus. I would seriously question the methods and/or results of this study.
At the very least I would give those 'self declared atheists' a dictionary.

if you don't believe that something exists how can you possibly be mad at it? What is infuriating are those clueless religious people who really need to get a good grip - but supposed anger at somebody else's imaginary friend? Really - get a grip

Hirshfield states, "Perhaps there is a God and perhaps there is not. While extremists on both sides of this debate hate to admit it, there is proof for neither conclusion." This is what makes me miffed (not really angry) as there is no evidence for the existence of any supernatural forces, brings or gods which means this is not a 50/50 proposition. Since the theists are the ones making the assertion that the deity of their choice exist, then the burden of proof rest with them and until they can present some evidence-based proof the natural, default position is that we exist in a material universe with no supernatural interference.

So Hirshfield's hypothesis that atheists are angry with "god" is without merit as you cannot get angry with a being that does not exist. I do get angry with those who believe that just because they believe on faith that the deity (or deities) of their choice exist that endows them with special rights and privileges to use government funds and authority to push their faith-based agenda. Atheists get angry when we see proponents of religion use their archaic belief system to retard scientific and social progress because they value myth over fact. Epicurus got it right when he wisely inquired,
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

Some of us who do not believe in any organized religion are not angry at God - we are angry at those who use the idea of God to punish, to disrespect others, to push their religion on us.

We feel for those in religions who fear an Almighty and fear even more the wrath of those who preach love and practice hate.

This is stupid; if one hates "god," one canNOT be an atheist.

If one were to believe in God and I mean a God Who created absolutely everything out of absolutely nothing and one also believed that satan is real, than one would have to come to the conclusion that God created satan.

If one were to believe in God and also believed in pre-destination and that God gave us free will, one may come to the conclusion that this could be at least "one" of the reasons that God came up with the Plan that God came up with before creation itself.

If one were to believe that God has a Plan and has had that Plan since before creation than one may come to the conclusion that it is only God Who knows just how it all "fits" together but that, ultimately, God's Plan is for All.

That is, if one believes in a God that is worth believing in.

God revealed Himself to me not when I was looking for God but when I was looking for forgiveness.

I believed in God before I met God but I did not "know" that God Is until I met God.

See you ALL in the Kingdom.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

Brad Hirschfield

You wrote, "Perhaps there is a God and perhaps there is not. While extremists on both sides of this debate hate to admit it, there is proof for neither conclusion."

I would like to ask you a simple question: Why do you consider me an "extremist" just because I say that I "know" that God Is?

There are some who just consider me psychotic and/or delusional while others think I'm a heretic yet you go with "extremist", could you explain?

I have said many times that I "know" that God Is for the simple reason that it was God Who revealed to me that God Is and I have also pointed out many times that many do not seem to know that the words (know and believe) do not mean the same thing.

I have said many times on here that I have no "proof" and I have also stated that it will be God, not me, Who will supply the "proof" and God will supply this "proof" in due time, God's Time.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

I'm an atheist, and don't hate God any more than I hate my sister.

I don't have a sister.

But it does make me angry when people ascribe variations of luck to the choice of an intelligence. No child deserves to be stillborn based on their parent's moral values. And anyone who thinks an earthquake was sent to Haiti as a punishment for practicing voodoo, really needs to explain why Treblinka wasn't destroyed by lightning.