I have no problem whatsoever with your reasoning because you use logic. I completely see your point and you completely see my point. Of coarse we do not agree. But at least we are on the same page.
Now my entire reason for not just saying that your right and be done with it is the whole argument behind something being optional. Just because it is optional, does not mean that it is unneeded (yes I am just repeating you). Where I find that it is not optional is for things after this life or things we do not even come close to knowing about. For instance, what happens after this life? If God exists, then it is completely necessary for us to have a relationship with God. I would argue that everything comes down to faith because that is the only discernable way of discriminating the attitudes of the heart. We are in a huge predicament with negative consequences both ways. If I am being honest, I still feel it comes down to whichever viewpoint you have a propensity to believe. One things for sure, The consequences of each viewpoint is so incredibly important and at the same time almost unproveable, that it is the most important decision we will probably ever make.
Actually, I’m saying precisely that “optional” and “unnecessary” are synonymous, so you’re not repeating me at all.
I say: biological death, wherein our atoms return to being dispersed throughout the universe just as they were before this life. Again, I consider that the afterlife (or even beforelife) is optional, not necessary. Unless you are proposing some reason why there absolutely must be an afterlife, rather than simply believing in it yourself as a personal opinion, then you’re saying that even the afterlife is merely optional, not necessary.
No. Whether we have a soul or not, we have bodies, and the suffering is just as real. You also keep assuming that your hypothetical afterlife will be better; you are assuming things without evidence about things for which you have no evidence.
Ohhh, garbage. Comparing real suffering to fictional suffering is just sick. You sound like an apologist for the Inquisition.
No, I’m pointing out that you are engaging in the common twin religious practice of sneering at how evil/sinful/self destructive humans are, while absolving God of all responsibility for his creations.
It’s still more plausible than your religion. At least we know the Sun and moon exist.
Nonsense. If I have faith I can fly, I can step off a cliff. Whatever happens next will prove or disprove my faith.
No, it’s not. Even if God exists, I want nothing to do with him ( and why would a singular God be male, anyway ? Wouldn’t God be an “It” ? ).
Only if someone agrees with you. In the view of a materialist/atheist like me, it’s less important than, say, getting married or having kids or choosing a career. After all, they are all real.
You are an interesting fellow. Your utilitarian view is quite consistent, but I think deeply flawed.
Our atoms are redispersed throughout the universe without our death as well, ever shed any skin cells? Ever burn any fat? Ever take a shit or cut your hair?
Are you your atoms, or are you the pattern that holds the atoms together by a force of will?
The problem with the word afterlife is that it creates a very distinct idea of life and death. It’s kind of an oxymoron, because if you are still conscious then it is during life, and not really after it at all. Does a Caterpillar die when it makes it’s cocoon?
What is the self? Is the self the cause or is it the effect? You hold a very materialistic view of this, and tend to ignore most arguments that don’t fit seemlessly within your very rigid worldview. So if you are consistantly shedding atoms throughout life, then what are you, being as you’re not the same atoms you started out with? You claim not to believe in metaphysics, but the idea of the self is a metaphyiscal concept. Consciousness is a metaphysical concept. Sure you can describe the physical mechanism by which these metaphysical concepts are manifested, but that doesn’t change their inherently metaphysical nature.
As I’ve said before “Red” is a metaphysical concept. Light of a certain amplitude and frequency is physical energy, but Red exists only in our perception of that light. We in our consciousness change the light that we experienced into a monosyllabic package in order to communicate it verbally. On my screen the word “red” is actually black, because my font is black. When I speak it, it’s in a different wavelength of energy than red light is, but still it’s red, still it communicates the idea of that particular waveform of light energy.
So “Red” lives on long after the experience of the color has gone away. So what exactly is the self, and what constitutes “after-life”, you’ve said that brain activity is what determines life function, but how do you determine that the self is maintained merely in the brain? First off it diminishes the rest of the body as part of the cognitive apparatus, it eliminates that which is being experienced as part of the conscious being, and it fairly arbitrarily chooses one physical process out of many that goes into the whole human being. Why is that physical process the consciousness, why not my beating heart or my erection? What about my feet as they test the ground I walk on? Then why is it that my feet are part of me and not the ground that I actually put my feet down upon, which is equally part of the experience of walking as my feet are?
This is part of traditional Christian doctrine I didn’t agree with or understand when I was a Christian. {the church I belonged didn’t teach this} When I have this discussion with folks it results in “we can’t really understand God’s ways”
My take on it is if I in my imperfect understanding of justice sees the blatent injustice in this how can you attribute this to a being to whom you attribute perfect justice?
If we are spiritual beings I don’t see how a physical sacrifice can atone for anything, any more than putting sins on a goat will help.
Utilitarianism is indeed my preferred moral framework and I’m glad you think it’s logically consistent, but it has very little to do with this thread.
Of course. I didn’t deny this in my answer to the question “What happens after this life”, which I will now further clarify.
We are the temporal arrangement of those atoms, specifically the unique collection of memories encoded into our neural computer. Just like a hard-drive which is copied completely into another hard drive (instantly, whereas ours is a gradual process), those memories survive the replacement of the atoms whose arrangement encodes them. Even then, there may well be some atoms which remain in our brains for our entire lifetime since neurons are so long-lived as cells go.
It is no longer a caterpillar, but a pupa. So yes, I suppose the caterpillar does ‘die’ in a way, but note that I will not waste time playing Write-Your-Own-Dictionary here.
My position is that it is the unique string of memories encoded within our neural structure, and the preferences and typical reactions to sensory stimulus those memories comprise.
The effect of years of sensory input, together with whatever innate modules or cognition homo sapiens is born with.
I don’t ignore them, I answer them as best I can. If you don’t like those answers or consider them evasive or non sequiturs, so be it.
The temporal arrangement of continually-exchanged atoms.
I propose a physical definition of ‘self’ and ‘consciousness’. Again, do with them as you will.
If I decribe the physical mechanism and thereby yield observable consequences with which to test the hypotheses, I have a scientific explanation for those “metaphysical” entities. Again, call them and their “inherent nature” whatever you like.
And as I’ve said before, it is light with a wavelength of between 630-760 nm, which excites photosensitive cells in the retina causing an action potential to propagate a signal via the optic nerve, chiasm and tract and the lateral geniculate nucleus to the visual cortex whose activity in “cross-filing” the signal with the linguistic label comprising the sound ‘r-e-d’ (or shapes ‘r’ ‘e’ and ‘d’) is our perception of red.
The outputs of your vocal tract label the property of comprising wavelengths 630-760 nm just like files in your home computer might be labelled “red”.
Yes, like I said: in our memories, which are labelled by linguistic tags.
A unique set of memories.
Access to those memories despite our brain cells having undergone irreversible necrosis such that the organ can no longer function.
By asking dead bodies how they’re feeling, and examining claimed instances of consciousness during brain inactivity and finding that they are extremely flimsy in terms of scientific evidence.
I’ve heard of “thinking with your dick”, but that strikes me merely as a metaphor.
The photons incident on my retina having been emitted by an obeject do not make the object part of me, any more than sunbathing makes me a class II stellar object.
Eating food isn’t thinking, although for some the outputs are similar.
Where are the signals from those organs being sent? If I chop off the receiving organ at the neck, can the body still be said to be “conscious”? Again, note that I’ve no interest in playing WYOD with you. I’ll set out my position, you say what you like about it.
I’ll say “because your feet are permanently in communication with the memory-apparatus, while the ground isn’t.” Heck, why do we even use language to arbitrarily distinguish one thing from another at all? Without such distinctions, “you” are not even distinct from “me”, and so I’m currently talking to myself. It sure feels like it sometimes.
You really should read it. (Here is an atheist telling a theist to read his Bible.) Reading Genesis, in particular, is like going to a museum of natural history, where the primitive roots of today’s religion is exposed for all to see. Here is where the patchwork nature of the Bible is most evident. Here is where you see the ancient concept of god as tribal deity begin to evolve into the modern concept.
So much of people’s understanding of these stories come from popular culture, children’s bibles, movies. They are all inferior to the real thing.
I also found that reading Genesis to my kids, and having them analyze it for contradictions and absurdities, was a great education in both critical thinking and atheism. I read them great literature, like Alice in Wonderland and the Oz books, but I also read them not so great literature (1950’s Nancy Drews) and we found plot holes and inconsistencies together.
For those who are accusing me of being illogical. Picture that you are a police officer at a KKK meeting. The KKK member giving the speech talks about how black people are the scum of the earth, don’t deserve to live, and are a disgrace to all humans. Every fiber in your body as a police officer wants to tackle the son of a bitch and haul his ass off to jail. You cannot do this however to preserve freedom of speech. You know that protecting freedom of speech is much more important than losing your cool. In this same way, you should value truth. Even though you may not agree with me, you cannot accuse people of being illogical when you have no proof of the fact. For every logical inconsistency you see, I can give you a premise that erases the inconsistency. Admit when we are wrong. We will never get anywhere unless we let our pride go.
Really I don’t consider believers and non-believers all that different. The very essence of the argument is simple. Believers do not think that it is very likely that we will find a mechanism for the important things in life. Instead we rely on faith that God will work out the mechanisms for us. If science clears new paths, then we use this evidence as it becomes available. We simply are not counting on it during our lifetimes. A believer does not assume either way; whether we are going to find enough evidence during our lifetimes for how the mechanisms of the important things work or not. The key note to make is that neither of these arguments are invalid. You simply choose what you believe is the most plausible. I choose faith because it is the perfect way to give us a choice and is a perfect way to discern whether we are for God , neutral, or against God. Others choose not to believe because there is no testable evidence that says so which is equally valid.
First of all, I’m sure it is not your point, and I actually worried that you would take my words somehow as an attack on you, which was not the case. You’re my favorite theist around here. And I agree that we have or should have absolute personal authority over our own choices for our destiny. Salvation is just one part of this. Since none of us know what is best for our future spiritual life, if there is one, we should all have the absolute right to make our own moral choices on this, whether it involves nothing at all, or going to the desert, or going to Church each Sunday. Suffering, self-imposed, is included in this. Thomas More had a perfect right to wear his hair shirt.
The problem is when another person decides that he knows the answer, and for the long term good of you or me feels free to impose suffering upon us - or forced conversion, or any type of coercion. This person feels that we’ll thank him in the long run, but even if he is correct about the future, he is still morally wrong. If he can prove his contention about a future life, we could have a debate on the moral justification of this, but faith don’t cut it. Absolute confidence in his view of a future life gives him, he thinks, absolute moral authority to force us to improve our chances in it.
You have some opinions about spiritual life, and they give you absolute authority to live your life around them. They don’t give you any authority to make me live my life around them, and vice versa, of course.
If they have mental capacity to make the decision, they should be given the right to make it. That’s why I am in favor of assisted suicide, given the proper checks and balances.
Any “purpose” that God can accomplish by allowing evil to exist he can also accomplish without allowing evil to exist. It is logically impossible for an omnipotent God to require any mechanism to accomplish his purposes. All he has to do is blink.
Alos, you’re still really missing the boat on the Free Will argument. Free will is impossible. Choices are either caused by something inherent (which means they’re not free) or they are random.
Christian doctrine.
It is logically impossible for an omnipotent God to require anything in order to save people.
What’s unjust about this? Why do people have to be punished? Does all punishment have to be equal and eternal? Is it just to give a pickpocet the same punishment as Pol Pot?
How is it UNjust to let everybody into Heaven? Who is hurt by that?
Why does God create bad people if he doesn’t have to?
I don’t see why this would be a bad thing. What’s unjust about everybody dying? Why is that a bad thing?
See, now this is insane. How does killing an innocent person punish bad people? What does God get out of a sacrifice? What can God do with a human sacrifice that he can’t do without a human sacrifice?
It’s not a question of being “allowed” to, it’s a question of necesity. It is logically impossible for a human sacrifice to be necessary in order for an omnipotent God to be able to forgive people. Moreover, the crucifixion is manifestly unjust not only for the victim but also because it (somehow) allows evil people to get off the hook with no punishment.
Cite?
Does good and evil mean something different to God than to humans? Are you saying that Hitler might really be “good” by God’s definition?
Do people know right from wrong o don’t they? If they do, then they can recognize evil when they see it, if not then free will is (even more of) a joke.
A mechanism for what? I don’t know what you’re getting at here. The existence of ANY inherent mechanism behind human choices makes free will logically impossible.
Anyone can make up a story. That’s neither here nor there. The problem is that your God has not bothered to give anybody any way to know that this story is TRUE.
Um…no, dude. That’s not evidence. If we were talking about Quetzalcoatl would that be evidence that the Qutzalcoatl myth was true?
This is just silly. I can make up any myth I want containing “concepts” and “expectations.” That’s completely meaningless. Your religion is one among thousands and all of them have the exact same amount of evidence. In what way is it possible to know that your own myth is the true one without a purely random guess (and even then, you don’t know, you just happened to make a correct random guess).
This is just silly. It’s already been pointed out to you that ad populum arguments are fallacious. When it comes to religious culture, the vast majority of people never bother to critically examine their own religious beliefs and even the ones that do simply choose to find ways to avoid or rationalize uncomfortable questions. Logical method has very little to do with religious assumptions.
No, it isn’t the same. The problems I’ve pointed out with Christian doctrine are not about incompatibility with physical evidence (although those problems exist as well) but about logically conflicting premises.
It is logically impossible for ANYTHING to be “necessary” for an omnipotent God.
Your posts give ample evidence of illogic. Your inability to address other people’s logical points give more such evidence. Where the KKK comes from is beyond me.
First of all, what do you consider important things? Science does not cover all that is important, nor does it pretend to.
Second, the reason you think there is a god to be for is faith. You started this thread to explore reasons for belief - if the only reason you have is faith, fine. I’ve got nonfaith reasons for lack of belief. If you choose to believe despite evidence against (and I’m repeating myself) fine also, just don’t pretend this is logical. You are free to do things that are not logical, after all. We all have.
You are incorrect. There are many parallels in what Buddha taught and what Jesus taught. There are many differences too but to say they are *nothing *alike is incorrect. See Jesus and Buddha and Going Home
AS a brief interlude here’s another Pope joke.
The Pope was coming to town and as a devout Catholic, Bob was excited and wanting very much to have some contact with him. When He got to the airport the place was mobbed and he could only get close enough to see the Pope from a distance. As the Pope’s procession moved through the gathered crowd Bob saw the Pope raise his hand to halt his entourage. There on the edge of the crowd sat a ragged begger. The Pope appraoached the begger and knelt before him taking his face in his hands and speaking softly to him.
Ahah! thought Bob. After the Pope moved on Bob appraoched the begger and offered him $100 for his ragged coat and hat. Putting them on he raced ahead of the Pope’s procession and wormed his way to the front and sat on the curb. AS the Pope passed by he again rasied his hand and halted the procession. As he approached Bob’s heart raced with joy and anticipation. Kneeling before Bob’s ragged figure the Pope reached out and took his face in his hands and softly spoke…“I thought I told you to get the fuck out of here”
You are more right about this then you might realize. Advanced servers today have multiple processor board, disk shadowing, the ability to hot swap components in. If you are running a process (analogous to a mind) you can theoretically force it out of a particular processor board, replace it, then let it back in. You can switch disk access to one of the pair of shadowed disks, replace that, and then copy the other disk over, switch to the first, and then replace that. You can of course replace monitors and printers. So, you can pretty much replace all the hardware that amounts to anything while keeping the same software running. No one would ever do this, but it is theoretically possible.
The solution to the mind body problem for computers is pretty clear.
You are more right about this then you might realize. Advanced servers today have multiple processor board, disk shadowing, the ability to hot swap components in. If you are running a process (analogous to a mind) you can theoretically force it out of a particular processor board, replace it, then let it back in. You can switch disk access to one of the pair of shadowed disks, replace that, and then copy the other disk over, switch to the first, and then replace that. You can of course replace monitors and printers. So, you can pretty much replace all the hardware that amounts to anything while keeping the same software running. No one would ever do this, but it is theoretically possible.
The solution to the mind body problem for computers is pretty clear.
WAKE UP! It’s about perspective. Yes YES! I keep assuming because it is a hypothetical discussion in which evidence is not a requirement. At least take a stab at staying relevent.
hypothetical It’s a good thing someone else thought of the inquisition thing for you. Sure came in handy for your inevitable religion bashing. I’m asking you to back off the borderline personal insults. You can ridicule my arguement if you like but I find that a feeble excuse for a reasoned arguement.
There’s sneering going on alright but I’m not the one doing it. Stick to the arguement. Do you deny that much of mankind’s suffering is a result of man’s own choice? I asked you if there was any more you or I or almost anyone could do to relieve some of the suffering? Answer the question.
That is kinda funny.
I have read the two accounts of creation and noticed the decrepancies there. As well as passages here and there. I actually found Leviticus to do some of what you described here. It seemed obvious to me that the religious leaders of that day used mythology and their own “How to please God” handbook to guide a tribal people in diet and some health issues as well as make out rather well for being “holy”
I’ll give it a shot at some point. Any suggested version?
And I agree that we have or should have absolute personal authority over our own choices for our destiny. Salvation is just one part of this. Since none of us know what is best for our future spiritual life, if there is one, we should all have the absolute right to make our own moral choices on this, whether it involves nothing at all, or going to the desert, or going to Church each Sunday. Suffering, self-imposed, is included in this. Thomas More had a perfect right to wear his hair shirt.