Is life unfair? Damn straight!
Life is unfair every time you find money while walking home. Life is unfair when you are born into a loving family. Life is unfair when you go out to the movies with a loved one and have a great time. Life is unfair when you go out looking for a job and you get one that allows you time with your family. Life is so damn unfair that a large number of you live in a great country at a great period in history on one of the very few planets capable of sustaining life as we know it. It’s sort of like winning the trifecta at each leg of the Triple Crown ten years running for most of us. Just take a look at how every other species on this planet lives, then take a good look at your own life.
Totally unfair. 
Whatever. I’m religious: I’m a Chrisitan. I don’t live in wonderland. Reality check: Besides the fact that none of the above is anything other than a whiney opinion masqeraded as something intellectual or unbiased, it is not a given- much less a general consensus- that religion is for the mythologically inclined. Also, I could spew the same asinine tripe about yourself.
Consider:
The assumption that logic exists cannot be proven. You assume there are both logical and illogical choices to make, but you do this by faith as you cannot prove that there is such a thing as this nebulous concept of logic. What may make sense to you may not make sense to someone else. What is logic? How does it work? How can it be tested? What are it’s origins? How can it be identified and separated from that which is illogical? You don’t have a rat’s rear-end, but it’s mighty benevolent of you to become a self-apponited expert on rational thought and define in stone. If the same stipulations that God was subjected to interrogation by were applied to your faith in “logic” you would have quite a bit of backpedaling to do. At least the concept of God gives way for motive, something dry logic apart from theism lacks and therefore cannot logically explain. You practice a form of pseodomonotheism. Your substitute for God is whatever you decide is logical and your entire concept of logic depends on yourself. Can you say circular reasoning? You cannote prove anything about what is logical and what is not, but you exercise faith in the 'logic" of your lack of faith to bash or belittle those who are honest enough to admit they adhere to faith. It’s counterintuative to say the least, staunch hypocrisy at worse.
To pass a judgment on Chrisitanity requires you to place faith in several factors:
-
You must have faith in yourself that you are smart enough to form a correct opinion. This requires faith in your ability to comprehend.
-
You must have faith that the conditions you applied to test and disprove the Christian faith are substantial and valid and relevant. (i.e. Testing the abstract with the concrete is misguided. It’s eerily reminiscent to saying people don’t need love because they can’t experience it or prove its existence with their five sense.)
-
You must have faith in your ability to be fair and unbiased while examining the evidence against Chrisitanity.
-
Again, you must have faith that logic itself is acutally a valid option and actually does exist beyond your personal preferneces.
My faith may not make sense to you, but that’s okay. It makes sense to me and is logical to me. The world did not come from nothing; it had a Creator, or so says my logic. To me, it’s illogical to say that the something produces nothing. Prove your logic trumps mine. Know what? You can’t. You can only exercise faith in your own, personal, biased, world view. (Sounds more like faith than logic doesn’t it?)
Chrisitanity is a myth? Who says? You? Sorry, doesn’t cut it. Especially not when you seem to be oblivious to your own faith.
You can only describe this world as “unjust” if you can somehow detail how something bad did happen to good people. In other words something that was not meant to happen, did. As it was pointed out this is only meaningful in a religious context.
Bothered me when a friend of mine died from a heart attack shortly after graduation? Yes, but only on an emtional level. I never did went ahead and asked rhetorically, “Why did this happen?”
If you meant “make this world more equal and better for everyone” then yes. I am a volunteer of humanitarian and environmental organisations.
Takes a seat and watches the fireworks that will soon start
An excellent riposte, Sir! (Well, I’m presuming on the gender part, but welcome to the SDMB anyway!)
-Is this a definition of oxymoron?
-I never once said or implied it was “unbiased”. The nature of the OP was, in fact biased; he specifically asked opinions of athieists/nontheists.
As for the rest, religion is essentially by definition mythology. It’s superstition, irrational belief, self-delusion. It’s the wholesale belief in something that cannot be seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelt, inferred, extrapolated, detected, weighed or analyzed. Moreover, the typical God-concept runs wholly contrary to how we have observed reality.
No man on Earth has seen God, a god, any ghost or angel.
Yet you- the generic “you”- believe in reincarnation, transubstatiation, magic, spirits, souls, life after death and other miracles, all without the slightest shred of evidence.
-“Logic” is a concept, a human construct, a definition to define a condition or method. Like “love” or “guilt”. Is this something that needs to be proven?
-Really. So if I assume that by setting a glass on this table, I cannot assume that the logical assumption is that it will remain there on the table’s surface until acted upon by an outside force, and that the illogical assumption is that it will fall upward and smash on the ceiling?
The proof, as it were, is in the pudding. Logic is what makes our computers work. Illogic is what keeps religions going.
-It is my opinion that logic is not an object to be tested, it is a condition by which one tests an object.
Again, we have only to look at the observable reality to define logic. Since, for the past ten thousand years of recorded human history, there have been no instances of gravity suddenly switching off and anything not securely nailed down being flung off into space, it is a logical- IE, following observed conditions- assumption that gravity will very likely not “switch off” tomorrow, or the next day, either.
The sun has risen over this dustball for somewhere around four and a half billion years, without fail. Logically- again because conditions follow observed profiles- we can assume it’ll rise again tomorrow.
-I’ll take that as a compliment.
[sigh] Again, the OP asked an opinion. I gave mine. Such is the nature of a bulletin board like this one.
However, I note you have thus far not managed to refute a single thing I said in my original post. Have you, perchance, any proof, or even strong circumstantial evidence, that anything I said was wrong, or are you content with the whole “sound and fury” thing?
-I suggest waiting a bit before posting next time, let the anger subside. Your statement makes no sense.
However, it seems to me that if God/religion was subjected to the same ‘interrogation’ as logic and reason, it is the theists who would be doing all the backpedaling.
-Oh? And how did you reach that conclusion? A motive is a desire for an action or condition- another human definition- so you’re saying that, without a God-concept, Man has no motive to do… something? Anything?
Are you using old Star Trek episodes to define ‘logic’? Spock has no desire to get laid, therefore anyone in the real world who says “lets’ think about this logically” doesn’t want to get laid either? Won’t allow themselves to laugh or cry or tell a really funny blonde joke?
-Ooh, good word. It’s horseshit, of course, but clever. Two points.
Please don’t project a desired mindset on me. I consider myself a nontheist. It’s not a “practice”, it’s merely, at best, a vague definition. Non-theism. No theism. Religion in any form is simply not a part of my day-to-day life, with the exception of discussions like this one.
However, the second part, my “substitute” as it were, is spot-on. Though it’s not just what I “decide” is logical, it’s what I observe as logical.
And yes, it all depends on me. I am the master of my own destiny, I am wholly responsible for my own behavior- I fear no afterlife, I’m not worried about my soul, whatever that is.
And again, you have yet to plausibly refute anything my first post stated. Do you actually have an argument or would you just like to sit there and swap jabs and witticisms with me?
-Sure! “God exists because the Bible says so! The Bible was dictated by God so therefore the Bible is True! The Bible says God exists, and God wrote the Bible, so therefore it’s True, so therefore God exists!”
Circular enough for you?
-Erm, what?
I saw the Sun rise yesterday. And again the day before that. In fact, it’s risen every day I can remember, and since I have a few vague ideas of orbital mechanics, I can say without fear of contradiction that the assumption it will rise again tomorrow is a logical one.
On the other hand, I have never seen God. I doubt you have either, and every theist with whom I’ve had a discussion on this board or others, has uniformly- without fail said that they have not seen Him either. Even the esteemed PolyCarp on this board has said he merely “heard a voice”. (Ted Bundy insisted he “heard voices” too, but no one believed him, why is that, do you suppose?)
So were I to meet a man on the street that said he has “Seen God”, I can, again without fear of contradiction- save for perhaps by a few theists- assume that the man is operating on some level of delusion- his statement is illogical- IE, outside the bounds of known, observed phenomena.
-What, counterintuitive to belittle, as you say, those who profess a belief in not only something that has never been seen, heard or detected, but something that also runs wholly contrary to what we know of as reality?
Tell me, do you believe in Astrology? The alignment of planets and stars somehow influencing your behavior? How about telepathy, the ability to read another persons’ mind? Dowsing? How about John Edward’s supposed ability to speak to the dead? Fortune telling, the whole crystal ball bit? How about Tarot cards? Yes? No? Maybe?
If a man stands on the streetcorner with a sandwich board and a megaphone shouting about how invisible magic elves are scrambling his TV reception and stealing his sofa one thread at a time, would you believe him? Yes? No?
How about a man standing on the streetcorner with a sandwich board and a megaphone saying how Allah was angry at our Judeo-Christian American ways and would return to Earth next Tuesday to burn the United States down to bare rock in his Divine Fury? Would you believe him? Yes? No?
How about them man standing on the streetcorner with a sandwich board and a megaphone shouting about how God, being a good Catholic, was pissed off at the Protestants and Baptists and would be here next Tuesday to slay the lot of you in His Divine Fury? Would you believe him? Yes? No?
Why are any of these any different than the rest? None of the scenarios are logical, none follow observable reality- they are, point in fact, counterintuitive to reality.
Yet we are to believe that your God, for example, created the Earth in a week, peopled it with man about six thousand years ago, and has at least once since then wiped it clean again with a Global Flood? We are to believe all this without a shred of even remotely factual evidence, and even in the face of mounds of directly contrary evidence?
-Guilty. Although you’re trotting out the tired and overused (and trite) “Science is a form of faith too!” aphorism. I’m sure you can do better than that.
-Done and done. Show me God. For that matter, I’ll accept Vishnu, Allah or even Amaterasu. How about a minor demon? Some parlor tricks, perhaps; can you turn water into wine? Trot out across the lake? Come back from the dead after a couple of days, maybe?
Now, perhaps we should define a term or two. I am not necessarily arguing Faith. I’m sure your belief, your faith, is strong, and in your mind, Righteous and Good. That’s fine, more power to ya.
What I argue is the Reality of that Belief. IE, Does God Exist. That, by all logic, we can state with near certainty that the answer is No. We cannot see him, we cannot feel him, we cannot detect him. This, a being supposedly powerful enough to create entire Galaxies, to populate a Universe thirty billion light years in diameter with a hundred septillion stars, we cannot detect or even infer with our instruments capable of detecting as little as single photons from nebulae twenty million light years distant?
God cannot be seen to interact with our world in any manner- any logical manner that is, there’s always someone praising/blaming him for something, like winning a football game, or rescuing Fluffy from that tree- and our observed data for the nature of the Universe runs largely contrary to the outdated stories found in the book from which we get the very concept of God itself.
It’s also eerily reminiscent of Einstein theorizing the existence of “Black Holes” mathematically. Even some objects that cannot be otherwise easily detected can be inferred by logic and knowlege of observable reality. God is not one of them, despite thousands of years of searching.
-Tell me, are you “fair and unbiased” while examining the Hindu’s beliefs? You have, of course, already read the Mahabharata with an unbiased eye, right? How about the Muslim? Significant points of Muslim belief run contrary to the Christian. For that matter, so does the Jewish faith. You are, I’m sure, “fair and unbiased” when regarding Jewish beliefs, right?
How about the Druid god of Fertility? The aforementioned Amaterasu, Shinto god of the Sun? You’re fair and balanced with them too, right? Those people’s beliefs are, of course, just as valid, truthful and correct as Christianity, right?
-At this point, you have provided no evidence otherwise. Logically we know that doping certain impurities in a highly-pure substrate allows us to create tiny semiconductor transistors. Logically it follows that piling many millions together, and using data gleaned from observable reality and known, verified physical laws we are able to create a personal computer, and a network upon which we can have this conversation.
Religion, on the other hand, tries to tell us that Pi, a mathematical abstract, is in fact Three, even, due to an obscure Biblical passage.
Now, you tell me which one of those is a valid viewpoint.
-And where did that Creator come from?
-Um. What? Is it more logical to say that Nothing produces Something? Like, say, God producing the Earth and the Universe from nothing?
-You haven’t been paying attention, have you? Try and keep up.
So, once again, here we are. Prove that God exists. Any god. Any deity at all- I’d even accept Apollo, Sisyphus or Loki.
Since the common theist belief is that the Earth was created about 6,000 years ago, and that the fossils, starlight and geology of the planet indicates a far greater age, meaning that God created the earth with the apparent appearance of age, prove to me that God didn’t make everything, including us with the appearance of age and memories, say, last Thursday.
Here’s an easy one: Prove that Jesus himself existed. Forget the magic and the mythology, just prove that the man himself existed.
-Sure, if you don’t know what logic is. But then, hey, grass growing is a miracle if you don’t know how it works.
And pardon me if someone identifying oneself as a Baptist calling me “biased” gives me a painful twinge of irony.
-Well, to start with, how about somewhere around 1.2 billion Hindu? Or another billion Muslim? Six hundred million Jews? Ten or twenty million Shinto, fifteen million Buddhist and an unknown million more Druid, Wiccan, Animist or polytheist?
Speaking of bias, a Christian-centric worldview is a pretty heavy bias all by itself, son. You’re outnumbered, to say the least.
-Again, you’re whipping that tired old “you atheists have faith too!” horse to ribbons. Repeating a mantra doesn’t make it truth, and you have thus far provided no evidence for the supposed illogic of my supposed faith.
If you wish, I can say I have faith the Sun will rise tomorrow. I have faith the sun will set again in the evening. These “faiths”, as you call them, are defined by logic- the phenomena with the Sun has been observed before, and due to the nature of stellar mechanics, that phenomena is unlikely to change in the near future.
You, on the other hand, I assume from your self-identification as a Baptist, have faith in something no one has ever observed, and a phenomena that is wholly impossible and runs opposite the laws of physics.
“Faith”, being defined as an irrational belief, fits which of these better?
I don’t see why. When I say a person is unjust, I mean that he does things that we (or possibly a consensus of people) wouldn’t consider fair if we had the choice ourselves. The exact same definition works as well for laws of nature.
If a judge sentanced everyone to be thrown off a cliff regardless of guilt I’d class them as ‘unjust.’ The laws of gravity cause everyone pushed off a cliff to fall regardless of guilt. (Err… or possibly everyone who falls off a cliff does deserve to die, in which case they might be just.)
Or would you restrict ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ to people, who might have the option to choose? That’s fair, but in this discussion I think it’s justified to use the slight extension of ‘unjust’ to ‘not just’ ie ‘acting irrespective of (someone’s judgement of) guilt.’
Indeed. In fact, yes, I do assume logic regardless of evidence. (Unless you get nitpicky and invoke Occam’s Razor and scientific induction ‘it always worked before’ But this process tends to involve logic itself.’)
But what the **** else am I supposed to do? If you’ve ever had an argument like…
You’re wrong!
Where am I wrong? What step did I make a mistake at?
The sky is blue, therefore you’re stupid!
That makes no sense.
Ah, but only if you assume logic.
… you learn that you can’t argue with someone who doesn’t assume logic (or something nearly equivalent) works. It’s possible that I’m wrong, and they’re right, but afaik GD is for people who like to argue, and if you can’t agree on a logic, you can’t, so we’ll have to segregate people into separate threads.
Very simple - you do the best you can. Life’s not fair, and you can sit around and wring your hands about it, or you can just deal with it and get on with your life. I always liked that line in The Shawshank Redemption: “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
Yes.
I try to be the best person I can be. I don’t always succeed, but I try.
It also helps to remember that there are a lot of good things in life as well as bad. The way I look at it, your God-belief just gets in the way. Why spend your whole life wrestling with this paradox of why an all-loving God would allow injustice to occur, when the more practical solution is to just accept that that’s how the world is, and resolve to do whatever you can to make things better? The God-belief doesn’t change anything; it doesn’t make the world fair.
Just to add a little more to this discussion: I sometimes subscribe to the idea of karma, otherwise known as “what goes around comes around.” For example, a person who is kind to others will receive more kindless in return, and a person who is rude and abusive will end up ostracized and/or attacked more frequently.
It sounds almost like a supernatural/religious idea, but I think it is just more of a “social feedback loop” at work than anything else. And, of course, it doesn’t apply in all cases – there is no fairness or karma when a two-year-old dies in an accident.
But it’s a bit of comfort to consider at times.
Disregarding the vaguely hostile attempt at a witnessing hijack, and addressing the OP:
This atheist finds it much more comforting (if that’s the right word) to recognize the world as being unjust on its face and to deal with that reality than it would be to try to rationalize a sense of Godly justice and fairness into a world that apparently thwarts such a rationalization at every turn. In other words, I think it would be a lot more distressing to try to find holy balance and meaning in a world where some babies are born with horrible diseases but a sociopath like Pol Pot dies peacefully in his bed than it is to simply accept that the world is what it is, sometimes grotesque, sometimes beautiful, and there’s nothing more to it.
In short: In a worldview where no benevolent power is in charge, injustice is not a “problem.”
It’s funny, but the situation in the OP is one of the reasons I don’t believe in God. It doesn’t make sense that a God would allow people to suffer such terrible tragedies.
Like when I hear of someone’s 4 year old daughter dying of brain cancer. What role could God possibly have in that?
Choice 1: The soul who was the daughter needed to be taught a lesson so God made her be born and gave her cancer. I don’t buy that. He’s God. Just make the soul have that knowledge.
Choice 2: The parents or other people who knew the daughter needed to be taught some lesson. That doesn’t make sense either. The sense of loss is horrible. What lesson could be worth that? Assuming those people learned the lesson, what would they think if they got to heaven? “Hi God. Thanks for teaching me about tragedy by giving my daughter cancer. I learned to live my life in a weepy depression.”
Choice 3: God plays no role in the tragedies of humans. This makes more sense because tragedies seem to happen randomly. But a god like that is not a god for me.
Choice 4: There is no god.
I go for choice 4.
You wanna talk about injustice? Look at the f@$%in’ BCS rankings! Does it bother me? Hell yes! I was planning a vacation to New Orleans with my friends! Is it going to bother me for long? No. Life goes on.
Work hard to correct injustice where you can. Sometimes, if you really manage to pull it off, you feel a little like god yourself.
BCS stands for “Best at Choosing Second”
Perhaps the free exchange of ideas disturbes you. Perhaps also you should read the introduction to this forum which specifically states that this is the appropriate medium for said “witnessing.” (A refresher course in Christianity- or any religion for that matter! would also do you some good, as advocating the existence of a God is a far cry from converting someone to a specific sect.) And perhaps you consider it fair that my faith should be reduced to a mere novelty and I sit idly by so as not to be intolerant. So be it. I try to be somewhat reasonable. I wouldn’t want to subject you to needless cause for further bellyaching and offend your sensibilities. Therefore, for the willy-nilly, close-minded who hyperventilate at the nerve of someone expressing themselves and their religious persuasions, the remander of this post should be avoided. Have a nice life. See, no unwanted evangelizing here.
Thank you for your kind welcome! And you’re a good guesser as I am male.
Granted, but a sweeping generalization of, “All x is whatever,” almost begs to be called into question doesn’t it?
And your basic argument here is essentially assumption, assumption, and assumption. Along with a few stereotypes and nose thumbing to boot. You don’t know why I am religious, much less if I suffer from a “self-delusion.” Further, I could play the same game towards yourself. Atheism is by nature the denial of the obvious that design demands inteligent thought…" But a discussion of the issues is more pressing than the hasty know-it-all labeling of demographics.
What do you call emotion? (And how precisely do you experience love?) What do you call insecurity taken away? What do you call contentment and peace giving rise to replace disgruntlemnent and anger? Maybe YOU have not experienced God, but you have no proof that someone else has not. You present yet another hasty generalization wrapped totally around an egocentristic world view that if you can’t grasp something it can’t possibly be real. It proves you are capable of forming an opinion, nothing more. Prove that I have not experienced God.
I disagree. So would countless religious manuscripts which many believe accurately record such occurences from a first hand account. It depends on what you believe. Once, again your hasty generalization wrapped totally around an egocentristic world view has proved that you are opinonated- and nothing more. Prove that no man has ever seen a trace of Theism. Or, once again, are we only talking about that which you are capable of grasping and eager to, rather arrogantly, generalize. No offense. 
I count the existence of this universe as proof enough that there is a God. We disagree on what constitutes proof. But there is evidence that all this did not come from nothing, hence, even atheists search for missing links and origins in faith of finding them. Different conclusions, same drive: faith.
Well, in matters weighty enough to deal with the meaing of life, and since we don’t want to be accused of having faith, everything should be proved. Or so says I. Besides, if my basic explanation for life is questioned why can’t yours be as well?
Yes, you can assume that. In faith. And assume is the key word as that is the essence of faith. You technically only know that which you experience with one of your five sense and having not experienced this particular session of setting the glass on the table you do not know that it will repeat prior performances until tried.
But you have now made my point. It becomes rather crazy though to keep demanding physical evidence to interrogate and validify common sense doesn’t it? That’s where my faith differes from yours. It’s common sense and a safe assumption to me that since something reproduces something and nothing reproduces nothing, I can apply that basic principle to the origins of life and conlude God is. The atheistic world view, if adhered to consistently, demands that every assumption be tested and nothing taken at face value. Only the five sense count, remember?
I never said logic was an object. Likewise, God is not an object. But if we don’t apply the appropriate conditions to test objects we reach faulty conlusions don’t we? This requires testing our conditions, including our individual “logic.” (The world just… happened? Really?)
Really? Says who? It is not logical for me to love my girlfriend but I do. Explain that through a mechanical process. It is not logical for me to do acts of charity and receive nothing in return for them. Nothing about “observable reality” dicatates the way most people live their lives. In fact, I’m sure you are even illogical at times and at a loss for explanation for it.
Also, my working logic says that design demands a designer and that is precisely, solely, exclusively based on observable reality. Care to explain what I’m missing?
Depends on what you mean by prove. I prove God to me by the evidence of life. You prove the lack of God to whomever by your whatever.
I am not angry. I never was. I suggest sticking with the conversation.
And if you had no motive to define the world logically then you wouldn’t do it. Your motive preceeds your logic. Explain the logic in your motive. Logic demands motive and you are evidence of it, which is why attempting to divorce the two in explaining life is impossible.
You’re new here, aren’t you?
You’re free to witness. I’m also free to :rolleyes:.
Yep, definitely new.
And your evidence for this unpleasant assertion is?
Perhaps you should learn the difference between a ‘forum’ and a ‘thread’ before diving in with the sarcasm. :rolleyes:
And Doc Nickel said this where?
Incidentally do you think someone mentioning Vishnu, Allah, Amaterasu, Apollo, Sisyphus, Loki, Druids, Wiccans, Animists the Biblical Creation, the Biblical Flood, the Mahabharata, Judaism, Hinduism, the Muslim faith etc might know something about religion? Or do you not know about these religious beliefs yourself?
No, actually you are consistently sarcastic. Aren’t Christians supposed to be pleasant?
Do you have any proof of your assertion that you have experienced God? Or that anyone else has?
Or to use your silly ‘logic’:
I am God. Prove I’m not. 
Stereotypical Baptist proves God exists:
-
the unsupported words of an anonymous Internet poster… nope, not evidence.
-
countless religious manuscripts which many believe…
nope, not evidence
(you do know the Gospels were written 30 - 100 years after jesus died, don’t you? How likely is it that any disciples were still alive to provide ‘first-hand’ accounts?)
As for your ‘prove that no man has ever seen a trace of Theism’, this is a second repetition of an elementary error. You want Doc Nickel to provide affadavits from all 6 billion living beings, stating they have never seen God? :smack:
Here’s how it works. You make a claim (God exists); you support it with evidence.
We certainly disagree on what constitutes proof. ‘If something exists, there must be a God’ is your proof?
OK, if God exists, who created Him? If God doesn’t need a creator, why does the Universe?
The consensus among most of us who don’t see any evidence for a God as envisioned by most Christians, Moslems or Jews seems to be that “unjust” is a human concept that has no meaning in the natural world. And so I don’t think that I have any moral dilemma for which to account.
It seems to me that those of you who believe in God, however, and expecially those who also push the Intelligent Design idea have problem to “deal with.” Why did a loving and compassionate Higher Intelligence “design” some creatures with an overpowering will to live and also “design” them so that the only way they can do so is to slaughter and devour other, weaker creatures?
The standard answer usually falls back to “Your limited mind can’t fathom the purposes of God.”
So, non-atheists, how do you deal with what seems to you to be unjust. For example, in Exodus Pharaoah refused to let the Israelites go. So God slaughtered the Egyptian children. I.e. He killed innocents rather than simply use His omnipotence to change Pharaoah’s mind.
Boy are you confused, right out of the gate. Logic doesn’t “exist.” A logical argument is either valid or invalid, not existing or not existing.
If we don’t try to discuss things as logically as we can, then we simply cannot have any sort of meaningful discussion about truth at all. So logic is not a matter of faith, its just a matter of pragmatism. Sure, no one can prove that it makes sense to be logical. But it pretty much seems like the only option, so that’s what we use as the presumed ground rule. That’s just not the same thing as an article of faith, because there is no assumption about any ultimate truth. In fact, it simply gives us a workable, limited, and operative definition of “truth” so that everyone knows just what’s going on.
And the fact that someone makes an argument is hardly a demonstration of their absolute faith in their own judgements: on the contrary, it allows others to QUESTION those judgements as specifically as possible, being informed about what lies behind them. So the idea that trying to make arguments in a logical fashion is akin to having faith that a particular thing exists is just plain ridiculous. If you have better arguments, present them. If you reject the basic presumption of logic, I’m not going to say that you’re wrong (since it’s not an article of faith, but just a conditional assumption), but it does seem like there really isn’t any point to your contribution to a debate, since its point ultimately just means that there can be no point to debating anything.
This sentance is pretty confusing, and I don’t know what the heck you mean by it. Did you mean that you think it illogical that “nothing produces something”? Well, you should know that that statement is not, in fact, illogical. Neither is it logical. It may be false, or it may be true, but logic applies to arguments, not bare claims (as long as they are intelligible).
That’s odd, because the full gist of your argument seems actually to be that everyone, including you, lives in their own personal wonderland or bias, no one can say that anything is true, and all rational discussion is all pretty much so much nonsense.
Actually, the text says that he was at work in the Pharoh’s decision: he hardened the Pharoh’s heart against the pleas of God’s own chosen people, all so that God could have a better chance to show off his wonders (which, include the wonder you mention)
Quite right. All of which, I think, reinforces my claim that I don’t have anything to account for but Stereotypical Baptist does.
I believe that “good,” “evil,” “right” and “wrong” are, when you get down to it, artificial constructs. Existentially, they pertain to humans just as much as they do to Grizzly Bears and Cuttlefish.
If we want “good” or “justice” to exist, we have to decide what they are ourselves, and then make them for ourselves.
“The world only makes sense when you force it to,” as Batman says.
Obvious, perhaps, to someone like Hume. However, a lot has changed since the 18th century…