601. The truth in religion

Comment #84470 by phasmagigas on November 2, 2007 at 5:46 am

"attempting to par away the meat bit by bit to attempt to get honestly to the rod"

what were you doing? trying to blow a fat guy?

i'll get my coat

i'll agree that donner meat is particularly fatty.

602. The truth in religion

Comment #84467 by phasmagigas on November 2, 2007 at 5:32 am

in the UK they are called donnar kebabs, in the USA they are called gyros.

When i think of science/religion i think of the rotating meat on a rod.

The truth (whatever it is) is the metal rod and it may well include god for all I know.

The meat however obfuscates and hides the rod. Religion coninually packs more meat upon the rod, the meat is various, often meaningless and often contradicting, eg there is no limbo but there was (really?), you cannot eat pork, you must kill apostates, bananas are the 'atheist nightmare' (what about pomegranates-a test of patience?)love your neighbour, kill those who work on sunday, dont drink alcohol, drink wine, remove foreskin, drip water on head, all fag enablers go to hell, confession makes you forgiven but all catholics still go to hell according to muslims, god guided evolution, god used special creation, and that doesnt include anything from the other 1000's of religions/cultures across the world, anyway you get the idea.

Note the meat doesnt have to be in the form of a scripture or dogma, it consists of all possible variants of religious based thought, a seperate chat with 10 creationists will pack at least 3 gyros worth of unfalsifiable and probably contradicting nonsense, ask another 10 just what is hell and what determines if you get there and you'll have another couple of gyros worth of meat packed on there.

I see science in attempting to par away the meat bit by bit to attempt to get honestly to the rod but the religious mind is persistent and just cannot fail to keep packing that rancid flesh.

603. What's the evolutionary advantage of offering your place to an old woman on a bus?

Comment #83158 by phasmagigas on October 29, 2007 at 5:35 am

by offering your seat you ultimately increase your selection of female partners, those that see the good act and then those that can know of the good act. The act 'feels' good for the same reason that orgasm and eating feels good the useful act and pleasure go hand in hand to reinforce the act. However......

I think the "attract a mate" and "please the townsfolk" explanations fail if you'd still do it when they aren't around.

a good point but you only give up a seat on a crowded bus anyway!! :) seriously though if you found an old lady hurt on a deserted country lane you would still help her (there are still people who can know of your deed) but id be suprised by any individual who didnt feel even better about it if there were suddenly people appearing and seeing the help first hand. indeed a good deed unseen might make one feel a bit cheated?????? anyway id be suprised if a young male who gave up his seat would prefer to have done it in front of a bus full of men rather than one full of young attractive women.

good deeds tend to lead to reciprocity but thats another story.

604. Evolution to be taught in SA schools

Comment #82871 by phasmagigas on October 28, 2007 at 4:57 am

Matters came to a head after snippets of a video, Tiny Humans: Finding Hobbits in Flores, was shown. The video traces the origin of tiny prehistoric humans somewhere on an Indonesian island. They are depicted as short and dark-skinned people. This offended some black teachers. They said that evolution was a racist theory. It "terribly undermines black people, everything bad gets a black colour. It means blacks were apes," they said.

this sums up quite well just how poorly educated (at least missing modern biology anyway) some people are and how poorly represented evolution is.

If only the person quoted realised that the flores folk were likely black for living in the tropics and that all humans are apes then there would be no problem.

the real tragedy here is that evolution is the framework that dispels racist myths from our culture. ironically it is white conservative christians who like to maintain them, their supposed superior place in the universe undermined when evolutionary evidence places all people equally diverged from our common ancestors.

Its a double edged sword, seems that evolution falsley applied for nefarious reasons can be used to suggest that black people are closer to apes than non blacks (and theres a false dichotomy if there ever was one:black/non-black))so its opposed and then on the other edge it can be opposed again if applied properly, as accepting it doest give racists their falsely implied priveleged position (in relation to what? God?)

seems that these people really do need to be taught evolution, what an incredible tool for seeing through bullshit. SA has a lot of catching up.

605. Arguments Against Evolution

Comment #81746 by phasmagigas on October 25, 2007 at 5:56 am

'in view of our special position in creation give me the reason why god has us share about 98% of our genome with chimpanzees but a bit less with gorillas, and a bit less still with orang utan'.

* note that each creationist you ask will give you a different answer *

606. Arguments From Design, First Cause, Something Rather Than Nothing, Fundamental Constants

Comment #81728 by phasmagigas on October 25, 2007 at 5:27 am

we are biased towards 'something' because we are and surrounded by the 'something', maybe we should ask the question 'why is there nothing' theres no reason to suppose that there should be something rather than nothing.

If there was nothing there would be no god, if there is something then you dont need a god.

607. Atheism is a religion and you're as bad as the fundamentalists

Comment #81441 by phasmagigas on October 24, 2007 at 6:09 pm

'so you are saying my nonsense is as bad as your nonsense'

608. That's not MY God or Religion you're criticising

Comment #81437 by phasmagigas on October 24, 2007 at 6:00 pm

'but there is only ONE god yes? then it must be yours'

609. You can't prove that you love someone, so don't expect proof of God

Comment #81430 by phasmagigas on October 24, 2007 at 5:55 pm

a slightly silly rebuttal but looks like we are getting a good selection of rebuttals for different people and on different occasions! I have already started picking my favourite bits, seems we need soundbites too.

if i hit your thumb with a hammer you will shout out in pain, I have proved (by most peoples standards) that your brain has experienced a sensation and by your logic you should also be able to show me evidence for god.

610. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #81300 by phasmagigas on October 24, 2007 at 2:53 pm

decius.

I believe that we need to debate further the knighthood issue. I would much appreciate if Richard could clarify his position, in order to settle the controversy which has ensued between those who take a dim view on the matter and the others

im not sure the RD knighhood needs to be in the debate section, i think RD suggested the debate section for the core issues, religion,evo etc, im not sure RD would even include his possible knighthood as of remote importance in comparison.

611. Atheism is a religion and you're as bad as the fundamentalists

Comment #81292 by phasmagigas on October 24, 2007 at 2:41 pm

ok a quick one and work in progress:

To suggest that when i say 'i dont accept there is a god' is a religion, then the definition of religion must be substantially broadened or changed entirely, I feel my words will have been give way to much significance.

'I dont accept there is a god' does not involve an exterior authority, dogma or ritual which if im not mistaken are common in the established religions.

If one has no dogma to adhere to then the accustaion of fundamentalism has no basis. 'i dont accept there is a god' is a personal stance not affiliated to any established dogma. If fundamentalism suggests that my stance cannot be changed then the accusation has no basis again, there are many events that i could witness that would make me change my mind, i have yet to see any of them.

612. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #81267 by phasmagigas on October 24, 2007 at 2:10 pm

putting heads together as such has got to be a good idea. this could be a very interesting thread/section.

once a debate point section has dozens of 'debate retorts' in then perhaps posters can start to use other posts to add/modify their own, eventually we many find a very strong debate point that has 'evolved' quite naturally from the input of maybe dozens of people, they will of course be continually modified to chase the othersides debate points, sounds a bit like the red queen here but hopefully alice will get ahead!!

613. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81150 by phasmagigas on October 24, 2007 at 9:18 am

i wonder if societies that survive today are the societies that just by chance slowly developed the 'right' morals.

If you were one of 10 individuls left on a desert island and you all secretly came to the conclusion that the only way to survive was to kill the others (without being noticed) then before long there would be one person left on the island and that society would vanish.

An equivalent group where the 10 decided that killing each other wasnt good would not befall that fate (assuming all else is favourable) and a society that practices 'no killing' would last longer, with time further group behaviour code selection would occur modifying and adding new elements, after all a huge intelligent society just HAS to have morals as it could never have developed without them but you would also predict that they didnt have to carried out to other huge societies hence why men murder childern in wartime. Right now I have a huge box of cockroachs that i use as livefood, they are getting a bit crowded at the moment and as some moult they do get eaten by others, however they still generally dont attack each other and so the colony continues, its kind of an 'already there' roach morality, so maybe roaches have their own god??



Of course a simple case of selection (think of the hundreds of similar little groups that would have broken away from our initial species members, as our speech and entire notion of self 'awakened' so came the chance for these moral experiments to be tried and tested!).

so our morals are kind of behavioural relics that worked in the past and are so engrained that they are unquestioned (although often broken-one wonders if a group of teenagers who beat a granny senseless, something that appears on the news in the UK quite often, realise that their act is wrong or have they become so dissociated from what the rest of the society feel is acceptable that that learned and NOT divinely given notion of morality just isnt present in their heads). anyway that makes sense to me.

I'm not sure why some people like to force the notion of divinely aquired morality, i just dont understand why that is necessary. where religion does teach morality then it is merely borrowed from that already there. Of course its BS, there were 1000's of pre christian cultures that had moral codes, surely similar to that of today.

614. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #80905 by phasmagigas on October 23, 2007 at 12:34 pm

I mean torturing children for fun would not be something our ancestors would with any probability find themselves doing one way or the other, so I can't see what kind of selection pressure could have applied in this case.

im sure that activities like this are suprisingly common across time where groups are at war, its probably happening right now.

615. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #80876 by phasmagigas on October 23, 2007 at 9:39 am

Yes, I can. If our male ancestors were child torturers and females at the time found child torturers sexually attractive, then the gene for child torturing would more likely be selected and we would all likely be child torturers from a long line of child tortuers, who had been tortured ourselves as a child.

interestingly one could exchange 'torture' for 'sexual activity between adult and child' and here i mean a biological child, usually seen as universally repugnant but there is that tribe/s in papua where the boys fellate the men in order to gain 'manhood' via ingested seminal fluid, I think they believe that if this is not carried out the individual stays/becomes a woman?? I forget where i read that.

Anyway obviously thats a cultural, not a genetic trait.

616. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #80873 by phasmagigas on October 23, 2007 at 9:33 am

The point is that some widely admired ethical precepts, such as that we should love our enemies, do not even make sense in a non-religious understanding of reality, and thus the origin of such precepts is religion.

maybe it is, it of course says nothing about god (and the author wasnt implying that i guess, but i said it anyway). Love your enemy I suppose is a nice abstract idea but just what does that mean??? it depends upon just what an enemy is in the first place, somebody who wants to kill/hurt you or maybe just somebody who lives in a country that your government is fighting. Either way until proof arrives in one way or the other, 'love your enemy' was written by man without god. saying that just who does love their enemies???? I have no enemies (that i know of) but If i could transport myself to a taliban quarter somewhere in the middle east I could well be seen as a suitable hostage/shooting practice/butchery practice or whatever, im not sure shouting 'i love you' (to my new found enemy) would do me any favour atall.

617. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #80829 by phasmagigas on October 23, 2007 at 6:25 am

You say that natural science can adjudicate on the supernatural, so this means that you are at least open to the possibility that the supernatural could be real.

if the 'supernarural' is real, then surely it becomes part of our ordinary natural world as steve99 suggests? its interesting that of so called supernatural things/events including magic, ghosts, esp, gods, demons, telekinesis, walking corpses, curses, premonition, wine to blood there is not in one single proven case in history of any of these things being real.

do not start asking just what do i mean by real, you put a knife to my neck and i feel it, thats real, you tell me youve put a curse on me, thats not real, when push comes to shove we all know what real is, all people sweat when a knife is pulled on them but not all jump when you say theres a ghost behind them, and for good reason.

The extent to which people can be utterly fooled into believeing this stuff can be demonstrated by the grotesque following of the equally grotesque sylvia browne, despite her blatently false claims, her criminal convictions, her body language and mannerisms (which to my mind readily demonstrates that fact thats shes constantly lying) she still appears on montel (i think) to a prozac fueled cheering bored audience who lap up every word she says (they must feel her $700 charge for a 30 minute telephone reading is reasonable), she could contradict her self many times per session and nobody would notice, let alone question her. Does she have any psychic ability whatsever, well i'll stick my neck out and say no. Its even more incredible that ive seen shows where people have tried to out sylvia as being a fraud......by 'real' psychics.

you can bet that the majority of the browne believers in the audience are also religious.

interestingly as a kid i loved reading arthur c clarkes mysterious world magazines/book where i suppose he is skeptical (i dont remember) but i do remember wanting to see a ghost very much, there came a point though when i was very sure that i was NEVER going to see a ghost, nothing so 'incredible' was going to happen, if it did happen it would somehow have totally shattered what i imagined could be real. i still havent seen a ghost.

heres the wierd thing for me, if I saw a ghost and the vision was corroborated by many and the general concensus was that the vision was indeed the soul of a dead person (ignoring all other possible explanations for now) then indeed the ghost whould have to be included in natural phenomena, so maybe in that respect it wouldnt shatter my world view, id think, ok, so ghosts, souls and hell, maybe therefor god is real BUT the thing is i have an absolute confidence that I will NEVER see a ghost to make this change to my view (i am open to the possibility that if it did happen that i would change my word view as a thought experiment). Why should one even contemplate ghosts other than as a figment of the imagination or as a fun component of a well written ghost story in the first place.

i suppose this is how i think about this stuff generally. Take miracles, if i fell from a building and a pair of wings sprouted from my back and took me to safety angel style and it was corroborated to the point where it had to be deemed real then it would absolutely shatter ny world view on what i can even imagine being real, the point though is this: I am NEVER going to sprout angel wings if I fall from a building, it just ISNT going to happen.

lastly that reminds me, this demonstrates the incedible lapses that the human mind is capable of, sylvia brown was asked to examine a family photo, to th eleft of the shot was an object 'in the way' looked a bit like a tree branch ir rock (it was suspiciously framed anyway) sylvia explained to th audience that it was actually one of the woman (in the photos) guardian angels wings! did the audience throw rotten fruit at her?? no, they all say with wide eyes believing every lie she spouted. Now maybe that audience isnt entirely representative of the US population (she was on montel) but it shows that reasonable thinking has a long way to go....

618. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #80534 by phasmagigas on October 22, 2007 at 4:53 am

But Plantinga's argument that the theory of natural evolution only shows that the evolution of the species might have been a blind process and not that it has been a blind process – is basically sound. His point is that the theory of evolution adds a valid alternative to the design hypothesis but does not falsify it, and thus we must now deal with the question of which belief is more reasonable

no reasonable evoltionist would disagree with you, we know it does not falsify design. but im still not sure of your original idea:

A great many theists disagree [with my thinking that hell makes no sense], perhaps the majority. Which makes me sometimes wonder whether theists in general are really closer to ontological truth than non-theists.

and i was thinking you meant this generally, not just relating to hell. Perhaps you should discuss hell with fred phelps, hes very sure of its existence, like you id agree there is no reason to suppose it is there but perhaps you should hear his argument for it.

edit: what i just realised is that you have said you dont accept hell as 'real' but that as theists dont agree on it or have different versions of it that that somehow makes it more likely to be true over the non theist view that its not there (not exclusively non theist of course). this makes no sense to me whatsoever although it suggests that you might accept that your are wrong on your belief in no hell!!

im not sure i need to be engaged in any conversation which even includes the possibility of hell, i really am wasting my time.

619. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #80531 by phasmagigas on October 22, 2007 at 4:48 am

dianelos:

I suspect nobody really can. So my guess is that no theist really believes in the reality of hell: they move their lips saying they do, maybe they try to believe in it, maybe they are scared shitless it might be true – but I don't think they actually do believe in it. By which I do not mean to justify those theists; quite on the contrary: they fail the test of intellectual honesty

DG, id be suprised here if you are not misrepresenting the majority of theistic people worldwide, you are giving them way too much credit. could the same lip service be said for belief in virgin births etc, etc, etc, you may not believe that stuff but many, many do.

620. Does fundamentalist religion cause the rejection of evolution? or is it the other way around?

Comment #80292 by phasmagigas on October 21, 2007 at 6:49 am

anti evo has unfortunately got on a big snowball and isnt going to get off at anytime soon.

Its quite common through general conversation (say about wildlife) to have laypeople talk to you fine and dandy about animal/plant x,y,z but as soon as you mention the word evolution you can get a funny look, a slap on the back and words to the effect of 'oh, youre one of those who believe all that evolution stuff, hahaha' and its like a joke to them.

it has been hijaked in popular culture to be the brunt of jokes and something that the masses like to throw stones at, and that just what the religious want it to remain as.

Evolution is almost personified and is firmly in the village stocks with the ignorant throwing rotten tomatos at it.

i always feel that belief in god is understandable but rejecting evolution is incredible. i wish the two could be separated as the rejection of evo leads to a rejection of science and reason generally. Id be happy to have people keep their god, just get their hands off evolution.

621. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #80289 by phasmagigas on October 21, 2007 at 6:36 am

As Dawkins wrote in his "River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life": "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.". But this implies that all our ideas about good or evil (including our judgment that the automata in our simulation evolve ethical behavior) are inventions. There is nothing really good or evil; and the logical implication is clearly that one shouldn't then really care about good or evil in the same way that one shouldn't care about anything that doesn't really exist.

I have always assumed that good/evil are emergent inventions that are manifest only in our heads just as something like pain is. it doesnt make it any less real to the body it occupies.

ive also never understood why a god is needed to have originally seeded the notion.

622. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #80283 by phasmagigas on October 21, 2007 at 6:02 am

Have done that already. Christians have many different ideas of heaven; some even think heaven will be some place here on Earth. But here it's you who used the concept of "heaven" so it's up to you to explain what you mean by it.

i'll end this one here. I was asking do you beieve in that place that most if not all christians believe, I dont know what it is either, so seems that neither do they and neither do you.

I dont accept that its there. As I dont believe its there there can be no description of it from my point of view other than 'that place that christians believe they will go to/where jesus is/where god is' or whatever they describe it as. If you wont give a simple yes/no asswer on the basis of me not providing a description of it then im at a loss. You dont seem to have a problem saying that you dont accept hell but if i ask the question 'do you believe in hell' would i need a description again, what do you want, fire, soot, devils and cinders.

thats the problem isnt it, if I ask you 'do you like scrambled egg' I can at least provide you with an example of scrambled egg on a plate and say this yellow heat denatured mass of blended chicken ovum but of course with subjects like heaven/hell whereby its impossible for me to provide a description, begs the question, is there anything to describe?

im rather fond of invertebrates, if somebody asks me 'why do you like bugs' I would rightfully be considered a complete fucking ass if i said 'now what exactly do you mean by bug? Are you referring to invertebrates generally, arthropods more specifically or even more specifically animals of the insect order Hemiptera generally termed 'bugs' by entomologists? please, make yourself clear when asking me a question'.

and dont actually bother replying to this one DG.

623. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #80152 by phasmagigas on October 20, 2007 at 9:01 am

dianelos:

I consider the Bible an ancient document which contains partly history, partly nationalistic mythology, partly poetry, and partly the ontological views of many different writers some of whom were inspired, some of whom were not, and some of whom did not care for truth but had a different agenda altogether.

sounds very reasonable but im not sure what you mean by inspired?

What is there to corroborate? It's a fact that some Christians believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, and that others don't believe that.

so christians should decide if is it the word of god or not, its quiet an important distinction I imagine. So why should anybody give the bible any special import over say the quran or the maori mythology if they decide it isnt.

Are you asking why that it is? Because they do not think critically, and they moreover implicitly trust the opinion of other people they fancy are authoritative. Which, as far as I am concerned, is the same reason why many people are impressed by TGD

im not sure there are many people reading TGD repeatedly and seeing each and every word as some type of truth or throwing paragraphs out online and saying 'see, its in TGD'.

Now that's an easy question to answer: If God had really literally written the Bible then the Bible would be perfect as any book can possibly be, but it obviously isn't – not by far.

DG, I am wasting my time asking these questions as are you answering them, they would be better used on other believers as aside from the god bit we probably agree on more than you do with most of 'them'.

624. Christopher Hitchens at AAI 07

Comment #80136 by phasmagigas on October 20, 2007 at 6:33 am

The intent of the device is simply to drive home the point: we do not get our morals from religion.

good point.

by attempting to make hitchens challenge a false one through the metaphysiscs of argument is absurd.

He is making a statement that stands alone.

It would be a bit like james randis million $ offer for a display of paranormal phenomana in tested conditions being laughed at because the proponents of the paranormal said they never asked to be tested. (well i think it might work like that, logic isnt my strong point).

625. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #80134 by phasmagigas on October 20, 2007 at 6:06 am

Yes, that would be the easy solution, but it has a deep problem: If we are to allow that animal suffering does not really exist no matter how realistic it looks, on what grounds can we justify that other peoples' suffering does exist? In the case of insects one could argue that they are nothing but automata (i.e. are no conscious beings and therefore do not have any experiences including experiences of pain) and if they appear to us to hurt then we are only projecting. But this line of argument hardly works with higher animals. Anybody who has spent some time with mammals knows that their pain is real enough.

dianelos, this is the first time ive read a post by you and thought 'i totally share your belief' re the mammal pain bit.

Its interesting though that ive met peole who have suggested that animals are automata, no soul, no thoughts, no pain and the basis was that only people have those as they are unique in gods universe, its an example of where concensus is required, of course there are believers (im sure the majority of them) who accept animals (at some level of complexity) do have sentience, indeed ive met christians who say there is a special place in heaven for dogs, again, concensus needed, im not sure muslims woud accept that in general.

In the same way that awareness 'appears' as a human embryo grows then the same probably happened/ing as animal brains increase in complexity, one wonders when it happens, im sure octopus and lizards have a fair amount of awareness but a protozoan wont (id be suprised if there was ever evidence for a thinking paramecium), I give them (octo and lizard in this case) the benefit of the doubt anyway, i think that is the only 'moral' thing to do. If i hauled an octopus out the se and left it to dessicate slowly in the sun I would feel very bad about that, I would question myself very carefully for doing that, unless I was starving on a raft and had no choice.

I wouldnt be suprised if insects didnt have any awareness though, im not sure they even need it, thir physical attributes and high fecundity mean they dont really need to think, well i guess anyway, dont quote me. at the other end of the scale our soft bodies and low fecundity mean that thought is paramount to our survival.

DG, its interesting that you posit mammals self awareness as being evidential through contact in the same way that it is when we are in contact with people. I find it annoying that the religious argument ('can you prove your wife loves you') is then also applied to animal awareness.

The evidence to my mind is clear, the interactions between the human and animal are so close to that between person/person that one is forced to extrapolate (i think youll agree it would be 'wicked' to not do so) that they do think and feel pain/pleasure.

when my dog sneezes, sulks, or enjoys his food I see that these are behaviours/feelings that our common ancestor might well have had, well perhaps sulking came later during the socialisation stage (of humans and canines separately, or indeed maybe when the two joined forces-maybe wolf pups sulk too though)but anyway to suggest that it only 'looks' like they are feeling pleasure or thinking is from a bread and butter perspective indefensible.

When i give our dogs a new toy, their excitement is obvious, im not sure why an automaton should act excited (as we see it) when its presented with novelty, i cannot see why natural selection (and i think many wild animals show excitement with a nowel plaything) would do this, one has to assume the animal is actually finding the new thing fun in the way that we do. eg the novelty of opening RD.net to find a new reply to reply to!!

edit. for sure 'naturalists' also debate on animal sentience but whatever the concensus I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt (to a point: i would cook and eat a prawn but i wouldnt pin a chicken to my wall for the fun of it). Lets just say that if an advanced alien intelligence arrive here i'd like them to give me the benefit of the doubt too!!

626. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #80126 by phasmagigas on October 20, 2007 at 5:25 am

Surely you are not saying that, by the same measure, naturalists should not defend or argue their position before they too have come to a generally agreed consensus among themselves? What about, for a start, agree about whether there is one universe or many, and if many about how many exactly?

I agree that there are contradicting ideas in science. reasonable scientists want to know what is out there and with questions like one/infinite universes things of course get rather tricky, this is rather a different kettle of fish than the differences that believers might like to throw around like should one drink or not drink alcohol, should one die for apostasy, the bread and butter things that affect people on a day to day basis.

Im not sure the religious community WANTS concensus, whereas a 'naturalist' would surely want concensus, i for one would.

627. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79956 by phasmagigas on October 19, 2007 at 8:34 am

bluejway.

Thank you science and especially the specific kind of science of controlled experiments, for that is the only way of knowing

well it certainly is a good way of knowing, I and many here would be already dead (assuming a direct affect here) if it wasnt for the trusted scientific method (its reasonable to suppose that 'ventolin' actually stopped me from dying as a kid from suffocation and antibiotics saved me on several occasions, we probably dont realise how often without those things that we'd have died quite quickly from that 'little infection')

As for the only way of knowing maybe not but people with 'other ways of knowing' have yet to prove any of their claims (and a certain large financial incentive has yet to encourage any of those -not ONE person worldwide- with 'other ways of knowing' to reveal for sure their 'other ways of knowing' and run away with enough $$ to make them independant for a while), think of some famous ones, the incredible sylvia browne who as a medium makes quite a fortune from her other ways of knowing, oh and that uri geller bloke.

actually i'll make an exception, a family member of mine is a recent islamic convert and she 'knows' that allah exists, now as i think she a nice trustworthy person anyway, she just cannot possibly be wrong, if there is a god then it must be allah, afterall my family member isnt going to lie to me is she?

628. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79928 by phasmagigas on October 19, 2007 at 5:23 am

A great many theists disagree, perhaps the majority. Which makes me sometimes wonder whether theists in general are really closer to ontological truth than non-theists

anybody else out there agree with this? DG, can you back this statement up please as its confusing me, right now the BS detector in my head is starting to flash but maybe im missing the point.

details aside, theists have a world view, god is there, and non theists view is the opposite, theres really only 2 versions (DG, do not start with anything here about ontological ontologies and how many versions there are as it wont make sense to me, it will be wasted on me).

it would be like saying that as scientists are unsure of the details of evolution (as an example) that its therefore more likey to be true, funnily enough most creationists use this as a ridiculous argument against evolution and i would be laughed out of any debate to suggest it was good reason to suspect it true.

damn, i keep falling for the bait, maybe i should join a christian forum and start telling them that their ontological worldview is only one of many and probably the wrong one because only 1 in 10 americans are atheistic, and that suggests that their ontological worldview is closer to the truth than that of the other 9 of 10. I will be welcomed with open arms im sure.

629. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79836 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 4:55 pm

doc benway

The correlation between brain stimulation, observed behavior, and subjective report is far more convincing than any thought experiment you might describe.

eek, you mean like you pop your finger in the brain and tickle it and the patient laughs,I think i may just faint!! :)

630. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79751 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 12:25 pm

Now I would like to make clear that I don't take my ethics from scripture; I take my ethics from some place within me, and under that light I judge what's written in scripture or anywhere else. And it is in this sense that I find the main body of Jesus' ethics as described in the gospels to be both coherent and really excellent, I mean so perfect that I cannot imagine any other ethical code being better than that

hang on. so what DG is saying is something like: my ethics come from within me, I then judge scriptural ethics and somehow the scripture matches? my morals so is excellent and better than anything else.

very strange. edit, actually if you think about it , if you were conversing with somebody one to one in the flesh and they said this you would feel you were dealing with a very unusual person indeed. Dianelos, that paragraph regarding your ethics excellence is almost disturbing, its like something youd hear in the film se7en. no offence.

631. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79748 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 12:18 pm

You're right. How about flagging Dianelos for spamming? Anyone?

DG is a spammer of sorts by constantly making assertions and asserting that any other positions are not valid as they are not his personal ontological beliefs and by asserting that his worldview is just somehow closer to truth than anybody elses. the whole exercise becomes incredibly tedious. i think we all get sick of having definitions of definitions of definitions pushed all over the place.


eg.

I don't know what you mean by "heaven"

DG knows exacly what i mean by heaven, if he doesnt know what i mean by heaven (and im not the one asserting heaven is a 'real' place) he needs to jump to a christian formum and debate the intricies of the afterlife with them as it seems central to many peoples beliefs.

632. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79743 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 11:58 am

dianelos:

I submit that the fact that so many people are naturalists is explained by the fact that they have not actually studied what naturalism implies

im not sure what to make of that comment, does anybody?

633. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79719 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 10:15 am

Personally, I don't really approve of flagging anyone as a troll

to my mind trolls need to be abusive

634. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79712 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 9:46 am

But, still, for a naturalist to play the ethics card is like a donkey saying to a rooster that it has big head

dianelos, do you feel that without your religious beliefs you would be more immoral (in the generally accepted sense of the word-whatever that may be)? if so, just what do you think you would do or not do that is different now.

you could try an experiment.

Go to an atheist convention in the USA and wear a big t shirt saying 'i believe in god' and walk around saying it repeatedly, record the result on videotape and study it later.

Go to a christian megachurch in the USA and wear a big t shirt saying 'i dont believe in god' and walk around saying it repeatedly, record the result on videotape and study it later.

Go to a large mosque in london UK (i dont know of any as such in the USA)and wear a big t shirt saying 'i dont believe in god' and walk around saying it repeatedly, record the result on videotape and study it later.

edit. the experiment might show something like 'the reaction of various groups to an individual not sharing their ontological worldview and presenting it in an annoying and obvious way.

635. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79708 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 9:31 am

dianelos

I mean neither you nor I believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, so we both expect to find errors in it.

please corroborate this with other christians, I hear every description of the bible from literal to metaphorical and all inbetween, on what basis is it not the word of god, many christians beleive it is, although most muslims i have met say the same thing about the quran instead of the bible and even then they themselves have not come to a common concensus on how it is to interpreted. i am getting more and more confused.

636. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79707 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 9:20 am

Donald:

nice post. good old cognitive dissonance from the flea.

637. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79695 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 7:42 am

steve99

It is basically a carefully-crafted delusion that allows one to hide from the uncomfortable truth.

in fairness that post wasnt thrown at DG, i didnt want to open a multifarious and nefarious can of worms regarding animal souls, pain, experience, or even what does one mean by rough herbage and sunny days.

delusions could be quite useful though:

'phasmagigas what are you doing on the floor again?'

'erm, im not sure, i was just walking a moment ago'

'but you have no legs, remember, they were blown off in that london attack'

'bollocks, I only have no legs in the accepted, neo capitalistic, dogmatic physician, quasi scientific western sense'

(the above is all fiction by the way but i just felt like writing it)

638. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79687 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 7:03 am

steve99

Dianelos is also master of the false dichotomy. If there are flaws in our current understanding of naturalism (or, rather in Dianelos' straw-man version) this MUST mean the only alternative is theism. There is at least one other option: We don't know everything yet. However, for Dianelos, "I dunno" is not good enough.

theistic vs uncaring universe:

if one spends an hour sat still amongst some rough herbage on a warm summer day one can see 'evidence' for that uncaring universe, each and every intricate creature and leaf is doing its very best to avoid being eaten and those doing the eating are doing their best to do the eating. lastyear I remember disturbing a large grasshopper that jumped close to a praying mantis that i hadnt even seen (the large non-native chinese mantis that we get around here) anyway, the mantis got the grasshopper and over a horrible hour, ate the thing from the back end forward. Now lets ignore all notions of mans special place/awareness but i thought if there was a god couldnt it have had the hopper get eaten front end first or even had the mantis dispatch it quicker with those nice sharp squewers at the front of its tibia, no, the mantis nibbled, yes, nibbled with its strong though quite small mandibles until all that remained was a still twitching head!! Insects, like humans dont die that quickly, i suppose its something to do with the amount of oxygen they can get and how quickly they use it.

anyway, if the universe was a caring one we'd see a world with the type of wishful thinking nonsense that you find on jehovas witness pamphlets, you know the lion and the lamb lying together, the child and the panda playing together(do pandas eat children in the real world??).

the above is all mere musing, please take it as such.

639. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79683 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 6:42 am

bluejway.

You have no clue and do not have the intellectual tools to make sense of the very solid and tangible points he made in his first 20 minutes

What are we missing? its important to educate not insult, please explain those points by mc grath that we are failing to understand.

If somebody says to me 'evolution is nonsense as it says we come from monkeys' i dont tell them they lack the intellectual ability to understand it, i will literally find a piece of paper/pen and draw a rough family tree and explain how evolution predicts that we do not come from monkeys but share a common ancestor with them, that ancestor might have been 'monkey like', i will tell them thats the prediction, I will also say (if they are still listening)that their initial statement (irrespective of their acceptence/non acceptence of evolution)that 'evolution is nonsense as it says we come from monkeys' was therefore false. (i use this as an example as ive heard this argument several times)

if they accept it fine, if not, fine, its upto them.

the point im making is that if you hear somebody say something and you feel they are honestly misunderstanding it then one should step in and engage in some explaining.

PS and when I do my explaining bit i dont do it all smugly and 'im right' but in a more 'well this is what the theory as it stands predicts' youd be suprised at the positive response you can get!!

640. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79678 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 6:24 am

whan a theist asks 'where do you (atheist) get your morals from?' I should reply 'thats a very good question, just where do my morals come from? its not from god or scripture (i dont believe and I dont read scripture), but they come from somewhere and as long as i have them thats enough for me.'

641. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79675 by phasmagigas on October 18, 2007 at 6:13 am

dianelos:

I'll do that (prove god)just after you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that an uncaring, universe-directing "physical" mechanism exists

im not sure DG is interested in truth, just carrying on the schoolground tradition.

It is you who are ADDING something that we dont accept is there so i think the onus is on you to do the first bit or proving.

the uncaring universe is perhaps a more reasonable default setting to be falsified (and dont start with all that ontological business, weve had it all before), well its not proof but when i see people and other animals happily going about their lives i just know (in the traditional sense of the word that most people tend to use on a day to day basis, you know, that time iterval drawn between complete revolutions of the earth, just incase you were wondering what my ontological version of day meant) that every single one of them (except a lucky few where the end is obscured by hospital opiates (or whatever they use) are going to meet with a rather miserable and unhappy end, happy spring birds by cat, by cold, by parasite, by starvation. Oh and even that pastor/minister or whatever he was with the 2 wetsuits and dildo death (he did at least use a condom, thats grace for you) you can of course say that they (oh,no, only people and only those that fulfil specific criteria) will bypass that suffering for eternal bliss.

if christians died and they suddenly turned into a twinkling beautiful vapour that swept upwards and muslims bloated and decayed unceremoniously like any ather animal i'd be quite certain to believe that some unknown force that christians had the right idea about was at hand, but of course it doesnt happen like that.

DG can i suggest that before you inundate us with more arguments that you spend some time talking to fellow theists, the problem is we non believers have a hard time understanding just what part of theistic belief to accept, they all feel they have it right, as do you. IM not sure if i should accept your non acceptance of hell, or fred phelps acceptance of it, and thats quite a big issue, please go to the godhatesfags website and talk it out with him, once youve ascertained if there is a hell or not (and please dont start rambling on about what constitutes reality or how we perceive it) comeback to us. hell is a big deal for most believers so i feel this is important.

anyway in a nutshell, come back when you have figured out through long discourse with various believers which god we are talking about, also was jesus devine? is there a hell? is there a heaven? is the komba god just a baka myth or the one true god? what constitutes a sin? did god guide evolution or simply make us very similar to apes just for the fun of it. how should the bible be interpreted (whatever the hell 'interpretation' means). get back to us in a few years when you have come to a general agreed concensus with your fellow believers and then maybe we can start talking.

642. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79550 by phasmagigas on October 17, 2007 at 4:41 pm

Obviously, because we don't know whether gods exist or not

I agree.

Indeed: the moral Zeitgeist has slowly but steadily come closer to Jesus' ethics.

ah, back to jesus. if the zeitgeist exactly matched jesus ethics (what are they and how would one ascertain they did match) of what significance is this?

643. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79547 by phasmagigas on October 17, 2007 at 4:33 pm

Theists need an asshole like Hitchens to shake you guys out of your comfort zone.

maybe theists need as asshole like Hitchens to shake THEM out of their comfort zone.

actually another theist asshole is that bill donahue, remember his words to hitchens: 'when the irish man is talking, the english man must listen'. Try substituting the word english for mexican/italian/african/iranian and see how far that would get donahue.

i agree though that ad hominem attacks on AM are not needed aside from the fact that he evaded just about every question thrown at him and turned it into a sermon.

644. Help Counter the New Atheist Crusade to 'Evangelize' America!

Comment #79462 by phasmagigas on October 17, 2007 at 10:17 am

so its a case of your BS is as bad as our BS but listen to ours anyway.

ugh, that horrible americanism (as it has come to seem to me) 'for your gift' it makes me cringe just like 'unconditional love' 'i believe' 'grace'......... sounds like an (soap)oprah show, shudder.

645. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79404 by phasmagigas on October 17, 2007 at 7:22 am

For me a cry-baby is somebody who at the face of a great number of people who are in much worse situation makes a big fuss about their own situation.

holy moses, this was written by the king of ontological ontology???????

To my judgment an atheist gay man living in Britain today decrying the Aglican Church's discrimination against gays when that Church is one of the most advanced in this issue and when in atheist regimes homosexuals fared much worse – displays a classical case of cry-babyhood

yes, that crybaby homosexual should be grateful he doesnt live in iran eh?? dianelos, you know for a fact that no atheists here (id be suprised if there were) would advocate a social system that discriminated against homosexuals, that is pure BS.

I personally know christians in my very neighbourhood who discriminate and dislike homosexual behaviour and even the people themselves and their main argument 'its against god' or 'its adam and eve, not adam and steve'. enough said.

646. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79399 by phasmagigas on October 17, 2007 at 7:06 am

perhaps C.H. could debate Joel Osteen; he's not aggressive, still, I'd like to see Joel taken down a peg or two:

bluebird, thanks for that link. looking at that stadium makes me almost feel physically sick. interesting how that which can produce almost orgasmic feelings in some is poison for others.

647. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79397 by phasmagigas on October 17, 2007 at 7:00 am

Let the Hitch get right into these mega church leaders and publicly destroy them. Like really take them apart and make sure that their followers know it

AM is just too gentile to be flayed publically, people are going to side with him irrespective of his ramblings because hes just so timid. A yelling, red faced, wealthy, seething and scripture hurling demagogue is just what believers need to see, just as long as hitch keeps his cool, he could seriously do some damage.

648. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79396 by phasmagigas on October 17, 2007 at 6:53 am

his non-evidence-based rants equate to a Sun editorial on immigration. No evidence from a man who claims reason.

walk through a southern town in the USA with a T shirt saying 'I love allah'.

walk through a mainly islamic area in London UK with a T shirt saying 'i hate allah'

see how long it takes before you are physically attacked.

ok, maybe not religion per say but ingroup/outgroup mentality, once could get similar results by wearing the wrong football shirt in the wrong pub.

649. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79390 by phasmagigas on October 17, 2007 at 6:40 am

i think hitchens is wasted on AM (AM isnt an asshole), as said before he needs to go up against one of those aggressive american christian demagogues. I suggest this as they are the types who feel so empowered by their flocks acceptance of their nonsense that to actually face some opposition will reveal the weakness of their arguments.

edit: we might also see horns growing from their heads as they get more and more frustrated as their rants become more and more ineffective

PS, this debate was so much better than the lennox/dawkins affair in part because of the better format.

650. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79376 by phasmagigas on October 17, 2007 at 5:31 am

Hitchens was weakest when he spoke about needing to destroy all enemies, which doesn't sound compatibile with the ideals of western civlisation that he upholds. In a civilised country, the cycle of violence stops when perpetrators are brought to justice by an objective dispassionate arbiter, rather than the never ending vendettas of tit-for-tat violence.

when hitch starts with this stuff it makes me uncomfortable. Interestingly its the only thing he says that might get the christian right agreeing with him.