Stupid atheist tricks: Now I'v see it all, The super bowl of atheist tricks

 Hieronymus Bosch's great paiting "the ship of fools."




Some times there comes a message board event so stupid you just have to stop and say "this is the limit!"


Originally Posted by HillyBilly

Can verbs love? Can they know? Can they be jealous? Can they be morally perfect?

Yes our most horrible fears are realized, this idiot thinks that statements like "god is love" and "God is being itself" make God into a linguistic verb and nothing else. He insists its a direct quote from me but of cousre what's he's ignoring is the fac that I don't think loved reduces to a verb. Love is more than just the act of loving. Being itself is not a verb at all.It's a noun perhaps an adjectival noun.


Originally Posted by NotAnAtheist

Theology flies in the face of experience? Or rather, theology can fly in the face of experience?

I admit the knowledge generated by science does as well, so experience isn't the end-all-be-all of epistemology. Still, the problem I have with theology (as you've described it) is that there's no checks and balances. If something theological flies in the face of experience - who are you, puny mortal, to question it?

Meta;

first hand experience is what epistemology is. modern scientific induction has changed the meaning of the term to a ideological construct.

In exchange with silly Billy:

Meta
I never said verbs have minds or that they think. I did not say God is a verb.

you have misinterpreted me.(I'm mocking Royce because that's what he keeps saying)

Hilly  Billy

Nope, it's a direct quote unchanged. If you click on the blue box with the double arrows, you'll be directed to the post where you said that.

The problem is we his understanding of what direct quotes are. he claims he's making direct quote when he's intprriting what hey think I mean. I see this is the case because he tried to claim that it's the consquence of the logic of my satment. so in other word he doesn't know what  a direct quote is.


 Originally Posted by HillyBilly

Actually, you have both said that God is being itself and that being is a verb. By the transitive property of identity, you said God is a verb.

 Meta

 Nope I didn't say God is verb. that just shows you don't understand ideas. you can' pull that broken transitive BS that means nothing. all that means you can't argue fairly.

 Originally Posted by Metacrock

Nope I didn't say God is verb. that just shows you don't understand ideas. you can' pull that broken transitive BS that means nothing. all that means you can't argue fairly.

 

Hilly Billy?

Logic is unfair now?

Yea I really said logic is unfair. I also logic is an idiot. at least one of them is.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

direct quotes are nto made in vacuums they are made in contexts. you took this one out.

 
 Hilly Billy

I did no such thing.

I never said God is  verb.

he says:

Hilly Billy

 It is a fact of logic that identity is transitive.

that doesn't mean that I said God is a verb, dumb ass.



Now, believe it or not we come to the really stupid one. Hilly Billy makes an argument of supreme stupidity makes an obvious mistake on the middle of it and the can't see that he made it.


Hilly Billy

 Here is an argument. This argument is nothing but premises from Metacrock and certain moves in logic. This is playing off of an argument that we had a few days ago where he kept trying to trape me into admitting that God could zaup us into perfection so there need be no suffering.I was trying to show that we wouldn't learn anything so it wouldn't be as good. So he's goign to prove logically that God could do it. He also thinks that God is just amplified humanity, so if God is perfect then we can be perfect too.

1) If something is morally perfect, then it has free will. [from Metacrock]
2) God is morally perfect. [from Metacrock]
3) There exists at least one thing which is morally perfect. [existential instantiation]
4) Said thing has free will. [modus ponens 1, 3]
5) There exists at least one thing which is morally perfect and has free will. [conjunction 3, 4]
6) If something is the case, then it is possible that it is the case. [theorem of modal logic]
7) Beings with moral perfection and free will are possible. [modus ponens 5, 6]
8) If something is possible, God can create it. [from Metacrock]
9) Therefore, God can create morally perfect beings with free will. [modus ponens 7,8]

The only premises here are (1), (2), and (8). Those all come from Metacrock. The rest of the lines are just allowable moves in logic. Is this argument sound?

He dances around this for while maintaining that I'm so stupid I don't see but this absolute totally logical can't deny it. He's confused sound with vaid this is not what sound is.


Originally Posted by Metacrock

My answer to this is that free is necessary in order to have a moral universe. Moral universe is based upon love, therefore, since love requires growth through experience then moral perfection takes time.

Hilly Billy

So, now you claim God didn't start out loving?

 Hu?

 Originally Posted by Metacrock

what in the name of God would possess you to think that I said that?

 

Hilly Billy

You said being loving requires time. You can't just start that way. Hence, God couldn't have started that way. Unless, of course, you think God could have started that way, in which case, per a similar argument to the OP, God could have created humans so that they started out loving him.

 He thinks like God like man. So he totally ignores the fact that we are not divine and we can't be perfect as God is perfect. that was part of the previous discussion he ignores it completely.


Hilly Billy

 It's a conclusion, and it's not that humans must be that way, but that they could be that way. It follows from your premises exactly how I said it does.

 The problem is it does not follow from  my premises because he's re arranged them and taken them out of context so they don't mean the same thing.


Hilly Billy:

Actually, it's you who doesn't understand even the basics of Metaphysics. And even said "I do not understand a single position I took on any of those issues. but you have spent some time reading up on it I just barely remember what they were about".

 Meta


 Here is my exposition of his argument I'll show the basic mistake.


1) If something is morally perfect, then it has free will. [from Metacrock]

one thing

2) God is morally perfect. [from Metacrock]

one thing

3) There exists at least one thing which is morally perfect. [existential instantiation]

one thing!

4) Said thing has free will. [modus ponens 1, 3]

thing = 1. one thing.


5) There exists at least one thing which is morally perfect and has free will. [conjunction 3, 4]


one ever loving thing!

6) If something is the case, then it is possible that it is the case. [theorem of modal logic]

possible for ONE THING not all things.

7) Beings with moral perfection and free will are possible. [modus ponens 5, 6]

BzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzz!

that's S = plural. more than one thing.

you only proved one thing. You can't assert that just because one thing is perfect and has free will that more than one thing would.


8) If something is possible, God can create it. [from Metacrock]

you did not prove the plurality is possible.


9) Therefore, God can create morally perfect beings with free will. [modus ponens 7,8]

NOPE doesn't follow

see the problem? He only proves that God can have free will and make moral decisions and be perfect not that we can. He's making an unfounded assumption that we can be like God. He never states that explicitly so it's a hidden premise.



 HillyBilly;5037949]Here is an argument. This argument is nothing but premises from Metacrock and certain moves in logic.

1) If something is morally perfect, then it has free will. [from Metacrock]

I never said that.I said moral decision making demands free will. that has nothing to do with perfection per se, it also apply to any kind of moral regardless of perfect or not.

2) God is morally perfect. [from Metacrock]

ok acceptable

3) There exists at least one thing which is morally perfect. [existential instantiation]

tautological: not deduced it's just repeated.

4) Said thing has free will. [modus ponens 1, 3]

in the moral decisions made, yes, ok.

5) There exists at least one thing which is morally perfect and has free will. [conjunction 3, 4]

yes one thing, God

6) If something is the case, then it is possible that it is the case. [theorem of modal logic]

tautology and thus unnecessary step

7) Beings with moral perfection and free will are possible. [modus ponens 5, 6]

no, doesn't follow. one thing is not a plurality.

8) If something is possible, God can create it. [from Metacrock]

yea ok, you have not proved that it's possible for humans to be morally perfect!

9) Therefore, God can create morally perfect beings with free will. [modus ponens 7,8]

you are just complete ignoring the issues that I prove when we had this nonsense before. you do not listen. you are not saying a word not a word about the arguemnt that made that day they totally destroyed this nonsense.

this is a silly argument, you don't half the steps you made. the concision doesn't follow from the preises and it's totally ignoring the issues that did make before.

The only premises here are (1), (2), and (8). Those all come from Metacrock. The rest of the lines are just allowable moves in logic. Is this argument sound?

the way you reason about it is illogical and your conclusions are totally illogical.

(1) you draw the conclusion that moral perfection is possible in a plurality when the premises you draw from only speak of "one thing."

(2) You have NOT proved that moral perfection is possible in humans. then you draw the conclusion that it is. then argue that God should be able to create it. you did nothing to prove that.

(3) your logic says "God can be morally perfect. therefore it's possible for something to so, that means humans can be so."

stop the machine it doesn't' mean that.


your arguments are really dishonest and unfair. you make things that I didn't say. you indulge in all sort of fallacious reasoning like affirming the consequent. The conclusions you arrive at dont' even follow logically.

I also think you confuse sound with valid. You seem to think what makes it sound is the way it's derived from previous assumptions. that is not the case. Actually the soundless of arguments is a lot harder to pin down.

here is how I dealt with it on my blog. This is taken form the discussion I had with him before. He ignores every bit of it including the part about we can't be perfect.

 A poster on CARM "HillyBilly" (aka SillyBilly) is trying to bring in standard atheist contradiction argument against moral perfection. His argument:

My reasoning is direct and simple enough that even a child could understand it.

1) If something is morally perfect, then it has free will. [from YOU]
2) God is morally perfect. [from YOU]
3) There exists at least one thing which is morally perfect. [existential instantiation]
4) Said thing has free will. [modus ponens 1, 3)
5) There exists at least one thing which is morally perfect and has free will. [conjunction 3, 4]
6) If something is the case, then it is possible that it is the case. [theorem of modal logic]
7) Beings with moral perfection and free will are possible. [modus ponens 5, 6]
8) If something is possible, God can create it. [from YOU]
9) Therefore, God can create morally perfect beings with free will. [modus ponens 7,8]

See? It's a deductive consequence of nothing but premises from you and from the rules of logic. If you deny it, you are contradicting yourself.

 In other words the point of it all is that since moral perfection and free will don't contradict then we could side step sin and just have moral perfection and free will but without sin and all the bad implications of it. My answer to this is that free is necessary in order to have a moral universe. Moral universe is based upon love, therefore, since love requires growth through experience then moral perfection takes time. Being a mature state of agape (love) moral perfection the development of moral perfection requires experience and pain. It's not something we can be "zapped" into. Yes, I believe that God is limited to logical necessity, he can't make square circles because square circles are a contradiction in terms. So is the idea of moral perfection without love and experience is a contradiction in terms. Thus being morally perfect, if we are granted it at all, takes time and experience in life.

I don't believe that we are meant to match God's moral perfection. Jesus says "be ye perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48). The problem is that "perfect" is a bad translation. The word in that passage is telos from tello meaning ""to set out for a definite point or goal." The word telos itself is defined as defined by Strong's:

5056 télos (a neuter noun) – properly, consummation (the end-goal, purpose), such as closure with all its results.

[This root (tel-) means "reaching the end (aim)." It is well-illustrated with the old pirate's telescope, unfolding (extending out) one stage at a time to function at full-strength (capacity effectiveness).][1]

So the end goal or purpose to which something is meant to move is the concept. Thus he's not saying "I command you to have the very save level of moral excellence that God has," but rather "be all that you are meant to be." Being all we are meant to be, in terms of moral perfection, would mean love. Love requires sacrifice, giving, compassion, forgiving, bearing with the pain of others. You can't do that in a vacuum without living among other people. Just to have the experience of that put into our heads without actually going through it and learning from it would defeat the process of learning and it would not be real love. Love requries that we actually love. To love because you are programed to love is not love.

It's much like the philosophical zombie argument. Without actually growing through the process of dealing with others in real life one would be a philosophical zombie; one would seem outwardly exactly like the end product and one might even have false memories of it but it wouldn't be real love. It wouldn't be real free will because then the agent would not have chosen to love but would just be carrying out the commands of a program. So the idea that God will just zap us into perfection is a pipe dream and would not work. That means to have a moral universe we just live in the real world and be put in situations to make real choices.

Thus it is necessary for a moral universe, that is a universe in which free will agents make moral decisions and willingly choose the good, one must risk the possibility of choosing wrongly. Free will is essential to love and moral perfection.

Then in the issue of perfection we are not required to be god-like. We are not going to be put on a level with God. We have our own telos that is the human telos; the goal or end point that we are meant to grow into, the level of love that is humanly possible.

The Christian free will defense says that God has to risk all the bad by giving us free will because love and moral decision making require free will. the atheist says we can side step the unpleasant choice of actually choosing wrongly just by God zapping us into perfection and we can still have free will. I say that is making philosophical zobmies who have not actually learned to love but merely carrying out programing.

There's a lot we can learn from this thinking even without the free will/Theodicy busienss. We can learn the difficulty of love and how hard it is to actually go through the process of learning to be what God meant us to be. In so dong we must learn that it's impossible without God's grace. That's part of the lesson, learning to rely on God.


 I swear they are getting stupider. They so desperate to win they don't read anything, they don't even read the answers in a given thread. They say any BS they think of and they assume their answers are so perfect and so brilliant they don't even need to extend.

My Answer on Amputees

Rex, reader and commenter on this blog, has argued that I did not respond to answer the famous amputee question. He has a spin on  it, the idea that scientists may invent a way to replaced lost limbs, thus science does better than God or some such:

Next time you rail about someone avoiding the issues that you bring up, I am going to refer you to this comment string.

I brought up the concept of amputees potentially being healed by technology in ways that you say that gawd is unwilling or unable to do because it would disrupt his "reality" and you totally ignored the point of the comment.

I know that I did it with condescension and sarcasm, as is our norm, and those were the only things you commented on.'tsamatter, no response for the scientists beating gawd to the punch on the amputee issue? Or are you busy reading 200 studies about it?

Atheists will go to so many great lengths to justify their laziness in reading those studies.

Just arguing that science can do something and God can't is ridiculous. Science is not beating God to the punch if God has chosen not to do something that humans figure out to do on their own. Obviously God left it for us to do. My over all answer to the amputee thing (why doesn't God hate amputees becuase he wont heal them) answers the question at the top, so the question of humans "beating God to the punch" is just a side effect of God leaving it for us today anyway. Thus if my original answer answers the problem as a whole then the argument Rex interjects here is irrelevant.

I will now demonstrate why my answer works.

fist the answer comes in two stages:

I. Hypothetical argument about Ground of Being vs big man in the sky.

This hypothetical argument is designed to demonstrate that the atheist's argument is based upon the old Atheist straw man that Christians believe in God who is a big man in the sky. Why wont the big man in the sky help us? this is basically what they are saying. The basis for this argument is the fact that theism has as a foundational principle the notion that God is beyond our understanding. We are either second guessing to explain anything about God or we are trying to vocalize experiences of God that can't be put into words. But conclusions atheist draw form the surface appearance of things are just as invalid and anything theists say.

Given that understanding, the hypothetical would argue "what if God is so far above human understand that his way of thinking about such things is just off scale and we can't understand it. In other words we can't say what God's reasons are so why try?

At this point the atheist will say "you are just appareling to the old no one knows the mind of God bromide." That would be a good rejoinder if, and only if, I then came back and tried to say that I understand God's motives. There's no logical problem with positing the notion of a 'force' or an 'entity' or even a 'mind' above our understanding. The problem is when we try to then claim that we understand it. The fact of the matter is that as an adherent of mystical theology I always argue that we understand anything. But what we know we know without understanding. Just as a baby knows it's mother's love, it does not have to know where they live, why the mother chose to live there, how she's regarded in society or what she did for a living before the birth, all the baby needs to know is that it is loved. It can know and know it for a positive fact without understanding much about that.

The problem is atheists don't really believe in love. They tend to be more cynical than skeptical. Thus they  will no doubt balk at the idea that infants can experience being loved and can know that they are loved. Be that as it may, it's just an analogy. The argument is we can know certain things as certainties without understanding everything about them and we can know them experimentally without proving them empirically or them scientifically. Thus the fact that God is beyond our understanding might give us reason to assume that God's thought processes are very different than ours and we can't second guess his reasons or lack of reasons in dealing with people they way he does or does not do.

Now this becomes a useless doge when it's used as a smokescreen to cover human rationalizations for temporal power. Such situations are easy to spot and the "no one knows the mind of God" theory is easy to discord when we see clearly that temporal power is at steak. No dictatorial regime is hiding behind the amputee thing.

Let's not forget this is a hypothetical answer. There's another hypothetical answer which makes a different assumption. Rather than assume we can't know any of God's plans this other answer assumes that we can figure some of them out becasue they are the only thing that makes sense given the perimeters of belief.

That leads to the second hypothetical answer:

II. Soteriological Drama

This is my approach to the free will defense. As I said this approach assumes we figure out some of God's desires and plans based upon a combination of experience, special revelation and logic.


Basic assumptions


There are three basic assumptions that are hidden, or perhaps not so obivioius, but nevertheless must be dealt with here.

(1) The assumption that God wants a "moral universe" and that this value outweighs all others.


The idea that God wants a moral universe I take from my basic view of God and morality. Following in the footsteps of Joseph Fletcher (Situation Ethics) I assume that love is the background of the moral universe (this is also an Augustinian view). I also assume that there is a deeply ontological connection between love and Being. Axiomatically, in my view point, love is the basic impitus of Being itself. Thus, it seems reasonable to me that, if morality is an upshot of love, or if love motivates moral behavior, then the creation of a moral universe is essential.


(2) that internal "seeking" leads to greater internalization of values than forced compliance or complaisance that would be the result of intimidation.

That's a pretty fair assumption. We all know that people will a lot more to achieve a goal they truly beileve in than one they merely feel forced or obligated to follow but couldn't care less about.

(3)the the drama or the big mystery is the only way to accomplish that end.

The pursuit of the value system becomes a search of the heart for ultimate meaning,that ensures that people continue to seek it until it has been fully internalized.

The argument would look like this:


(1)God's purpose in creation: to create a Moral Universe, that is one in which free moral agents willingly choose the Good.

(2) Moral choice requires absolutely that choice be free (thus free will is necessitated).

(3) Allowance of free choices requires the risk that the chooser will make evil choices

(4)The possibility of evil choices is a risk God must run, thus the value of free outweighs all other considerations, since without there would be no moral universe and the purpose of creation would be thwarted.


This leaves the atheist in the position of demanding to know why God doesn't just tell everyone that he's there, and that he requires moral behavior, and what that entails. Thus there would be no mystery and people would be much less inclined to sin.

This is the point where Soteriological Drama figures into it. Argument on Soteriological Drama:


(5) Life is a "Drama" not for the sake of entertainment, but in the sense that a dramatic tension exists between our ordinary observations of life on a daily basis, and the ultiamte goals, ends and purposes for which we are on this earth.

(6) Clearly God wants us to seek on a level other than the obvious, daily, demonstrative level or he would have made the situation more plain to us

(7) We can assume that the reason for the "big mystery" is the internalization of choices. If God appeared to the world in open objective fashion and laid down the rules, we would probably all try to follow them, but we would not want to follow them. Thus our obedience would be lip service and not from the heart.

(8) therefore, God wants a heart felt response which is internationalized value system that comes through the search for existential answers; that search is phenomenological; introspective, internal, not amenable to ordinary demonstrative evidence.


In other words, we are part of a great drama and our actions and our dilemmas and our choices are all part of the way we respond to the situation as characters in a drama.

This theory also explains why God doesn't often regenerate limbs in healing the sick. That would be a dead giveaway. God creates criteria under which healing takes place, that criteria can't negate the overall plan of a search.

Objection:

One might object that this couldn't outweigh babies dying or the horrors of war or the all the countless injustices and outrages that must be allowed and that permeate human history. It may seem at first glance that free will is petty compared to human suffering. But I am advocating free will for the sake any sort of pleasure or imagined moral victory that accrues from having free will, it's a totally pragmatic issue; that internalizing the value of the good requires that one choose to do so, and free will is essential if choice is required. Thus it is not a capricious or selfish defense of free will, not a matter of choosing our advantage or our pleasure over that of dying babies, but of choosing the key to saving the babies in the long run,and to understanding why we want to save them, and to care about saving them, and to actually choosing their saving over our own good.

In deciding what values outweigh other values we have to be clear about our decision making paradigm. From a utilitarian standpoint the determinate of lexically ordered values would be utility, what is the greatest good for the greatest number? This would be determined by means of outcome, what is the final tally sheet in terms of pleasure over pain to the greatest aggregate? But why that be the value system we decide by? It's just one value system and much has been written about the bankruptcy of consequentialist ethics. If one uses a deontological standard it might be a different thing to consider the lexically ordered values. Free will predominates because it allows internalization of the good. The good is the key to any moral value system. This could be justified on both deontolgoical and teleological premises.

My own moral decision making paradigm is deontological, because I believe that teleological ethics reduces morality to the decision making of a ledger sheet and forces the individual to do immoral things in the name of "the greatest good for the greatest number." I find most atheists are utilitarians so this will make no sense to them. They can't help but think of the greatest good/greatest number as the ultaimte adage, and deontology as empty duty with no logic to it. But that is not the case. Deontology is not just rule keeping, it is also duty oriented ethics. The duty that we must internalize is that ultimate duty that love demands of any action. Robots don't love. One must freely choose to give up self and make a selfless act in order to act from Love. Thus we cannot have a loved oriented ethics, or we cannot have love as the background of the moral universe without free will, because love involves the will.

The choice of free will at the expense of countless lives and untold suffering cannot be an easy thing, but it is essential and can be justified from either deontolgoical or teleological perspective. Although I think the deontologcial makes more sense. From the teleological stand point, free will ultimately leads to the greatest good for the greatest number because in the long run it assumes us that one is willing to die for the other, or sacrifice for the other, or live for the other. That is essential to promoting a good beyond ourselves. The individual sacrifices for the good of the whole, very utilitarian. It is also deontolgocially justifiable since duty would tell us that we must give of ourselves for the good of the other.

Thus anyway you slice it free will outweighs all other concerns because it makes available the values of the good and of love. Free will is the key to ultimately saving the babies, and saving them because we care about them, a triumph of the heart, not just action from wrote. It's internalization of a value system without which other and greater injustices could be foisted upon an unsuspecting humanity that has not been tought to choose to lay down one's own life for the other.

Put the two hypothetical answers together:

It's more acute to combine these two then it seems at first. The reason is because there has to be a core of mystery preserved for the answer on two to make full sense vis-a-vi the amputee question.

The core of mystery allows for God to be bigger than our understanding. It allows for ultimate reasons we can't know. That's not an excuse to get off the hook because it can't be tied to shielding temporal power, it has to be motivated by noetic qualities (learning) derived from experience of the divine.

So the ream in which we can speculate tells us that God can't be so obvious about working in the world as to remove all doubt, because that would destroy the point of creating free moral agents who care capable of feeling choosing the good. No one has to search for truth that is self evident. No one has to seek to find that something hold us to the surface of the earth, we may not understand what it is, but we know ti's there we call it "gravity" (which is in itself a secular version of "no one knows the mind of..."). Science falls back its own mysteries when it is convient to do so.

Thus God works through zones of faith. Why? Because if the faithful believe already and are seeking the good then having their doubt removed will not destroy the project, because they are seeking the good anyway. But it can't be so obvious that no one will doubt. If the world were that way, no one would doubt God exists because anytime anything bad happened it would be fixed supernaturally just with the first hint of a prayer, then everyone would be believe but no one would be happy. Humans do not enjoy being told what to do. If we feel we have no alternative we will resent having to do it, If everyone believed God existed and there was no question, people would still sin, but they would resent God for not allowing them to do so. No one would seek in their heart.

Another missing piece of the puzzle is that God make structures that run autonomously through the laws of physics. The universe is made to work this way. The human structure has evolved to a point where we are not flat worms and we don't grow limbs back then they are cut off. That humans can figure out ways to cross thread the gadgetry of nature and perhaps grow back limbs (they haven't done it yet) doesn't change the facts above becuase since God isn't' doing it it doesn't violate the principle of the search for  the values of the good.

Put it all together and this is my answer on the amputee thing

(1) The rarity of God's use of SN healing is due to the need to respect the integrity of the search for truth that all people are required to engage in (which is for the purpose of gaining the values of the good as a result of the search).

(2) As a result of this need for "hidden God" God works SN healing only in certain "zones" or parameters (faith for example).

(3) God's ultimate reasons are beyond our understanding and the callused used to know the ultimate viability of the plan is also beyond us,or even the possibly that there is no plan other than evolution is also beyond us.

(4) We have structures such that nature runs on its autonomously but in harmony with divine will. That harmony can bend toward God's SN effects when the time is right, but it can also resist such effects and going beyond the stricture is not within the parameters.

(5) That humans can figure out an answer to the problem themselves doe snot jeopardize the search, thus God allows this as a result of human evolution, which God put in place, using the brains God gave us so in a sense it's the way God wants to do it, with us doing for ourselves.