Are Atheist Well Educated?

An article on about.com claims that atheist are well educated. I contend that the sort of atheist who rants about the stupidity of theology, who is equally alarmed by philosophy and liberal arts, are not well educated, they tend to lack any sort of understanding of arts and humanities. They are only well educated in science and in computers and in things that deal with making money, but not thoughtful contemplative studies that make for deep thinking about the nature of the universe.




He starts his attack on the intelligence of Theologians by using the wrong word for them. Then he goes on to demonstrate they are so very stupid by linking to journal of theology that he finds particularly stupid. He uses the Australian EJournal of Theology Not particularly a major source.

And read through a number of the articles, but they are all the same. Each author simply puts forward their own views, without any reference to research or evidence to support their points.

Even accepting that the subject matter doesn't really lend itself to evidence, most of this stuff just looks like shameless invention.

I think the biggest paradox in reading this rubbish is that for authors who must (by nature) start with a premise that there is a deity, they don't appear to take any backward step in presuming to know the mind & motives of their particular deity. Wouldn't that in itself be the height of arrogance?

Anyhow. From my point of view if you cut and paste "invisible pink unicorn" everywhere they refer to the deity in question, the material doesn't seem to loose any of it's argumentative or logical value, which is to say, almost zero.

But, maybe I'm reading the wrong authors.

So, any theist out there who thinks they can point an atheist to a piece of writing by a theologian that would challenge my thinking please do. I'm really not up for reading entire books at this point, so an article available on the internet would be good, but books if it must be.

Over to you, internets..!

A Christian looking at the same material had this to say:

Envar:

I took a look at the Australian journal the OP linked to. After browing through an article or three I was forced to conclude that you were very unfamiliar with any journals in the humanities.

I found substantiations based on well-established concepts with special meaning in the humanities (mimesis, sacraments, Logos, Other), well-known previous authors (Buber, Barth, Levinas), models (even a proposed equation system drawn from economics!), qualifications that negate their supposed "presumption" ("I propose", "The following is based on Mr. X's ideas") etc.

I really find it difficult to see how the OP could be so obtuse. Has he taken a look at papers in art, musicology, philosophy etc. lately? Given current fashions (which admittedly have much for one to object to) they are about on par with this kind of theology.

Perhaps you should start by looking up basics like "Eucharist", "Apostolic Succession", "Barth", "Luther", "Council of Chalcedon", "scholasticism" etc. on Wikipedia first. Primary texts are obviously not for you.

Of course we don't know if he's carping because the things discussed aren't "proved" or because hey discuss things he doesn't agree with or believe in. What exactly is his beef? would he find a regular academic journal of any subject "stupid" and too tedious to read? is he saying these things because he just doesn't know what a real intellect discussion looks like? The journal he picked on is not stupid. It's not a major source of theology but its' not bad.

I think he's just carping and one could slip in an academic journal on Greek and show him a brilliant article on diacritical markings in Homer and he would say it was stupid because he just doesn't know anything. How many such people are carping against theology on atheist messages boards all over the net?

That's just one guy but let's examine the claims in the about. come article:

It is true that studies have repeatedly shown a correlation between atheism and education levels. The more education a person receives — especially in the sciences — the less religious they become and the less likely they are to remain theists. The exact nature of the relationship between atheism and education is a matter of dispute, but the existence of some sort connection is clear and not really debated.

That's not true. The scientific degree bearers that believe in God are 45%. That statement by the atheist in about.com is referring to a survey of the national academy of sciences several years ago (around 99) which was terrible and totally unscholarly because the questions were designed to compare fundamentalist belief with no alternative but atheism. So there was no room on the survey for a liberal sort of belief in a process theology god for example.

It is also true that higher education levels generally correspond with better income — the more education a person has, the more they will earn over their lifetime. The connection between education and income is even less controversial than that between education and atheism, but it suggests that in America, atheists tend to be a bit better educated and probably tend to make more money that the average. Usually, it is assumed that people with more education and money are privileged, not the victims of bigotry and discrimination. So what's going on?

There is no correlation between education levels and atheism.

this is on Doxa, my website it's originally taken from an atheist website that has for years argued that atheists have higher IQ's. I tear that up and tear this up.

STUDENT BODY COMPARISONS1. Rose Goldsen, 1952

Percentage of students who believe in a divine god: Harvard 30; UCLA 32; Dartmouth 35; Yale 36; Cornell 42; Wayne 43; Weslyan 43; Michigan 45; Fisk 60; Texas 62; North Carolina 68.2. National Review Study, 1970

Percentage of students who believe in a Spirit or Divine God: Reed 15; Brandeis 25; Sarah Lawrence 28; Williams 36; Stanford 41; Boston U. 41; Yale 42; Howard 47; Indiana 57; Davidson 59; S. Carolina 65; Marquette 77.

[O look what happens here! The scores go way up for God, especially at S. Carolina and Marquette why is that? And all the Ivy league and big name schools its near 50%, is this really evidence? Why a greater percentage of believers at Harvard and Yale than at UT? Better schools?]

Professors Represent the Same proportion of Religious Belief as General Public.
Students in the first year of collage or last year of high school will be more rebellious, since they are testing the limits of their new found adulthood for the first time. This means they may tend to reject their parent's teachings, but might come back to them in latter life. It might also be that the even ore intelligent cream of the crop will go on to graduate school and these will tend to be more religious than the overall student body of undergraduate school. In fact this is borne out by the stats on religious belief among professors in colleges and universities. We can assume that professors are a more highly educated and more intelligent group than the general public. Yet religious belief among professors reflects that of the general public, overwhelmingly believes in God.

Sociology 265--News Articles
Natalie Angier
1997
SURVEY OF SCIENTISTS FINDS STABILITY OF FAITH IN GOD

c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service

"Several recent surveys of American college professors, ..., show that professors are almost as likely to express a belief in God as are Americans as a whole."



Which means that this large group of more intelligent people reflects the general population, the vast majority of which believe in God. So why doesn't this mean that when you look across the board, not at special interests that are more likely to be materialist, most intelligent people believe in God?

This fact also confirms my previous argument on page one, that we could expect many or most of these kids to become beleivers latter in life. After all, we find that bright kids have a high consentration of atheists in late highschool and than early college, but we also find that professors accorss the board tend to reflect the religious attitudes of the general population. That tells us that with more education, age, maturity, and settaling down, more intelligent people tend to resume their faith.

Just for the thrill of it, here's my list of recent nobel science winners who are Christians:

The scientific fraternity conducted a poll and found that on any given Sunday 46% of Ph.D. holders in science can be found in church. That compares with 47% for the general population (in Alan Lightman Origins: The Lives and World of Modern Cosmologists (Harvard University press, 19990).

Fritz Shafer, nominated for Nobel Prize in Chemistry, University of Georgia, himself a Christian: "it is very rare that a physical scientists is truly an atheist."Martin Rees at Cambridge: "The possibility of life as we know it depends upon a few basic values which are constants. And it is in some aspect remarkably sensitive to their heir numerical values. Nature does exhibit remarkable coincidences."

Charlie Towns, Nobel prize winner: "The question of science seems to be unanswered if we explore from science alone. Thus I believe there is a need for some metaphysical or religious explanation. I believe in the concept of God an in his existence."

Arthur Schewhow, Nobel prize winner from Stanford, identifies himself as a Christian, "We are fortunate to have the Bible which tells us so much about God in widely accessible terms."

John Pokingham, theoretical physicist at Cambridge, left physics to become a minister. "I believe that God exists and has made himself known in Jesus Christ."

The world's greatest observational cosmologist Alan Sandage, Caregie observatories, won a prize given by Swedish parliament equivalent to Nobel prize (there is no Nobel prize for cosmology) became a Christian after being a scientist, "The nature of God is not found in any part of science, for that we must turn to the scriptures."

In a lecture by Fritz Shafer from a website by Leadership University:http://www.leaderu.com/realri9501/bingbang2.html

_____________________________________________

The last part of that web site about atheists beign smarter is very confussing indeed. He goes on to say:

"This is the result even when the researchers are Christian conservatives themselves. One such researcher is George Gallup. Here are the results of a Fall 1995 Gallup poll:

Percentage of respondents who agreed with the following statements:

Religion is Religion can "very important "answer all or most Respondents in their life" of today's problems" ------------------------------------------------------------ Attended college 53 percent 58 percent
No college 63 65
Income over $50,000 48 56
$30,000 - $50,000 56 62
$20,000 - $30,000 56 60
Under $20,000 66 66

I don't' know why he includes the income levels, but it seems that he is showing that more people who say that religion is not very important go to college than those who say it is important. But that could also be explained by the fact of early adulthood rebellion. He never presents any stats on life long commitment to atheism. And how does he explain the fact that taken across the board college professors reflect religious belief the same as the general population? "Why does this correlation exist?" He says, "The first answer that comes to mind is that religious beliefs tend to be more illogical or incoherent than secular beliefs, and intelligent people tend to recognize that more quickly." But wait, no they aren't! Just because he can't read the works of the great theologians and think rationally about them doesn't mean they aren't rational. This is mere opinion, mere propaganda!

"The simplest and most parsimonious explanation is that religion is a set of logical and factual claims, and those with the most logic and facts at their disposal are rejecting it largely on those grounds." But that shows total and complete theological naivete. What he's actually demonstrated is the opposite of his thesis in his own analysis. Why can't he read the theologians? Why can't he buy a book and find out what religion is? Why doesn't he consult the works of comparative religionists? Religion is not reducible to a mere set of propositions or of "factual claims." There is no correlation between intelligence and religious belief or lack there of. The majority of people are of average intelligence and the majority are religious. Atheism is "in" for young people in teenage rebellion so any comparison will be like comparing the chess club with the rest of the student body. There can be some very bright kids not in the chess club, perhaps even the brightest, but in comparing the chess club to the student body at large the chess club will obviously seem to be much brighter proportionally. IN fact it may well be but what does that prove?

The whole concept that the truth of the case can be decided by which camp has the brightest members is idiotic. But his site does nothing to prove that atheists are smarter. All he really proves is that at a certain time in life more adventurous kids are more likely to expediment, and that materialistically minded people are drawn to reductionistic occupations.


Next: Page 3

circualr reasoning at the heart of naturalism

I have always contended that naturalism, the idea that the natural world is all there, is based upon circular reasoning. It works like this, all evidence for anything beyond the nature is discounted on the premise that there can't be anything beyond the natural. Then the idea that there can't be anything beyond the natural is supported by the "fact" that there is no proof for anything beyond it. But the only reason there is no proof is because it's already been ruled out by the assumption which is nothing more than begging the question. Even when empirical evidence is presented it doesn't matter because the skeptics just poo poo the evidence based upon the question begging assumptions.

The initial context is that I had given an exposition on the making of the Gospels in which I said they are redacted. But he said I'm white washing it becuase I don't say that redaction = being totally false lies garbage ect.

Here's how this played out on CARM the other day. this could actually be a textbook case.





Dale on carm

http://www.christiandiscussionforums.org/v/showthread.php?p=4874846&posted=1#post4874846
Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post

why would it be whitewashing if I say the whole is redacted?

Dale:

It’s whitewashing because you are obviously trying to downplay the zombies of matthew 27 because it obviously didn’t happen.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
If I am saying much more than [that]


Dale:

Remember that this started when I simply requested, in a thread about archaeological evidence for Jesus, that I be informed should any contemporary chronicles recording the zombie incident turn up. It seems like a perfectly reasonable request to me. You certainly wouldn’t be so agitated about it if there was any such evidence.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
since you don't know anything about theology or textual criticism you don't know anything about liberal belief so what exactly am I gullible about? Why would you think that, not knowing anything about my beliefs?


Dale:

The only thing I claimed to know about your beliefs was that you weren’t a fundie which is evident from your writing. You don’t need any degrees in theology or specialist knowledge in textual criticism to confidently say that if, and again I say if, somebody believes that the dead have climbed out of their graves and walked into Jerusalem then they are definitely far too gullible for their own good.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post

how do you know it was an eclipse? that's ruled out by the time year.

Dale:

I don’t know anything about it except that an eclipse is a far more likely explanation for any alleged darkness at noon.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post

look at the circular nature of your reasoning. I say "maybe they did talk about it but we don't have the records because we don' have a lot or records, here's a reason to think maybe that's true because talk about this other thing (darkness at noon)." So you decide that means they talk about one and not the other. what part of "we don't' have records" can you not understand?
(in other words I'm saying because they talked aobut the darnkess at noon there's a chance they talked about the resurrectees but we just don't have the records).




Dale:

What part of the absurdity of trying to assert that alleged traces of historical records noting an eclipse is evidence in support of a truly sensational extraordinary event which went unremarked upon do you not understand.

(Of course I didn't use the one as evidence of the other, just as an example of something atheits always say we don' thave (record of the darkenss) but we actaully do have it, and due to the time of year of Passover it would not have been a eclipse}.




Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post

cant you see how illogical and chaotic your thinking is?


what does it mean to be "telling" If something is not "evidence? what does "telling" mean apart from evidence? It can be telling if your bigoted and your willing to let the lack of evidence feed your suspicions> It can be "telling" if you are obsessed with hate and the evidence in everything.

Dale:

Alleged traces of historical records noting an eclipse but a truly sensational extraordinary event which went unremarked upon! Read that again…a truly sensational extraordinary event which nobody but author of the Book of Matthew made a record of. I acknowledge, again, that absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. But the fact that there is nothing is perfectly in keeping with the obvious conclusion that this ridiculous zombie incident didn’t happen in the first place. Your charges of bigotry and hatred as being my problem here are equally ridiculous. You really must try and remain calm when confronted by people who aren’t cowed by your presumption that everybody must agree with you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
I bet you pride yourself on being open minded. it's really sad how self deceived we can be.

Dale:
I don’t necessarily think it’s a matter of pride but I do consider myself open minded but not to the point that my brains are going to fall out.


you haven't said anything is wrong wtih the evidence. you just assume it can't be true a prori. I did point out thee is evdience of the darkness and it can't be an eclipse

l-aid!!

O atheism is free thinking hu? O yea the free thikers.

Here's what a free thinker thiks:


this just porves that atheism is nothing more than a bunch of ignorant illiterate scum who hate learning banding together to destroy books and knowledge.
This illiterate atheist on CARM is answer my questions and arguments.

Quote:Meta
why would you think it's useless? (theology)

Bozo:Because its only purpose is the perpetuation of theology? Literature in general is not a particularly useful field of study; theology is simply literature distilled down to the study of a single story.

Quote:Meta
The first question I have to ask you is, don't you think learning foolish anyway?

Bozo
No.

He says no but of course we soon see the only kind of learning the would allow is pragmatic things that make money.

Quote:Meta
You probably think if you don't go to work making over 100 thousand in the first year right out of college then you wasted your education right?

If I did, I would have studied different subjects in college. No, money is not the measure of utility.

Quote:
I'm betting you have never read a book unless you had to
I'm betting you need to retake an English course.

You are, by the way, incorrect in your assumptions. If I was adverse to reading, I would have certainly picked fields other than political science and computer science--both fields require quite a lot of reading (one philosophy, history, and statistics, the other lines of code and equations).

of course his idea of learning is pragmatic fields.

Quote:
you think novels are boring and would never read one.

You fancy yourself a mindreader, I see. To be more specific, I dislike fiction. It's generally rather contrived, and far less interesting than real life. This might well explain my position regarding theology.

look at the philistine. he has 0 impulse for art. this is the sort of non thinking anti-intellectual that atheism breeds.

Quote:
you don't enjoy the act of thinking

Clearly. My distaste for "thinking" perfectly explains why I entered two fields of study that both require quite a lot of thinking. That might also explain why I capitalize the first letter of every sentence, and why I actually type out all of the necessary words in a sentence. This certainly requires less thought than someone who deemed it best to study only a single book, and other people's opinions on said book.

nothing requires as much thinking as theology and philosphy. they are so complex you have n concept.



Quote:
and you have never experienced the intellectual hight.

Clearly, you've reached a towering intellectual "hight", yourself.

that is quite right I sure as hell did.

Quote:
did you even know there is one?

You've given me an entirely new definition of intellectual "hight".

clever.


Quote:
It's probably news to you that you can actually feel high when you thought deeply about important things for a long time.
My, you state that so eloquently.

Quote:
so in saying that any sort of education is useless we really ahve to ask what is your definition of "useless?"
You are the one who states that "any sort of education is useless". I was referring specifically to theology, though I feel similarly about literature in general. It's not a terribly rigorous discipline. Even by the relatively loose measure of the social sciences, literature isn't rigorous.

Quote:
But since probably money it might interest you to know that I know theology professors who live in the South of France and drive Italian sports cars.
I know a bus driver who lives in a quarter of a million dollar house. What's your point? You're the one pushing this straw man about income.

Quote:
ah! not so useless now is it?
It's just as useless.

Quote:
another thing do You think that I seminary so I could argue with idiots?
No, I think you "seminaried" because you couldn't handle anything more rigorous but felt compelled to attend college.

Quote:
do you think I care about converts stupid peolpew ho don't' give a rat's assa bout truth?
Anyone who cares about truth avoids philosophy like the plague.
BrokenDoors is online now Add to BrokenDoors's Reputation Report Post Reply With Quote

my answer:

you've just proved the idiotioc and anti-thinking aspect of atheism. this is the best evidence so far that atheism is nothing but a hate grouip. it's practicaly am way. just crass unthinking unleanred hyhpocortres who are afarid to learn.


O yea us free thiers, we hate learning because we are free thinkers. down with books and learning learning is only important if I make money,.

atheism is for stupid people. it's for people who don't like knowledge.
__________________
Metacrock

It's a classic

I did a post on CARM sunday which was in two parts. It was real long. NO one answered after over 50 people had spoken up (you can see the content of it on Metacrock's blog I posted it there as a blog post). So after a while I chided them for not answering (this was after a full day). I said "hey come on" so this guy puts up this:

Maconnor34

I think that he is going a little off-kilter. His thread "NT is good evidence" consists of him talking to himself, extensively.

This is yet another reason that I am not a christian. Instead of actually conversing with people in a dialectic, the christian can be reduced to didactically preaching to himself because he can not understand the world. It is really quite sad and frightening that a person can loose touch with reality so much and build an artificial world around themselves.

What good is it to build a heaven for yourself if you are the only person in it?

Great reason for not being a Christian. Notice he's assuming my chiding the atheist to post is talking to myself. He assuming part II is arguing against part one which clearly its' not, it's clearly reaffirming it and giving a specificity explaination.

This whole post is typical atheist hate group response, attack the personality.


several atheists actually speak up and tell the guy he's being unfair.

Hatsoff is the best of these I think

I have no idea what you're talking about. This is a discussion board for matters relating to Christianity. Metacrock posted arguments aimed at a significant subset of atheists, the Jesus mythers. His points are relevant, and most are compelling.

this is from an Evangelical named Angst:

Do you think that bringing down others makes yourself feel or look intelligent?

so to this one he says:

I do feel intelligent.
It doesn't necessarily make me look intelligent.

By replying to my thread instead of Metacrock's, you have voted for me as more interesting and deserving of your attention.

And this goes to all here. Why aren't you posting in Metacrock's thread? Because his arguments don't make sense. And I would say that his theism is a cause of that.

So in other words, even though the content of your comments says I'm wrong, the fact that you posted on my thread means you agree with me over Metacrock anyway!???

I call this "never say die." It's a classic, it's so typical of many atheists just count everything in their favor.

He's still at it. he says;

Originally Posted by maconnor34 View Post
Yep, and people are still talking here and not on your thread for 12 hours now. Nobody cares what you think because you don't present rational and cogent arguments.

You are commenting here because nobody will come to you there. Awwwwwww.

incredible he really doesn't understand about content.

Atheist and Cognative Dissonance

CD is the concept first developed by Leon Festinger when he studied the flying Soucer cult he wrote of in the book When Prophesy Fails (early 50s). Some of the major people in that cult went to become some of the major people in dionetics.

Story:

The cult was centered around a woman who did automatic writing. He received a message that the world would end. The group wound up watching an early sci fi tv show called "Captain Video and his Video Rangers" to recieve message from the saucer people (here is a link to an actual episode of Captain Video

http://www.archive.org/details/Capta...d_By_Yugi_Moto)


Festinger


Festinger heard of the cult and as he was writing his dissertation in psychology he joined the cult as a participant observer. He observed that over time many predictions were made and every time a prediction failed to come true contrary to what one would think the members became even more committed. These were major predictions. People were giving away their houses, and giving away their cars, they were ready the saucers to come and take them to save them from the end. Instead of saying "wow I sold my house and quite my job to wait for the space people and they didn't come man I was sucker, never again will I do this!" NO! they did not! They become more committed. They made bigger comiitents they believed more passionately.

The book is really worth reading as old as it is, it's hilarious all the stuff they did they seem like nuts. But they were normal middle class people and Festinger developed a whole theory of psychology based upon their antics.

The principle of CD as accepted and became very important in advertising. Advertisers used it throughout the 60s and probably still use it now. The old slogan "wouldn't you really rather have a Buick" is an example of that use.

Our minds seek equilibrium, peace. We want to feel ok. When we make big commitments we have a sense of disequilibrium (dissonance) because there'sa conflict, did we do the right thing? So to find equilibrium again we become more committed to our choice. Even if it proves wrong we still go n with it more passionately becasue it gives us equilibrium. I didn't really screw up it will still prove to be true.

Thomas Kuhn's theory of the Pradigm shift proves true at this point becasue the fine disequilibrium is reached when there are too many anomalies and the paradigm can't hold or can't absorb them. The paradigm shifts and we commit to the paradigm even more than to the old.

I was an atheist when I read Festinger (in my undergrad days back in the 70s) and I said 'this is disproves Christianity. This is what happened with the resurrection of Jesus." In fact Festinger actually wrote about that. What I could not see at the time was that it applies to atheism too. Atheists are human, they have human psychology, why they escape DC when it's a basic norm of human psychology?

Atheists who are raised in a religious environment and then grow up with a strong fear of hell and then discord that belief have to become totally committed to atheism to stifle their fear of hell. Even if you don't sit around biting your nails agonizing over hell, even if you have reached a level of maturity where you can see that hell is not true because the concept is too childish,there will still be a sense of fear and guilt in the back of your mind; I threw off the things Mom and Dad taught me they are ashamed, if hell is real I will go there, all submerged in the unconscious.

This is why when biased concepts of atheism are disproved clearly and with a huge truck load of data (such as the idea that religion is mental illness) some atheists just refuse to even consider the data. They don't even have to be aware of making a choice it's just an automatic thing, the need for equilibrium creates grater commitment to the choice even if evidence creates a doubt.


I have no solution. I don't know what can be done to cheat psychology, but I think becoming aware of the process would be the first step in overcoming it. Both sides should overcome it because it hinders logical decision making. I don't know if belief in God or rejection thereof could be a truly passionless logical process. But I think the more self aware we are the better off we are.

__________________
Metacrock

Undersatnding Ideology

everyone knows I support Obama*
(see bottom)


Some assumed that all the groups on my chart were meant to be hate groups. I said they were "ideologies." I am distinguishing between the two. Everyone has an ideology, that doesn't make you a hate group. By including communism I was demonstrating this because I don't see communism as a hate group. I was an communist and while I think communism as a whole was a mistake, I still have a certain fondness for different aspects and groups such as the fourth International (the "Trots"). I certainly would not lump myself in with a hate group. Now I think the hate group segment of atheism, which is very real, I call them "Dawkamentaists," are very ideological. Ideology is a basic staple of a hate group. But having an ideology does not make you a hate group.

To a certain extent Churches have ideologies, Christianity has an ideology. I will include Christianity in my next chart. I'm going to do the next chart on groups that it would be absurd to claim as hate groups: Christian Evangelicals (not fundie extremists, not abortion clinic bombers but just regular conservative Christians), hippies (non communist counter culture guys) Democrats, Republicans. These three mainstream groups and a non violent group. I think there was consternation becasue I put atheists in the same chart with Nazis. But I also put communists and Black Muslims and extreme feminism in the same chart. How could Black Muslims and Femists be Nazis? They could be Nazi-like (I'm not saying they are) but they wold antithetical to Nazi ideology. Same with communists.

Ideology means we view the world through one lens and everything is filtered through that lens, that one idea that defines all. One Idea defines all that's how I would defines ideology. Of course come groups are more ideological than others. Internet atheists are one of the most ideological, and they may be the most self deceived about their own ideolgoical nature. I think that find that in general atheists are very very touchy. They see everything as a criticism they chafe at the slightest analysis. They are always looking for an insult. The most ideological groups are the least open minded. To be an ideologue is to wear blinders so that one can see only the one idea, everything must be defined through that idea. I find atheists on message boards who can't conceive of religious experience apart from mental illness or delusion. They can't conceive of religion as a positive thing. Even though some of them admit there are positive things about religion, they can't possibly conceive of a net advantage. They cant' possibly conceive of anything that one might associate with the word "G-0-d" as anything but impossible and ridiculous and illogical, even if they can't show a single reason by the rules of logic why it should be illogical. It just has to be illogical to think about God, if there's no real reason they can give. These are clearly examples of ideological assumptions at work.

Of course not all atheist think this way, I know that. i never said otherwise. We are all at different levels. Some of us free ourselves from ideology to a greater extent than others. Its' all a matter of to what extent one are willing to use other lenses to look at the world. When we can't use any other lens, everything is so clear with that one lens that we use to define it all, then are trapped in ideology. made that chart one day on the bus coming back from class AT UTD when I was a Ph.D. student in history of ideas. I heard the black bus driver talking about Black Muslim ideas with a friend who was also a Black Muslim. It hit me "they have all the elements of their view that communists and anti-communists have." I had long been aware that communists and anti-communists are mirror images of each other, (as fundamentalists and atheists are to some extent mirror images at times). I began to think how many groups can fit into that chart? I fitted feminist separatism into it right away (in Arts and Humanities department there was a culture war going on at that time--early 90s--and the feminist quasi separatists were giving everyone hell). So I eventually came to realize that almost all groups can be put on the chart. Now you might think at that rate there's no difference in being on the chart and not being on it. Well to some extent I think everyone does have ideology. But there are a couple of differences that would make say Christian fundamentalism in the "quiver full" group a candidate for the chart and not the Southern Baptists. Just as there is a reason to put "Dawkamentalists" on it and not all atheists.

The first reason is becasue not all elements are going to be represented fully. To explain what I mean let me go through the chart and explain what's on it and why.

Ideology:

The first element is "ideology." That's a paradox like Kant's list of lists becasue the whole chart is illustrating ideological groups, so to put ideology on there assumes we know in advance they are one so we don't need the chart. That's a logical mistake, I didn't think it through. All of these characteristics make up ideology. So I will reformulate the chart. What i should have said rather than ideology is "exigence." That is each group has a mission, they see a problem that needs solving and they have a name for that problem. Usually that problem involves members of the group feeling victimized by soemthing. For example communists see class struggle as the operative problem in society and themselves feel victimized by class struggle. With Nazism I said "Aryan Supremacy" but I should say "racial struggle." Nazis saw themselves as racially superior but begin victimized and help by by "inferior races."
I did not put the group's own victimization on the chart, that should probably be there.

Party line:

That's a hall mark of ideology. The part Line is what the leadership chooses as a propaganda device for all their members to say. This is in complete contradiction to everything atheists like to think about themselves. Free thinkers do not follow party lines. Of cousre if you look at what atheists actually say on the net almost all of them do follow a party line. On the chart I reflect upon who is in charge of setting the party line so I should probably change the category o "arbiters of party line." For communists that's easy, the soviets, the governing body of the Soviet union and that was ran by the Polite Bearue. That category is rather murky for atheism because they don't have a set part structure, unless we count the leaders of national organizations. Not nearly enough has been done to study the national atheist organizations. I have a feeling they set the agenda even more so than Dawkings. On the Chart I left it up to "atheist stars" such as Dawkins and Harris. Of course atheists will object to all of this saying they don't follow the dictates of an organization. But I think they clearly do, but it's diffused because it's spread about through atheist stars like Dawkins.

Scapegoat:


this is important aspect. This is one of the distinguishing features that makes the difference between a mild ideological gestalt for a mainstream group and real ideologically driven group. The scape goat is the corollary to the exigence. That is it's the agent which persecutes the ideolgoical group in its victim hood and makes the problem (the "exigence") a problem. For atheists of course that wold be religious people, primarily fundamentalists. For communists its a capitalist, for anti-communists guess what it is? A commie of course! Of course to Nazis it's the Jews. The scapegoat is the one to blame it all on. We see the scapegoating aspect so clearly in Zuckerman's study where he finds that major reason we don't have a social democracy paradise like Sweden is because of religion. Religious people are holding us back and if we just didn't have them we would have paradise. Never mind that America is firmly entrenched in capitalism and vast monetary interests have profit motive reasons for not supporting social democracy, why without religious thinking those guys would be greedy. Religious thinking just causes all problems of the world.

Vanguard:

The antithesis of the scapegoat. The noble knight who will enact the party line, battle the scapegoat and solve the exigence. For the communists this was the party members for sure, but especially the party leaders. Some of these groups that don't have strong party structure have ambiguous leadership. There is no atheist party structure to speak of so there are no officially designated atheist leaders, unless of course you look at the national organization. That's not a party and it doesn't represent very many atheists on the boards. Nevertheless, I used to see this a lot, when I would say things about when I was an atheist and they would say "you were never an atheist, because true atheitss wouldn't think that way. In the next breath they would claim that I was doing the "no true Scottsman thing!" Be that as it may one can pick out a Vanguard in atheist ranks. That would be first and foremost the atheist stars, Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, Doherty and so on. Leaders of atheist message boards, but board hosts (Infidel guy, leaders of the sec web) and posters who a lot of attention. If atheism was an army the posters on the boards would be the non commissioned officers.

Eschatology:

This is another hall mark. Mainstream groups seem to have this less clearly defined. I think that's becasue everyone has a veg a idea of the pay off of a particular belief system but only those groups very grounded in ideology have to so clearly defined that it's a positive goal. For the average Christian perhaps it's going to heaven. Heaven can be anything for anyone, that's not very clear. But for Christian extremists it might be returning America to the golden (non existent) age when 99.9% of Americans were conservative Christians. For party structure groups is very clear: communists the worker's paradise when capitalism fades away. Then we have a new humanity (another hallmark) and we will go fishing in the morning make a bit of steel in the after noon. For less clearly defined groups in terms of structure the goal my be a bit more veg but still pretty sharp. For atheists I said "Sweden." That's according to Zuckerman. He sees the Social Democracies of Europe as paradisaical lands where no one is poor, all sick people receive care, they never have wars and all because they rid themselves of the evils of religion. This is clearly a watered down Marxism.

Marx' eschatology was a watered down Biblical promised land. Marx had a long line of Rabbinical ancestors and it's long been observed that he just naturalized and politicized the Biblical notion of eschatology. There is a final battle between good (socialism) and evil (capitalism). The workers arrive in the promised land but instead of the Messiah returning for a thousand year reign its the party who enacts the big big version of the five year plan. For atheism Zuckerman is the prefect expression of an atheist eschatology. The promised land for him is the religonless social democracy of Sweden, and all that Sweden represents for him: no religion, (supposedly) no poverty, social welfare agency see to all our needs, sterling educational sysetm, and great humanistic society.

All the elements of the chart fit together. There's an exigence that must be solved, ti's caused by the scape groat who victimizes the heroic group, but a vanguard of that group will form a party, carry out a party line and usher in the parsdisic state by ridding itself of the scapegoat. These are the hallmarks of all ideological groups. They all fit on there. The fact that Dawkamentalism fits on doesn't make it a hate group, but it means that it's so heavily ideologically laden that it's members think in sterio types and the notion fo "free thinking" is a joke among them.

I'm sure that people will give me flack on each one of these observations. The overall point is that atheists seem to be hyper annoyed by any insinuation that they have an ideology. I think most atheists on the net who argue on message boards are heavily ideological, not all of them are necessarily unable to make any coherent observations. I'm not saying this precludes anyone from being right about a lot of things. It doesn't make them a hate group. But does make the very stereotype oriented in their thinking. Now I'm sure a lot of people will call this a conspiracy theory. I am not talking about a conspiracy. It's a gestalt. It's an impetus that emerges from social interaction of many many like minded people (all hooked on the same steriotypes) and that develops into an ideology and takes on a life of its own.

I'm going to revise the old chart where it is posted it wont be a major repair. I'm going to change ideology to exigence. especially now that I know how to spell it. Here's the new chart that shows groups which are clearly not hate groups in my view to prove to Hermit that being on the chart does not make one a hate group.

The brand of christian fundamentalism on the new chart is just general mainstream televangelism. These groups the first three are clearly ones I could belong to or have some semblance of connection to and that i clearly don't see as hate groups.

For example I list global warming as the exigence for the Green Party but I actually believe global warming is not only true but is our no one problem in the world today. So this is not say that any of these things are necessarily wrong.

across = group down = charactoristic	Christian Fundamentalism	Green party	Ghandi's movement (Satiagraha)
Exigence	Sin	Environmental degradation (global warming)	Violence
party line	Set by Televangelists	Ralph Nader	Ghandi
scape goat	Liberal humanism	Pollutors	Unenlightened people
Vanguard	Televangelists and other preachers	Ecologically aware hippie types	Satiagrahis
eschatology	Thousand year reign of Christ	Ecologically balanced world	Peaceful world

Unfortunately the atheist side of the talbe didnt' show the answer there are:

exigence= free from religion
ideology = free from religion
set by = Dawkings and other atheist stars
scape goat = Christians
Vanguard = new atheism
eschatology = Sweden (enlightened atheist country)



*about the graphic. This was used on a right wing site on the net called "The American Thinker." I use it here not because I think it reelects truth but just as an example of ideology at work.

Come n Hermit be Reasonable

I just don't think I should have to go back and qualify everything thing in the same way every single time. I have said this over and over and over. why do I have to say it every single time?

I am not saying that all atheists are a hate group. I never said, that's i've repudiated that. I've never said it. I've always denied saying it. I've been very very careful to always say "this is isn't all atheists just a certain segment.

Now I think ti's really totally unfair that you expect me to admit that there are nut job extremists in the Christian camp. But I can't recognize the same thing for the atheist camp without certain atheists expanding it to all atheists and saying I"m treating them hatefully. Why would I post Hermit's stuff every single day. He sends about eight posts an day and i"ve never turned them down. I am clearly including him in the blogs and that's not enough.

If I am willing to qualify my statements why can't he respect that?

Or is it that it struck a nerve. Maybe he's what I'm talking about? Maybe it's really atheists he's angry at. I did not say one work to imply that he is one of the extremists. I usually call them "Dawkamentlaists" to show they are a totally different group.

I even took down the links that he thought were offensive. what more do you want man.I don't have the freedom of speech to observe that some little segment of atheists are extremists? Its' a lot more than that Zhavric guy. I can find them on every atheist board.

this is an emotional tantrum.

Dawkamentlaism is a typical ideological group

Remember Zhavric on CARM? He's back. Here's a post he made that's most instructive.

6/14/09

I was listening to a Christian talk radio show the other night while driving home late. Why do I listen? It's because I can't drink coffee for medical reasons. I often listen to Christian radio on long drives. The things people say on these shows are idiotic and inflamatory... so it keeps me awake.

Anyway, there was some Christian whack-job calling in to say something about how Obama's economic policies were evidence... ("cold hard evidence" as the caller put it)... that the end of the world was coming. The caller then quoted some bit of scripture which vaguely sounded like it supported his point. The guy running the show argued with the whack job, but he was forced to have to fumble and search for some suitable bit of scriptural nonsense that contradicted the whack job's original bit of nonsense.

Two whack jobs arguing over which piece of irrelevant nonsense best fits in with their delusion.

How terrible is that?

As much as these two were whack jobs, they were doing what Christians are supposed to do: look for answers in scripture. And that's terrible.

These grown men who were (likely) college educated had been reduced to sounding insane because they'd both been trained from toddlerhood to look for answers in a 2000+ year old scam. Er, book. Whatever.

How much better would it have been if they could simply discuss Obama's economic policies on their own merit?

How much better would it have been if the caller could have said, "I think Obama's policies will have negative effect X based on real world evidence Y"?

How much better would it have been if the caller had said what he said on the air, and the host had been able to say, "Look, man, you sound like a nice & smart guy, but you're spouting off like a crazy person. Obama's policies are Obama's policies. They'll either work or not work to some degree. There's not a shred of evidence to make us think they're going to herald the end of the world. That's insane."

Honestly, if the guy had called in and said, "The rain drops on my porch window are tapping out a code that tells me the world is going to end" we'd have him locked up.

So, I submit that my morality is superior to those of Christians like this because mine is based on the avoidance of harm, reason, the golden and logic. It's not based on trying to shove the square pegs of today's issues into the round holes of archaic nonsense from the bible. I can freely discuss any issue without sounding like a crazy person.

Discuss.

so he will go out of his way to hear people who make him angry but he wont put himself out to read a single page of real theology by a real thinker? why? Because it's so much more fun to hate than to work at understanding a real thinker? He clearly hates them. one can see the passion of despising the other.

Two whack jobs arguing over which piece of irrelevant nonsense best fits in with their delusion.

here we see exactly what the FBI describes in stage four. Utter contempt for the target, coming together(on carm) to deride and ridicule the target. Of course this isn't filled with his own question begging assumptions is it?

How much better would it have been if they could simply discuss Obama's economic policies on their own merit?

How much better would it have been if the caller could have said, "I think Obama's policies will have negative effect X based on real world evidence Y"?

how much better would it be if he could discuss Christianity in intelligent rational terms and deal with the theology in the points that it presents. But he wont go near theology because his Fuhrer Dawkins the great one tells him not to, being a "free thinker" he must obey!

So, I submit that my morality is superior to those of Christians like this because mine is based on the avoidance of harm, reason, the golden and logic. It's not based on trying to shove the square pegs of today's issues into the round holes of archaic nonsense from the bible. I can freely discuss any issue without sounding like a crazy person.

boil it all down to utter simplicity. never mind the Regan era, never mind the fact that there was a vast movement to brain wash the churches in 80s. never mind the fact that it's still a minority and most Christians voted for Obama. Never mind the fact that Obama's a Chrsitian!


If being a nuttie fundie like that is what comes of Christianity how dose he explain Obama? why didn't it do that to him?

here's your view of the world: their guys are bad. them bad bad bad, baaaaaaaaaaaad.

we are good. Atheists = gooooooooood. Theists = baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.


this is the thing that comes over as the way you look at things. But you want to deny that atheism is a hate group but look at the facts.

*who singled out a certain group of people to blame all their woes upon?

*who decided that one group of people were really evil and ruining everything?

*who boiled down the world to a show down betwen them, the bad guys, the evil villains ruining everything, and us the good guys who going to save humanity?

Am I talking the Nazis? You might "that fits so many groups" yes it does my point.

communists
Nazis
right wingers
black power/Black Muslim
extreme feminism


this is how we know a segment of atheism is a hate group and that there is an atheist ideology. Because it fits all the other groups that are bound up in ideology.


we do a chart and show the basis of all ideology, and the "new atheism" or Dawkamentlaism will fit right on the chart.

here's a little table I worked out to illustrate the characteristics of ideological groups. I did this back when I was a communist. I was turned off by the brain wash effect of ideology and I wanted to make it clear exactly what an ideology group entails. Atheism wasn't even on the chart back when I first did it. The fact that it fits perfectly I think goes a long way toward proving that there is an atheist ideology.

across = group down = charactoristic	communism	Nazism	right wing	Black Muslim	Extreme Feminism	Dawkametnalism (New atheism)
Exigence	class struggle	Aryin supremacy	free from others	free from whites	free from Patriarchy	free from religion
party line	set by soviets	set by Fuhrer	set by power structure	Fruit of Islam	Lesbian separatists	Dawkins and other atheist stars
scape goat	bourgeoisie	Jews	communists	white men	white men	Christians (fundies)
Vanguard	workers party	Hitler youth/brown shirts	vigilantism	Fruit of Islam	Feminist separatists	"new" atheism
eschatology	Workers Paradise	Third Reich	America "the way it should be"	black utopia	feminist world with no men	Sweden (and all it symbolizes)

Unfortunately the atheist side of the talbe didnt' show the answer there are:
Dawkamentalits:

exigence= free from religion
party line set by = Dawkings and other atheist stars
scape goat = Christians
Vanguard = new atheism
eschatology = Sweden (enlightened atheist country)






__________________

Atheists Refuse to Learn Theology

Its' as simple as this, flapping your gums to criticize an idea that you know nothing about is ignorant. The Dawkie movement runs on ignorance.


from Ooberman on CARM

There is no Hell, physical or emotional - or separate from a god.

There would have to be a god to be separate from it.

These are theological discussions. I think we should start asserting ourselves in this Subforum to stop people from having theological discussions in which a God is presumed to exist.

We should be having Pro-Athiesm discussions. Not arguments about what kind of god exists - that's theology. Leave it to the Religionists.

If the argument about what Hell is, that should be done in a Chrsitian Subforum.

As far as Atheism is concerned, Hell is a mythological place or, used in common speech to express a "hellish" state or place. If anyone claims it is more physical than spiritual, or more spiritual than physical - then we should point them to the Theology section.

This is the Dawkamentalist concept of free speech and scholarship. To them it' all propaganda.



here's atheist honesty and engagement in discussion.

My message: the Bible does not teach that hell is eteranl ocnscous torment:



Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
that's cretinous to expect the vast majority who have the great thinkers firmly overwhelmingly and this vast efface of evidence that the opponents don't even understand can't answer don't even know is there.
Ummm...have you been drinking...

Quote:
Yes delicaet genius it's speaking form within the assumptions I make abuot ht eworld hellooooooooo I am me/! understand? i make the assumptions I make. get it????


Grayzneuf.

I'll take that as a yes.

Quote:Me
the purpose of the board is to show what goes on in the minds of atheists that's what it says in the description.

Gray

I thought it was about "being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you,...", not totell us whats going on in the mind of Atheists, but to tell us whats going on in your mind, we're the ones you're talking about, we already know whats going on with us.

Oh and by the way, you're supposed to be telling us with "gentleness and reverence"...

all mockery and ridicule. why would tehy react with hate to the message tht they need not fear hell? Because they are hateful.



Atheists are always coming up with little gimmicks. Anytime you trump them with real knowledge they get up set and find a gimmick. The Jesus myth theory was such a gimmick. Jesus was such a compelling figure and there is some decent evidence he rose from the dead, so to counter that they just pretend he never existed, and give it a little name and make up some pseudo intelligent sounding crap pertaining to it. The "default" and the "extraordinary evidence credo" these are all gimmicks atheists made up and they are passed off as pseudo official sounding quasi logical tactics that in actuality mean nothing.

The latest is the Courtier's reply. This is it:

I recently referred to the "Courtier's Reply", a term invented by PZ Myers to rebut the claims of believers who insist that their superstitious beliefs are ever so much more sophisticated than the simple version that Dawkins attacks.

PZ's response deserves much more publicity because it goes to the heart of the debate between rationalism and supersition. I'm going to post his original Courtier's Reply below (without permission, but I'm sure he'll understand) but before doing so I need to remind everyone about the original fairy tale [The Emperor's New Clothes].

This is a statement by a reductionist scientism king Larry Moran is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. He's on a blog called Sand Walk.

So what this couriter's reply is saying is that if the sketpic says stupid things about theology and demonstrates that he knows nothin gabout it and the theist says "O your criticism is invalid because you don't understand what you are criticizing" then al lthe atheist has to do is say "that's the courtiers reply" and the theist is supposed to go "O my God, I've violated a law of logic!" and give up and stop believing in God. But in realty it's nto a log of logic, I never heard it in a logic class.It's not in a lgoic text book, and the menaing of it is silly. I'ts just saying 'You can't point out my ignorance of theology because I will not allow theology to have any kind of validity or importance and religous people may not not any sort of human dignity." That's all it's saying. It's nothing more than anti-intellectual stupidity.


Here is Myers statement about it:


The Courtier's Reply
by PZ Myers

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk.

Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.

Personally, I suspect that perhaps the Emperor might not be fully clothed — how else to explain the apparent sloth of the staff at the palace laundry — but, well, everyone else does seem to go on about his clothes, and this Dawkins fellow is such a rude upstart who lacks the wit of my elegant circumlocutions, that, while unable to deal with the substance of his accusations, I should at least chide him for his very bad form.

Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.

In other words, knowledge of theological subjects is just plain bull shit and it doesn't matter if Dawkins doesn't understand it because it's not worth understanding. So it's not valid criticism of him to say that. Except the problem is, if he understood theology he would see that his criticisms are wrong. The criticisms he makes are almost always about fundamentalists views. Since he refuses to accept that there are other non fundamentalist types of theology, when you point it out he just says O that's ridiculous because all theology is crap so it doesn't matter--but if he knew that he might not make the criticisms becasue they don't apply. But it's not worthing knowing that. he's just reasoning in a cirlce.

Here's his logic:

Him: religion is evil superstiion because fundies believe X

Liberal: we don't beileve x

him: that doesn't matter becasue religion is all crap no matter what. so even if you don't believe the thing I say is crap you still your own crap that must be stupid because you are religious. I know it's stupid because religion is stupid. Of course that's based on the stuff that you don't believe but that doesn't matter.

Narrow minded anti-intellectual brinkman ship in a most unsophisticated manner.

A very emotionally immature atheist tried this on me recently. Here's how it went.

Brent: All religious people believe in big man in the sky.

Me: process theology doesn't believe in big man in the sky

Brent: that's nonsesne all religous people do so they mustt.

Me; you clearly don't know enoguh about theology to say that

Brent: Courteiers reply! Courtiers' replay!

Like some magic king'x X that's suppossed to mean something. Clearly it's stupid because they are only trying to dodge the fact that their criticisms are based upon things they don't understand and that don't apply. Its' an attempt to hide their ignorance. They are committing an informal fallacy with the use of this gimmick. It's called "ipsie dixit." It means "truth by stipulation." They are saying in effect "I simply stipulate that I will not allow you to have knowledge. AT this point on your knowledge is now void becasue I declare to be so, since it's religion and religion is stupid."

Again their reasoning is quite circular since the reasons they would give for reducing religion to superstition don't' apply to modern sophisticated theology, but the fact that it can be labeled "theology" and they don't even know what that means, they stipulate that it must be stupid. So even though their reasons don't apply they just demand that they must do so any way.

Again they are merely stipulating truth and insisting they are right without any just reasons. It's idiotic to try and criticize a whole field you know nothing about. To make up for appalling ignorance they imply a third rate gimmick that is actually made up of two informal fallacies: ipsie dixit and circular reasoning.

Their Human Nature and Ours

Cardinal Cormack Murphy-O'Connor,

This is about the Cardinal who supposedly said that Atheists are not Human. I contend that he was really just saying that the atheist Understanding of being human is inadequate, while atheists aer trying to turn it into a big hary deal to prove that Christians dehumanize atheists.



You can listen to him here:

Hermit (our Hermit)

He quite clearly says at the end that if you don't accept the belief that man was made by God then "you are not fully human"...not "your understanding of humanity lacks something" but "you are not fully human."

He doesn't say "if you don't accept..." anything but I agree his last snippet was a statement to the effect "they are less human." But I think it's pretty clear he mean within the context of the atheist understanding of being human, not they literally are less human. But I know that atheist will never never never give him the benefit of a doubt. I think he just phrased it badly because it was the tail end summary he was rushing to Finnish and he only meant within in their understanding they are less human, meaning their understanding is. The sort of person the atheist invisions is not fully human because they leaving out the dimension of the divine.

But that would be interpreting him in the best light and the atheists have interest in doing that because they are not concerned with what really did mean. They are only concerned with millage out of it.

I am quoted as saying:

Meta:

"No the only argument he made was atheists leave out the imago dei dimension. that's the context. He did not say anything else. He is talking about that. He says they are only into themselves he's talking about just understanding themselves as the limit on being human excluding the divine."

Our Hermi says:

And that's still grossly insulting and unfair to atheists. Even if we accept that the last bit about people like me not being "fully humans a slip of the tongue this whole attitude of smug superiority is really galling. It misrepresents the appreciation that atheists, humanists and secularists (he seems to be lumping them all together here) have for humanity.

No it's not! why would it be? That's just absurd. But let's look at the two view to see what's really being said. First, the Cardinal is coming out of a rich heritage of 2000 years of intellectualizing bout the nature of humanity. The Catholic concept of humanity is much more complex and well developed than just the idea of a soul an an after life. Click on the link and see how long the article and how many blue words to follow as side links and you will see how vast this thinking about humanity is. Here is just a small sample:

According to the common definition of the School, Man is a rational animal. This signifies no more than that, in the system of classification and definition shown in the Arbor Porphyriana, man is a substance, corporeal, living, sentient, and rational. It is a logical definition, having reference to a metaphysical entity. It has been said that man's animality is distinct in nature from his rationality, though they are inseparably joined, during life, in one common personality. "Animality" is an abstraction as is "rationality". As such, neither has any substantial existence of its own. To be exact we should have to write: "Man's animality is rational"; for his "rationality" is certainly not something superadded to his "animality". Man is one in essence. In the Scholastic synthesis, it is a manifest illogism to hypostasize the abstract conceptions that are necessary for the intelligent apprehension of complete phenomena. A similar confusion of expression may be noticed in the statement that man is a "compound of body and soul". This is misleading. Man is not a body plus a soul — which would make of him two individuals; but a body that is what it is (namely, a human body) by reason of its union with the soul. As a special application of the general doctrine of matter and form which is as well a theory of science as of intrinsic causality, the "soul" is envisaged as the substantial form of the matter which, so informed, is a human "body". The union between the two is a "substantial" one. It cannot be maintained, in the Thomistic system, that the "substantial union is a relation by which two substances are so disposed that they form one". In the general theory, neither "matter" nor "form", but only the composite, is a substance. In the case of man, though the "soul" be proved a reality capable of separate existence, the "body" can in no sense be called a substance in its own right. It exists only as determined by a form; and if that form is not a human soul, then the "body" is not a human body. It is in this sense that the Scholastic phrase "incomplete substance", applied to body and soul alike, is to be understood. Though strictly speaking self-contradictory, the phrase expresses in a convenient form the abiding reciprocity of relation between these two "principles of substantial being".

about half those words are blue.Meaning there are other articles about them, so it's a pretty complex study.

Now to translate into my own warped Protestant version: To be human is to be a creature of God. To be human is to be a contingency participating being through the aegis of the eternal necessary aspect of Being. Our mind constitute "spirit" and through God's sustaining action it will live on after the death of our bodies, which may be reconstituted in a new but improved tripartite union; body, soul, spirit. "Soul" is a symbol for our lives in relation to God. We don't have souls, we are souls. The importance of this point is that life itself is measured in terms of proximity to God, emotional, spiritual, moral proximity. We are created in image of God meaning our intellectual and moral capacities mirror those of the divine. This means that each human being is a moral end in himself. Humans are not be used as a mean to an end. We are the end and we are each and equal and valuable end. Christ died n the cross for everyone of us. So even the worst murdering drunken scum bag in the gutter is a valuable jewel and the loss of his soul (life and relationship with God) is an eternal tragedy. This reality forms the basis for a Christin concept of the sanctity of life. This is especially true in terms of human life, but all life by extension as all life is connected through the ecological dimension, and all life is a web of contingent beings created by God.

The best source I can recommend for understanding a Christian concept of humanity would be Reinhold Niebuhr's book The Nature and Destiny of Man vol I: Human Nature. This is no dray formal recitation of doctrines. It's a dynamic look at humanity in relation to God written on the eve of world war II and focuses upon Neitzsche's concept of humanity and its' affects upon the Nazis and the demonic fury of nineteenth century romantic sources of Nazism. Vol I is the book that gave me my view on the nature of Genesis creation myth. This text is the one that influenced me to understand that story not in the context of literal history but as a Hebrew take on pagan creation myths. This is one of my all time favorite books. This book might make my short list of greatest books ever.

The Atheist view, on the other hand, while dressed up and given a happy face any number of ways is still just this: We are worm food. Of course they would never say that. They dress it up, put elaborate ball gowns and glass slippers on it and take it to the ball, but it's still just worm food. We are only sacs of chemicals with electricity flowing through them. They try to jack it up by re valuing it, try to attach values to it commensurate with the imago dei and the idea of the soul but it's just worm food in the final analysis. To me the atheist view is far more insulting even with the happy face. The worst thing is many atheists use a reductionist methodology (or pretend they do and really just a reductionist mentality) and reduce everything a theist says to just its most basic physical components. So there's no soul, no God, no spirit, no atonement, no sin, no after life, we are not loved, we are not contingent, we are just worm food, sacs of chemicals and electricity and that's all. Yet when it comes to their value as individuals, usually measured by what they want to do for pleasure, then that's a whole different story. No longer are they content to just be worm food, they are excellent, intelligent, wondrous amazing brilliant mysterious worm food that thinks and feels and is so unique it's only here for a short time then tis' gone forever int he stomach's of worms.

Even though some atheist may argue that there emergent properties that elevate humanity beyond the level of worm food ultimately that's all we aspire to in the atheist scheme of things. They have to transpose value from Christian memories and moral frameworks that ultimately come from the Bible or other religious bases. Even if atheists don't believe this, from that Cardinal's perspective compared to the elevated and rich view of man in Catholicism that's probably the way he thinks atheist think and it not an insult it's what he thinks. The are not willing to hear him in a positive light. they are not to give him the benefit of a doubt. They want to hear him in the the worst possible way because they hate him. They despise him. They hated him long before he said anything. Just knowing he's religious means they hate him. They don't care what he thinks, he could be in love with atheists for all they care. They care about only the propaganda value not the fats.

I said:

"I am so totally convened that atheists have problems understanding things. I see it all the time."

Hermi says:

In this case I think you're the one who's having trouble understanding. If you tell people they are "less than human" or even that their understanding of their own humanity is "less than human" they tend to get angry. Reacting angrily to a disgusting comment like that isn't hateful. Defending a disgusting, hateful comment like that by pretending it's the listener's fault for allegedly being too stupid to understand the plain language of what this man said is what's hateful.

Of course you are begging the question because he didn't say that. It's a misinterpretation but one you want and one you don't want to clear up.

Tell me Hermi that it would make you happy to know he didn't mean it? Do you really what he really meant?

Ps the title is a parody of the famous Marxist fourth international speech "their Torstsky and ours" which has been repeated over and over in different forms: their Lenin and ours, their Trotsky and Ours, their Barnes and o

More hate group stuff from Athetsi

On carm atheist says:

Wow! So basically you're admitting religion is bogus, but you think that touching little boys, driving planes into buildings full of people, drinking god blood, and fighting stem cell research improves peoples' lives...

so Christians are child molesters. the context of this statement is the charge that religious experince is delusion. So this guy having seen me refer to a boat load of studies that disprove any link between RE and mental illness (source of delusions) reaches into the recesses of his bigotry and tells me that my sweet little grandmother was a child molester and a mass murderer. He didn't say "your grandmother" but he's sticking all Christians with that. That would include her.

If he's sticking all of Christianity with those things because the acts of a few Priests and some Muslims, then he's calling my grandmother that.

The other atheists on the board could stop it but they are gutless cowards who don't know right from wrong so of course they don't say anything. This is the action of a hate group. Their only purpose in being on a message board is to spew venom against those they despize.

I would really like to be wrong about this. But when it just keeps coming up over and over again. I'm know there are some smart ones, even one's that I thought were smart and flexible have turned out to be very literalistic. Maybe it's just me but I can't help equating literalism with stupidity. Apparently atheists have a hard time understanding concepts, they cant' sort out one idea from another, and they are very very literalistic in their thinking. This shouldn't surprise me since I've seen before that atheist are fundies. Fundies are literalistic. Even some atheists who I considered very intelligent turn out not to understand ideas.

On CARM I put up the following entitled "Parable." Now if they know anything at all about the Gospels they should understand up font that it's not a literal story.

There was an isolated island off the Coat of Siberia. In the 30s a group of scientists went there to study the people, who had little contact with civlization. They found that monks had gone there in the middle ages and told them about Chrsitanity. So the people were not only Chrsitians but they followed a form of mystical prayer when meant that they spend hours every day praying.

they told the scientists they they felt the presence of god very strongly and that they felt very close to God, who gave them love and made their lives better.

one of the major scientists was a proponent of chemical determinism. He had a formula that he thought demonstrated that all experinces were just the result of chemicals in the head. So he explained to the people why this was not possible they were not feeling the presence of God.

The people on the island were not stone age natives. They even had a car and they some electricity. Although most had horses and karosein lamps, some of htem could do math. So he explained the formula and what it meant and got them to memorize it.

HRG = PDQ + CIA -BBC = HRG

So when they left the scientist felt really good that he has vanquished the evil superstition of religion and brought science to the lives f the people.

When they got on the ship one said "what's that moving across the water?" they looked, it seemed to be a man. they were astonished, one of the natives was running across the waves. He was running the water. He was calling out to them. As the got closer they heard "we forgot the formula!"

I practically give the point dead on, who cares if you have a scientific explaination that reduces a phenomena out of existence if it works, it's wroth doing or believing or following. Religious experience words, so practice it. Who cares if there are explanations that try to explain it away, if it works it has not be explained away. The explanations don't disprove the studies that show that it works.


here's what the atheists said:

Zhavric

A cargo cult is a type of religious practice that may appear in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced, non-native cultures. The cults are focused on obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices, believing that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors.
Following contact with people from more technically advanced societies through exploration, colonization, missionary efforts, and international warfare, cargo cults were initially documented in New Guinea and other Micronesian and Melanesian countries in the southwest Pacific Ocean.
Members, leaders, and prophets of cargo cults maintain that the manufactured goods ("cargo") of the non-native culture have been created by spiritual means, such as through their deities and ancestors, and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that, unfairly, the foreigners have gained control of these objects through attraction of these material goods to themselves by malice or mistake[citation needed].
Cargo cults thus focus on efforts to overcome what they perceive as the undue influence of the others attracting the goods, by conducting rituals imitating behavior they have observed among the holders of the desired wealth and presuming that their deities and ancestors will, at last, recognize their own people and send the cargo to them instead. Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.

In other instances, such as on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, cult members worship certain Americans, who brought the desired cargo to their island during World War II as part of the supplies used in the war effort, as the spiritual entity who will provide the cargo to them in the future.

He's looking at it literalistic. the facts about the story must be literally true. when I corrected this he says:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
why would you think any of that is relevant?

Z:

There was an isolated island off the Coat of Siberia. In the 30s a group of scientists went there
A cargo cult is a type of religious practice that may appear in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced, non-native cultures.

Quote:Meta:
Cargo cults are not anything like major world religions.

Z

Yeah... because a group of people waiting for their mythical savior to come back to them from the great beyond doesn't sound like anything we see in modern religions . Clearly, you've never read about John Frum.

Quote:Meta
the point of the peice is...

Z:

The point of this piece is that remote people can be easily tricked into believing nonsense. You see, this is what you've never been brave enough to deal with intellectually: people can be deluded in positive ways, but that doesn't make them any less deluded. The cargo cults were deluded. The folks on your island are deluded. It's the gorilla in the room and the reason no one takes your argument seriously. "All the deluded people's delusions prove they're not deluded!LOL" What a joke?

Quote:
the thing is atheist don't have

Z

thing that atheists don't have is delusion. What we do have is intellectual honesty and the truth. That's far superior to your silly delusions.

Of course if it works why is it a delusion. So they can't think an they can't listen and they argue in a circle. I expects this guy to do this since he is literally the stupidest person I've ever encountered. But the next guy is someone I always admired because I though the was very intelligent.


Teabag Salad

So I am supposed to accept your story as real because I can't explain how someone can walk on water? Erm...maybe the story was made up.

Just because it contains something fantastic it doesn't mean that we should accept it as truth. Do you accept Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter stories as being true just because they contain things you can't explain.

Even he can only approach it as a literal story. He know very well I've been arguing the religious experince studies and he should know exactly what I've said and that no one has touched them. So he should get it. And yet he doesn't approach it as an illustration of an idea but as a literal story.

The same can be said for every single atheist on the thread.

It boggles the mind. they can't understand concepts, that's why they don't read theology. They have to have a nice little literalistic moral put in front of them and take it factually, that's why they are reductionists. they can't process new information.

I have decided to take the reductionists seriously. I think atheism is just a matter of brain chemistry, or too much gluten or something. that's why they cant' learn.

The Atheist Worship of Science

Fictitious Ideological crap. Z's little gimmick for impossing his "understanding" upon religion.

CARM poster Zhavric indoducted what he calls "FIC" and I can't even remember that he says it's stands for. Its' a gimmick.

This is a gimmick to make his circular reasoning sound reputable. He is assuming first that science is the only form of knowledge, and secondly that there can't be a God (it's impossible) becasue the only form of knowledge doesn't sanction it. Never mind that we humans have a pathetic data base.

Here's his arugment:

Quote:
God is a work of fiction. A false claim. We know this based on the False Implied Claims (FIC) argument.

It goes like this:

1) Claims require evidence.

2) Evidence which demands the listener re-define what evidence is cannot be considered evidence.

3) Objective claims which are a) have no evidence and b) contradict existing proven claims are false.

Hold it right there. Now he put this in to spike out any otherr form of knowledge. He's here saying science is the only vaild knoweldge and to quality as scintific knowlege you have to have data. But of course I hve data I 350 studies and he choses to inore them becasue he picks and chooses when to accept science and when not to. But never mind, let's go on.

the point is God claims do have evidence, they evdience from many forms of knowledge not just one.

He also assert that knowledge has to be "objective" but that's unproved and begging the question. So his argument invalid at this point.






Quote:Z

4) Because god cannot exist AND not exist, the statement "god exists" is an objective claim.
But here hes' about to confuse objective existence of the subject wtih objective perception of the observer. Just because God's existence would have to be an objective fact doesn't mean our perception of that fact would have to (1) given scientifically, (2) be objective.

Quote:
5) The claim "god exists" has no evidence that does not demand the listener re-define what evidence is.

But that's only true because he doesn't accept real evidence. He only accepts science as evidence. he automatically takes out all the evidence for
God and says "that's not evidence because it's not in the realm that I control." only stuff taht he thinks he controls (he's deluded into thinking he knows science).

Quote:
6) The claim "god exists" contradicts existing proven claims (in spite of the best efforts of theists to shield god from scrutiny).

what those established things or or who establishes them he cannot say. If he had an established thing he would use it. But you watch he will quote no one because there are no such established "facts." he's just blowing smoke to create this gimmick.

Quote:
7) Therefor, the claim "god exists" is false.

remember now it's only "false" based upon ignoring otehr forms of knowledge, the fallacious argument that logical impossibility can be derived from empirical data or lack of it, ignoring the basis in loigc for begging the question.

in reality he's just made several fallacious assertions and presents nothing of any kind of proof. Whic is also a violtion of his own principle, so his arugment is actually self defeating.

We had a round about on this last time I kept saying "its' self contradictory so it's betting itself." he ketp saying "you haven to make a logical argument."
I say "that is a logical argument." He basically argued that it was long enough to be liogical.

friends, and spectators, that is the essence of logic. If you contradict your own argument the arguemnt loses. look it up!
that is rational that is logical. that's rational.



Quote:

It is my stance that Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) A) always existed, B) fucntions properly without any hardware of any kind and C) spontaneously causes new software and hardware to come into existence from nothing.

Obviously, these three claims are nonsense. They are quite demonstrably false because they a) have no support and b) contradict what we know to be true. It would take evidence to convince us otherwise and, to the best of anyone's knowledge, none exists. Until that time, we are quite correct in saying the above statement is false. Not unknown. Not partially true.

False.

this is not analogs to god because he chose soemthing that is a prpori not true. so there's no dispute then he's arguing from analogy he wants you to think if I can make an argument based upon this analogy that proves by analogy that Im right.

the laws of logic forbid this. It is a total fallacy in every logic book to argue from analogy. analogies simple do not prove things. they are not meant to. Analogies only expalin ideas they do not prove.

Moreover, his analogy is not analogs us he's wrong he loses. Not analogous because he chose something we nkow is wrong,but he has no knowledge at all that god is not real.





Quote:

Furthermore, invoking special sets of rules only makes the speaker sound foolish. If someone stated, "IE can function without hardware because IE, by definition, is software that runs without any hardware" we'd laugh at the speaker. Clearly, this is just the same claim reworded as a definition. It would be likewise foolish to say, "It's not appropriate to expect evidence of this special version IE because it's in a category of things that doesn't require evidence." To be sure, we need support for all things. If the speaker believes there to be a category of things that doesn't require evidence, then that claim needs to be supported first.

he's saying this because in God argumetns atheists often violate the rules of logic. So he wants Christians not to be able to say things like "that's a violatioj of the law of exclude middle." so he says special rules make you sound foolish. but of course he want to accept that scientific Method is full of rules but that's knowledge so are automatically accepted. But now, he has to prove those too.

you can't have an argument if you don't use logic. The rules of logic are set and they are accepted. If doesn't accept logic he can't use science. Robert Boyle one o the great scientists of the Britsh enlightenment (disocovered air pressure) said "science is based upon logic and reason and it will always opportae by them."

so he cannot on the one hand dismiss rules of logic and on the other turn around an try impose his own er zots understating of science.

by the way, if it makes one sound foolish to invent little rules, then what do you can the FIC gimmick? think maybe hat makes one seem foolish too hu?




Quote:

Now, imagine for a moment that you're at a party and a friend of yours shows up there. This friend, you didn't think she knew about the party. You wonder to yourself how did she find out about the party? If someone were to offer, "Well, she gained that knowledge using that form of IE that doesn't require hardware" our first reaction should be "WAIT A censored SECOND!"

in all of his analogies he keeps leaving the things hat make experince count. He doesn't dare include them. We experience things, we evaluate our experience we assume it's real we accept it as such. Its' foolish to write off experience on the grounds that it's not science. that's stupid because empricial knowledge is essentially first hand experince, that's what the word means.

RE is proved to be real. in the that one is experiencing something and his real tangible effects, the conteint of that is of the divine. ti's is lgiocal then to assume that one did experince the divine, if we clear away the clutter of alternate causes.

but those are cleared away by various means.



How could that possibly be an option?

Quote:

Sure, the party was posted online, but we can't even entertain the hardwareless IE as a possibility because it's A) completely unsupported and B) contradicts what we already know to be true.

The god hypothesis is no different.

The god hypothesis tells us a being A) always existed, B) is intelligent without any sort of brain or network and C) can make things out of nothing.

A) contradicts quite a few facts and common sense.

see now if he had any facts he would use them. he can't show you any facts that are contradicted, he just asserts it. But his analogy (he uses computer stuff to add to the gimmick it's science he talking computers!) but it's nto analogous because he leaves out all the basic reasons for belief. He creates his own straw man belief and builds the analogy around that then fallaciously argues from the analogy.




Quote:

We know that things as complex as a god don't just happen

.

(1) No one ever said God "happened." God did not happen. that's not being eternal to happen, that's having a cause. God doesn't have a cause so he did not happen. So his argument is not analogous.

(2) he can't prove that God is complex.

(3) he can't show any meaning to therm "complexity" in relation to God since God transcends our understanding.


Quote:

They require an explanation and "always existed" is simply a cop-out. It also contradicts what we know about intelligence through the study of evolution (don't reply yet. Look below)

It not an explaination it's the doctrine, it's the idea of what God is, being itself. it's been around for thousands of hears. No something some stupid apologist thought of on the internet. ti's always been there since long before atheists existed, before anyone mad eany argument that needed answering.




It's nothing but pure loigc


(1) Being has to be. nothingness as a putative state of affairs is impossible

(2) since something must always exist something must be eternal.

(3) etenral things are not contingent they do not need causes.

(4) therefore what ever is eternal logically then gave rise to contingent things. logical because continent things need causes, so it's more logical to think that at least one contingent thing was created by what came before it (the eternal thing) since causes seem to always proceed their effects.

(5) Since the eternal thing more logically created the contingent things we can think of the eternal thing as the creator.

(6) ergo God has to be eternal. That's the name we use to call the eternal thing.

QED





Quote:

B) contradicts what we know to be true from evolution, neurology, biology, etc. All forms of intelligence come very late into existence. They don't just happen. (don't reply yet. Look below)
doesn't contradict anything in evolution. why would it? that's a spurious claim and note he does not give a reason. He hs not proved that intelligence has to "come late" in the eternal thing. He's comparing biological evolution to eternal non biological being itself. That's stuid1 that's just grossly stupid!

Fist of all, it's hardly a contradiction to evolution since God is not the product of evolution. secondly it has no application to evolution so it contradict it. I eman evolution can still be understood in the same way.



Quote:

C) contradicts the law of conservation of energy. Things don't just pop into reality. (don't reply yet. Look below)

stupid assumption that God is energy.
things don't just pop into reality hu? you like universes.

like universes? tell me bout the big bang! things dont' just pop into reality hu? what about the big bang?



Quote:

We are certainly open to the idea that there is evidence to the contrary on any of these points, but without evidence, it's completely inapropriate to contradict these facts. Period. No amount of special pleading can change this. Only evidence.

I'm gald you said that because I just happen to have some, it comes from non other than Hawking. Hawking the god of our religion science tells us that there must be soemthing very like God:







4)Major Physicists propose Unitive principle they call "God."

MetaList on Scinece and religion

Stephen Hawking's God

Quote:

In his best-selling book "A Brief History of Time", physicist Stephen Hawking claimed that when physicists find the theory he and his colleagues are looking for - a so-called "theory of everything" - then they will have seen into "the mind of God". Hawking is by no means the only scientist who has associated God with the laws of physics. Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, for example, has made a link between God and a subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson. Lederman has suggested that when physicists find this particle in their accelerators it will be like looking into the face of God. But what kind of God are these physicists talking about? Theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg suggests that in fact this is not much of a God at all. Weinberg notes that traditionally the word "God" has meant "an interested personality". But that is not what Hawking and Lederman mean. Their "god", he says, is really just "an abstract principle of order and harmony", a set of mathematical equations. Weinberg questions then why they use the word "god" at all. He makes the rather profound point that "if language is to be of any use to us, then we ought to try and preserve the meaning of words, and 'god' historically has not meant the laws of nature." The question of just what is "God" has taxed theologians for thousands of years; what Weinberg reminds us is to be wary of glib definitions.
Ok These guys are not talking about the God of the Bible, but the fact that they do resort to organizing principle proves my basic point. They can't just leave the laws of phyiscs unexplained, they have to resort to organizing principle that ties it all up in one neat package. But why assume that principle can't be the personal God of the Bible? The rest of this Website argues that it is. But the main point here is that it is very logical to assume an organizing principle such a mind which orgainizes and contians physical laws.But "which god" is dealt with else where. at the very least this argument gives us a Spinza-like God.


You know I don't think this Hawking guy knows anything about science. Becasue apparenly he thinks something like God is plausible and the great Zhavric tells us that it's totally impossible.

HRG, Hans Reginold Grune is a mathematician from Austira. he posts on the CARM board as HRG. He and I have been freinds and enemies (sparing partners) for years. We are always at odds with each ohter. But an interesting devleopment at the end of this thread:

HRG and I actually on the same side!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zhavric View Post

God is a work of fiction. A false claim. We know this based on the False Implied Claims (FIC) argument.

It goes like this:

1) Claims require evidence.
True. But claims that another claim is false and not just unproven require evidence, too.
Quote:

2) Evidence which demands the listener re-define what evidence is cannot be considered evidence.

3) Objective claims which are a) have no evidence and b) contradict existing proven claims are false.

4) Because god cannot exist AND not exist, the statement "god exists" is an objective claim.

5) The claim "god exists" has no evidence that does not demand the listener re-define what evidence is.
OK.

Quote:
6) The claim "god exists" contradicts existing proven claims (in spite of the best efforts of theists to shield god from scrutiny).
Here I beg to differ. The claim "His Supreme Indifference exists" contradicts no proven claims. It may look quite implausible to some, but it has not been proven false. In fact, it has been set up in a way (like Last Thursdayism) that it cannot be proven false.


Quote:

7) Therefor, the claim "god exists" is false.

It is my stance that Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) A) always existed, B) fucntions properly without any hardware of any kind and C) spontaneously causes new software and hardware to come into existence from nothing.

[/INDENT]Obviously, these three claims are nonsense. They are quite demonstrably false because they a) have no support and b) contradict what we know to be true. It would take evidence to convince us otherwise and, to the best of anyone's knowledge, none exists. Until that time, we are quite correct in saying the above statement is false. Not unknown. Not partially true.

False

HRG:

Please note that you are describing a physical process. While there is little reason IMHO to assume that there are processes which aren't physical, it cannot be excluded either that there are non-physical processes, e.g. those used by HSI.

I think that you confuse "highly implausible and without any significant evidence" with "disproven". I try to separate clearly in my mind what has been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt from what has been 100% proven.
__________________

Regards, HRG.

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. - Marcus Aurelius






Quote:
Originally Posted by HRG View Post

Zhavric:
True. But claims that another claim is false and not just unproven require evidence, too.

OK.


HRG:
Here I beg to differ. The claim "His Supreme Indifference exists" contradicts no proven claims.


Zhavric

HRG, we've already been through this. The only reason you state this is because you have written HSI a blank check... given him a complete free pass to do whatever needs to be done to create a literal universe, yet somehow magically do so without the requirement for evidence (which itself is yet another unsupported claim). To be sure, things that make real things pop into existence require an explanation beyond "They don't require explanation".

Quote:HRG

Please note that you are describing a physical process. While there is little reason IMHO to assume that there are processes which aren't physical, it cannot be excluded either that there are non-physical processes, e.g. those used by HSI.
As soon as you provide some evidence as to non-physical processes being possible I'd happily agree with you. Until such time as you are able to do that, we must conclude that you are mistaken. Like most theists, you are allowing special pleadings for HSI without any explanation as to why that is the case.

Quote:Hans

I think that you confuse "highly implausible and without any significant evidence" with "disproven".

Zav

I do no such thing. You're simply falling into the same trap that theists have fallen into; you're allowing unsupported claims and ignoring what they imply and what those implications contradict.

#35
HRG
Forum Member

HRG's Avatar



Originally Posted by Zhavric View Post

Divorce yourself from the idea that they need to be logically impossible to be impossible. Logically impossible just means it's paradoxical. No... all I have to do is look at the implied claims of HSI (intelligence, ability to create stuff from nothing, etc.) understand that these are scientific claims,
No, they are not scientific claims. Since a universe created by HSI looks today exactly as an uncreated universe, science cannot tell the difference.

Quote:Z

and look to science to see what's proven. Your claims for HSI contradict what's proven without given any reason / explanation / evidence for how they're even possible

Hans

The absence of the supernatural can never be proven - almost by definition. All we can say it that it is not necessary as an explanation.

Quote:Zhavric

Which is not my claim and, to be frank, a statement unworthy of your considerable debate skill and talent. If you truly think that my argument is "things that aren't proven" are false, then I submit that I have vastly overestimated your ability to comprehend my argument. Do you really think there's no difference between "things that are A) unsupported and B) contradict that which is supported are false" and "A lack of explanation for X proves that X is false" are the same thing?


HRG

But HSI does not contradict what is supported. You overestimate the proof powers of science, IMHO.

Quote:Zavhric

I must do no such thing, HRG. This above quoted sillyness is the same sort of sophomoric argument theists employ. It would be like me boldly declaring that my argument is super-logical and therefor transcends the petty regular logic that you employ... at which time you'd (correctly) protest and demand I support how something can be "super-logical" and I then do what you just did in the above quote: I tell you that it's up to you to prove that super-logic doesn't exist.
What is logical is objectively defined, so a superlogic does not exist. A similar argument is not possible for the physical universe.

HRG

As Sherlock Holmes said: "Never confuse the improbable with the impossible

".


Quote:Zhavric

To be sure, you need to stop throwing away science and common sense anytime anyone shuffles together the letter d, g, and o in a different order. Seriously, the only explanation you have for your argument is "god doesn't have the rules apply to him because he's god". It's unsupported theistic drivel

this is so very halarious. He's accusing HRG of "throwing away scinece" everytime someone mentions God! HRG is one the atheist guru of CARM Atheist. He's always aruginga against theism and he's never baffled and supremely confident and knows far more about science that Zhaveric does. So idiotic that this guy immediately starts thinking of him as backing down before theism because they disagree.


HRG:

What rules ? If you want to hear that HSI is impossible within the rules we have discovered for the physical universe: Yes, he is. But science cannot prove that the supernatural does not exist; it only can demonstrate, point by point, that it seems to be unnecessary for explaining the physical universe.

Quote:Zhavric
Oh, so HSI isn't intelligent and didn't create the universe? Is that your stance? Really?

HRG:

I have no evidence that HSI exists, so I cannot say anything real about this entity. All I say is that he is logically conceivable.

P.S. I call it when I think - after rational analysis - that a theist argument is invalid, and I call it similarly when I think that an atheist argument is invalid.

Pretty funny to see the immature hot head ideologue becoming irate when the mature exponent of the same position doesn't go whole hog on is zealotry. That's so often the case with young literalistic fire brand of the ideology.

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