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Who What Now posted:So you're saying a supposedly omnipotent and omniscient being is incapable of finding a way to transmit knowledge of objective morals without resorting to mind control? That seems like an arbitrary limitation because just because we can't think of one doesn't mean God can't. Presuming that humans exist in our current state, transmitting perfect knowledge of objective consequentialist morality would necessarily negate free will. This is because perfect morality would require every action, even down to the most instantaneous, to be perfectly optimal. Given the limits of human cognition, passing this information along to our conscious mind would be insufficient, so it would have to be essentially an instinctual understanding of exactly what we should be doing in every millisecond. I would consider this a negation of free will: you could, I suppose (taking as given that contra-causal free will existed), freely will yourself to ignore your constant bodily instincts, but everyone would break down eventually. Now, an omnipotent God could surely solve this by improving human cognition in some way that I can't really imagine well, but the question "why doesn't God give us the perfect morality?" assumes that we exist and not some other species. vessbot posted:OK, got it now. A representative character (fictional, the commonly-referenced religious God) is in the likeliness of the real person (actual god, impersonal, unknowable, complicated, mysterious). And you can draw instructive parallels between the two of them despite one being real and one being conceptual. Except, you can't draw parallels between them unless there is some significant similarity. If there wasn't, what could the parallel be? And, via the incessant theological goalpost-shifting, the more particular scrutiny is put on the commonly-referred to god, the more different the "real" one gets! Sorry, but you still don't get it. The point is that you seem totally unable to grasp the idea that two things can be alike in one aspect but totally different in others. A character and the real person they're based on might have similar histories or personal tics or what-have-you, but obviously they are extremely different types of thing. A song and its cover might have the same exact lyrics, but completely different melody, instrumentation, tempo, and genre. Similarly, humanity being "in the image" of God could indicate similar subjectivity or moral sense despite a totally different physical and metaphysical nature. quote:I can insist on that because the fundamental nature of any similarity of God to humans is rooted in our biological processes. Be careful you don't make the mistake, that 2 other posters already did, of taking "intelligence" to be a vague homogeneous quantity that can only be described in terms of the relative strength exhibited. By that notion, sure, given that humans have intelligence then Russell's Teapot can also have intelligence, and I'd have no basis for disputing that. But that model of intelligence is abysmally incomplete, and is not shared by anyone who's not ten years old, or a religious apologist. Every aspect of our intelligence and emotions is an evolutionary accident of biological, environmental, and social circumstances. To demand of me to explain why Russell's Teapot can't have great intelligence like ours is the same as demanding of me to explain why it can't speak Cherokee. Remember my reasonable descriptions of what religious accounts of God would be like if God was based on the neurology of a fish or a black widow spider instead of an ape. He's not a product of some unrooted intelligence, but rather a uniquely ape one. I bolded the part where you beg the question. The idea that consciousness--including some selection of subjectivity, self-awareness, free will, a sense of morality, etc.--is due solely to biology is not an assumption you share with the people whose theology you're attempting to disprove. Many (I suspect most) believe that there is, in addition to the biological, a supernatural aspect to humanity that sets it apart from other animals. The common conception of God goes even further, to a consciousness rooted entirely in the supernatural and not at all in biology. In fact, this is what many people consider to be the "image" of God in humanity: the addition of a divine aspect to what had previously been just a biological entity. I agree with you that appeals to the supernatural are meaningless and should be disregarded, but if you're going to accept some of Christianity's axioms for the sake of argument then you have to take them all. It's also worth pointing out that your description of what God could be "based on" is, I think, illustrative of your unwillingness to give up your assumptions. In reality, you're right that God is based on humans, but in Christianity it is the other way around. Even if we imagine a God which has aspects of all types of beings, it makes no sense to think that their interactions with humans--and, particularly, what humans would choose to write down in a book for other humans--wouldn't express their "human side". If not, then God specifically created humanity to have the specific features that we share with them (whatever those features may be), so it's again not surprising that our experience of God seems human-centric. I do think the idea that humans are the only form of person is untenable, and casts doubt on any Christianity that holds it, but I don't share your belief that it's a "core tenet" that humans are alone in being created in God's likeness. quote:You say that "it's quite obvious that the explanations for how humanity can be "in his image" without requiring specific physical correspondence are equally infinite." Well it's not obvious to me, can you give a few of these explanations from ths infinite set? I mean, we're taking the supernatural as given. "God is a disembodied consciousness with no physical component at all, but they used magic to create a universe in which evolution would produce a species that can poorly simulate certain aspects of their consciousness" is the tip of the iceberg. quote:If you think that supernaturalism is bullshit, then what exactly are you arguing? I'm arguing because your arguments are both poor and rude, and therefore not only ineffective at deconverting theists but also a negative reflection on me. If a theist was in this thread making a bad argument for the objective existence of their god, then I promise you I'd be all over their poo poo (or just having a good, long laugh, in some cases). But either they're all smart enough to know that their god isn't objectively factual, or they're restricting themselves to arguing against atheists who overreach.
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Feb 19, 2015 01:49
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Mornacale posted:Presuming that humans exist in our current state, transmitting perfect knowledge of objective consequentialist morality would necessarily negate free will. This is because perfect morality would require every action, even down to the most instantaneous, to be perfectly optimal. Given the limits of human cognition, passing this information along to our conscious mind would be insufficient, so it would have to be essentially an instinctual understanding of exactly what we should be doing in every millisecond. I would consider this a negation of free will: you could, I suppose (taking as given that contra-causal free will existed), freely will yourself to ignore your constant bodily instincts, but everyone would break down eventually. Now, an omnipotent God could surely solve this by improving human cognition in some way that I can't really imagine well, but the question "why doesn't God give us the perfect morality?" assumes that we exist and not some other species. The god of the Old Testament showed very little compunction about directly interfering in human life - why would some small impact to free will matter given that a supposedly perfect god could design this from the ground up in such a way that no one would know the difference?
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Feb 19, 2015 02:11
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JawKnee posted:The god of the Old Testament showed very little compunction about directly interfering in human life - why would some small impact to free will matter given that a supposedly perfect god could design this from the ground up in such a way that no one would know the difference?
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Feb 19, 2015 02:23
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Infinite Karma posted:THAT begs a lot of questions about God's nature. If he's omnipotent, and omniscient, how can we have free will? If he created the world we live in, and he's benevolent, why do bad things happen? If he created us with our individual natures, why does he punish us for following those natures? If he had to choose between different options in order to realize his creation, how is he omnipotent? sure, I'm not arguing in Gods favor or even trying to be particularly rigorous here - I think there are plenty of contradictions in the Christian conception of god - just pointing out that jumping on to the sanctity of free-will with respect to this version of god is not a great idea if you lend any credence at all to stories of his interference.
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Feb 19, 2015 04:25
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Violating free will is only fun if you're doing it to make Pharaoh reneg on his promise so you can punish him and a bunch of uninvolved Egyptian newborns.
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Feb 19, 2015 06:11
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JawKnee posted:The god of the Old Testament showed very little compunction about directly interfering in human life - why would some small impact to free will matter given that a supposedly perfect god could design this from the ground up in such a way that no one would know the difference? Absolutely, and I think not designing things from the ground up to allow is to perfectly understand morality is a persuasive argument against a tri-omni god. But I am fiating such a God for the sake of argument and saying that the world is not designed that way. So, given the hypothetical existence of God, there is apparently some reason for us to be as we are. Making us able to process a perfect morality would fundamentally change our nature, either by removing our hypothetical free will or making us work differently on a cognitive level. So, as long as God doesn't want to do that, there are necessarily limitations to the ability to communicate. I guess ultimately my argument is that the issue isn't " if God's real then why is Mosaic law imperfect?" but rather "if God's real then why do we need a written law at all?"
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Feb 19, 2015 22:31
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Disinterested posted:I do plenty of This is getting broken up into too many snippets, so I'm gonna try to sum it up. There are two things we're talking about : 1. Whether my arguments are an “idiotic” aim to begin with, and 2. the argument itself. For 1, your criticism seems to be a tone argument, except even emptier. It's not that my argument is fallacious, it's not that you think I'm wrong, it's that it's not “persuasive” enough? On what grounds? You go to some trouble to explain to me that Christians will continue to believe despite logical refutation (as if I hadn't considered that... stop the press!) and direct me to focus on their psychological needs instead. I'm not interested in that – this isn't an exercise in evangelism. It's a logical argument in a forum that supposedly prides itself on being driven by that. To that end, you make a serious error when you say that “You don't tend to progress arguments very far by attacking a series of small and incidental claims that are made entirely contingent on a major initial premise.” No, if you refute the conclusion that follows from a premise, you necessarily refute the premise too. Modus tollens. Now if a believer can't come to grips with that, then it's on them to decide if they want to continue to believe against logic. But if they do, I've removed their ability to claim that their belief is supported by reason. --- When you said “If you think that's what you're doing, it's not.“ (referencing “The only point in addressing the wrongness of the further links is to emphasise how they fail internally, even permitting their own assumptions, otherwise the only thing that really matters is demonstrating that their initial premise is wrong.“) what did you mean? I thought that by “further links” you were referring to things that are consequences of their supernatural premise combined with facts from biology. Am I not addressing them? Or am I not addressing (defeating) them successfully? What claims am I attacking that you think are well-settled? If you think I don't have a “have a good sense of which religious claims to go for” why don't you go for the good ones yourself? What are you accomplishing (you seem to focus a lot on accomplishments rather than logical substance) by attacking my critiques of the ones that I do go for instead? You seem to have some sort of egotistical desire for control of conversations that don't involve you. If you simply didn't care to involve yourself, you simply wouldn't have involved yourself. But you did anyway while at the same time trying to play it off as something beneath you that you didn't want the bother of being involved with, so I call bullshit on that. Now onto the argument itself: I said: ”If one accepts the premise that god has an infinite number of faculties and powers then those he shares with us are an accidental occurrence within infinity, and we don't share a special bond with it above the rest of its creation, as Christianity claims. If he's "infinitely different" from us just as much as he's like us, you've refuted one of Christianity's central tenets in an attempt to save it. There isn't even a meaningful "bit like a person" to build an analogy from.” You disagree with that because you say that I assume that all qualities are like. I have to ask you for clarification: alike in what respects, and how does that figure into my argument? Particular powers that “define humanity as apart from our fellow animals” “might be relevant” to what? Currently I'm not making sense of those statements. Next, to make the argument that images don't have to be perfect likenesses, you make another analogy, of a kid's crayon drawing of Venice being recognizable as such, despite its proximity and fidelity. But, just like Mornacle's example of a cover song failed because the cover still has to have a resemblance to the original, this example works against you because the kid's drawing has to have some recognizable semblance to the real Venice – otherwise it wouldn't be a drawing of Venice, it would be just a drawing. And in both examples, the likeness exists because it was the specific goal of a human person – not some random impersonal process that generates random objects like salad spinners and neutron stars with the same level of intent or connection as covers of songs and drawings of Venice. Mornacale posted:Sorry, but you still don't get it. The point is that you seem totally unable to grasp the idea that two things can be alike in one aspect but totally different in others. A character and the real person they're based on might have similar histories or personal tics or what-have-you, but obviously they are extremely different types of thing. A song and its cover might have the same exact lyrics, but completely different melody, instrumentation, tempo, and genre. Similarly, humanity being "in the image" of God could indicate similar subjectivity or moral sense despite a totally different physical and metaphysical nature. Yes two things can be alike in one aspect but different in others. But in the discussion here (personal character God vs. impersonal “real” god) there is no substantial similarity at all left after stripping away the personhood. His personhood isn't some ancillary unimportant quality, it's at the core of what he is said to have granted humanity to make them like himself. By attempting to save the rationality of Christianity via making the “real god” behind the Bible character not be a person, you are indeed refuting it. And the last sentence in the above quote is dead wrong, our moral sense is fundamentally rooted in our biological makeup, therefore someone else cannot share it with a “totally different physical and metaphysical nature.” Let's ferret out the special pleading by substituting out some words to apply that sentence to some other topics: Cars being "in the image" of God could indicate similar handling dynamics despite a totally different physical and metaphysical nature. Bats being "in the image" of God could indicate similar blind-flying abilities despite a totally different physical and metaphysical nature. Wire wheels being "in the image" of God could indicate similar abilities to strip paint and corrosion despite a totally different physical and metaphysical nature. In each of these examples (including human emotions) the earthly quality is fundamentally rooted in its physical makeup, environment, and interactions. To say that any of them could continue to be identified as such despite “totally different physical and metaphysical nature” is nonsensical at worst, and at best fundamentally transforms God to some “infinite faculties” being that could do or be any notion the speaker wishes to entertain, that is no closer to humanity than it is to golf club bags or starfish. It's just a more abstract version of the roomful of monkeys with typewriters that must eventually spit out Shakespeare. quote:I bolded the part where you beg the question. The idea that consciousness--including some selection of subjectivity, self-awareness, free will, a sense of morality, etc.--is due solely to biology is not an assumption you share with the people whose theology you're attempting to disprove. Many (I suspect most) believe that there is, in addition to the biological, a supernatural aspect to humanity that sets it apart from other animals. The common conception of God goes even further, to a consciousness rooted entirely in the supernatural and not at all in biology. In fact, this is what many people consider to be the "image" of God in humanity: the addition of a divine aspect to what had previously been just a biological entity. I agree with you that appeals to the supernatural are meaningless and should be disregarded, but if you're going to accept some of Christianity's axioms for the sake of argument then you have to take them all. Failing to throw away everything we know from neuroscience is not begging the question, it's just arguing from true premises. When I ventured to entertain supernaturalism, I never said that I'd accept any random thing that the religious could claim from it – for such such claims could be literally anything at all, including, at the outset, many contradictions of true fact, and self-contradictions. That would be just plain stupid, but from my reading of your post, that's exactly what you demand of me. No, I'm entertaining supernaturalism but to a limited sense, like the invisible intangible angels that must be pushing the planets in their Keplerian orbits. Really it's more “scientific fact” plus supernatural claims on top that don't go so far as to contradict it. That is, the kind of supernaturalism practiced by the most limited of intelligent design creationists – they acknowledge the tree of life, the ordering of fossils, the age of the Earth, gene mutation and replication, etc... basically that everything about evolution that you could explain to a high schooler is true – except God must still be doing something somewhere somehow to it! in some way we can't detect. That's a kind that you can have some semblance of reasonable conversation with. Any other, you must first make to acknowledge the physical facts, but besides that all you can say is “there's no such goddamn thing as magical spirits, get a grip” and that's as far as you can go – not really interesting discussion. Like the angels pushing the planets on top of what Kepler says, and like the God that fiddles with mutations on top of what Darwin says, the only reasonable "soul" must be on top of what neuroscience says about the brain. Anything else is pure fantasy and unassailable by reason. quote:It's also worth pointing out that your description of what God could be "based on" is, I think, illustrative of your unwillingness to give up your assumptions. In reality, you're right that God is based on humans, but in Christianity it is the other way around. Even if we imagine a God which has aspects of all types of beings, it makes no sense to think that their interactions with humans--and, particularly, what humans would choose to write down in a book for other humans--wouldn't express their "human side". If not, then God specifically created humanity to have the specific features that we share with them (whatever those features may be), so it's again not surprising that our experience of God seems human-centric. I do think the idea that humans are the only form of person is untenable, and casts doubt on any Christianity that holds it, but I don't share your belief that it's a "core tenet" that humans are alone in being created in God's likeness. Here again, you try to save rationality of Christianity by positing the infinite (lower-G) god that could do anything – humans being just one of the things it does. You're right that if I grant that, then it would make sense that it relates to us in a way that we would easily understand, i.e., appearing in a person-type form (and this isn't even the physical Jesus, but still the person-type God of the Old Testament.) and then went on to have even more personal qualities ascirbed to it in human storytelling. But by that standard, humans are nothing special in god's collection of faculties – just one of its multitude of things it does, or the multitude of beings it has aspects of. This directly refutes the Christian position that God specifically created humanity in His image to fundamentally share in His personal nature – and that that nature is a substantially important link shared between us and him, and not some ancillary quality that's no more important than any other part of His creation. Actually on reading that paragraph again, I didn't have to spell out what your position logically entails – at the end you explicitly come out and say it yourself: ”I don't share your belief that it's a "core tenet" that humans are alone in being created in God's likeness.” Well – it is a core tenet. (And if you plan to start quibbling on “alone” based on pantheistic notions of everything in the universe having some likeness of God since he's the sole source of all reality, please don't. Instead of “alone,” substitute “at the top of”) quote:But either [theists are] all smart enough to know that their god isn't objectively factual, or they're restricting themselves to arguing against atheists who overreach. I'm disregarding “smart enough to know that their god isn't objectively factual” because that excludes the vast majority of theists; “restricting themselves to arguing against atheists who overreach” - what do you mean by that?
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Feb 20, 2015 02:02
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posting when the situation calls, but you're not the most rewarding of interlocutors, y'know?
' kind of arguments.
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vessbot posted:This is getting broken up into too many snippets, so I'm gonna try to sum it up. There are two things we're talking about : 1. Whether my arguments are an “idiotic” aim to begin with, and 2. the argument itself. If you are sentient and sapient [R], then you're a person [P]. If you are a person [P], then you're biologically (related to) an ape. [Q] God is not biologically (related to) an ape [not Q]. Therefore, God is not a person. [not P] Therefore God is not sentient and sapient [not R] That is structurally a correct modus tollens proof. But it is not semantically correct, or at least not obviously semantically correct. If you want to prove the controversial assertion that the above P implies the above Q, you actually need to provide supporting evidence and an argument, not just state "it's a fundamental physical fact." Since nobody has yet elucidated how our mind arises from our biology, you're going to have a hard time finding that evidence. And even if there was evidence for THAT, you would also have to prove (not just assert) that ONLY an ape's biology can produce a person-like mind. On top of that proof, you would find disagreements over the subjective nature of what a mind is in the first place. The idea of free will is incompatible with physical determinism, and there are compelling arguments that the mind itself is an illusion, or conversely, that supernaturalism is a fundamental requirement for free will. It's fair to hold those opinions and make those arguments, but the further you get into those minutiae, the more likely you're going to present a premise that you can't support. Lo and behold, the ape-biological-mind argument has an unsupported premise.
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Feb 20, 2015 03:01
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Mornacale posted:I am fiating such a God for the sake of argument quote:...there is apparently some reason for us to be as we are. quote:Making us able to process a perfect morality would fundamentally change our nature, either by removing our hypothetical free will or making us work differently on a cognitive level. So, as long as God doesn't want to do that, there are necessarily limitations to the ability to communicate. quote:I guess ultimately my argument is that the issue isn't " if God's real then why is Mosaic law imperfect?" but rather "if God's real then why do we need a written law at all?"
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Feb 20, 2015 05:00
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Infinite Karma posted:The loving ape argument is not a modus tollens proof. The bigger problem is the first premise, not the second. Is P defined solely by sentience and sapience? Can no other being have sentience and sapience? Does god need to have these characteristics?
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Feb 20, 2015 05:04
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JawKnee posted:Does god need to have these characteristics? We're only involved in the need to talk about proving the possibility of this because we're sunk pretty deep in to Christian premises about God. Vessbot: I think I'll leave it to you to respond to the argument about the logical fallacy you've made, since it runs through your entire post, and then try to pick it back up. For one thing, the posts are just too long. Just a few quick points: quote:What claims am I attacking that you think are well-settled? If you think I don't have a “have a good sense of which religious claims to go for” why don't you go for the good ones yourself? I do, just not right now. quote:direct me to focus on their psychological needs instead. I don't. Although human psychological needs are a relevant consideration to religion, I am saying (a) a lot of people believe in God/spirituality in a general as well as in a particular sense, and abolishing their Christianity doesn't necessarily abolish a God for them - your work would, therefore, still be very much ahead of you without touching on God as abstracted from a particular religion. That is not about psychological need necessarily, since there are arguments from reason that apply here. (b) There is something to be said for the Marxian argument against religion and against the condition that requires illusion - but this is not principally a form of psychology, and is a separate train of thought to (a) Disinterested fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Feb 20, 2015 10:23
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Christians boil good and go great with slaw.
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Feb 20, 2015 14:16
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Bob James posted:Christians boil good and go great with slaw. Were you at the witch roast? Best barbecue I've had in ages.
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Feb 20, 2015 16:11
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Infinite Karma posted:The loving ape argument is not a modus tollens proof. ?? So it is not a modus tollens proof, except it is and you formalized it into a syllogism? Which is it? I'll obviously go with "it is," but I'll simplify it down. 1. If one has human thoughts (A), then one has cognitive processes based on human neurology (B). 2. God has human thoughts(C), therefore he has cognitive processes based on human neurology (D) 3. God does not have cognitive processes based on human neurology (not D) 4. The consequent is false (not D), therefore the antecedent (not C) is false. 1 is provided from neuroscience, 2 is provided by common mainstream religious accounts, and 3 is provided by religious believers' distaste at the notion. In your [P] you snuck in, willfully or not, a lot of ambiguity that has me chasing a phantom. What my argument is based on are the unmistakable human emotions, communications, and intelligence said to be displayed by God. When you wrap that up with the vague descriptor "person," you inflate from what I said to a huge quagmire of philosophical dead-ends of things called "persons" that are wildly outside of what my argument is based on. Artificial intelligence, nonphysical minds, necessary beings defined to be able to do anything... my argument does not depend on proving an inability of any of those things to do what humans do. Our entire concept of what a "person" is is drawn from human experience, and you haven't shown me why I carry a burden of proving why those other fantasies have to obey some rule or another. They just don't figure into my argument, notice how I reformulated it completely avoiding the word. Once you make your [P] more accurate by specifying "human-type" person, you see that P -> Q almost becomes a tautology and there's nothing for me to prove. Your argument boils down to "we just dont knoooow, man, now really do we?" More formally put, you're extrapolating from not knowing something about a topic, to not knowing anything about it relevant to the discussion. Everything about the mind isn't understood, but despite that, there's ample evidence that it's based on the brain. Entertaining supernaturalism doesn't commit me to allowing any supernatural claim at the supernaturalist's whim, disconnected from the physical processes of the organ under discussion. Not knowing exactly how the experienced mind arises from the brain doesn't negate its fundamental connection to the brain, any more than not having tied gravity to the other fundamental forces means I can't make a statements about celestial motion. GAINING WEIGHT posted:We're said to be made in the image of God; perhaps that is not meant that he looks like a human, but certainly that the way we operate reflects the way He does. He's ascribed all sorts of human emotions: anger, jealousy, love, and he is said to desire certain things, like the redemption of the world, and hate certain things, like sin. So I think even Christians would agree that the "image of God" descriptor of humans indicates, at least in part, his "personality" (as defined above). You say that I "would also have to prove (not just assert) that ONLY an ape's biology can produce a person-like mind." No, that's already well-established, insofar as any relevant meaning of "person" is concerned. It's been done. Disinterested posted:I don't. Although human psychological needs are a relevant consideration to religion, I am saying (a) a lot of people believe in God/spirituality in a general as well as in a particular sense, and abolishing their Christianity doesn't necessarily abolish a God for them - your work would, therefore, still be very much ahead of you without touching on God as abstracted from a particular religion. That is not about psychological need necessarily, since there are arguments from reason that apply here. (b) There is something to be said for the Marxian argument against religion and against the condition that requires illusion - but this is not principally a form of psychology, and is a separate train of thought to (a) OK? And?
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Feb 24, 2015 19:17
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Do you have autism y/n?
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Feb 24, 2015 19:27
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vessbot posted:?? So it is not a modus tollens proof, except it is and you formalized it into a syllogism? Which is it? Exactly this "well-established" fact is what I'm disputing. It's not well-established. Please humor us stupid Philistines and show us what must be easy to find scientific research. A claim that any phenomenon is irreducible and can only be the product of a unique system is inherently antiscientific. That'd actually be... supernaturalism!
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Feb 24, 2015 20:06
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Infinite Karma posted:It's not a proof because the truth relationship between P and Q is insufficiently proven. Gaining Weight posted a pretty good summary, which I quoted in my last post, so quit playing dumb and start there.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:23
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I tried to engage you briefly before and the arguments haven't changed so forgive me for simply picking one small part of your post.vessbot posted:2. God has human thoughts(C), therefore he has cognitive processes based on human neurology (D) quote:2 is provided by common mainstream religious accounts You keep construcing your claims on this one point. You are provably, objectively, statistically wrong. Two most heavy-weight objections presented here: quote:Isaiah 55:9New International Version (NIV) "The Catholic Catechism posted:42 God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, imagebound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God --"the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable"-- with our human representations.16 Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God. Neither the Bible nor the largest church in the world agrees with you. You are not presenting a mainstream interpretation. There is no one in this thread, heck, maybe in this world for all I know, who believes the way you present. God does not have human thoughts. He may not have thoughts at all. That is our way of describing Him because we don't know any better.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:43
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Valiantman posted:I tried to engage you briefly before and the arguments haven't changed so forgive me for simply picking one small part of your post. There is a reason many of the early fathers of the church used apophatic rhetoric in their arguments on how God was to be described. Hell, Dionysius the Areopagite wrote an entire book just on that topic. I skipped most of the thread (because why not?), so it may have already been touched on, but I've always been a fan of Alan Watts' interpretation that most modern mainstream Christians kind of missed the point to Jesus' teachings. (I would even go so far as agreeing that Jesus' experiences were something not particular to himself. He just interpreted them through a lens circumscribed by Jewish culture.) Whether he was a real person as described in the Bible is really a moot point, though. How the Catholic and Byzantine Churches collated and interpreted the books of the Bible shows more about the organizations' mentalities than anything Jesus may have personally believed. And that is why these arguments usually carry little to no meaning. The fact of the matter is, the Bible, itself, is circumspect, and whatever meaning it contains boils down to how much credit the reader is willing to give it based on their own personal interpretation.  Theological debates can be fun, but a lot of people just fail to understand that in the end, the judge and the advocate are always going to be the same person.
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Feb 24, 2015 22:15
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Valiantman posted:I tried to engage you briefly before and the arguments haven't changed so forgive me for simply picking one small part of your post. The thoughts that God is said to have are unarguably human. There are two reasons why your objections fail. First, they don't really contradict the specifically human basis of all the things that God is said to think and do. The first passage just waxes poetic about how awesome and above everything he is. The second passage is literally nonsense at best, and a load of poo poo at worst. What's "incomprehensible" and "inexpressible" here as a backpedal, is daily comprehended and expressed to mean idiotic things like that because of God we can't wear condoms and only carriers of Y chromosomes (who, as membes of previous sect, were required to cut off pieces of their penises but not anymore because of a rule change) are allowed to lead ceremonies where human-processed products of grape and wheat plants are said to literally become the body and blood of another Y-chromosome carrier who died 2000 year ago and was God at the same time. Second, even if they did contradict the multitude of other Bible passages and other teachings where God cleraly displayed human cognitive processes, you still have not gone an inch in showing that people don't actually believe that. All you've shown is that one part of one teaching contradicts that, which means nothing. (If Christianity was a coherent system where contradictions meant that one of the claims had to be dropped, then you might actually be getting somewhere.) And a third one, for the nonreligious here who are making the same argument against mine (not sure if that includes you): By your own premise, God's thoughts are plot elements in a human mythical story, so it's only possible that God's thoughts are projections of literal humans' thoughts! I'm frankly stunned at how a holder of that premise can go on to claim that these things are not human-based. Then what are they? Examples of unmistakably human acts of God: - Communication acts (and not grand revelatory visions of the origin of reality or some such that a cosmic AI-type disembodied intelligence might implant into our brains, but rather things like: quote:10 This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. - Anger - Jealousy - Love - Familial relationships - Desires - Advice Oh and as long as we're quoting the CCC, here's the passage just before yours: quote:41 All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. the manifold perfections of creatures - their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his creatures" perfections as our starting point, "for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator".15 vessbot fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Feb 25, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 19:48
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vessbot posted:Neither the Bible nor the largest church in the world agrees with you. You are not presenting a mainstream interpretation. There is no one in this thread, heck, maybe in this world for all I know, who believes the way you present. You keep on banging on this drum like you are going to convince everyone suddenly that God is just a really big dude up in the sky who has nothing better to do than start an ant farm. Lemme put it this way, a child drawing the Mona Lisa with a crayon is in the image of the Mona Lisa, but obviously is gonna look like poo poo next to the real thing, right? Furthermore, humans are not the only things capable of cognition, right? Octopi and dolphins are both pretty bright,but humans are smarter than them. What if God is something smarter than humans? Doesn't mean he looks like one. Catholic teaching is that God is utterly beyond the ability of man to comprehend, so we use metaphors and analogies to approximate as best we can. Furthermore, on the issue of transubstantiation, this kinda sorts works to explain the thought behind it. Sinnlos fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 20:24
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Disinterested posted:(b) There is something to be said for the Marxian argument against religion and against the condition that requires illusion - but this is not principally a form of psychology, and is a separate train of thought to (a) "Schelling calls the claim of Hegel's rational system to embrace not only the real, the What, but also its reality, the That, a " deception." No "merely logical process is also a process of real becoming."' When Hegel uses phrases such as: "the Idea decides to become Nature," or, "Nature is the fall of the Idea," he is either describing a real, non-dialectical event, or his terminology is meaningless. Marx attacks in similar fashion the Hegelian transition from logic to Nature. He calls it "the fantastically described transition from the abstract thinker to sense experience. "" But his criticism is more fundamental. It is directed against Hegel's category of "Aufheben"... It is obvious that this criticism strikes not only Hegel, but every rational theory of progressive evolution, idealistic as well as naturalistic, including the later so-called ''scientific Marxism. "" - Existential Philosophy, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jan., 1944), pp. 44-70 Marx's critical argument is against more than religion. It's against all idealism, against the Illusion of "Aufheben". It is against "Essence is existence". Christians can respond with: We are describing a real event (Jesus as Christ). Our talk is not meaningless. Vessbot, does anything you are arguing about deal with real events? Specifically the ones that matter in a conversation about Christianity: the life of Jesus and all our lives?
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Feb 25, 2015 21:20
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BrandorKP posted:Vessbot, does anything you are arguing about deal with real events? Specifically the ones that matter in a conversation about Christianity: the life of Jesus and all our lives?  C'mon now.
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Feb 25, 2015 21:34
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Vessbot, no need to be so wordy. You claim that it's a mainstream Christian belief that God is human-like while providing no proof that it is so. I present counter-proof and you call that nonsense at best and somehow link it to condoms, male priesthood, circumcision and Eucharist. I've given up on trying to discuss most of what you write but please answer briefly: Can you imagine a highly sentient being other than biologically human-like one existing?
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Feb 25, 2015 21:43
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Sinnlos posted:You keep on banging on this drum like you are going to convince everyone suddenly that God is just a really big dude up in the sky who has other better to do than start an ant farm. Well, so far no one's put up a reply that shows that most religious don't believe he is. (They've tried, but I've shown flaws in those arguments) quote:Lemme put it this way, a child drawing the Mona Lisa with a crayon is in the image of the Mona Lisa, but obviously is gonna look like poo poo next to the real thing, right? Yup. Now how does that figure into the argument that you're responding to? It's an analogy, right, where the Mona Lisa is God and the kid's copy is humanity? Where the copy is specifically made to be, well... a copy, of it, but I'm supposed to stop beating the drum of them having any similarity? quote:Furthermore, humans are not the only things capable of cognition, right? Octopi and dolphins are both pretty bright,but humans are smarter than them. What if God is something smarter than humans? Doesn't mean he looks like one. Oh look, examples of intelligent beings being intelligent because of their nervous systems? But you say, it's still examples of intelligent beings that are not humans, which undermines my claim that only humans can be intelligent? I already wrote about this: "Our intelligence and emotions are products of our neurology fed with inputs from our physical and social environment. On the contrary, we have a huge sample size of those things; we see a host of different behaviors (giving us a glimpse into different emotions and intellectual devices) in the animal kingdom. And each one is slightly different. Even you yourself edited in your own reference to the animal kingdom to show that other beings could develop intelligence. But you're treating intelligence as an either/or thing, it either exists or doesn't. It's not like that at all though. Every animal has its own different (sometimes vastly different) inclinations based on their neurologies and environments. If God was based on a black widow spider, there'd be a lot of stuff in the Bible about eating your husband. If it was a dog or a shark, it would surely talk about smelling. If it was a salmon, theologians would be pondering the divine mystery of swimming up the cosmic river. But we don't see any of that. We see crushing your enemies and raping their women on one end, and loving your fellow man as a brother on the other: straight out of largely human pursuits. Human intelligence and emotions are quite different from other animals (close evolutionary ancestors notwithstanding) so it's a well-founded assumption that "human biology is the only thing that can produce intellect and emotions similar to ours."" ... and ... "You however, didn't read (or if you did, didn't address) the part of my argument where I corrected your simplistic notion of "intelligence" as some sort of nebulous homogeneous concept that a creature could either have or not have, (or at best, have at various levels of strength) which doesn't account for the huge array of types of intelligence displayed by different animals, which are all accidents of their evolutionary history and environment. Based on that notion, you could say that humans have 100% intelligence, chimps 90%, dogs 70%, and worms 0.5%. Based on that misunderstanding, you bring up the billions of planets and likelihood of other beings developing intelligence, as if "having intelligence" is the only thing needed for them to be human-like, and nothing more specific than that. It's as if I made an argument (before worldwide travel) that since other humans on the planet could surely have the ability to learn the Cherokee language (they have the neurology for language after all, and it's a big big planet!), it's too big an assumption to make that there can't be a community in the Middle East that speaks Cherokee." ... and ... "I can insist on that because the fundamental nature of any similarity of God to humans is rooted in our biological processes. Be careful you don't make the mistake, that 2 other posters already did, of taking "intelligence" to be a vague homogeneous quantity that can only be described in terms of the relative strength exhibited. By that notion, sure, given that humans have intelligence then Russell's Teapot can also have intelligence, and I'd have no basis for disputing that. But that model of intelligence is abysmally incomplete, and is not shared by anyone who's not ten years old, or a religious apologist. Every aspect of our intelligence and emotions is an evolutionary accident of biological, environmental, and social circumstances. To demand of me to explain why Russell's Teapot can't have great intelligence like ours is the same as demanding of me to explain why it can't speak Cherokee. Remember my reasonable descriptions of what religious accounts of God would be like if God was based on the neurology of a fish or a black widow spider instead of an ape. He's not a product of some unrooted intelligence, but rather a uniquely ape one." quote:Catholic teaching is that God is utterly beyond the ability of man to comprehend, so we use metaphors and analogies to approximate as best we can. quote:Furthermore, on the issue of transubstantiation, this kinda sorts works to explain the thought behind it. The moneyquote: "It was once barred by Australian officials from entering the country as "vegetation".[11][12] Craig-Martin was forced to inform them that it was really a glass of water. " So sophisticated yuppies could stroke their chins while blabbering the avant garde art critic version of  but when the rubber meets the road, he was forced to acknowledge the reality of it. It's a perfect encapsulation of religion's relationship with the modern understanding of the world. When push really comes to shove, academic defenders of the faith are forced to inform the rest of us that it's really just a system of allegories for good lessons. The rest continue to buy into it and kill people from trivially solvable medical problems.Valiantman posted:Vessbot, no need to be so wordy. You claim that it's a mainstream Christian belief that God is human-like while providing no proof that it is so. I present counter-proof and you call that nonsense at best and somehow link it to condoms, male priesthood, circumcision and Eucharist. I didn't merely claim it, I gave a list of examples that you didn't acknowledge (while at the same time, incredibly, admonishing me for being too "wordy"). Your denial that I posted any proof (not refutation, not explaining-away as being irrelevant, but flat-out denial) makes it look like you're gaslighting yourself from reading my argument. I mean I just don't know what to do with this. I posted it. It's there. The references to condoms, male priesthood, circumcision and Eucharist were to give concrete examples of some things taught by the Church on the basis of what they've comprehended about God. That puts lie to the defense that God can't be comprehended, and exposes how it's a laughably shallow qualification invoked only when convenient, such as the convenience of escaping the criticism of bonkers-stupid beliefs like the examples in question. quote:I've given up on trying to discuss most of what you write but please answer briefly:
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Feb 26, 2015 00:46
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Vessbot, you are just a tedious anti-intellectual with the argumentative faculties of a fifteen year old who spent fifteen mnutes thinking about how religion makes no sense, man. There's no arguing with you because you are not capable of processing anything other posters present to you. BTW, the Catholics don't command you to cut off your foreskin, it's a purely American (and Third World) perversion.
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Feb 26, 2015 01:00
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vessbot posted:I didn't merely claim it, I gave a list of examples that you didn't acknowledge (while at the same time, incredibly, admonishing me for being too "wordy"). 
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Feb 26, 2015 01:48
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vessbot posted:That's in my reply above to Sinnlos, where I quoted some of my older posts in italic. I keep ignoring you because you keep ignoring me and replying to questions I didn't ask. But thanks for this. If you cannot imagine an intelligent being without human nervous system even for the sake of an argument, there isn't any argument to be had.
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Feb 26, 2015 02:10
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vessbot posted:Well, so far no one's put up a reply that shows that most religious don't believe he is. (They've tried, but I've shown flaws in those arguments) The fact that you've stumbled upon such a weak argument is actually kind of remarkable, in debates on the existence of God the atheist position is normally so much easier to defend.
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Feb 26, 2015 04:48
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Vessbot, perhaps it is the tendency of the human brain to anthropomorphize things? Perhaps the intelligence of God is not ape based at all, but OUR intelligence makes it easier to process by understanding God as something he is not, i.e. as something sort of human?
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Feb 26, 2015 04:59
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CommieGIR posted:
I think good theology does exactly that 
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Feb 26, 2015 18:24
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Sinnlos posted:Vessbot, perhaps it is the tendency of the human brain to anthropomorphize things? Perhaps the intelligence of God is not ape based at all, but OUR intelligence makes it easier to process by understanding God as something he is not, i.e. as something sort of human? We've tried this line of argument before, beleive me.
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Feb 26, 2015 18:25
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The paradox I have is that for some reason on SA when I visit religion threads I usually agree more with the religious, myself being an atheist. Or at least I find myself on the side of non-anti-religious posters.  (Addendum: Although it seems that I apply a very strict standard to atheist posters, and so feel really disappointed when their performance isn't perfect.)This thread seems to be a little better than the other one, so. I've been listening to a podcast in which Christians seem to often question the atheist host on the following point: If there is no afterlife, then anything you do in this life doesn't ultimately matter. I guess I've been hearing this argument so often that I've started inventing possibly farfetched replies, such as: All evidence indicates to me that good things don't last forever, so there's no reason to expect an eternity of bliss after I die. Furthermore, transience seems to be an essential component of really good things, so an eternity of bliss doesn't make that much sense. Of course, this doesn't deal with the more ancient conceptions of afterlife, or with hell for everyone. Or, from a different tack, if animals aren't supposed to have eternal souls, is there no point to my affection for my cat? What about my efforts to create the most comfortable home? Or, in fact, people's efforts to improve the condition of their country or the planet in general? Unless the afterlife is exactly like this life, and we bring everything with us. But in that case, what's the point of having death inbetween? ...Phew. I think I'm done for now. Oh, Herd Mentality! Anyone? I probably could write in to the show with these comments, although those episodes are kind of old.  But this is sort of relevant to the thread, right?
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Feb 26, 2015 19:40
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BrandorKP posted:I think good theology does exactly that You cite a bunch of theological scholars who basically argue that their faith is true 'Just Because' While Vessbot is off his rocker, you hardly have any firm standing either.
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Feb 26, 2015 19:51
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steinrokkan posted:Vessbot, you are just a tedious anti-intellectual with the argumentative faculties of a fifteen year old who spent fifteen mnutes thinking about how religion makes no sense, man. There's no arguing with you because you are not capable of processing anything other posters present to you.  quote:BTW, the Catholics don't command you to cut off your foreskin, it's a purely American (and Third World) perversion. You might have heard of this religion called Judaism, which Catholicism is an outgrowth of, that commands circumcision both historically and currently. Valiantman posted:I keep ignoring you because you keep ignoring me and replying to questions I didn't ask. But thanks for this. If you cannot imagine an intelligent being without human nervous system even for the sake of an argument, there isn't any argument to be had. Well what was the gist of your question? You didn't give me much to go on, but from context assumed that you were trying to make the argument that since it's possible for beings with non-human nervous systems to have intelligence, that undermines my argument that only humans can have intelligence. And my quote that I referenced directly addressed that objection, by raising a lot of necessary nuance that it misses (or at least that everybody else who raised it so far missed). A few others made that argument, but fell silent after my rebuttal. Then they all complain that I just don't understand, make empty insults and single-emoticon shitposts, then call me the anti-intellectual. If that's not what you meant, then what was it? I can't guess at your thoughts and accept blame for not answering them. What did you say that you feel like I ignored? Barlow posted:You've already been given a citation from the largest Christian denomination on the planet which says you are wrong on this point. quote:Can you cite a single theologian that agrees with your understanding of God? Can you even cite a few random Christian from internet that agree with it? Theologian: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-web-only/god-watches-big-game-william-lane-craig.html?paging=off William Lane Craig posted:]Ultimately, one is submitting oneself to God's providence, but I see nothing the matter with praying for the outcome of these things. They're not a matter of indifference to God. God cares about these little things, so it's appropriate ^--- specifically about football plays Random Christian from the internet: http://www.gotquestions.org/does-God-have-emotions.html quote:Question: "Does God have emotions?" Sinnlos posted:Vessbot, perhaps it is the tendency of the human brain to anthropomorphize things? Perhaps the intelligence of God is not ape based at all, but OUR intelligence makes it easier to process by understanding God as something he is not, i.e. as something sort of human? Disinterested posted:We've tried this line of argument before, beleive me. You have, and that argument fails because it necessitates that God is totally different from us. (If it wasn't totally different, we'd have no need to anthropomorphize it to represent it.) However, that contradicts the central Christian position that "All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God." (CCC) While there is plenty of allegory and metaphor in religion, the connection between God and humanity is said to be real. This is far from the first time the other side has tried that line of argument, and respectively it's far from the first time I've made this objection. The first time you ignored it I chalked it up to an innocent oversight from a busy thread, but now that's getting hard to maintain. Are you just hoping that the next successive time I'll forget my objection and be likelier to accept your argument, or what? If you ignore my arguments and merely repeat yours, you've got no basis for acting exasperated at the other side... it's you, you're the problem.
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Feb 27, 2015 00:54
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Feb 27, 2015 00:58
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supermikhail posted:The paradox I have is that for some reason on SA when I visit religion threads I usually agree more with the religious, myself being an atheist. Or at least I find myself on the side of non-anti-religious posters. You could make a Platonic / Socratic argument that longevity / eternity of a thing is a necessary component of perfection, and that happiness, too, can only be perfected by bringing it closer to the unchanging, eternal world of ideas. Anything good that lasts for a discrete amount of time is just a glimpse into the desirable. The problem is, what does it mean to be happy, or blissful? It certainly isn't a bodily experience, and it seems to me quite possible that it is effectively a negation of one's individuality as we understand it, because if we achieve a state of true perfection, how could we distinguish individual parts of the whole body of the Church? The Catholic doctrine teaches us that souls have a matter, but is that enough to keep them distinguished in the afterlife, or is it more accurate to imagine it as some sort of singularity (for instance, imagine that the purpose of the soul isn't to be propagated for eternity as an entity in itself, but rather to contribute to the development of a universal spirit which matures thanks to the activity of the soul, but isn't identical with it)? Your concern for the temporal should be, from the Christian point of view, motivated by the well-being of the soul, which is a subsistent part of the human being and as such deserves cultivation and protection so it can receive God's Grace. And because you seek to be part of the Church, aka the community of Christian souls, and because you obviously depend on the actions of others, you are also interested in ethics, politics etc. If living according to Christian principles means leaving behind some of your possessions, that's fine. From a religious point of view poverty can be uplifting. Things that don't have soul of the human kind are important because through them we refine our understanding of the world, and of God's plan. All things are good, and all things hold some value for personal development. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Feb 27, 2015 |
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Feb 27, 2015 01:12
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vessbot posted:Disagreeing with you, therefore must be an anti-intellectual You are literally mentally challenged.
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Feb 27, 2015 01:14
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Miltank posted:I am laughing at your robot brain.
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Feb 27, 2015 01:16
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Vessbot, I think your attributes are rat-like. You make noises like a rat, you use your appendages like a rat. Your heart beats like a rat's, you have the faculty of perception, like a rat, and a capacity to make certain decisions, and to engage in cognitive processes - like a rat. I think you are a rat, a filthy plague-carrying rat and nothing more. People who claim you aren't a rat are merely trying to rationalize their previous relationship with you, and are probably rats also.
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Feb 27, 2015 01:19
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