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Calliope
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We agree on that!
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Calliope
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I’m not using “ploys”. I’m not trying to convince you of anything or trying to pull dirty tricks to get you concede to my perspective. I’m just here discussing the subject matter.
The point I was trying to make is that millions of people have died for their beliefs, sometimes religious beliefs, sometimes political ones, sometimes family honor, the list goes on. It’s happening all over the world all the time. It has happened countless times all throughout history. Some were martyred, others willingly gave their lives.
If you are truly that ignorant of history, or that convinced that I’m trying to pull one over on you, I don’t know if this discussion is worth the effort.
I don’t claim miracles for anyone, just going by what others have reported. Miracles have been and continue to be reported. I can’t pretend to know the veracity of them. Nor do I have a stake in seeking proof of religions I don’t believe in to satisfy whatever your agenda is.
If you are interested a quick google search should bring you up to speed.
To be fair I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic school for 12 years and have read quite a bit of Catholic theology. I’ve also been actively discussing religion for decades in various groups (face to face) and online forums.
How about for the sake of discussion you tell me which definition and understanding of monotheism you are using so we can dismiss the word games.
These people are more than acquaintances. Family, including those with degrees in Catholic theology and a Catholic spiritual director. I’m not a stranger to the faith. I attended Catholic school, received the sacraments and actually won awards in elementary and high school for my knowledge of Catholic theology and dogma. I’m not bragging, but since I get the feeling you think I have no idea what I’m talking about, I thought I’d bring you up to speed.
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Bradskii
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It appears that we have a difference of opinion as to what defines intelligence.
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MPat
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Oh, I don’t think that you are trying to trick me. But I do suspect that you might be trying to trick yourself.
So, in other words, you do not really know any you could cite.
Thus you did not get those “millions” by adding up specific examples.
So, your claims are only supported by “Well, there have to be some, right?”, just as I thought.
I was trying to get you to do a proper investigation - at least to do a short simple search.
Had you done that, you would have noticed that it is not quite as easy, as you think now.
Finding Catholic martyrs or miracle claims is easy. Finding non-Catholic Christian martyrs or miracle claims might be harder, but not very hard.
Finding Jewish or Muslim martyrs or miracle claims is still harder.
Finally, finding martyrs or miracle claims for non-Abrahamic religions requires quite an effort (or luck).
No wonder you had to add “family honor” to the list…
Not to mention that such examples tend to be rather unimpressive.
Just what one would expect to happen if Catholicism was true.
Oh, and you have ignored the point that deaths of apostles confirmed that they were not lying - and they would have known if Jesus has resurrected. Adding those two facts together gives us a lot.
I think what I wrote is sufficiently clear. If you do not understand something I wrote, point that out. Specifically, with a quote. Then I’ll try to clarify.
Unfortunately, it is sadly joked that “I attended Catholic school” is often evidence for not understanding Catholic faith…
Although I have no doubt that you think you know a lot about Catholic faith.
Yet, for example, you do not claim you have read anything by St. Thomas Aquinas.
So, let’s correct that.
Go and read “Summa Theologica” Second Part of the Second Part, Question 94, article 1 (https://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/SS/SS094.html#SSQ94OUTP1).
There you will see things like “These they called ‘gods,’ on account of their having a share of the godhead; but we call them ‘angels’.”.
And the reply to the third objection points out what is meant by “Pagan gods do not exist.”.
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catholicray
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I’m sorry but you’re jumping ahead of the argument. You can actually logically arrive at the Catholic Church if you start at “I don’t believe in the non-existence of God”
I’m still working on how I can know by reason alone rather than a subjective experience. Regardless it’s not as awful as it may first appear to be.
I’m still working on how I can know by reason alone rather than a subjective experience. Regardless it’s not as awful as it may first appear to be.
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Bradskii
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That there could be a God is always up for debate. There may well have been something behind existence that we could call God. As my good mate Voltaire said, doubt can be an uncomfortable position, but certainty is absurd. So all we can do is agree on a definition of that which we are discussing and place our belief, or lack of it, on sliding scale.Bradskii:
You were talking about “default”, “We do not know.”. That’s supposed to be before you have a look at evidence. At that point you do not know what evidence will be available.
And are we supposed to be scared of that?
At this point “I don’t know.” is very acceptable - provided that it is honest and humble. When you start the sequence that might as well have its limit in “I reject personal God, because it is inconceivable that He wouldn’t have sought an audience with Me, and I haven’t received Him yet.”, it is far less acceptable.
So if God is ‘something that caused the universe to exist’, then on a percentage scale, I am in the very high nineties that God does not exist. As a sidenote, even Dawkins gives himself a seven out of eight, so he’s more amenable to the suggestion than I am.
If the definition is ‘a deity who interacts in a regular and meaningful way with individuals’ then I’m as close as I can be to one hundred percent. And that’s beause, having started with the default ‘I don’t know’, I have reached a point where it would be nonsensical to maintain that position. At some point, you reach a point so close to certainty that you may as well just call it as such. It’s like investigating all and every claim of alien abduction. Eventually you have to say - ‘That’s it. It’s never happened.’
And that process doesn’t happen overnight. We’re talking many decades here where the needle has crept ever so slowly but irrevocably towards absolute certainty. It’ll never actualy get there, but at some point it’s close enough not to make ay meaningful difference.
And there’s no scare tactics involved in pointing out that if I need to rely on personal testimony to help me make my mind up, then I need to listen to all claims of a personal nature. Which leads to the question: Whose testimony should I believe?
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o_mlly
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If by “case closed”, you mean intelligent things always have intelligent causes then we agree and you are welcome.
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LionHeart
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No, I did not mean that. I only meant that intelligence is not the the sole property of organic beings. From the fact that the only examples on non-organic intelligent beings (we are are aware of) were created by intelligent organic beings you cannot willy-nilly extrapolate that every intelligence necessitates the existence of an external intelligent causative agent.
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catholicray
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I mean to me I think I can lol. You do your own thing but from nothing nothing. From no intelligence no intelligence. If we’re just biological bags of nature I don’t see why in the world we would call ourselves intelligent.
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o_mlly
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“Willy-nilly extrapolate”? I rather thought my point was “reflectively interpolated.”
Good science requires hypotheses that are falsifiable. Go for it.
Intelligence is defined as the capability to store and process digital data. It is not important to the argument that one agree with that definition unless one thinks intelligence is less that the two capabilities described.
Hypothesis – intelligent beings require intelligent causes. Easily falsifiable; show verifiable evidence of an intelligent being begot by non-intelligent causes.
A correlative hypothesis: Since all living beings have DNA/mRNA, all living beings have intelligence. Easily falsifiable; show verifiable evidence of a living being begot by non-living beings.
Good luck.
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LionHeart
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Just because you don’t see it, that is not an argument.
Nonsense. Not all data are “digital”. Of course you keep on attempting to change the goalposts. Your proposition was that intelligence requires living - aka organic - aka carbon based - beings. That proposition (or hypothesis) is refuted by the existence of non-organic intelligent entities. As I said, that case is closed. If you wish to open a new discussion about the origin of intelligence that is fine. But that requires that first you admit that your previous hypothesis was incorrect.
Moreover, your definition of intelligent is incorrect. Intelligence is far more than just simple data processing. That is why we know that Watson is intelligent, while a hand-held calculator is not.
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o_mlly
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I suppose all these deflections means you have no contradicting evidence.
If you got nothin’, just admit it. The deflections are not helpful.
So? The claim is specific only to digital data. Should make it more easy to falsify.
Nope. Straw man alert! Never claimed that.
Yes, the definition is correct as I define the term, not you. However, if my definition is overly constraining then one might quibble. As it is, the definition is minimalist and, again, makes falsification easier.
If you got nothin’, just admit it. The deflections are not helpful.
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whatistrue
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LionHeart
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Thank you for sparing me the effort to find these self-contradictory posts.
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catholicray
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You’re the one making the claim then. Burden of proof is on you. Prove that biological bags of nature are actually intelligent rather than tricked by their own biology. Prove that from non-intelligence comes intelligence. Otherwise I’m not buying it.
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o_mlly
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Good attempt on trying to mine the thread for contradictions but, sorry, no brass ring for you. Follow the thread instead.
The conversation proceeded from the poster’s introduction of Watson as intelligent and non-living. OK. Leaving aside (but mentioning) that Watson exhibits none of the accepted attributes of living things, rather than rejecting, I embraced Watson as intelligent to further demonstrate the strength of my hypotheses. (Do some more mining to find the exchange. Hint: search on “stumble”.)
I then restated (to include Watson) the proposition here:
Try again.
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LionHeart
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My claim was extremely simple. I only asserted that intelligence is possible in non-living entities. I brought up Watson as an example. The information processing ability of Watson far surpasses the ability of the best human Jeopardy players.
The definition proposed my o_mlly was simplistic, but works as a starting proposition. According to that definition Watson is intelligent. That is all.
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catholicray
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I think the point is that intelligence if it exists at all is not possible without intelligence.
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LionHeart
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You are welcome to believe what you want.
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whatistrue
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You directly claimed, rather vociferously, that you had never claimed that intelligence requires a living being. I showed where you did. Muting thread.
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