Atheous

[Al_Moritz]

Al

**And no, please don’t tell me that “any right thinking scientist will have the same experience” – I am a scientist too, and I don’t experience it that way. How would you know, are you a scientist? **

To whom am I speaking at present? The Roman Catholic? The Freethinker? The Skeptic?

No right-thinking scientist will see there is no God at the bottom of the scientific cup.

As Pope Pius XII said:

“True science to an ever-increasing degree discovers God as though God were waiting behind each closed door opened by science.” Pope Pius XII

All Pius XII said is exactly what Heisenberg said, using a different metaphor.

Are you a Catholic or not?

It doesn’t matter whether or not I am a scientist. What matters is that Heisenberg was a scientist, and it was his impression that science leads to God. Many other scientists have had the same experience.

Francis Collins has said pretty much the same. So did Francis Bacon, who labored mightily to promote the new scientific method in England. :

“It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy brings about man’s mind to religion: for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.”

In Bacon’s day the scientist was called a natural philosopher.

But then you have scientists like Richard Dawkins who will never drink to the bottom of the cup because they are too inebriated by science to drink that long and deep.

***Oh no, I totally agree with you! ***Science does lead to God. But the way, I have used that Francis Bacon quote myself in discussions.

But the context of your statement:

“Any right thinking scientist will have the same experience,”

was:

“That what he had seen through his intellect was as straw compared to the revelations he experienced in his heart. Any right thinking scientist will have the same experience,”

And that is what I take issue with. Science leads to God via the intellect, and i just don’t see what “that what he had seen through his intellect was as straw compared to the revelations he experienced in his heart” has to do with that.

 

[Al_Moritz]

To whom am I speaking at present? The Roman Catholic? The Freethinker? The Skeptic?

I am all in one. My thinking is one, and I don’t compartmentalize, full stop.

(By the way, the ‘compartmentalization’ argument is one of the silliest ones that atheists come up with when it comes to criticize intellectual believers.)

 

[Wads42]

Your theorem is riddled with false premises/assumptions. This is basically the problem of pain and I’m a bit bored of the problem of pain as it’s been hashed out and rehashed more times than I can remember, so I’ll let someone else pick them out for me.

The biggest laugh in here is that you basically try to get us to accept atheism as true before we try to “prove” God’s existence. Funny, considering how often atheists cry that we’re doing the opposite.

Is this all that you and Trishie can do in the face of reason and logic?–just more preaching or shifting the goals posts, and “equivocation”,- re-defining words so that they mean something quite different?

 

[Wads42]

***Oh no, I totally agree with you! ***Science does lead to God. But the way, I have used that Francis Bacon quote myself in discussions.

But the context of your statement:

“Any right thinking scientist will have the same experience,”

was:

“That what he had seen through his intellect was as straw compared to the revelations he experienced in his heart. Any right thinking scientist will have the same experience,”

And that is what I take issue with. Science leads to God via the intellect, and i just don’t see what “that what he had seen through his intellect was as straw compared to the revelations he experienced in his heart” has to do with that.

How about this for a quote?
“Science, Evolution, Mathematics, logic and reason all lead to Atheism”.

 

[Wads42]

I am all in one. My thinking is one, and I don’t compartmentalize, full stop.

(By the way, the ‘compartmentalization’ argument is one of the silliest ones that atheists come up with when it comes to criticize intellectual believers.)

Al Moritz
OK then I see what you mean. If you deny “compartmentalization”, you must be rejecting binary logic and the distinction between black and white; which means that you are merging all discourse into one amorphous mess (and mass), wherein any reason and discussion is impossible, because you have just defined away the need for logic.

The first law of logic is that a thing is itself; P=P.
The second law of logic says that a thing ( P) is not identical to its opposite (not-P).
The third law of logic is the law of the “excluded middle”,–which means that a thing (P) is in one compartment, and another thing (Z) is in a different compartment.

But you don’t “compartmentalize”, so you don’t think logically or rationally, and the noises you make are meaningless babble.

 

[Perplexity]

Perplexity

***On a side, but related noted, I think for many atheists, their atheism is a properly basic response to suffering and evil. **

I don’t agree. I was an atheist and I never used that as a reason to be one. It’s a cop-out.

Bottom line … no one can prove there is not a God, so that too is not falsifiable.

You don’t agree that for many atheists, their atheism is a properly basic response to suffering and evil because it wasn’t for you? I’m not sure that follows.

Your last remark is simply a repetition of your original claim. That’s not further reason to accept it though, as I see things, I sit in great company in opposing you on this, with theists and atheists alike.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Al Moritz
OK then I see what you mean. If you deny “compartmentalization”, you must be rejecting binary logic and the distinction between black and white; which means that you are merging all discourse into one amorphous mess (and mass), wherein any reason and discussion is impossible, because you have just defined away the need for logic.

The first law of logic is that a thing is itself; P=P.
The second law of logic says that a thing ( P) is not identical to its opposite (not-P).
The third law of logic is the law of the “excluded middle”,–which means that a thing (P) is in one compartment, and another thing (Z) is in a different compartment.

But you don’t “compartmentalize”, so you don’t think logically or rationally, and the noises you make are meaningless babble.

Haha, in the context this post is meaningless babble, as everyone reading it will see. What does this have to do with the usual ‘compartmentalization’ argument? You are just here trying to pick a fight.

 

[Al_Moritz]

How about this for a quote?
“Science, Evolution, Mathematics, logic and reason all lead to Atheism”.

Yeah right.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Al

**I am all in one. My thinking is one, and I don’t compartmentalize, full stop. **

It seems to me that you have compartmentalized all three, so that you can be in any one at any given time as an excuse not to be in the other.

If you are a Catholic you can say “all right thinking scientists can find God at the bottom of the science cup.” Why you would repudiate that is simply unfathomable, unless on some days you have compartmentalized yourself into a Skeptic or a Freethinker. Do you even know what people immediately think of when you use these terms? I for one do not see them used by most right-thinking Catholics to describe themselves.

You are confusing people by giving them so many designations of your mental state. Maybe you are also confusing yourself?

 

[Wads42]

I all comes down to this.

Perplexity and his fellow atheists don’t mention:
-human intelligence
-human loyalty to family, friends, country, and the world at large
-human esthetics
-human imagination
-human creativity

Nature alone cannot be the cause of these human attributes. They are created by God.

We will now hear reams and reams of meaningless bluster from the King of Quibblers, Perplexity.

Take it way, your highness. :extrahappy::whackadoo:

The above list is easily explainable by cultural evolution and the evolution of our big brains which allow for emergent enhanced conscious and self-awareness. Nature can and did -do-it.

For you to say that God-did-it, you have to explain the follwing:

1 Where is God? The best description of God that I know of is “Deus absconditas”,-the missing or absent God. he is nowhere to be found. He should be on this Forum arguing with atheists and threatening us all with Hell-Fire and Damnation; but no,–why not? Please explain.

1. If there is a God, he should be self-evident. If he is eternal, then there is something which can logically be eternal and infinite, and if one thing, why not another?–like the Universe? But if the Universe is eternal and infinite, then God is no longer unique in his infinitness.
2. If God exists and made the Universe (which is a double statement logical fallacy, and also unproven; how exactly did he do it? Did he poof it into existence with his Magic Word, or did he use the process of natural evolution?
3. If he used evolution, which can do the job naturally, then he did not need to set it up, and keep interfereing with it and inserting souls here and there into it.
4. Evolution is basically chaos, seen as a whole. It has, and did, and does, go off in all directions producing all the different species which we observe. At a lower level natural selection guides evolution along various paths, billions of them. We are just one product.
   Now if God is “Order” (by definition), then why should God create chaos, so that eventually by chance, 4 billion years later, some troublesome, murderous, greedy humans should evolve and pollute the planet and squander its resources?
   I thought God was supposed to create Order from Chaos, not the other way round.
5. If neither his Word or evolution was sufficient, then he must have required a factory and production line,. and stuck every atom together individually. Did he have a work force. How about the Heavenly Hosts?–except that these belong to pagan religions from the time when the Israelites wee polytheists and worshipped Baal and others.

Please explain these problems without preaching,-if you can.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Al

**I am all in one. My thinking is one, and I don’t compartmentalize, full stop. **

It seems to me that you have compartmentalized all three, so that you can be in any one at any given time as an excuse not to be in the other.

If you are a Catholic you can say “all right thinking scientists can find God at the bottom of the science cup.” Why you would repudiate that is simply unfathomable, unless on some days you have compartmentalized yourself into a Skeptic or a Freethinker. Do you even know what people immediately think of when you use these terms? I for one do not see them used by most right-thinking Catholics to describe themselves.

You are confusing people by giving them so many designations of your mental state. Maybe you are also confusing yourself?

If I am confusing you, that’s too bad, but I would hope that I am not confusing everyone. Of course I know what people think when they see the terms ‘Freethinker’ and ‘Skeptic’. But I assume people would think a bit deeper when they see the terms in conjunction with ‘Roman Catholic’. Are atheists really ‘freethinkers’? They cannot be if they are naturalists, which most of them are. They have to deny true free will, since they have to work under the assumption that their thoughts are just brain currents that are physically determined. Thus they cannot be freethinkers, all assertions to the contrary. I on the other hand am a true freethinker: I believe my thoughts are indeed free, and I am free to follow the evidence where it leads me. And of course I am a skeptic: I am skeptical of paranormal phenomena and pseudoscientific claims (UFOs, Pentawater etc.), and I am thoroughly skeptical of naturalism. Are naturalists true skeptics? My experience tells me that they are quite gullible when it comes to their ‘scientific’ worldview.

 

[Al_Moritz]

1. Evolution is basically chaos, seen as a whole.

Oh really? Why then do we have the phenomemon of convergence? For example, why did the eye evolve independently 40 times over? Cumulative natural selection is pretty orderly, you know.

 

[Wads42]

Your judgment of the rightness or wrongness of suffering depends on your system of morality, so you first need to prove that your morals are objective and absolute, otherwise “unjustified suffering” is merely your value judgement.

I think any civilised person will agree that suffering is wrong and should be minimized.
The highest morality is the utilitarian, consequentialist one of maximizing human happiness. Some of themost intelligent minds have agreed with this, eg Epicurus, Lucretius, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Sam Harris etc.
I know Christianity is all about suffering, sin, guilt, atonement and death, but some of us have moved beyond this outlook and just want to be happy and free, and not harm others in the process.

 

[Wads42]

If I am confusing you, that’s too bad, but I would hope that I am not confusing everyone. Of course I know what people think when they see the terms ‘Freethinker’ and ‘Skeptic’. But I assume people would think a bit deeper when they see the terms in conjunction with ‘Roman Catholic’. Are atheists really ‘freethinkers’? They cannot be if they are naturalists, which most of them are. They have to deny true free will, since they have to work under the assumption that their thoughts are just brain currents that are physically determined. Thus they cannot be freethinkers, all assertions to the contrary. I on the other hand am a true freethinker: I believe my thoughts are indeed free, and I am free to follow the evidence where it leads me. And of course I am a skeptic: I am skeptical of paranormal phenomena and pseudoscientific claims (UFOs, Pentawater etc.), and I am thoroughly skeptical of naturalism. Are naturalists true skeptics? My experience tells me that they are quite gullible when it comes to their ‘scientific’ worldview.

You should read Sam Harris’ “The Moral Landscape”. What you call Freewill is just the very limited ability to choose between several different deterministic chains. Our lives are ruled both by our genes and the environment, with very little wiggle room. Wiggle room is itself determined. As Harris says: “You do not choose what you choose”.
I shall be discussing this topic in my next Philosophy class.
Naturalists think naturally; they do not assume supernaturability; please give us some evidence that it exists then we will incorporate it, (along with God), into natural science.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Al
**
If I am confusing you, that’s too bad, but I would hope that I am not confusing everyone. Of course I know what people think when they see the terms ‘Freethinker’ and ‘Skeptic’. But I assume people would think a bit deeper when they see the terms in conjunction with ‘Roman Catholic’. Are atheists really ‘freethinkers’? They cannot be if they are naturalists, which most of them are. They have to deny true free will, since they have to work under the assumption that their thoughts are just brain currents that are physically determined. Thus they cannot be freethinkers, all assertions to the contrary. I on the other hand am a true freethinker: I believe my thoughts are indeed free, and I am free to follow the evidence where it leads me. And of course I am a skeptic: I am skeptical of paranormal phenomena and pseudoscientific claims (UFOs, Pentawater etc.), and I am thoroughly skeptical of naturalism. Are naturalists true skeptics? My experience tells me that they are quite gullible when it comes to their ‘scientific’ worldview. **

Sorry, this discussion apparently is going nowhere. I’m signing off for the present.

 

[You]

The above list is easily explainable by cultural evolution and the evolution of our big brains which allow for emergent enhanced conscious and self-awareness. Nature can and did -do-it.

For you to say that God-did-it, you have to explain the follwing:

1 Where is God? The best description of God that I know of is “Deus absconditas”,-the missing or absent God. he is nowhere to be found. He should be on this Forum arguing with atheists and threatening us all with Hell-Fire and Damnation; but no,–why not? Please explain.

He is Super-Natural; in you, He is present in the little voice of your conscience through which He guides you for as long as you wish.

1. If there is a God, he should be self-evident. If he is eternal, then there is something which can logically be eternal and infinite, and if one thing, why not another?–like the Universe? But if the Universe is eternal and infinite, then God is no longer unique in his infinitness.

If there is one logical All-powerful God then there is no other, logically.

1. If God exists and made the Universe (which is a double statement logical fallacy, and also unproven; how exactly did he do it? Did he poof it into existence with his Magic Word, or did he use the process of natural evolution?

He thought it into existence. All matter disappears at a sub-quantum level into what one particle physicist described as ‘a dream’. Or thought, as you wish.

1. If he used evolution, which can do the job naturally, then he did not need to set it up, and keep interfereing with it and inserting souls here and there into it.

He designed the qualities of the system for His own purposes, in His own way. Evolution is not inevitable, it is, if it is true, possible only because it was designed so.

1. Evolution is basically chaos, seen as a whole. It has, and did, and does, go off in all directions producing all the different species which we observe. At a lower level natural selection guides evolution along various paths, billions of them. We are just one product.
   Now if God is “Order” (by definition), then why should God create chaos, so that eventually by chance, 4 billion years later, some troublesome, murderous, greedy humans should evolve and pollute the planet and squander its resources?
   I thought God was supposed to create Order from Chaos, not the other way round.

What do these humans need above all else to live as they can and like to live. They need a planet full of sorted, collected, obtainable resources - chemical, mineral resources gathered up under the ground waiting for intelligent creatures to exploit. No other planet or moon I know of has this type of necessary resource. Its quite a trippy coincidence that sentient, industrious creatures occur on such a planet with perfect arrays of resources to hand.

1. If neither his Word or evolution was sufficient, then he must have required a factory and production line,. and stuck every atom together individually. Did he have a work force. How about the Heavenly Hosts?–except that these belong to pagan religions from the time when the Israelites wee polytheists and worshipped Baal and others.

Not only the whole world but also the whole universe exists within Him and His presence still continues to infinity and eternity beyond this universe. We live in Him. Such is His power.

Please explain these problems without preaching,-if you can.

 

[Al_Moritz]

You should read Sam Harris’ “The Moral Landscape”. What you call Freewill is just the very limited ability to choose between several different deterministic chains. Our lives are ruled both by our genes and the environment, with very little wiggle room. Wiggle room is itself determined. As Harris says: “You do not choose what you choose”.
I shall be discussing this topic in my next Philosophy class.
Naturalists think naturally; they do not assume supernaturability; please give us some evidence that it exists then we will incorporate it, (along with God), into natural science.

The problem with your scenario is that, as a naturalist, you cannot even rationally affirm that naturalism is true:

home.earthlink.net/~almoritz/naturalism_is_true.htm

 

[Wads42]

Haha, in the context this post is meaningless babble, as everyone reading it will see. What does this have to do with the usual ‘compartmentalization’ argument? You are just here trying to pick a fight.

Read my post again. Ir explains what logic is and therefore how your “statement” ignores and denies logic, and therefore you cannot argue rationally. You have to "compartmentalize " in order to distinguish one topic, person, fact or idea from another. Your computer is using logical binary machine code as its basic language; that is how we are able to communicate. But as you seem to deny this, you are just being incoherent; and also using the “Tu quoque” fallacy; (you too- sucks boo, so there!)

 

[Wads42]

Al

**I am all in one. My thinking is one, and I don’t compartmentalize, full stop. **

It seems to me that you have compartmentalized all three, so that you can be in any one at any given time as an excuse not to be in the other.

If you are a Catholic you can say “all right thinking scientists can find God at the bottom of the science cup.” Why you would repudiate that is simply unfathomable, unless on some days you have compartmentalized yourself into a Skeptic or a Freethinker. Do you even know what people immediately think of when you use these terms? I for one do not see them used by most right-thinking Catholics to describe themselves.

You are confusing people by giving them so many designations of your mental state. Maybe you are also confusing yourself?

Perhaps he should have concentrated more on his Uncertainty Principle, then he might not have made such a certain remark.

 

[Wads42]

Oh really? Why then do we have the phenomemon of convergence? For example, why did the eye evolve independently 40 times over? Cumulative natural selection is pretty orderly, you know.

It depends upon your level of explanation. There are many such levels. Variation occurs due to random mutations and randon sex chromosome recombination (unless you think marital partners (including the animals) are chosen and matched together in Heaven).
Natural selection fine-tunes phenotypes so that they retain the characteristic they need to survive.
But taking a God’s Eye view (Ha-ha), the whole process of natural selection can be seen as essentially random, because the environment does the selecting, and it is full of random occurrences; eg rising mountain chains which divide a species into two groups which then evolve separately in different directions,-and so on.