I know I’m wasting my time responding to someone who is so closed-minded, but are you saying you are completely unaware of the fossil record in sedimentary rocks, to name just one blindingly obvious thing that demonstrates evolution exists?
Meanwhile, there is a theory of electricity. As far as I can tell, I do not have to have blind faith in it for a light to work when I switch it on
[/QUOTE] Isaac Asimov — “Creationists make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”
That’s one of the things that turn me off Christian “altruism” altogether. If you’re helping Granny cross the street because ultimately you hope it gets you a ticket to the Nice Place, then that’s really no different from helping Granny cross the street for a fiver. It’s mercenary goodness, and that’s not altruistic in the least.
Altruism and generally being a decent bloke is *supposed *to be its own reward, according to the Gospel of Kobal. Even if that, too, is kind of selfish, since you’re doing good to feel good about yourself, and avoid doing bad because you know you’ll just feel rotten. Ah, narcissism, is there no problem you can’t solve ?
For the purposes of your challenge, it is irrelevant whether a sociopath is a good thing or an evil thing. It is a thing the existence of which is not accounted for by [del]your[/del] “religion’s” assertion that “God imprinted His morality on the soul of human beings”. This kind of conversation works best if you match up the answers you get to the questions that you ask.
And here is the question you refused to answer: Exactly what god are you referring to in the OP? Is your god omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent?
Here’s another one. “If you dispute these, why won’t you explain why?” You quite intently avoided answering. If you think there are ways other than observation and empiricism to gain knowledge, what ways are that?
There are other kinds of knowledge: personal kinds, relevant only to individuals. I know my family loves me. Science simply wouldn’t be interested.
Science (sociology) can investigate the social consequences of various moral codes. Science can’t tell you anything about “wrong” because that’s not a well-defined term.
There are philosophical first principles, such as “reality exists” and “other people have minds” and “knowledge is possible.” Science generally accepts these for pragmatic reasons.
Science can, in a rough way, investigate what would follow if certain first principles were ignored, but, again, this is more a job for philosophy.
Science can’t tell you anything about “why.” The question is not rigorously definable. Science is very good at telling us “how.” Science is pretty good at explaining causes and effects. “The hammer fell because of gravity.” That’s about as close to “why” as science gets.
The next time you pull a stunt like this, do you have any intention on staying on topic and actually responding to questions that directly correspond to your own op?
It’s been pointed out to you, many times, that reason does not lead to a generic God, let alone a specific one. “Revelation” is meaningless and there are most likely millions of such “revelations” through the ages, all of them contradictory. It is not a source of knowledge, in any sense of the word.
Okay. Make any statement based purely on logical deduction beyond “I think, therefore I am”. I will accept that as a premise, and anything else you can somehow find that is not based on empirical observation. How far does pure reason get you?
Revelation is not a path to truth any more than psychosis is.
I’m not sure if this is the case, especially given that mathematics is demonstrably incomplete. I welcome you (or anyone else) to provide the deductive reasoning required. But that would be something. However, that something is purely an abstract logical construct whose link to the real world is more coincidental than anything else. Mathematics does not “exist” in the real world in any meaningful sense.