Why are you an Atheist? - Catholic Answers Live - 12Nov2018

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Hi Wozza – You do not know who I am , nor the extent or limit of my knowledge, so please don’t pretend you do. I have avoided expounding on any item simply offering examples of supernatural expressions, well witnessed and investigated, so that to deny is simply not being able to handle the truth.
 
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Hi Wozza – You do not know who I am , nor the extent or limit of my knowledge, so please don’t pretend you do. I have avoided expounding on any item simply offering examples of supernatural expressions, well witnessed and investigated, so that to deny is simply not being able to handle the truth.
Unless I’m mistaken, you are Benny44 who has replied to some of my posts. And yes, I do not know the extent of your knowledge. But that doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t exhibited enough knowledge about what we have been discussing for further conversation to bear fruit.

You said Mary didn’t appear with a halo. So I showed you a picture of it. I asked why there were just half a dozen or so pictures available when in excess of a million (count 'em…a million!) people saw the apparition and had hours to take them. You didn’t know. Likewise film of the event. Deathly silence. I asked why the Catholic church didn’t decalre it a miracle and you said they couldn’t. Which they could.

Why should we continue if your strike record is so poor?
 
The same process that we used to create hunting patterns and then tell stories around the fire. We were able to retain our experience of the day and then communicate this to the tribe later at night. Bees do this too when they find a new source of food and communicate to their hive where to find it; just at a simpler level than writing down their adventures that day when they found it. We never lost the driver to communicate to our tribe about our day of where to find berries and what leaves to avoid, just we have enough leisure time to become storytellers and we have an imagination and empathy to create a story from someone else’s point of view with a curiosity to see what its like to expound that story of where to find berries and what leaves to avoid, staring Matt Damon.
 
Secondly you seem to be subscribing to either logical relativism. or the idea that we cannot know metaphysical absolutes.
You can know philosophical absolutes, like Law of Contradiction, Law of Excluded Middle, etc. However, when we apply these labels of A is not B and then reference reality, the logic only works if we’ve correctly labeled A in reality and B in reality. But we can’t know that unless reality demonstrates that for us. That is why you can be logically correct and still factually wrong because what you labeled in reality as A and B and then you run the experiment to see if they follow the logic, sometimes, you’ll learn that you didn’t know enough about A and B to separate them like that in those categories. Your ignorance about A and B in reality gets better and you learn that B is a subset of A or something else entirely. That’s why, any philosophical claim about reality has to be tested against reality for us to be justified in believing that claim to be actually true for reality.
We are always getting our categorizations of something in reality wrong because of our ignorance of the nuance of it. That’s why our medical trials fail, why our mathematical models fail, etc.
You can have all the logical arguments you want, they can all be internally logically correct, but once you reference reality for your model, you have to test your logical model against reality to see if reality matches your model. If you can’t, then it’s just an untested claim of reality that you can not have a justified true belief about. You can have a justified belief of where to look and how to test your claim against reality, but reality’s results are the truth for what reality is, not your logical claims. Otherwise all you’re doing is defining something into existence.
Accept, we know the idea that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time is a reference to reality because that is what reality demonstrates to us all.
Yes that is a logical law. A can not be B. But once you reference something in reality about that, regardless of how obvious and intuitive it seems, you still have to test that claim. Truth claims about reality are not justified until you can falsify them against reality, regardless of how big your ego is for assuming you couldn’t be wrong here.
 
Wozza telling people they don’t know what they are talking about is not an argument. I have said from the start I was offering a few examples of clear supernatural activity with multiple witness. I do not intend to give unnecessary detail. But to appease you may I repeat that the Catholic Church has always refrained from investigating phenomenon in another’s Church, in fact of the hundreds of recent Marian apparitions the Catholic Church only approved 9 and rejected less not deciding on the rest. The Coptic Church accepted that in Egypt.
 
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As human beings we are the only creature that can ponder the meaning of our own life, do self reflection, think about where we came from, where we are going.
Wrong, we are the only ones that can communicate this concept to other human beings. Elephants and primates are able to express all the ranges of emotion that people do, just they don’t speak your language, for example.
Atheists (I’m sorry) deny human nature. Human beings are wired to seek that which transcends the material and observable world.
We are wired to need ceremony for emotional release of heightened emotional states. We feel insignificant in when we look into the vastness of the cosmos at night, so we create ceremonies to deal with that, like finding significance with our tribe. We feel our time to experience life is short, so we created art that will last beyond our time here so we can have a taste of immortality. We kiss photos of past lovers, talk to our family member’s head stones, etc.
As a secular humanist, that just happens to be an atheist, I find ceremony very important. Just I don’t need the religious approach to my ceremonies. I don’t need to look gleefully for the end of the world. I don’t need to belittle humanity and gin up the populace to be primed for a dear leader to come along and save us. I have enough respect for humanity that we can stand together, reach back and pull people off their damn knees, and do the hard work ourselves of creating culture and civilization.
 
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Wrong, we are the only ones that can communicate this concept to other human beings. Elephants and primates are able to express all the ranges of emotion that people do, just they don’t speak your language, for example.
Without a human to giraffe dictionary you will have a very difficult time proving emotions in other animals.

Please post the scientific papers proving animals have human emotions.
 
we have enough leisure time to become storytellers and we have an imagination and empathy to create a story
So something is created.
What is it?
And where is it when it is not written down?

It would appear your efforts to limit your world view to only what can be physically shown is failing.
 
Without a human to giraffe dictionary you will have a very difficult time proving emotions in other animals.

Please post the scientific papers proving animals have human emotions.
Have you never owned a dog or watch documentaries on primates that learn sign language? You’ve never seen the terror that a pachyderm expresses when their child is stuck in a hole?


Literally takes 5 second google search of “animals emotions research” to find a scholarly article.
 
Have you never owned a dog or watch documentaries on primates that learn sign language? You’ve never seen the terror that a pachyderm expresses when their child is stuck in a hole?
I Have.
And I recognize these animals as having a response that appears emotional.

But I also know there is no way to communicate what exactly is or is not experienced.

All we can say is “I don’t know.”
Anything less is simply anthropomorphism.

This is very interesting.
You claim God cannot be tested, therefore we cannot justify a belief.
But at the same time you cling to beliefs that cannot be tested.
 
Yes that is a logical law. A can not be B. But once you reference something in reality about that, regardless of how obvious and intuitive it seems, you still have to test that claim. Truth claims about reality are not justified until you can falsify them against reality, regardless of how big your ego is for assuming you couldn’t be wrong here.
You don’t have to test what is ontologically necessary. I know that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time because to be something is an ontological feature of reality and to be nothing at all is not an ontological feature of reality. There are also truths that follow necessarily from that fact for the same reason, such as the fact that a thing cannot come from absolutely nothing without a cause because we know that absolutely nothing has no reality in it, it is a lack of reality, and therefore reality cannot come from it. It follows therefore that anything that begins to exist is necessarily caused by something that is already real. You cannot object to this fact, and it is an arbitrary and ridiculous demand that one must subject such facts to an empirical method.

The scientific method is only relevant when you are claiming that a particular kind of thing exists that one cannot know exists by reason alone. For example i can know for certain that there is a reality, but i cannot know for certain that there are 3 particular apples in reality. Thus the scientific method is required. This is not so when we are speaking about the act of being in general.

The more you write the clearer it becomes that you really don’t know what you are talking about, and that your position is fueled by prejudice; not by reason or science.
 
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No, we understand what it is when a human is at rest verse in a playful state, vs rage, embarassed, etc. without having to look at brain scans or language. We are comparing their body language to the event.
Dogs and elephants do this as well. We understand what the body language is for these beings at rest and then compare it to when they are mad, playful, loving, etc. We have video documentation of elephants in a panic when their child is stuck in a hole. We have video documentation of them mourning the loss of one of their family members of the pack. This is not anthropomorphism them any more than it is to catch them sleeping just like humans do or any other group sociology they perform that we do as well. That is also how we know that people, who don’t speak your language, have body language to indicate their emotional states. Animals do the exact same thing.
 
You don’t have to test what is ontologically necessary.
Yes you don’t have to test A does not equal B. But once you reference A to something in reality and B to something in reality, you do. Just like you don’t have to test “A does not equal B”. But you do once you say, “A = Apple and B is not an Apple”, You have to test this because they actually might be the same based on our ignorance of reality. It’s people that just assume they are obviously right and can’t be wrong that paves the way for charlatan and crystal healers and every other huckster out there trying to get your life savings.
You cannot object to this fact, and it is an arbitrary and ridiculous demand that one must subject such facts to an empirical method.
Yes there is always another, “How did that happen?” question. So we learn where we have to stop and say, “We don’t know.” from this point because we can’t test any further than this. Which is great to know so that you know where you need to spend your time trying to learn instead of just making stuff up and believing its actually true for reality that you’ve never tested or can’t test.
Okay, so you have logical conclusions that can’t break, which is fine. 1+1=2, doesn’t break. But once you reference reality, then all you have to do is demonstrate that your logical model actually and correctly models reality. To do that, you need to have reality indicate that to you. That’s all I’m requesting from religious claims. I’ll give you all the logical conclusions you want, but until you can demonstrate it in reality, it’s literally no different than the internally logically consistent claims of comic book series as well. Know how we tell the difference between Thanos and Stan Lee? I can actually demonstrate that Stan Lee exists in reality. Just do that once and we’ll update our model of reality to include Thanos or zeus or Sekhmet or every other 100’s of 1000’s of supernatural claim out there.
 
Yes you don’t have to test A does not equal B. But once you reference A to something in reality and B to something in reality, you do. Just like you don’t have to test “A does not equal B”. But you do once you say, “A = Apple and B is not an Apple”, You have to test this because they actually might be the same based on our ignorance of reality. It’s people that just assume they are obviously right and can’t be wrong that paves the way for charlatan and crystal healers and every other huckster out there trying to get your life savings.
You cannot object to this fact, and it is an arbitrary and ridiculous demand that one must subject such facts to an empirical method.
Nothing you have written here has addressed my argument. Your claim applies only in reference to contingent particulars because you are describing something that cannot be known by reason alone. Metaphysics doesn’t deal in particulars but rather it deals with being in general.

We know what it is for something to be a being (to have existence), and we know what nothing is. We also know that nothing cannot cause reality because it is the absence of reality, in the same way we know that a being is not nothing because nothing is the absence of being. We know this for certain without the empirical method. Therefore we also know that if a thing begins to exists it is by the power or nature of that which is already real, for the simple fact that nothing is an absence of reality.

Please address this fact instead of regurgitating the same thing. If you are unwilling to listen to others then i fail to see why you are posting at all.
 
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Okay, how is the example of 1+1=2 not a general term of an internally logically consistent concept. Just like A is not A, law of excluded middle, etc.?
I am just pointing out that when you apply that general philosophical term to reality, then you’ve got a claim that needs to be demonstrated from reality in some way. That’s all I’m trying to point out.

All the first cause argument points to is a first cause. Makes logical since, but again, it’s a logical model that is in reference to reality. So you need to demonstrate that some how. Until then, it’s just an idea to investigate some day, but its on the board next to universe creating pixies as well.
 
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Okay, how is the example of 1+1=2 not a general term of an internally logically consistent concept. Just like A is not A, law of excluded middle, etc.?
Address the argument i put forward to you. Otherwise we are going to have to agree to disagree.

You are the one claiming that Christians are making arguments that have to be verified by the scientific method in-order to succeed. I am showing you that is not true.
 
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Makes logical since, but again, it’s a logical model that is in reference to reality.
Making an argument in reference to reality is not what necessarily requires the scientific method. Making an argument for the existence of unnecessary particulars or the particular natures of contingent beings is what requires the scientific method. Metaphysics and science are operating in two different contexts and are asking two different questions about two different aspects of the same reality. You are failing to understand this, most probably because you don’t really understand the epistemology of either of them.
 
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No I am acknowledging that animals, including us, all express emotions. You’re the one that believes that emotions are only exclusively to humans or something along that line. I don’t. It’s like saying that I’m anthropomorphizing animals for having fur because we have hair. Since people are the reference point it seems to you, anything that animals have that is similar is just anthropromorphizing them.
 
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