Happy Atheist Forum

Here is the topic to discuss and comment on this debate (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=3820).

Good luck to both Will and Brax.

I must profess to be a little disappointed by Brax, the way he encouraged the debate made it seem that he would not use arguments that have been tried and tested by many religious people before, and proven to fail. He has put them more eloquently then they are usually used, but ultimately, the arguments used are not proof of God, and even if they were they are not proof of any one particular God over another. Hopefully there is more to read, but so far the arguments put forward are no more compelling then those put forward in GCSE R.E. classes.

And one particularly stood out. The argument put forward about not dying for lie is simply ludicrous, and I would have hoped above this calibre of debate. It should be obvious to all that many kinds of people are willing to die for a lie, whether that lie was committed in plain sight, or not.

Haven't read every argument word for word, but it's, from what I can glean, a variation of the Kalam cosmological argument put forth by William Lane Craig. At least, the CORE aspect is. This argument has been ripped apart for years, and is even given to first-year philosophy students at my university as practice.

 

The William Lane Craig argument if anyone is interested:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?rlz ... en&tab=wv# (http://video.google.com/videosearch?rlz=1C1SNNT_enUS342US342&sourceid=chrome&q=william%20lane%20craig&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv#)
Btw, skip the rather lengthy introduction. I also don't suggest wasting 2 1/2 hours watching the entire debate, as it was very lobsided.

First, thanks to Will for stepping up. I was previously slated to argue the opposition, and frankly after reading one post on the affirmative side, I'm already bored.  So, cheers.

Cosmological argument - 2 faults. Suffers from infinite regress, and is not internally consistent... If everything had a cause, then so too does the creator.  Further, there are questions now as to whether or not the big bang really started things.  More reading here:  

http://www.einstein-online.info/en/spot ... index.html (http://www.einstein-online.info/en/spotlights/big_bangs/index.html)

QuoteThus, while some cosmologists do not have a problem with assuming that our universe began in a singular state, most are convinced that the big bang singularity is an artefact - to be replaced by a more accurate description once quantum gravity research has made suitable progress.

...Or, here:

http://www.einstein-online.info/en/spot ... index.html (http://www.einstein-online.info/en/spotlights/avoiding_the_big_bang/index.html)

QuoteIn the loop quantum models, the big bang universe whose beginning is haunted by infinities... turns out to be a universe with a history reaching far beyond the big bang - a universe that, initially, was in a state of collapse, reaches zero extension at the point where general relativity predicts the big bang singularity, and, afterwards, expanded in perfect harmony with the predictions of the regular big bang models.

The rest of the CORE argument rests on a lot of unfounded, unsupported, and often mistaken assumptions, hence the rest of the structure built on that core can only be correct by mistake (much like a broken clock is right twice per day... any correct ideas stemming from those false premises are only correct coincidentally).  As for the FACTS side of the argument, they could just as easily be used to argue for Thor, Zeus, Apollo, or the tooth fairy and (for me, at least) don't seem to have any bearing on the topic.


Much of the argument pertained to the existence of god, and completely dismissed the thread topic regarding which is the more reasonable position.  I will, however, wait and see where that goes, as I presume the approach being taken on the affirmative side is that "These are the reasons god must exist, and since god must exist, it's more reasonable to believe in him than not."  It will be more telling once we get past the "I just copy/pasted these arguments which I'd written previously" and goes more into the tennis match of organic response to dynamic questions.

Unfortunately, the reply was merely a repetition of points, not a support of them.  No new evidence, no new information, simply the restatement of previously made unsupported claims.  Repetition alone does not make a point transition from an invalid to a valid one.

Very disappointed indeed, I really like this type of debate, in theory, the Richard Dawkins forum has them as well. Almost invariably the end up with the theist making incredibly poor arguments that have been refuted 1000s of times before, and then dismissing arguments of the same structure when they are reversed to show the faulty nature of their form. This argument seems to be exactly the same. 2 Thumbs down

Will certainly is patient though, I would not have bothered replying to the first post.

Braxhunt is also continuing to show a poor understanding of altrusitic genes and how they can give rise to societal behaviours and what today we would call morals. He has also obviously not read Richard Dawkins 'The selfish gene' because if he had, he would know that it is a title used to draw in readers, and is not the core argument and I would've hoped anyone of learning could have at least taken the time to read the sources they quote. And I would urge him to go read up on evolutionary theory, because he is arguing that he is correct because the alternative is his constructed straw man. We understand an awful lot about how evolution gives rise to moral behaviour, and his rebuttal that we can not currently explain extraneous altruistic behaviour is firstly, completely false, and secondly not evidence of a divine creator.

This is where I disagree with Richard Dawkins, and why I think it is bad to base arguments against evolution based on his ideas. He is a great scientist and a very nice guy, but there are many other scientists who research this area, and have studied these ideas more closely. Such as the extraneous altruistic behaviours, Dawkins has in the past stated that this is because of 'misfiring' altruistic genes, when in fact it is probably much more easily explained by status gain. For example if your group sees you helping people in need, they are more likely to think highly of you, and give you a higher status (thus making you more likely to find a mate), just because these genes also kick in when people aren't watching, doesn't mean that they don't have a purpose, or an evolutionary backing. They are the kind of genes that put our health in danger for the possibility to reproduce more, there are many examples of these kinds of genes.

I was hoping for something more exciting then this.  Its too bad brax is using old arguments that i've heard many times over.

QuoteI have, yet to hear a compelling reason why these arguments are invalid.

Obviously brax hasn't looked that hard or just ignored them. Its not that hard to find a counter apologetic website Iron Chariots (http://www.ironchariots.org) is a pretty good one.  Also why does he have to quote mine?  You know brax seems like a nice guy but if all he is going to do is rehash old arguments and quote mine then he has lost.  He won't convince any of us that a god exists much less his god.

Looks to me like Brax is using the best arguments but if you don't like em cause they're old Will is using the same old atheist stuff especially epicurius ---hundreds of years old. you seem to think just cause you heard someone give an answer on dawkins' website that means it's a done deal. No, you still have to defeat the arguments.

Quote from: "edgeofuniverse"Looks to me like Brax is using the best arguments but if you don't like em cause they're old Will is using the same old atheist stuff especially epicurius ---hundreds of years old. you seem to think just cause you heard someone give an answer on dawkins' website that means it's a done deal. No, you still have to defeat the arguments.

The arguments have been defeated countless times, and are either no evidence of a deity, or not evidence of one deity over another. Plus Brax seems to be showing a lack of knowledge in many areas pertaining to the evolution of morals, and all too readily quotes works and asserts meanings to works he has never read. Just because an argument is old does not make it invalid, what makes it invalid is that it can be defeated by anyone with a GCSE knowledge of R.E.

So.... what's the standard way to defeat the argument from morality?

Quote from: "edgeofuniverse"Looks to me like Brax is using the best arguments but if you don't like em cause they're old Will is using the same old atheist stuff especially epicurius ---hundreds of years old. you seem to think just cause you heard someone give an answer on dawkins' website that means it's a done deal. No, you still have to defeat the arguments.

What is your relationship to Brax?

Quote from: "Reginus"So.... what's the standard way to defeat the argument from morality?

The evolutionary development of morality can be explained and verified.

Quote from: "Reginus"So.... what's the standard way to defeat the argument from morality?

That moral behaviour arises as a need to live and work as part of a cohesive group, for mutually beneficial gain. As working in a large group, especially for animals who by themselves are not particularly specialised (i.e. humans), is beneficial in terms of increased/more stable food supplies, a better chance of encountering a mate, safer from predators and more secure living areas. Murder, rape, theft, bribery, violence destroy the cohesion in groups, and therefore the members who practice them are ostracised, so they are kicked out or shunned, so an individual who practices these acts is less likely to breed. Therefore you have a build up of acceptable and 'moral' behaviour within a group to encourage that group to work together for mutually beneficial gain. These groups have grown and grown until becoming the society we live in today.

Religion is not required in explaining moral behaviour, and to claim such is making an argument from ignorance, as they must have gone out of their way to ignore the evidence that suggests that moral behaviour is derived by evolutionary means.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"

Quote from: "Reginus"So.... what's the standard way to defeat the argument from morality?

That moral behaviour arises as a need to live and work as part of a cohesive group, for mutually beneficial gain. As working in a large group, especially for animals who by themselves are not particularly specialised (i.e. humans), is beneficial in terms of increased/more stable food supplies, a better chance of encountering a mate, safer from predators and more secure living areas. Murder, rape, theft, bribery, violence destroy the cohesion in groups, and therefore the members who practice them are ostracised, so they are kicked out or shunned, so an individual who practices these acts is less likely to breed. Therefore you have a build up of acceptable and 'moral' behaviour within a group to encourage that group to work together for mutually beneficial gain. These groups have grown and grown until becoming the society we live in today.

Religion is not required in explaining moral behaviour, and to claim such is making an argument from ignorance, as they must have gone out of their way to ignore the evidence that suggests that moral behaviour is derived by evolutionary means.

Interesting, so do you think that morality is perfect in that the moraly responsible choice is always beneficial to the tribe or society?

Quote from: "Reginus"Interesting, so do you think that morality is perfect in that the moraly responsible choice is always beneficial to the tribe or society?

No, it is not always beneficial, but there are no examples to my knowledge, of a behaviour being considered moral, that is detrimental to society. Much of what we consider moral behaviour could also be classified as selfish behaviour, as moral behaviour arose out of a selfish need for extra food/comfort and mates. Even though we don't know the source of every single moral behaviour, it is easy to disprove that religion or a God has anything to do it, in previous discussions cultures where rape is prevalent have been used to try and argue that morality cannot be derived from evolution or is 'innate'. But I would say this is a very compelling argument why moral behaviour cannot be derived from religious texts or deity's. Even in this discussion morality has been said to be objective, then why do cultures where rape is prevalent even exist? Secluded cultures, some of which are only now being discovered, have never been in contact with Christian writings, or a Christian God, yet they share what we would consider very moral behaviour. So they don't kill people within their group for the hell of it, or steal from people within their tribe, but other parts of their moral behaviour are very different, suggesting that morality isn't derived from an objective source. But that it is derived from the particular needs and situation of that particular group/pack/tribe.

There are rebuttals to do with extraneous moral behaviour (e.g. So why are we kind to people outside of our group?), saying that they cannot arise without a God. This is again false, because natural selection, selects for empathy. This may seem like a behaviour that would grant no survival benefits but it does, if you show kindness to another group during their time of need they may show you that same kindness in yours, leading to a greater chance of survival. Tribes that empathised with wolves, and fed them got the benefits of an early warning system when the wolves hung around for more food, eventually becoming the domesticated dogs many own today. All these behaviours at first, seem to contradict the self-protection 'all-for-me' instinct, but when you think about them in terms of a group, and the chances of survival for that group and mutual benefit. Many of the behaviours such as owning pets and giving to charity make sense. And it seems to be the norm that as we learn about something and can then explain it, it removes a need for a God in that situation, just take thunder as an example. It just seems that so many religious people are getting 'God is the source of morals' battered into their heads that they are never presented with the evidence for moral behaviour by evolution.

Quote from: "Whitney"

Quote from: "edgeofuniverse"Looks to me like Brax is using the best arguments but if you don't like em cause they're old Will is using the same old atheist stuff especially epicurius ---hundreds of years old. you seem to think just cause you heard someone give an answer on dawkins' website that means it's a done deal. No, you still have to defeat the arguments.

What is your relationship to Brax?

 :pop:  

After going over the debate again there seems to be no end of falsehoods.

Quote“T” is for Testimony. This kind of commitment level developed because it was based on eye-witness testimony.

Brax seems to be going out of his way to ignore the evidence, the bible was written based on testimonies by those claiming to know Jesus (the Gospels themselves admit this), not eye witness testimony.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"No, it is not always beneficial, but there are no examples to my knowledge, of a behaviour being considered moral, that is detrimental to society.

There are several things I can think of right off the top of my head. For example, factory farming is almost unanomously considered to be unmoral, even though it is economicaly productive to society. Care for the elderly (I'm talking 90+), even though they are usualy not at all beneficial to society. You might argue that they have wisdom that they can pass on, but I cannot think of a single author or infulencial scientist over the age of 90. Tons and tons of money is spent on medication and surgery for these people, because it is consitered to be moraly responsible. Last but not least, we have animal rescue centers. I think these are definatly detrimental to society, as we are spending money (that could be used to feed the poor) to care for dogs and other animals, when we could just as easily euthanize them. Why do we do this? Again, because we consider it a moral responcibility to help animals. My argument is that even though morality and "what's benefitial to society" are often compatible, they are still two different things.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"Much of what we consider moral behaviour could also be classified as selfish behaviour, as moral behaviour arose out of a selfish need for extra food/comfort and mates

I'm not sure that I understand this point. Could you perhaps give a few examples? It seems to me like quite often, morality conflicts with these needs.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"Even though we don't know the source of every single moral behaviour, it is easy to disprove that religion or a God has anything to do it, in previous discussions cultures where rape is prevalent have been used to try and argue that morality cannot be derived from evolution or is 'innate'. But I would say this is a very compelling argument why moral behaviour cannot be derived from religious texts or deity's. Even in this discussion morality has been said to be objective, then why do cultures where rape is prevalent even exist?

First, I think the notion that if something was prevalent, it must have been moral, is untrue. Again, factory farms are where we get the majority of our meat, yet factory farming is unmoral. Thousands of scam artists scam people out of money for their own benefit every year. This is common, but clearly unmoral. Therefore, I think that it is certainly possible for rape to have been common in a civilization, even if everyone knew it was unmoral.

Secondly, these differences between societies also have something to do with what was common knowledge at the time. If we had thought of blacks as equal to whites durring the late 1700s and early 1800s, slavery would have disapeared far, far more quickly. I would be willing to bet big money that in the civilizations where rape was common, women were thought of as far "bellow" men. People have disagreed as to weither war is ever moraly "right", but they have almost all agreed that it would be wrong to simply kill random people.

Besides, have you ever heard of man double-crossing someone because he thought it was "the right thing to do," or someone torturing animals because he believed it to be "moraly responsable'? Of course not! Therefore, I think it can be said that morality is, in fact, very objective and suprisingly similar between cultures.

Quote from: "Reginus"There are several things I can think of right off the top of my head. For example, factory farming is almost unanomously considered to be unmoral, even though it is economicaly productive to society. Care for the elderly (I'm talking 90+), even though they are usualy not at all beneficial to society. You might argue that they have wisdom that they can pass on, but I cannot think of a single author or infulencial scientist over the age of 90. Tons and tons of money is spent on medication and surgery for these people, because it is consitered to be moraly responsible. Last but not least, we have animal rescue centers. I think these are definatly detrimental to society, as we are spending money (that could be used to feed the poor) to care for dogs and other animals, when we could just as easily euthanize them. Why do we do this? Again, because we consider it a moral responcibility to help animals. My argument is that even though morality and "what's benefitial to society" are often compatible, they are still two different things.

I asked for examples of moral behaviour that impacted badly on society. You've presented a slightly immoral situation that impacts favourably upon society in the short term, and moral behaviours that have little/no impact on society. Additionally you're describing current situations, none of these situations would have been relevant during the times when natural selection had a much greater effect on the human populace (as of now it is almost non-existent). Our ancestral groups did not have factory farming, and the life expectancies would be short enough so that they would have died before they were old enough to be of no use. What behaviour that would be relevant during the times when moral behaviour was evolving, that we would consider moral would damage group cohesion in ancestral groups? My including of the word society in the first question blurred its meaning, so I've been sure to include ancestral groups this time.

QuoteI'm not sure that I understand this point. Could you perhaps give a few examples? It seems to me like quite often, morality conflicts with these needs.

It's what drove animals into family groups, an animal didn't get born into a pack and stay there solely because of love (though some kind of kinship does play a part in many pack animal behaviour), they stay there because if they go out by themselves they are less likely to survive. It can be applied to many current situations, the reason many people stay in religious groups is for selfish reasons (because that group may ostracise you, again meaning you get less access to friends and potential mates), it's the same with society, you don't leave your home with no warning/explanation and try to start a new village because of selfish reasons. Because you're safe within the group, these aren't recognised as selfish behaviours of course, because the word selfish has so many negative connotations, but it's selfish ideas that drive animals into groups/society, and those same behaviours that make you stay there.

QuoteFirst, I think the notion that if something was prevalent, it must have been moral, is untrue. Again, factory farms are where we get the majority of our meat, yet factory farming is unmoral. Thousands of scam artists scam people out of money for their own benefit, every year. This is common, but clearly unmoral. Therefore, I think that it is certainly possible for rape to have been common in a civilization, even if everyone knew it was unmoral.

Factory farms played no role in prehistoric ancestral groups, the rise of moral behaviour is down to what was relevant to these ancestral groups. It is easy to explain why we find factory farming immoral (down to empathy), but it did not exist during times when moral behaviour was being formed. And the point was that these civilisations don't see rape as immoral, they see it as a part of society. Just like some would be disgusted that we eat cows and drink their milk, just because we see it as wrong doesn't mean every other society does. I'm not trying to justify rape (I would never do such a thing), but it's evidence that when an ancestral group develops, if rape occurs and causes no problems in the cohesion of that group, then why would any members of those group see any reason to ostracise the perpetrator? It's evidence that society can grow up around very different moral standards, that are not gleaned from an objective source.

QuoteBesides, have you ever heard of man double-crossing someone because he thought it was "the right thing to do," or someone torturing animals because he believed it to be "moraly responsable'? Of course not! Therefore, I think it can be said that morality is, in fact, very objective.

Many evil acts have been perpetrated because someone thought 'it was the right thing to do'. We only see it as evil from our subjective world view, I would be willing to go out on a limb and say that you thought the consumption of dogs was wrong? At least it is the majority view held in western civilisation, but there are many countries where Dogs are eaten as standard affair. Morality is not objective, it appears to be simply because certain moral behaviours are so widespread. But how far do you think a group would have got if they thought it was fine to kill anyone in that group if they looked at you funny? They would have died out rather quickly, moral behaviour has been sculpted over thousands of years, and certain morals are so prevalent because they were the best solutions. In evolution, certain solutions arise several times, independent of each other. Does this mean that there is some intelligent designer? No, it means that, that solution is good at getting the job done. Just like: don't murder each other, don't steal from each other, don't rape each other are usually good morals in preventing the breakdown of group cohesion, just because they're good doesn't mean it is always the case though.

Morals are objective in the same way that natural selection 'designs' nature. They may look that way at first glance, but delve deeper and you find the reasons why they almost look sculpted. It's the same reason we see pictures in clouds.

I sort of wonder why Will has so far let braxhunt get away with asserting that Stephen Hawking's writing presents evidence for a theistic world-view, and that Hawking himself is a theist.  My guess is that he's trying to avoid being impolite.  To go into this would entail an inference that either
A) braxhunt is basing this assertion on a drastic misreading of Hawking's writing, or
B) even worse, getting it from some Christian propagandist who is deliberately misrepresenting what Hawking has written.
  It's fairly common to come across this in Christian writing.  It's a snare and a delusion. The only way to present Hawking as a theist is to quote-mine his work; chopping off a portion of what he has said to give the impression that he's arguing for the existence of a creator.  In reality, it's pretty clear that Hawking does not consider a creator in any way necessary to explain the existence of the universe, and those who assert that he does are either mistaken or mendacious.

  If anyone cares to read up further on this, there are lots of resources on the web.  One that I found interesting, if a bit hard to follow in places, was Why Steven Hawking's Cosmology Precludes a Creator (http://www.qsmithwmu.com/why_stephen_hawking's_cosmology_precludes_a_creator.htm), by Quentin Smith.  Smith has written more that one piece on the issue of Hawking's supposed theism.  A succinct statement by him on the subject from another article:

 

Quote from: "Quentin Smith, quoting Stephen Hawking in 'Stephen Hawking's Cosmology and Theism' (1994),"Stephen Hawking has recently argued that there is 'no place for a creator', that God does not exist. In his quantum cosmology

"there would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time . . . The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE . . . What place, then, for a creator?"  
 S. W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time pp. 136, 141 (New York: Bantam, ©1988).

Full text here (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/hawking.html).

That said, I for one am actually enjoying this debate, which has maintained a consistently high level of dialog with none of the snarling and snapping often seen when subjects like this are on the table.  I appreciate the readiness of both the affirmative and negative sides to keep it civil.

I never said Hawking was a theist. Please read my posts carefully before attempting to discredit me.

Quote from: "braxhunt"I never said Hawking was a theist. Please read my posts carefully before attempting to discredit me.

Point taken.  I should have said that it seemed you were implying that Hawking was a theist, by only quoting a statement by him which seemed to present a theist view, rather than making it clear that he does not hold such a view by the very simple means of including a more complete picture of his statements on the subject.  I guess you actually just did that in the interest of brevity.

 

Quote from: "braxhunt"Stephen Hawking said in his book A Brief History of Time, “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”

It seems I misunderstood your intention, because to me this quote made it sound like Hawking is a theist.  In the interest of being diplomatic, I suppose I should apologize for this misunderstanding.

I've finished reading all the posts so far in here (when i'm done i'm going to read whats has been added to the debate).  First I got to point out a few things.

Quote from: "edgeofuniverse"Looks to me like Brax is using the best arguments but if you don't like em cause they're old Will is using the same old atheist stuff especially epicurius ---hundreds of years old. you seem to think just cause you heard someone give an answer on dawkins' website that means it's a done deal. No, you still have to defeat the arguments.

An argument's validity has nothing to do with age.  His arguments, as I put it, are old and discredited they bring nothing new to the table no food for thought.  He is using arguments that are flawed and have been rejected by atheists (well at least me) because they fail the lemon test.  What makes you think I go to Dawkin's website for answers to apologetics?  Just because someone claims your bible is true and that there is a god doesn't mean there is a god or that your bible is true.  Do yourself a favor and think on your own don't let brax do it for you.  Its blatant that you are affiliated with brax and if the truth is on his side he doesn't need someone to step in on his behalf, hes a big boy and he came here looking to convert an atheist.  The arguments he has presented have all been defeated at length and a simple google search and can defeat them again. You see, he (and you) is assuming that we've never heard any of these arguments and we have (at least I have) and if they were convincing i'd no longer be an atheist.  

Quote from: "Reginus"Interesting, so do you think that morality is perfect in that the moraly responsible choice is always beneficial to the tribe or society?

You would have to define perfect but in the way I think you mean it then morality is not perfect and individual choices are not always beneficial to the society.  However group morals are beneficial to our society otherwise we wouldn't be here.  There have been studies on morality in which a person is asked questions such as, "You see a train heading 60 miles an hour toward a wall, when it hits the wall everyone on the train will die, you have the option to divert the train but by doing so it will hit a man who just happens to be crossing the railroad tracks and it will kill him.  What do you do?"  Then it asks different variations of that question changing the man to children, to people working on the tracks, to many other things.  What they found is morality isn't cut and dry.  If you look at our society individuals who kill, rape, burn buildings, vandalize and so on are the minority of people in our society.  Our society has deemed it wrong to kill, rape, steal, etc..all.  If we all killed, stole, vandalized and so on it would compromise the structure of our society and severely reduce our survival rate as a species.

Quote from: "Brax"“S” is for Solution. The best solution to the question of what to do with these facts is surmise that Jesus really did die and rose again. As my friend Mike Licona says, “If a man claims to be God and rises from the dead we should believe him.

I am god, I rose from the dead now send me money!!!  If you or Mike don't send me money then you do not believe in the claims you make.

Perhaps it would be appropriate to split this thread... One for the morality discussion (which is interesting, but off topic) and another for the comments regarding the debate itself?  I'm not trying to back-seat moderate, I just see the two as very clearly unrelated to one another.  Cheers.   :offtopic:

Quote from: "Recusant"I sort of wonder why Will has so far let braxhunt get away with asserting that Stephen Hawking's writing presents evidence for a theistic world-view, and that Hawking himself is a theist.  My guess is that he's trying to avoid being impolite.

I don't see it as being an important point, really. Even if Professor Hawking were religious, which he's not as he's agnostic, that wouldn't be evidence for the existence of god. I don't want to let things get off topic.

Why has Reginus not replied to the question posed by Whitney? I wish I had admin powers.

Also, why does every christian assume because early Christians were willing to die for Jesus, Jesus must have been divine, there are so many holes. One, we don't know if they were willing to die or not, we just have stories, even if they were willing to die, they could still be mistaken, just as they would say modern suicide bombers are mistaken. Classic case of conclusion first, evidence second.

Quote from: "SSY"Why has Reginus not replied to the question posed by Whitney? I wish I had admin powers.

I don't remember asking Reginus any questions.  The question towards Edge ended up being handled via pm and there are no issues.

Quote from: "SSY"Also, why does every christian assume because early Christians were willing to die for Jesus, Jesus must have been divine, there are so many holes. One, we don't know if they were willing to die or not, we just have stories, even if they were willing to die, they could still be mistaken, just as they would say modern suicide bombers are mistaken. Classic case of conclusion first, evidence second.

Its a common logical fallacy that Christians employ.  My buddy made the best retort to that "proof of Jesus' divinity" he said, "Our troops went to Vietnam to protect our country from communism."  In 20 years we will probably be saying the same thing about Iraq except replace communism with terrorism.  

On the Christians defense (the only point that merits defense) we have records of Christians fighting with Pagans and Jews as well as battle orders ... well "divine" orders from the church sanctifying violent attacks against the "heathens".  However almost all of those came about after Christianity became a popular religion whenever (I think was) Constantine became a Christian around 300 C.E.  Before that we have records of Christians being persecuted by Pagans (mostly) and it was not total persecution it was just a local thing after all most Pagans saw Christianity as a cult before Constantine.  The only time there was violence was when something bad would happen and the pagans would say that their gods was mad because of the godless Christians and would go persecute them to appease the gods.  Yes I did say that Pagans saw Christians as godless.  The Jews were excluded from persecution because they had shown they had a god that they worshiped in their own way.  However it was known (and often criticized) that Christianity was a ... shoot off sect of Judaism but they did not follow Jewish law while claiming to worship the same god, pagans concluded that they worshiped no gods and because of that they were persecuted in desperate times. Like I said though the persecution was never done on larger then a local level.   Wow long tangent sorry about that.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"The only time there was violence was when something bad would happen and the pagans would say that their gods was mad because of the godless Christians and would go persecute them to appease the gods.

Things haven't changed much over the years....just different time place and people.

Quote from: "Whitney"Things haven't changed much over the years....just different time place and people.

It always seems ironic to me that Christians say their god is love and infinite mercy but when something bad happens that god is angry at us.  You notice god is always mad at the same group of people the person talking doesn't like?  Maybe next time a Cat. 5 hurricane hits the U.S. I can get on T.V. and say god is angry at Evangelical Christians for retarding science and education.  Lets alienate the same group of people who are trying to fuck our society up.

Quote from: "iNow"Perhaps it would be appropriate to split this thread... One for the morality discussion (which is interesting, but off topic) and another for the comments regarding the debate itself?  I'm not trying to back-seat moderate, I just see the two as very clearly unrelated to one another.

Yeah, I'll probably make a separate topic some time today. Thanks for pointing that out.

I don't see why you want to split the thread.  Its on topic with what is discussed in the debate.

Quote from: "SSY"Also, why does every christian assume because early Christians were willing to die for Jesus, Jesus must have been divine, there are so many holes. One, we don't know if they were willing to die or not, we just have stories, even if they were willing to die, they could still be mistaken, just as they would say modern suicide bombers are mistaken. Classic case of conclusion first, evidence second.

Where I do understand your point, I'm not too sure it's fair to say "every christian".

Again this debate only serves to disappoint me, Brax's rebuttals revolve around arguments from incredulity, arguments from authority, and arguments from ignorance. And he also seems to have made some sort of connection that an old argument is an incorrect one (a fallacious argument makes it incorrect, not just age). He also seems very fond of implying that without God, morality is meaningless, which I hope is not his desired intention, but if it is, it is idiocy of the highest order. On top of that he invokes the rather common design fallacy of 'I'd know a painting was made by someone even if I'd never seen a painting before' which is wrong on so so so, many levels. Number 1, if you had never encountered a painting before you would not know that it was man-made, but deductive reasoning would lead you to say it was, as it is framed, most likely in a gallery and has a 'painted by X' label close to it.  Number 2, does that mean God spends his time designing clouds? We see 'designs' in clouds all the time, yet we recognise that they aren't created by an individual designer.

I'm going to refrain from reading this thread until the end of the debate to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

hilarious post by brax.  I laughed at the fallacies from start to end.  Seriously does he think that atheists haven't heard these arguments before?  I laughed so hard when he said The Cosmological Argument (http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Cosmological_argument) or "First Cause Argument" for the existence of god wasn't a, "god of the gaps" problem then compounds it by saying that we argue poorly at it.  It seems he doesn't have a grasp on what the argument is.

Brax is trying to use the argument from infinity and its laughable.  If you are reading this brax then answer me this, between each number there is an infinite number of decimals (ex. 1.5, 1.55, 1.555555555555, and so on).  This applies to time in seconds, each second has milliseconds and so on.  By your logic can we ever get from 1 second to the next?  There are an infinite number of points in between 58 seconds and 59 seconds.  By your logic we can't, yet at least 1 second has passed you by while reading this (thats assuming you are reading this)

Lets see i'm brax never addressed the issue of the fine tuned universe, he just seemed to ignore it which disappointed me.  The moral issue he acts like its some big deal, I mean he doesn't realize that killing has been the "NORM" since the beginning of our species.  Humans killed rival tribes, Christians killed Christians, Christians killed Jews, and Christians killed Muslims, Christians killed women, Christians killed children, and so on.

These "points" you make are poor do you have better ones?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"If you are reading this brax then answer me this, between each number there is an infinite number of decimals (ex. 1.5, 1.55, 1.555555555555, and so on).  This applies to time in seconds, each second has milliseconds and so on.  By your logic can we ever get from 1 second to the next?  There are an infinite number of points in between 58 seconds and 59 seconds.  By your logic we can't, yet at least 1 second has passed you by while reading this (thats assuming you are reading this)

Of course there are hypothical infinities, but there are no "real" infinities in nature.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"The moral issue he acts like its some big deal, I mean he doesn't realize that killing has been the "NORM" since the beginning of our species. Humans killed rival tribes, Christians killed Christians, Christians killed Jews, and Christians killed Muslims, Christians killed women, Christians killed children, and so on.

I don't understand what your argument is. Morality by its very nature can be completely ignored.

Quote from: "Reginus"

Quote from: "LoneMateria"If you are reading this brax then answer me this, between each number there is an infinite number of decimals (ex. 1.5, 1.55, 1.555555555555, and so on).  This applies to time in seconds, each second has milliseconds and so on.  By your logic can we ever get from 1 second to the next?  There are an infinite number of points in between 58 seconds and 59 seconds.  By your logic we can't, yet at least 1 second has passed you by while reading this (thats assuming you are reading this)

Of course there are hypothical infinities, but there are no "real" infinities in nature.

Please explain what you mean by "real" infinities and how in any way that could possibly improve Brax's thus far laughable arguments? I must congratulate Will, if it were me debating I would have lost my patience a couple of posts into the debate simply due to quickly rising mountain of fallacies and plain ridiculous conjecture on Brax's part.

QuoteI don't understand what your argument is. Morality by its very nature can be completely ignored.

Then how can it have an objective source? If morals such as do not kill, steal and rape are objective, then why do some civilisations grow up around ignoring them? If morals are objective why does the west hold a majority view that eating dogs is wrong, but the east does not?

Quote from: "Arctonyx"Please explain what you mean by "real" infinities and how in any way that could possibly improve Brax's thus far laughable arguments?

An infinite amount of something that actualy has essence or existance (such as a particle or a minute). Lone's argument was that there are an infinate number of points in a second. However, in order for this to be true, the points(or sections of time) would have to be infinatly small, or in other words, non-existant. Therefore, this is an example of a purly hypothical infinity. Brax's argument (if I correctly understand it) is that in nature, there are no infinities of anything with essence, not even atoms. Since a second actualy has essence, (is not infinitly small or non-existant) there is no way that there could be an infinite amound of seconds.

Quote from: "Reginus"

Quote from: "Arctonyx"Please explain what you mean by "real" infinities and how in any way that could possibly improve Brax's thus far laughable arguments?

An infinite amount of something that actualy has essence or existance (such as a particle or a minute). Lone's argument was that there are an infinate number of points in a second. However, in order for this to be true, the points(or sections of time) would have to be infinatly small, or in other words, non-existant. Therefore, this is an example of a purly hypothical infinity. Brax's argument (if I correctly understand it) is that in nature, there are no infinities of anything with essence, not even atoms. Since a second actualy has essence, (is not infinitly small or non-existant) there is no way that there could be an infinite amound of seconds.

The problem is that whether an infinity is "real" or not does not help Brax's argument. He argued that if the universe stretched back into infinity then we could never reach 'our' point in time, firstly he is making the assumption that scientists think the universe stretches back into infinity. They simply don't know. Secondly he is implying that the only thing that could explain this is God, again untrue, we don't know. Anyone who asserts that there is a creator to the universe is lying to you, they cannot know. Thirdly, it's just plain ridiculous. That's like saying you cannot find the number 4 between 1 and 7 because there are an infinite number of points between 1 and 7 (which there are).

Quote from: "Arctonyx"Then how can it have an objective source? If morals such as do not kill, steal and rape are objective, then why do some civilisations grow up around ignoring them? If morals are objective why does the west hold a majority view that eating dogs is wrong, but the east does not?

I admit that I am very nieve about eastern culture, so please correct me if I am wrong about anything. First of all, I believe I can assume that these dog-eating civilizations do not think of dogs as the loving, loyal, and intelegent creatures that we think of them as in the West. Perhaps they are equivelent to mice, or other low-level animals in the mind of a person from the East. Second, culture has sort of a "snowballing" effect. If dog-eating becomes the norm, then people tend to ignore how morality goes against it. C.S. Lewis equates this with "getting our multiplication tables wrong."

Quote from: "Arctonyx"The problem is that whether an infinity is "real" or not does not help Brax's argument. He argued that if the universe stretched back into infinity then we could never reach 'our' point in time, firstly he is making the assumption that scientists think the universe stretches back into infinity. They simply don't know.

He is simply arguing that the universe must have began at some point in time. Scientists tend to have this view as well (big bang theory). Brax's argument is that if the universe really did begin at some point a finite time ago, it could not have just come into existance out of nothing.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"Secondly he is implying that the only thing that could explain this is God, again untrue, we don't know. Anyone who asserts that there is a creator to the universe is lying to you, they cannot know.

Of course he can't be 100% sure, but the "god explaination" is better than no explaination, is it not?

Quote from: "Arctonyx"Thirdly, it's just plain ridiculous. That's like saying you cannot find the number 4 between 1 and 7 because there are an infinite number of points between 1 and 7 (which there are)

Numbers are hypothical, right?   Time on the other hand, is real and measurable.

Quote from: "Reginus"I admit that I am very nieve about eastern culture, so please correct me if I am wrong about anything. First of all, I believe I can assume that these dog-eating civilizations do not think of dogs as the loving, loyal, and intelegent creatures that we think of them as in the West. Perhaps they are equivelent to mice, or other low-level animals in the mind of a person from the East. Second, culture has sort of a "snowballing" effect. If dog-eating becomes the norm, then people tend to ignore how morality goes against it. C.S. Lewis equates this with "getting our multiplication tables wrong."

On the contrary, in Eastern culture dogs are kept as pets maybe not as commonly as they are here in the west, but there are several Korean breeds of dog. Also it has been suggested that the first domesticated wolves arose in Eastern cultures. And how would dog eating become the norm if morality was objective? If people inherently saw eating dogs as wrong, it wouldn't become a social norm. In evolutionary terms this is rather easily explained, Eastern cultures exploited dogs as a food source primarily and as companions second, whereas western cultures did the opposite. Leaving you with a situation today where western cultures see eating dogs as wrong, and eastern cultures see at as a part of society. And what objective morality goes against eating dogs? None to my knowledge, our behaviour toward the consumption of dogs has been conditioned by a society with subjective morals.

QuoteOf course he can't be 100% sure, but the "god explaination" is better than no explaination, is it not?

No it is not. Seriously, this is the God of the gaps argument. An explanation with no evidence is not better then no explanation at all, pretending you know what happened is a wilful admittance to ignorance. You are pretending to know more then the cleverest people on Earth. By saying God did it, you're professing to know more then Stephen Hawking does about his particular field of Physics. I realise this could be misconstrued as an argument form authority, but I am pointing out that by making up explanations you are claiming to know more then the foremost experts in many fields.

It's as stupid as me saying 'I don't understand the stock market, therefore Leprechauns make it work.'. I would be pretending to know more then stock brokers who have devoted their entire lives to discovering the intricacies of the stock market. My idea that leprechauns make it work gives me no advantage to investment, it simply provides me a psychological teddy bear, by pretending to know more then I actually do.

Making up an explanation is irrational, superstitious, idiotic and I would say morally wrong, because you are wilfully lying to people.

QuoteNumbers are hypothical, right?  

No they are not.

Wow I didn't think I was off this site for that long.  Thanx Arctonyx you answered his questions pretty much the same way i would have.  I think Reginus is trying to point out what is wrong with the logic of the argument (brax's argument) which was the point of the example.  There are between seconds are an infinite number of fractions of seconds.  For example between 3 and 4 there is 3.5, 3.7744, 3.453749587349857394857394875, and so on.  It is flawed to say well theres an infinite number of time before what time it is now therefore it can't be infinite because it would never come.  There is an infinite number of time between the 3rd and 4th second of the minute does that mean that the 4th second will never come?  Answer is no, the argument from infinite is a flawed argument.  But even if the infinite theory for time is wrong it doesn't mean his god is right.  This is because he is saying the universe either happened this way or god did, which is another flawed argument since he is excluding all other possabilities.  In order for him to conclude god did it with no tangible evidence then he would have to systematically disprove all other possible theories which can't be done.  Say for example that all of our current models for how the big bang occurred were wrong but it happened by some other means we haven't thought of yet, it would be ridiculous (at least premature) to say well I reject all the current theories so god did it.  It turns into an argument from ignorance (I can't think of any other possible way it could have happened so god did it case closed).

Quote from: "Arctonyx"On the contrary, in Eastern culture dogs are kept as pets maybe not as commonly as they are here in the west, but there are several Korean breeds of dog. Also it has been suggested that the first domesticated wolves arose in Eastern cultures. And how would dog eating become the norm if morality was objective? If people inherently saw eating dogs as wrong, it wouldn't become a social norm. In evolutionary terms this is rather easily explained, Eastern cultures exploited dogs as a food source primarily and as companions second, whereas western cultures did the opposite. Leaving you with a situation today where western cultures see eating dogs as wrong, and eastern cultures see at as a part of society.And what objective morality goes against eating dogs? None to my knowledge, our behaviour toward the consumption of dogs has been conditioned by a society with subjective morals.

I don't think we are making much progress on this issue, so I will ask you this question: Pork is a common source of meat in our society. By your reasoning, since pig eating is socialy acceptible in our society, everyone should be completely fine if they saw a pig being slaughtered. Acording to your social norm=moral theory, they would consider it moraly all right. However, I would be willing to bet that this would not be the case at all. Perhaps a small minority would be ok with it, but these will most likely be the people who consider pigs to be stupid, low order animals, which again has to do with the "difference between knowledge" concept I was talking about earlier.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"No it is not. Seriously, this is the God of the gaps argument. An explanation with no evidence is not better then no explanation at all, pretending you know what happened is a wilful admittance to ignorance. You are pretending to know more then the cleverest people on Earth. By saying God did it, you're professing to know more then Stephen Hawking does about his particular field of Physics. I realise this could be misconstrued as an argument form authority, but I am pointing out that by making up explanations you are claiming to know more then the foremost experts in many fields.

It's as stupid as me saying 'I don't understand the stock market, therefore Leprechauns make it work.'. I would be pretending to know more then stock brokers who have devoted their entire lives to discovering the intricacies of the stock market. My idea that leprechauns make it work gives me no advantage to investment, it simply provides me a psychological teddy bear, by pretending to know more then I actually do.

Making up an explanation is irrational, superstitious, idiotic and I would say morally wrong, because you are wilfully lying to people.

Whoa, whoa, let's slow down the train. First of all, I personaly don't think that the "something must have created the big bang" argument is particularly convincing. That doesn't mean that I can't defend it, however. Secondly, I think the "something can't begin to exist from nothing" argument is more of a philisophical problem than a scientific problem. Even if we made some sort of gigantic cosmoligical discovery on this topic, it would likely just bring us to a conclusion of what happened before the big bang, but probably could not explain how the universe could begin to exist out of nothing. If Stephen Hawking or some other scientist has an idea as to how this could have happened, then I would be extreamly interested to hear it.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"(Reginus: numbers are hypothetical, are they not?) No they are not.

If they are not hypothetical, than can you physicaly demonstrate that there are an infinite number of numbers between 1 and 7?

This thread seems to becoming a debate on it's own, so to heck with impropriety.

There are innate moral tendencies, which are then interpretedâ€"or even occasionally ignoredâ€"because of a given social structure. Not murdering in some countries means no capital punishment, but capital punishment is not seen as murder by most Americans. The tendencies are there, as most people on death row are guilty of murder, but the interpretation of that tendency is different because of the social structure.

I'd never eat dog because I was raised in a culture that reveres and befriends dogs as companions. Had I been born in a culture where dogs are eaten, though, it's entirely possible that even though I was born with the same moral tendencies, I would gladly have a warm plate of spaghetti al Spaniel.

I wonder if anyone would be willing to give Brax a tutorial on the quote feature.  His last post is damn near incomprehensible since I have to keep scanning up and down/back and forth between posts to determine which question he's responding to (further, he used numbers, where Will did not, which strangely makes it even harder to follow).  

viewtopic.php?f=43&t=3820#p49300 (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=3820#p49300)

Quote from: "Reginus"I don't think we are making much progress on this issue, so I will ask you this question: Pork is a common source of meat in our society. By your reasoning, since pig eating is socialy acceptible in our society, everyone should be completely fine if they saw a pig being slaughtered. Acording to your social norm=moral theory, they would consider it moraly all right. However, I would be willing to bet that this would not be the case at all. Perhaps a small minority would be ok with it, but these will most likely be the people who consider pigs to be stupid, low order animals, which again has to do with the "difference between knowledge" concept I was talking about earlier.

Eating pig in our society is acceptable but killing pigs for fun isn't.  However it doesn't stop people from raising pigs for food.  If we don't see it we don't care unlike during Pagan times where you would often have to take your prized animals and cut their throats, burn their flesh and serve them to everyone.  It was morally acceptable then just as it was in the bible OT.  They considered it morally okay as well as their duty to the gods to sacrifice their best animals to the gods and give a snack to everyone.  That should demonstrate by itself that morals are subjective not objective.  Also morals evolve over time, my morals and your morals are better than those of the bible and of Jesus (especially considering he preached Jewish law).  If I missed the point you were trying to make please correct me.

Quote from: "Reginus"Whoa, whoa, let's slow down the train. First of all, I personaly don't think that the "something must have created the big bang" argument is particularly convincing. That doesn't mean that I can't defend it, however. Secondly, I think the "something can't begin to exist from nothing" argument is more of a philisophical problem than a scientific problem. Even if we made some sort of gigantic cosmoligical discovery on this topic, it would likely just bring us to a conclusion of what happened before the big bang, but probably could not explain how the universe could begin to exist out of nothing. If Stephen Hawking or some other scientist has an idea as to how this could have happened, then I would be extreamly interested to hear it.  

Reginus are you playing Devil's advocate?  I disagree on the notion that its a philosophical problem.  We can show, through science, that matter cannot be created or destroyed.  No created matter means no creator.  Also about the big bang have you heard of String Theory for the origins of the universe?  It basically says what we perceive as the universe was caused by a collision of 2 strings (I don't remember the name it gave for the giant string) however you are right and it doesn't solve the problem of infinite regress just like a god doesn't.  Some theists claim it completely solves the problem but "First Cause argument" what caused the god?  We may never know the solution to the infinite regress but we don't claim we have the solution.

Quote from: "Reginus"If they are not hypothetical, than can you physicaly demonstrate that there are an infinite number of numbers between 1 and 7?

Can you demonstrate that numbers can only be hypothetical or physical?



Well I had to do that.  Now I just read brax's latest post.  Maybe he thinks if he puts enough numbers in there Will will just give up.  Considering he made a few flawed points in the first few numbers and no points in the rest it was a very boring post.  C'mon brax you have to do better to convince us there is a god.  The sad thing is even if brax stalemates Will brax has lost since he failed to prove a god is real.  The affirmative position must suck.

Quote from: "Will"I'd never eat dog because I was raised in a culture that reveres and befriends dogs as companions. Had I been born in a culture where dogs are eaten, though, it's entirely possible that even though I was born with the same moral tendencies, I would gladly have a warm plate of spaghetti al Spaniel.

Exactly. I think we are all born with a moral tendency that says "do not eat companions." Its up to society to decide who's a companion to man and who's not.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Eating pig in our society is acceptable but killing pigs for fun isn't.  However it doesn't stop people from raising pigs for food.  If we don't see it we don't care unlike during Pagan times where you would often have to take your prized animals and cut their throats, burn their flesh and serve them to everyone.  It was morally acceptable then just as it was in the bible OT.  They considered it morally okay as well as their duty to the gods to sacrifice their best animals to the gods and give a snack to everyone.  That should demonstrate by itself that morals are subjective not objective.  Also morals evolve over time, my morals and your morals are better than those of the bible and of Jesus (especially considering he preached Jewish law).  If I missed the point you were trying to make please correct me.

If eating pigs is socialy acceptable, then how can killing pigs for food be socialy unacceptable? You can't have one without the other. By the way, what makes our morals better than those of the bible? It sounds an awful lot like you are compairing them to a set of meta-morals. How can this be if morality is just an invention by mankind that is closely linked to culture?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Reginus are you playing Devil's advocate?  I disagree on the notion that its a philosophical problem.  We can show, through science, that matter cannot be created or destroyed.  No created matter means no creator.  Also about the big bang have you heard of String Theory for the origins of the universe?  It basically says what we perceive as the universe was caused by a collision of 2 strings (I don't remember the name it gave for the giant string) however you are right and it doesn't solve the problem of infinite regress just like a god doesn't.  Some theists claim it completely solves the problem but "First Cause argument" what caused the god?  We may never know the solution to the infinite regress but we don't claim we have the solution.

Yes, i have heard of the string theory, but I've never really looked into it, so thanks for telling me about it. Anyway, even if it true, it doesn't solve the problem of how the strings came into existance. I do not think the "first cause argument" is very convincing, because it fails to explain how God came into existance. Anyway, we have a paradox where the universe must have come into existance at some time, but it could not have come into existance from nothing. Is there really any possible naturalistic solution?  

Quote from: "LoneMateria"

Quote from: "Reginus"If they are not hypothetical, than can you physicaly demonstrate that there are an infinite number of numbers between 1 and 7?

Can you demonstrate that numbers can only be hypothetical or physical?

Arct said that there are an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 7. I said that in this case, the infinite is hypothetical. If the universe has existed for an infinite amount of time, than this would be an instance of a "real", not "hypothetical" infinity, because any measurement of time (seconds, for example,) has essence and is not infinatly small. In other words, if there are an infinate number of numbers between 1 and 7, than the difference between one to the next is infinitly small. If the universe has been here for an infinite amount of time, then the time between one second to the next is not infinitly small.

Quote from: "Reginus"If eating pigs is socialy acceptable, then how can killing pigs for food be socialy unacceptable? You can't have one without the other. By the way, what makes our morals better than those of the bible? It sounds an awful lot like you are compairing them to a set of meta-morals. How can this be if morality is just an invention by mankind that is closely linked to culture?

Would tell your kid that you are hungry to go kill a pig?  Regrettably things have to be done to ensure our survival.  However I can demonstrate how our morals our better, and yes i'm the judge I have to be just like you have to be the judge for your morals.  I don't know if you have kids but i'm sure you can imagine you do if you don't, in the bible OT it says that unruly children must be stoned to death.  Homosexuals must be killed.  Slavery is okay and you can sell your daughter into slavery if you want.  If a woman is raped (and shes a virgin) she must marry her rapist as gods punishment to him and he must pay her father 50 shackles.  If she wasn't a virgin then she committed adultery and must be put to death.  All this is of course sanctioned by the god of the bible.  None of this today would be deemed remotely acceptable (at least not in the U.S.).  

Our morals have evolved as our knowledge has expanded.  We realize now that slavery is wrong even though it's endorsed by the supposed creator of morals.  We don't kill unless we have to, I doubt if someone broke into your home and was going to kill you or your family and the only way to stop him was to kill him, that you would say killing is wrong and you would rather die then kill someone.  You would shoot them dead and deal with any reprocussions later.  There is no black and white moral right and wrong there are a ton of grey areas just look at killing.  Our laws have to define killing specifically because it isn't black and white like you are trying to make it.  There are charges such as 1st degree murder, involuntary man slaughter and so on.

The thing is our morals have evolved and have been refined in such a way to help benefit our society.  Our societies survival is dependent on general "morals" of our people.  Our society wouldn't survive if everybody thought that murder was right, in order for us to operate in a cooperative society we must behave in a way to support it.  We now know that stoning the newer generations for not behaving (though it may make some people happy) is detrimental to the growth of our society.  If we stoned nearly all of our children to death our population would shrink considerably because the death rate would be higher then our birth rate, we would be a dying species.  Did I answer your question?

Quote from: "Reginus"Yes, i have heard of the string theory, but I've never really looked into it, so thanks for telling me about it. Anyway, even if it true, it doesn't solve the problem of how the strings came into existance. I do not think the "first cause argument" is very convincing, because it fails to explain how God came into existance. Anyway, we have a paradox where the universe must have come into existance at some time, but it could not have come into existance from nothing. Is there really any possible naturalistic solution?  

No problem, if you are lazy like me there is a NOVA movie on String Theory, I think you can watch it here (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html).   I never did say it solved the problem of how everything came into existence.  We may never know how everything that exists got here but it doesn't lend credit to a magic man hypothesis nor does it mean we should give up and put a non-answer (god) in the spot to what caused everything.  We may live in a paradox who knows the universe is a strange place.  The naturalistic solution could be even more bizarre then us living in a paradox.  The universe is full of surprises and wonders none of which are normal.  Look at our perspective, we live on a rock mostly covered in gas circling a giant fireball.  We consider this normal.

Quote from: "Reginus"Arct said that there are an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 7. I said that in this case, the infinite is hypothetical. If the universe has existed for an infinite amount of time, than this would be an instance of a "real", not "hypothetical" infinity, because any measurement of time (seconds, for example,) has essence and is not infinatly small. In other words, if there are an infinate number of numbers between 1 and 7, than the difference between one to the next is infinitly small. If the universe has been here for an infinite amount of time, then the time between one second to the next is not infinitly small.

Again that doesn't answer my question.  Can numbers only be physical or hypothetical?  I say no and i'm going to throw conceptual out there because infinite is a concept.  I'm sorry in order for me to understand the rest of what you are saying here I need you to define "real" to me.

However I think I can tackle your last sentence without your definition of real.  The time between one second and the next is one second.  Between each second is an infinite number of fractions of seconds.  Same can be said if the age of the universe is infinitely there is an infinite number of fractions of the universe that we can measure.  I guess the best way to conceptualize this is to imagine a circle from a math text book (or any closed shape triangle, trapezoid, hexagon whatever) we can measure bits and pieces of it.  We can take a pencil and trace over it but we can't say where it "started" you can't ask where did this triangle start.  You can see a set of points and label one beginning like we have for time.  We consider the start of time 14 billion years ago at the singularity of the big bang.  Thats where we decide to make our starting point and we measure from it, in reality we don't know if there was a starting point we just take the oldest significant point for us and decide to start there.  Just like you would choose the point where an angle starts of a triangle or rhombus or whatever and start measuring from there.  We can cut the shape up into an infinite number of smaller segments (because infinite is a numerical concept) and then measure one segment to the next.

Again don't get me wrong i'm not positive this is how time even works we don't have a good grasp on the concept of time.  Even if this theory is wrong it doesn't lend credibility that a god did it, much less a specific god.  Just like the failure of that theory doesn't lend credibility to the theory that magic leprechauns created the universe.  When you try to blend the realm of science and pseudoscience you cannot discredit all possabilities to find the truth.  For example brax says a god created the universe and specifically his god.  I say the flying spaghetti monster created his god with the illusion of having him create the universe and thus we can do that infinitely (or at least until one of us gives up or dies).  If you knock pseudoscience like god out of the equation then you can eliminate all possabilities until you are left with the truth.  Saying god created everything is saying I give up lets go look for something else to do.

This thread is making my hungry.

Quote from: "Will"This thread is making my hungry.

making your what hungry?  :-p  Chinese is sounding good to me right now, mmm cashew cat or sweet and sour dog.  Tasty.

Gah, I've been typing way too much tonight. Leads to typos.  

Quote from: "Will"Gah, I've been typing way too much tonight. Leads to typos.  lol thats okay just typing leads to typos with me.  It doesn't matter my state of mind.  I'm just glad I use google chrome because it has a built in spell check.  Now when I mispell shit I can correct it so I don't look like a complete retard.  Just a minor one

It appears LoneMateria got in there before me  :P ).

It just goes to show that there is no objective source for morality. If there was morality would be black and white, but it isn't there is a huge swathe of grey between some very thin streaks of black and white. And the existence of those small streaks is debatable.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Would tell your kid that you are hungry to go kill a pig?  Regrettably things have to be done to ensure our survival.  However I can demonstrate how our morals our better, and yes i'm the judge I have to be just like you have to be the judge for your morals.  I don't know if you have kids but i'm sure you can imagine you do if you don't, in the bible OT it says that unruly children must be stoned to death.  Homosexuals must be killed.  Slavery is okay and you can sell your daughter into slavery if you want.  If a woman is raped (and shes a virgin) she must marry her rapist as gods punishment to him and he must pay her father 50 shackles.  If she wasn't a virgin then she committed adultery and must be put to death.  All this is of course sanctioned by the god of the bible.  None of this today would be deemed remotely acceptable (at least not in the U.S.).

All that I am saying is:
1. We all have innate morals, which can be slightly modified by culture.
2. If you are suggesting that our modern morals are better than those in the OT, then you must be compairing both of them to a "best" morality. How can there be a "best" morality if morals are just a creation of man?  

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Our morals have evolved as our knowledge has expanded.  We realize now that slavery is wrong even though it's endorsed by the supposed creator of morals.  We don't kill unless we have to, I doubt if someone broke into your home and was going to kill you or your family and the only way to stop him was to kill him, that you would say killing is wrong and you would rather die then kill someone.  You would shoot them dead and deal with any reprocussions later.  There is no black and white moral right and wrong there are a ton of grey areas just look at killing.  Our laws have to define killing specifically because it isn't black and white like you are trying to make it.  There are charges such as 1st degree murder, involuntary man slaughter and so on.

Of course natural law (innate morality) doesn't say "never kill for any reason." I think we can all agree that there are times where killing is the moraly right thing to do. However, I also think we can agree that simply killing random people for no reason goes strongly against our sense of innate morality. Again, I am simply saying that natural law is not simply an invention of mankind (though I am not yet contesting that it is not a result of evolution).

QuoteNo problem, if you are lazy like me there is a NOVA movie on String Theory, I think you can watch it here (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html).   I never did say it solved the problem of how everything came into existence.  We may never know how everything that exists got here but it doesn't lend credit to a magic man hypothesis nor does it mean we should give up and put a non-answer (god) in the spot to what caused everything.  We may live in a paradox who knows the universe is a strange place.  The naturalistic solution could be even more bizarre then us living in a paradox.  The universe is full of surprises and wonders none of which are normal.  Look at our perspective, we live on a rock mostly covered in gas circling a giant fireball.  We consider this normal.

Case closed. My argument was that Brax's argument has some truth to it, in that god creating the universe is the only way we can imagine it came into existance from nothing. However, like you just said, perhaps the truth is stranger than anything we can imagine.

QuoteAgain that doesn't answer my question.  Can numbers only be physical or hypothetical?  I say no and i'm going to throw conceptual out there because infinite is a concept.  I'm sorry in order for me to understand the rest of what you are saying here I need you to define "real" to me.

Numbers are conceptual mathmatical objects. Numerals are physical representations of numbers. Infinity is a concept and does not exist any where in nature. By "real" examples of infinity, I mean examples where the unit that supposivly goes on for infinity, actualy exists, and is not infinity small.  

QuoteHowever I think I can tackle your last sentence without your definition of real.  The time between one second and the next is one second.  Between each second is an infinite number of fractions of seconds.  Same can be said if the age of the universe is infinitely there is an infinite number of fractions of the universe that we can measure.  I guess the best way to conceptualize this is to imagine a circle from a math text book (or any closed shape triangle, trapezoid, hexagon whatever) we can measure bits and pieces of it.  We can take a pencil and trace over it but we can't say where it "started" you can't ask where did this triangle start.  You can see a set of points and label one beginning like we have for time.  We consider the start of time 14 billion years ago at the singularity of the big bang.  Thats where we decide to make our starting point and we measure from it, in reality we don't know if there was a starting point we just take the oldest significant point for us and decide to start there.  Just like you would choose the point where an angle starts of a triangle or rhombus or whatever and start measuring from there.  We can cut the shape up into an infinite number of smaller segments (because infinite is a numerical concept) and then measure one segment to the next.

First of all, the circle started in an ink factory   . Anyway, there an infinite number of inifinitly small (non-existant) units of time in a second. If time goes on for infinity, then there are an infinite number of minutes, but minutes are not infinitly small. You also cannot cut a paper triangle up into an infinite number number of segments, as quirks cannot be cut up. Even if they could, it would still be impossible to cut it up into an infinte number of pieces. As for imagining time as going around the edge of a circle, I admit that that is a very interesting concept, but I don't know of any evidence for something like that.

QuoteAgain don't get me wrong i'm not positive this is how time even works we don't have a good grasp on the concept of time.  Even if this theory is wrong it doesn't lend credibility that a god did it, much less a specific god.  Just like the failure of that theory doesn't lend credibility to the theory that magic leprechauns created the universe.  When you try to blend the realm of science and pseudoscience you cannot discredit all possabilities to find the truth.  For example brax says a god created the universe and specifically his god.  I say the flying spaghetti monster created his god with the illusion of having him create the universe and thus we can do that infinitely (or at least until one of us gives up or dies).  If you knock pseudoscience like god out of the equation then you can eliminate all possabilities until you are left with the truth.  Saying god created everything is saying I give up lets go look for something else to do.

The first cause argument says that a god must have created the universe, since there is no possible naturalistic solution to how the universe began. The nature of this "god" is still up for grabs, so based on the first cause argument alone(and apologists have many arguments), this god could have just as easily been the FSM.

Quote from: "Reginus"Anyway, there an infinite number of inifinitly small (non-existant) units of time in a second. If time goes on for infinity, then there are an infinite number of minutes, but minutes are not infinitly small. You also cannot cut a paper triangle up into an infinite number number of segments

Sorry, but seriously? A minute is only not infinitely small, relative to you. If the universe goes on for infinity then a minute would be infinitely small. Arguably a minute in terms of the universe is a much smaller method of measurement compared to the time periods in a second.

Okay, getting back on topic...

I think the debate is over now. What are everyone's thoughts? Did I make mistakes? Did Brax? What points did you find interesting? Did you hear anything new? How would you have argued differently, either being me or Brax? Do you have any constructive advice for either of us?

I'd appreciate any thoughts.  

Too many comments really... his final post got me burning because it appears that he ignored most of what you said then posted how everything you said was wrong or misguided.     He did the fingers-in-the-ears LALALA thing better than any other person we've had post here recently, he just did it more formally than others.  Perhaps I'm biased, I don't know.  But for me, that was an exercise in futility... well-worded futility, but futility just the same.

I'm sorry to hear that it got you burning. I'm going to just say a couple of things here in my on defense. First, I expected that on an atheist forum I would get this kind of response. I mean, c'mon, I don't have that many theists cheering me on here. It makes sense that most of you would disagree. To those who have responded in a friendly and respectful way (which includes Will), I appreciate it. To those who responded unkindly, you might be happy atheists, but you aren't really friendly ones. And if anyone else wants to debate (even using a looser style) with the same professionalism as Will just let me know.

I suppose the Athiests here will most likely think that Will won, and the Christians here will probably think that Braxton won. It seemed hard to follow at times, both because you were going back and forth about 14 different arguments, and because some of the dialog was just a tad technical. I do wish that Brax had gone more in depth with his afirmative arguments, as I think there is a lot of evidence for a god that spawns from examoning our human characteristics (ex. morality, love, reason).

Yeah, I figured a response would be "well, you're an atheist, of course you'd agree with Will."  By saying that, you're insinuating that we aren't tolerant or wise enough to make up our own minds, but rather are just nodding like a bobblehead with everything Will said.  I was raised in a Christian house, like Will.  My father wasn't a pastor, but my mother was the organist, music director, and choir director, so I got a lot of religion, a lot of it set to music.  :rant:  or  :blink: or  :crazy: thrown in for good measure.  

I found myself nodding for points made on both sides... I just agreed with many more of Will's points that yours.  And I still feel it's an exercise in futility for an atheist and a theist to debate like this.  Neither side will convince the other side of the points made... it just won't happen.  All it does is reinforce the beliefs of each side even more, thus creating a bigger chasm, not a bridge between the 2.

You have been cordial and polite... and you haven't preached to us (until that final paragraph in your summation) so I appreciate that.  As for the "finger-ear-LALA" thing... we all do that when confronted with information that we disagree with so strongly.  It's much harder to change your world view than to just stick to your own side where it's comfy and safe and warm.  I think many of us have walked in your shoes... will you try to talk in ours for awhile?

Rereading it now, I'm wondering of the topic wasn't too broad. A debate on the cosmological argument alone could be vast, but to have it as only one component of a much larger argument made it difficult for me to concentrate on each thing individually while also trying to keep the overarching theme in place. By the end, some of the tangents had gone off so far that they no longer, in my view, represented the intent of the debate.

If there is to be another debate, I think it would be wise to reduce the scope a bit, maybe just having the affirmative being one particular argument and the negative be a direct and opposing response to that one argument.

I appreciate those comments. I did not mean to characterize you as not being thinking people. I just assume that the majority of atheists will tend to agree with someone who is articulating their position. For some, debate only further polarizes, that's true. But, from a theist's point of view it is important to show that you don't check your brain at the door to believe in God. There are answers to atheist arguments like the one we saw here.

Will, I think that's fair for this type of setting.

Quote from: "braxhunt"I appreciate those comments. I did not mean to characterize you as not being thinking people. I just assume that the majority of atheists will tend to agree with someone who is articulating their position. For some, debate only further polarizes, that's true. But, from a theist's point of view it is important to show that you don't check your brain at the door to believe in God. There are answers to atheist arguments like the one we saw here.

None that aren't based on utter fallacies that I can see. Again I have to congratulate Will, I would have lost my temper a while back. And while you seem like a nice guy Brax, you obviously have not checked your facts. You repeated the same fallacious arguments over and over again, and responded with rhetoric and straw men. Not only that but you tried to accuse Will of the same fallacies, when you either misunderstood his position, or were basing your own argument on a straw man or some other nonsense in the first place. You claim that Will has not answered the questions, when in reality you never gave him the time too. All the arguments you have put forward have been refuted many times, and are no longer in contention among theologians and professors, because they don't work.

I'm too similar to a vulcan to lose my temper.  

Quote from: "Will"I'm too similar to a vulcan to lose my temper.  :P

It amazes me that Brax actually believes his CORE FACTS arguments have any merit. And that his cosmological ideas are even based in rational thought. I outlined an answer to all the points on his CORE FACTS thing, don't think I even got halfway through C before I started losing my patience

I don't know why you're surprised, with all due respect to Brax that sort of flawed logic is the norm when it comes to most theist, doesn't ring true with them all but certainly through a lot of them.

I haven't read the whole debate yet, so I have no opinion.

The debate was okay.  Will you definitely have the patience of a Vulcan .  It would be nice if Brax hung around he would probably get more insight if he were to post openly on a thread (much narrower subject of course).  I didn't agree with most of his arguments mostly because I've heard them refuted before.  Will seemed to do better in the debate because he tackled brax's questions head on while brax at the end played the "La La La I can't hear you" game.  However before he played that game he seemed to do okay even though I didn't agree with his analysis or assertions.  

Anyway brax I was honestly hoping for some special argument or something new but you disappointed me.  You seem like a nice guy to me, but you showed a lack of imagination.  It looks to me like you got your arguments straight from an apologetic handbook and didn't double check the accuracy of the arguments or the common rebuttals to them.  I may be wrong but thats what it looks like from my perspective.  If you want to continue arguing for theism or Christianity why don't you make a thread about?  I'd be happy to participate and like I said it can give you insight into how we think and what we believe or don't believe.  Even if you think you might be beaten up a little the worst that can happen is that it will promote discussion on topics you deem are important.  So it can't be that bad ^_^

I'm assuming this thread is going to die off since the debate is over. Reginus, you seemed to miss my points and my intentions in your last post.  You seemed to think I was agreeing with brax or something I don't know.  The whole argument from infinite I was using seconds to demonstrate why brax's argument was wrong.  If you want to continue our debate in a more specific thread let me know, and I'll gather up our posts (at least our relevant parts of the posts) and condense it into a super post.  It doesn't have to be about the argument from infinite it can be the cosmological argument or why I don't think there is an objective morality (which you seem to either be confused about my position or we seem to have a misunderstanding somewhere).   Let me know ^_^

@LoneMateria
No, I understand that you completely disagree with Brax. I simply said "case closed" because there wasn't much more that I could argue.

As for morality, I don't think we have found common ground on exactly what it is. You seem to have an interpretiation of "morality" as sort of a "rule book", while I think of it as more of a compass.

In any case, I think I'm done debating for a while. Time to go play some Starcraft!  :P Yeah, how much more geeky could I get?

Quote from: "Reginus"As for morality, I don't think we have found common ground on exactly what it is. You seem to have an interpretiation of "morality" as sort of a "rule book", while I think of it as more of a compass.

In any case, I think I'm done debating for a while. Time to go play some Starcraft!  :P Yeah, how much more geeky could I get?

Lol Starcraft brings back good old memories.  When does number 2 come out?

The way you put it, it made me think that you saw it as a rule book when I find it more of a guide line or a grey area.  Anyway thats for another time let me know when you want to debate some more.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Lol Starcraft brings back good old memories.  When does number 2 come out?

Well, you know how Blizzard is. You have to take the "release date" and add on 3-6 month to compensate for delays. Anyway, they still havn't put up a release date for it, but I would guess that it will actualy come out some time in the fall of 2010. I'm not even sure if the beta version is up and running at this point.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"The way you put it, it made me think that you saw it as a rule book when I find it more of a guide line or a grey area. Anyway thats for another time  let me know when you want to debate some more.

Will do. I havn't read it yet, but The Abolition of Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Man) looks like a good book if you are interested on what C.S. Lewis has to say on the topic of "Is morality objective?"

Well, I'm glad everyone thinks I'm at least a nice guy. Thanks. BTW, somebody just posted that these arguments aren't even discussed by theologians anymore. If one of you atheists doesn't refute that I'm just gonna think there is some kind of unwritten rule that you guys can't disagree with eachother, ;)

We atheists disagree on many things, but generally speaking we have similar experiences with religious apologists to draw on when forming an opinion. I said that I have seen the arguments before during our debate. The same is true for many atheists, especially those that seek community in a public medium such as a forum.

Quote from: "Reginus"Will do. I havn't read it yet, but The Abolition of Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Man) looks like a good book if you are interested on what C.S. Lewis has to say on the topic of "Is morality objective?"

yeah i've heard about C.S. Lewis, nothing good .  I'm actually going though 2 books right now and i'm about to start on the bible.  I'm currently reading Godless: How an evangelical preacher became one of america's leading atheists.  And I just started on God is not great.  But my big one is going to be the bible >.< its gonna suck.  Plus I can't find a reasonably priced 1611 King James version anywhere.

Why do you want the King James version?

Will, I'm specifically talking about the claim that theologians don't discuss these arguments anymore.I was asking if you guys aren't going to challenge that. Is that really what you guys think? Theologians? Really?

Quote from: "braxhunt"Will, I'm specifically talking about the claim that theologians don't discuss these arguments anymore.I was asking if you guys aren't going to challenge that. Is that really what you guys think? Theologians? Really?

Well, if Will did, in fact say that, then perhaps people chose not to comment since it was completely peripheral and unrelated to the topic of the debate.  However, since you asked... Yes, if those were Will's words, then he probably over-stated that particular case (to the point where what he said was no longer accurate).  Either way... Theologians frequently talk about all kinds of silly unfounded nonsense, so why not that too?  Now, I'm off to go make a chic out of a rib.  I'm horny and this snake keeps talking to me.

Quote from: "Reginus"Why do you want the King James version?

I want the 1611 King James because it was the first bible in English.  Its more literature to me then say the New American Standards edition.  After reading Misquoting Jesus I figured I wanted an older translation.  But the price of the 1611 King James is so much I might have to settle for a regular King James Bible.

Quote from: "braxhunt"Will, I'm specifically talking about the claim that theologians don't discuss these arguments anymore.I was asking if you guys aren't going to challenge that. Is that really what you guys think? Theologians? Really?

It doesn't matter if theologians discuss this or not.  If they still want to use the argument and just ignore any counterpoint to it then they might as well not be talking about it.  For example the Cosmological Argument for the existence of a god is essentially a god of the gaps argument.  We don't know for sure what caused the big bang so a god did it.  Throw in a few unfounded assumptions and then you think you have a case.  If I were to substitute your god for the cause of the universe and replace it with fairies then would the argument still be valid?  Just take everywhere in the cosmological argument and replace god with fairies and your "argument (fallacy) becomes self evident.

Quote from: "braxhunt"Will, I'm specifically talking about the claim that theologians don't discuss these arguments anymore.I was asking if you guys aren't going to challenge that. Is that really what you guys think? Theologians? Really?

I never said they didn't make the claims anymore. I just suggested that they were not effective tools of evangelism.

Will, no I'm talking about Actronyx comments on the last page. Ok, I admit it. . . I don't know how to quote other posts.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"All the arguments you have put forward have been refuted many times, and are no longer in contention among theologians and professors, because they don't work.

Ha, just figured out how to quote.  

Might go quote crazy now.

Ah, I misunderstood.

One could argue that anyone with a working knowledge of theology is a theologist, which would mean that Braxton is a theologist and thus we have evidence that at least one theologist does use these arguments still.  

As long as there is religion there will be apologists, and that's okay with me. I enjoy my skepticism, and I hope that any theist that has a similar tendency to be skeptical would explore his or her belief system.

Quote from: "braxhunt"

Quote from: "Arctonyx"All the arguments you have put forward have been refuted many times, and are no longer in contention among theologians and professors, because they don't work.

Ha, just figured out how to quote.  :)


However, now for the bad news.  You've completely misrepresented what was actually said.  Let's review:

Quote from: "Arctonyx"All the arguments you have put forward have been refuted many times, and are no longer in contention among theologians and professors

Quote from: "braxhunt"I'm specifically talking about the claim that theologians don't discuss these arguments anymore

See the difference?  So many of these misunderstandings could be avoided if we simply spent more time understanding what others actually say, and not just what we think they said.

I found the whole fideism-(is dispute with non-believers proper) aspect interesting.

The bible does not seem to direct believers to reason as the source of wisdom.  In fact, if anything, it seems
to be much stronger in exhorting believers to rely primarily on faith, and the holy scriptures themselves.  
Relevant passages come to mind; mostly Jesus preaching that one must become like a little child to enter
the kingdom of heaven.  What is it about "little children" that distinguishes them from adults?  In this context,
it seems to me to be that they have yet to achieve the "age of reason."  Thus, in my opinion, Jesus is saying
that faith, not reason, is the path to wisdom, and to heaven.

 

Quote from: "2 Timothy 3: 15"And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto
salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

(â†'Points to both scripture and faith as the sources of wisdom. Reason is not mentioned.)

 

Quote from: "Matthew 18: 3-4"And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall
not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

 

Quote from: "Mark 10: 15"Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall
not enter therein.

(Luke has this last passage also, almost word for word.)

Then there are at least a few passages that seem to point to reasoning as a less than desirable path.
Mostly the incident when Jesus spoke of rejecting the "leaven of the Pharisees."  The disciples begin to
"reason among themselves" about why he said this, and Jesus rebukes them for doing so.

Of course I understand that most modern churches reject fideism, but I would say that those who
embrace it (though obviously they don't call it that) have a fairly sound biblical basis.

As for the question of disputing with non-believers, as I pointed out in another thread (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2333&start=195), the bible is of
two minds regarding this, even putting two diametrically opposed views on the subject in consecutive
verses:

 

Quote from: "Proverbs 26: 4-5"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.

Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

I guess in this particular case, one can decide for themself whether debating non-believers is proper
or not, since the bible seems to have it both ways.  (No doubt braxhunt can point out why my
reading of these verses is mistaken.)
____________________________________________________________________________________________

On to the Kalam, which braxhunt seems to find so irrefutable.  Well, you can't refute a dog chasing his
tail, but what good is he doing?
The Kalam Cosmological Argument (interesting that the name is somewhat of a redundancy in that "kalam" is
a word used in Muslim theology to describe a type of dialectical argument) is essentially circular, in that
there's a god hiding in the first premise.

The Kalam:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

As restated by Dan Barker in his essay Cosmological Kalamity (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html):

1. Everything except God has a cause.
2. The universe is not God.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

It's clear from this that unless there is at least a hypothetical something else which is uncaused, "God,"
being the only uncaused thing, defines that state.  If your proof begins by assuming the existence of
that which it's intended to proove, it's not particularly useful.

I think that the whole "you must become a little child to enter the kingdom of heaven" thing is generaly saying that you must become free of the corruption of sin, and is not really implying anything about becoming free of reason. Atleast that was always my interpretation.

Quote from: "Reginus"I think that the whole "you must become a little child to enter the kingdom of heaven" thing is generaly saying that you must become free of the corruption of sin, and is not really implying anything about becoming free of reason. Atleast that was always my interpretation.

Hmm, even little children are guilty of original sin, so I have reason to doubt that your interpretation is correct, but I'm sure most Christian scholars (especially those who renounce fideism) would agree with you.

purgatory (http://www.gregboyd.org/blog/purgatory-and-the-judgment-seat-of-christ/)

And yeah, I think fideism is absolutly ridiculous

I did want to bring up something during the debate but I held off because it was theism in general and not Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church is a doubting Thomas for rejecting fideism. In John 20:24-29, Thomas seeks evidence to verify the resurrection and gets an earful from Jesus for his skepticism. "...blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." That's fideism. Thomas wasn't satisfied with the unreliable testimony of people, instead seeking an objectively verifiable answer to the question. $5 says that Thomas Aquinas would have made the same mistake.

Quote from: "braxhunt"Will, no I'm talking about Actronyx comments on the last page. Ok, I admit it. . . I don't know how to quote other posts.

Well I have an answer pretty much prepared for your cosmological argument in your first post. May as well just do bullet points, sorry if the orders a bit out of whack, responding to them as they appeared in your argument

1) We do not know whether the universe was caused, or whether it stretches back into infinity, or whether the 1000's of other explanations it could be are more likely. You have misrepresented your opponents opinions, straw man fallacy by presuming we believe the universe can only stretch back into infinity.

2) Even if there is a cause and it is proven to be supernatural, then why is your Christian God invoked? Why not the Hindu Gods? Why not Zeus?

3) Current scientific consensus IS NOT that the universe wasn't always there, physicists DO NOT say the universe was created a finite time ago, do not lie. The current scientific consensus is that the current universe expanded from a singularity, WE DO NOT KNOW the origins of that singularity, whether it was a bounce from a previous universe or a spiders web of millions of universes or something else entirely.

3) Your argument that whatever made the universe must be eternal is just plain wrong. Just because something is made of time, space and matter/energy does not mean that whatever the cause was (if there was a cause) must be 'beyond' those things. Lets put this into algebra, we have T, S and M/E. You have jumped to the conclusion that G is responsible for all of these. YOU CAN NOT KNOW whether the cause was 'non-temporal', do not claim you know something you can not, or even suggest that there is evidence supports such.

4) There is NO evidence for what you claim to be 'non-temporal', something with no presence can not (as far as we know) have an effect on the temporal without reverting to magic

5) There is no evidence for the non-temporal, and even if there was there is no evidence it is eternal, cop-out argument.

6) Argument from authority:

Quote“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Pity, so when did theologians come up with Modern Medicine? Oh yeah that's right they didn't. Theologians pretend to have 'scaled' this mountain of ignorance, just because you claim to do something doesn't mean you have.

7) The infinity argument is just plain stupid, there are an infinite number of points between 1 and 2, yet if I increase the number 1 by infinitesimally small units I will reach 2 eventually. By your reckoning this should be impossible. Furthermore you are arguing that if the universe does stretch back into infinity, that it can never have existed, a rather strange argument again based on things YOU CAN NOT KNOW

8) Additionally science does not argue that the big bang retreats into 'nothingness'. Your whole argument revolves around a God of the Gaps, don't pretend that it isn't.

I think I went a little overboard on the caps, but as I said I lost my patience rather quickly with the amount of falsehoods you were blurting out. And I said they were no longer in contention by theologians, simply because the arguments you presented have been shot down so many times that it's pointless to bring them up again. Because they are filled with holes and logical fallacies.

I take it as personally offensive that you would accuse me of lieing. I hope that as you develop a more well rounded understanding of academic debate you will find that "character assasination" is the most debased form of argument. Also, I was not arguing against a straw man argument when I argued against an infinite regress as I was presented the eternal universe hypothesis several times. Yes we can know that an infinite regression is not possible. We know it philosophically. Yes we can know that the non-temporal exists in that the temporal is dependant on space and matter both of which most have a first cause. Your infinity between two points is not what physicists and philosophers call an "actual infinity." You may contend that there are infinite points between, say 3 and 4 but you still have point "3" so you still have a starting point. And the scriptural arguments for fideism do not stand in that context is everything. I could take singular quotes from virtually anyone on this forum, quote them alone and make you all sound like bible-thumping holy rollers.

Quote from: "braxhunt"I take it as personally offensive that you would accuse me of lieing. I hope that as you develop a more well rounded understanding of academic debate you will find that "character assasination" is the most debased form of argument. Also, I was not arguing against a straw man argument when I argued against an infinite regress as I was presented the eternal universe hypothesis several times. Yes we can know that an infinite regression is not possible. We know it philosophically. Yes we can know that the non-temporal exists in that the temporal is dependant on space and matter both of which most have a first cause. Your infinity between two points is not what physicists and philosophers call an "actual infinity." You may contend that there are infinite points between, say 3 and 4 but you still have point "3" so you still have a starting point. And the scriptural arguments for fideism do not stand in that context is everything. I could take singular quotes from virtually anyone on this forum, quote them alone and make you all sound like bible-thumping holy rollers.

I'm sorry if you find it offensive, but I do not make the accusation lightly:

QuoteModern astrophysics has now confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt what theists have said all along. The universe was not always here. Since the early 90’s physicists have had convincing evidence that the universe began to exist a finite time ago.

Simply put, that is a lie on your part. Whether it's a failure to check the facts or a wilful ignorance, I do not care. You  purposely misrepresented information, also known as a lie. And I'm sorry to say this, but if you can not critically analyse your response to my comments, and do not realise just how fallacious your 'rebuttals' are, then there is no point debating with you. You did not respond to my arguments on more then a couple of points (and those responses themselves were based on fallacious claims and never dealt with the entire argument), personally attacked me for calling you a liar on one point(although I would say I was valid in that statement, considering the above evidence) and then threatened us with quote mining. I'm afraid it is you, who has not grasped the basics of a debate.

Also I decided to have a little dig around on your website, and what I found on your products page seems to say rather a lot. You have 4 'messages' about Evolution, titled:

The answer to evolution
The fairytales of evolution
The lies of evolution
The racism of evolution

Whilst, I see that they aren't directly pertinent to this debate and I haven't personally seen them as I'm unwilling to pay $20 for something I will probably have heard before. I can not take anyone seriously who blatantly ignores such well substantiated theories, as these messages seem to suggest you do. It suggests that no matter what we say, what evidence we provide, that you will ignore it. I'm a rational person, people debate me out of positions I hold all the time, selling such messages seem to suggest that you will never question your beliefs, and in this debate not being able to question your beliefs would automatically (in my view) hand the 'win' (if anyone can win in this debate) over to Will. Simply because arguing you have the more rational position, when you will not question any of your beliefs or the information you've been given, is rather ironic.

I admit I could be completely wrong in this assessment of you, I'm making an assumption, based on the evidence that you are selling such messages, that you are unable or unwilling to question your beliefs and ideas. And that is not the basis for a rational debate. Although I must admit, being a former Mormon myself that your message entitled 'the dangers of Mormonism' did make me giggle, considering the people in my family and in my community who attend the Mormon church around here

Quote from: "braxhunt"Your infinity between two points is not what physicists and philosophers call an "actual infinity." You may contend that there are infinite points between, say 3 and 4 but you still have point "3" so you still have a starting point.
...
 I could take singular quotes from virtually anyone on this forum, quote them alone and make you all sound like bible-thumping holy rollers.

What about mathematicians?  I have no idea an "actual infinity" is can you describe it?  It doesn't matter if we use a starting point for reference.  Infinity is infinity and the argument doesn't change.  It just switched scales.  There is still an infinite amount of numbers between the 3rd second of the minute and the 4th second of the minute, if we couldn't get past infinity then we wouldn't get by we would be frozen in time.  

Also i'm sure we can quote mine your posts and make you sound like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins.  I don't take much stock in quote mining.

Quote from: "braxhunt"Yes we can know that an infinite regression is not possible. We know it philosophically.

Thats a big assertion and you demonstrate how universal infinite regression is not possible?  The problem with the argument is that even if the eternal universe theory is wrong you would have to demonstrate every other explanation that could ever be conceived is equally wrong and that it only could have been done by a singular intelligence in which it itself is immune to the infinite regression (and specifically your god).  When you start mixing that type of pseudoscience with actual science you cannot be sure that you are right.  I could claim using the same logic you use that a small family of space leprechauns created the universe.  Would I be right?  Or that the family created your god and we should worship them?  Or that it was Satan who created the universe and he made God on accident and God is in hell and Satan rules heaven.  That is the problem of mixing pseudoscience with science.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"Simply because arguing you have the more rational position, when you will not question any of your beliefs or the information you've been given, is rather ironic.

I admit I could be completely wrong in this assessment of you, I'm making an assumption, based on the evidence that you are selling such messages, that you are unable or unwilling to question your beliefs and ideas.

You have no knowledge of what my view of evolution is because I have not told you. Further, it makes no difference to whether theism is true. As a side note those messages are actually about naturalism, not "evolution" but I don't handle that part of my site and it's was a mistake. I am more than willing to change my position on issues if I am presented with compelling evidence. The fact that I make my work available to anyone who wants it is not an assertion that I cannot be persuaded otherwise. If that were true then no true scientific or philosophical works would ever be published by honest authors.

I did not respond to your other arguments because 1) I already have in the debate, and 2) guess what? I'm not in a formal debate with you. If you want to debate formally then ask, but I am not gonna be roped into debating dozens of atheists on this one thread where everyone has questions and I spend my entire day answering.

This may be my last post with regard to you, Arctonyx. There are plenty of cordial atheists on this site with whom I can converse. Furthermore, I have made no unkind comments that I am aware of. If I have I apologize, but I will not continue to converse with an individual who engages in "character assasination." It sounds like you have a lot of anger. Your the kind of person I only find on the internet because you say the kinds of things most people would never say in person because of something called common courtesy. I'd rather view atheists as the respectful kind of people I have found in some others here.

I have been perfectly cordial, I accused you of lying on 1 point, and provided evidence. On all other points, although I know I lost my patience and may have seemed aggressive (that was not my intention), I was perfectly cordial. I am sorry that I made an assumption regarding your views on evolution, however you must realise that selling such things on your site suggests you are a creationist? Especially with those titles. Furthermore I would argue that you have not made them available for all to view, as you are in fact, charging money for them.

I'm sorry if I do not engage in something called 'common courtesy', however I was raised to tell the truth, and not to care if the truth happened to step on some peoples toes. I'm usually very cordial and open to debate others views, however I will not engage in tip toeing just to be considered politically correct, if someone says something that is so obviously wrong, I will call them out on it. And please point out where I have not been cordial with you, I tried several times (in vain, obviously), to point out the logical fallacies you were relying on, in several different posts. And all you've done to reply is call it 'character assassination' because I pointed out a lie on your part, and have the evidence of your own words to back it up. I find it odd that you have not yet actually responded to these allegations, as if you were not lying it should be incredibly easy to point out where I misinterpreted your words. I welcome you to point out, where I misinterpreted what you said, and I will admit I was wrong and retract my statement.

brax why are you only interested in 1 on 1 debates?  Seriously we have theists on here and they have taken your side on some issues why do you only want to debate 1 on 1?  We have big discussions and if your views are right and backed up by evidence were not going to play the ignore game (like you did with regard to my last post).  Not everything has to be a debate, there is such a thing as an open discussion to which no one is obliged to agree or disagree with every point you or someone else makes.  However we are (at least I am) prepared to back up any points I make in a discussion with evidence, logic, reason, or whatever else may be called for.  

Also i'm getting somewhat annoyed you are playing the "angry atheist" card.  I can tell that the members you are accusing of being angry are just frustrated.  Sometimes we all expect things to go a certain way and they don't but when you make comments like:

Quote from: "braxton"I did not respond to your other arguments because 1) I already have in the debate, and 2) guess what? I'm not in a formal debate with you.

You are the one who looks angry, and you are the one who is not cordial.  If you were to ask a question to me and I were to respond that way how would you view me?  If you asked me a question about my position on something and I intentionally refused to answer it then said well were not in a debate so i'm not going to answer it, how strong would you view my position?  And this could be over something as simple as he/she honestly didn't see that in your debate, it was long after all and i'm sure there are points everyone missed.

Chilax, everyone.  

Lone, I appreciate your articulation of some of this, but honestly, having anything, but a one on one debate on an atheist forum is incredibly trying for a non-atheist not because of anything inappropriate on the part of atheists, but simply because I can hardly post a thing without having several different people jump on it and demand that I answer their specific questions. Then when I don't because, like you I'm sure, I don't have all day to spend in front of the screen I get chided for it. Moreover, I can say the most non-offensive things that have nothing to do with the discussion at all and get chided for that too.

Quote from: "Will"Chilax, everyone.  :D How could I not be chillaxed?

Quote from: "braxhunt"Lone, I appreciate your articulation of some of this, but honestly, having anything, but a one on one debate on an atheist forum is incredibly trying for a non-atheist not because of anything inappropriate on the part of atheists, but simply because I can hardly post a thing without having several different people jump on it and demand that I answer their specific questions. Then when I don't because, like you I'm sure, I don't have all day to spend in front of the screen I get chided for it. Moreover, I can say the most non-offensive things that have nothing to do with the discussion at all and get chided for that too.

With all due respect braxhunt, that is what happens when you try to argue against logical people with fallacies and debunked theories.

(https://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lawlblog.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2008%2F05%2Fargue.jpg&hash=f8d5a77ed6034a31a652de355f30c5efd769efc9)
Psss I disagree with this assessment, but it's still pretty funny

Quote from: "braxhunt"Lone, I appreciate your articulation of some of this, but honestly, having anything, but a one on one debate on an atheist forum is incredibly trying for a non-atheist not because of anything inappropriate on the part of atheists, but simply because I can hardly post a thing without having several different people jump on it and demand that I answer their specific questions. Then when I don't because, like you I'm sure, I don't have all day to spend in front of the screen I get chided for it. Moreover, I can say the most non-offensive things that have nothing to do with the discussion at all and get chided for that too.

I understand but were not requiring you to spend all your time here.  Just make a thread and see where the discussion goes.  I'm sure there are a lot of points we all agree on and others we don't.  I'm fairly confident we have the same views on Islam though our views of Christianity differ.  

I don't think anyone would fault you for taking a day or two to yourself from time to time.  Don't get overly worked up on a website it will burn you out.  I used to be an admin on a forum site years ago, you have to learn when to take a break.  I know I've been guilty of not answering all the questions presented to me either because of fatigue or getting side tracked or whatever.  But if someone asks why didn't you answer this I do my best to respond even if its posting a link to somewhere I answered the question before or something.  We don't always need an instantaneous response, we all have lives and we all understand that the internet isn't our top priority.  Don't neglect your personal life, we only have 1 life that we know of and there is no reason not to take time out to enjoy it.

Honestly if you feel people are being openly hostile toward you there are admins and mods on here that you can talk to about it.  They won't let people get away with flaming or openly harassing anyone.  However before you do it keep in mind that sometimes people say things that they don't consider offensive but people take offense to it.  There could be an honest misunderstanding or a temporary lapse in awareness of what is being said.  This is not uncommon when 2 views are at odds with one another for example democrats and republicans have these misunderstandings as well as theists and atheists.  I know I've said stuff before that people took offense to that I didn't know they would.  It becomes a consciousness raiser.

Well said Lone. You sound like my kind of atheist. And I might add that as I have point out several times already, I have really found that the majority of the atheists on this site have been wonderful people. Its just that the issues we're dealing with are so complex that they require lengthy answers with citations. That's fine when I'm just responding to one person, but its entirely different this way. However, your idea about just linking to other responses is a good one, I'll consider that. But as a rule, I try to keep it one on one just for the sake of spending time with my family and getting things done. And I know I'm going to get it for this, but I have been accused a couple of times of committing logical fallacies (although the only one that keeps coming up is "god of the gaps" which I really have answered). And so far it has been said that I am a liar and not a logical person. Sorry, but that is the lowest form of intercourse, and it wasn't you that said it, Lone. So when I am then accused of pulling the angry atheist card I feel like that's been demonstrated by some. I'm not even sure a real effort is being set forth to understand what I'm saying i.e. I responded to the posting of several "picked out" scriptures that were said to teach fideism by claiming that they need to be examined in context, and I demonstrated the problem by simply saying that I could pick out singular quotes from anyone here and make them sound like a bible-thumper. Someone seems to have taken that to mean that I was "threatening" to do so. Thats a stretch. So all I'm saying is, this doesn't seem like a beneficial way to talk things over.

Brax, I have already given you the option, several times, to refute my accusation. At this moment it seems you are unwilling or unable to, I don't care if you no longer feel the need to debate with me. But you are playing a 'wounded puppy' card, to get out of debating with LoneMateria, and many others on this forum who have the patience to respond to your outlandish claims in a much more politically correct fashion then me. I'm sorry if I offended you, but I have offered before, and offer you the chance again to refute my claims as to get a retraction of my statement.

Although I have 1 question, what are your views on evolution? Throughout the debate you said that Will was wrong in bringing up creationist ideas, yet you seem to be selling messages that endorse creationism. Again this may not be the case, but you must realise that things you sell on your site appear to be endorsed by you personally? So to clear things up in future, and to save misconceptions, what are your views on evolution?

I am skeptical when it comes to evolution, but that does not mean that I accept what the term "creationist" implies. I do not maintain a young earth position. I would agree with mainstream cosmology on the age of the universe and the age of the earth. Those were the issues that were brought up against me in the debate. Either way, I did not and do not debate as a creationist would on those issues and so to hold me to those views is a straw man argument. In terms of your accusation that I lied, You need to know that I hold to everything that I said in the debate, but even if I was wrong, one can be mistaken, or one may misunderstand genuinely. To assert either of those things is perfectly acceptable. To call someone a lier is character assassination.

BTW Arctonyx, how old are you? Yes, it's completely irrelevant, I'm just curious.

Quote from: "braxhunt"I am skeptical when it comes to evolution

Why?  It is, perhaps, the single most well supported idea ever put forward by science across the entire history of the human existence.  If you're skeptical of evolution, it suggests that you may not have had proper opportunity to learn about it, and I'd welcome the opportunity to address any specific questions or concerns you may have.  Would you like me to open a thread so we can walk through the issues resulting in your skepticism?  Is that type of dialog something in which you'd be interested?

Quote from: "braxhunt"I am skeptical when it comes to evolution

Is there anything in particular that you're skeptical about? It's always fun to explore science.

Quote from: "braxhunt"In terms of your accusation that I lied, You need to know that I hold to everything that I said in the debate, but even if I was wrong, one can be mistaken, or one may misunderstand genuinely. To assert either of those things is perfectly acceptable. To call someone a lier is character assassination.

BTW Arctonyx, how old are you? Yes, it's completely irrelevant, I'm just curious.

Ok, please explain where I misunderstood you, or if you were mistaken in this qoute:

QuoteModern astrophysics has now confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt what theists have said all along. The universe was not always here. Since the early 90’s physicists have had convincing evidence that the universe began to exist a finite time ago.

As to me, you seemed to implicitly say the scientific consensus is that the universe began to exist a finite time ago. Which is what theists have said all along.

The second point is debatable, but on the first you either did not check your facts, or fed us what someone else had fed you. So you can see where I thought you lied? If I had said 'all theists think this', that would not only be a gross misrepresentation of my opponents opinion, but I would be lying if I had said that, and I'd hope that if I did. Someone would call me out on it, as I've never really been offended at being called as liar, I just see it as an opportunity to see if I was mistake, to ratify my views, or to point out where they were mistaken.

And if you must know I'm 19. I'm not sure what relevance this has to this topic though.

I really am not interested in discussing evolution, not because I am closed off to the idea. My closest friend is a theistic evolutionist and I discuss it with him regularly. Moreover, I spend much of my my week surrouned by academics from various fields who hold degrees in various sciences and I have plenty of opportunity to discuss it with them. I appreciate your willingness to talk about it, but it just has zero relevance to the question of God. In fact philosopher Alvin Plantinga actually believes if you grant biological evolution it makes the case for God stronger, as does J.P. Moreland. And there are many who don't see the connection between evolution and atheism such as, William Lane Craig, Francis Collins, Dinesh D'souza, Gerald Schroeder and a host of others. The reason is because if it's true, it only answers the question of how life arose, but it doesn't answer how the universe came to be.

By the way arctonyx, your age is irrelevant, I was jus wondering.

Quote from: "braxhunt"The reason is because if it's true, it only answers the question of how life arose, but it doesn't answer how the universe came to be.

By the way arctonyx, your age is irrelevant, I was jus wondering.

Just a small correction here, evolution explains the variety of life, the big bang explains the origins of this universe (although not what came before it currently), and abiogenesis explains how life began. No theory is going to be all encompassing, evolution only explains the variety of life.

Quote from: "braxton"but it just has zero relevance to the question of God.

I have to partly agree with you on this.  A god who made us through evolution could be an underachiever or could be a deistic god who just didn't care.  

However when certain apologists start saying that the bible is the inerrant word of God (to my knowledge you haven't said that braxton so i'm not including you in this) then evolution becomes very relevant to the existence of god.  This is because they are giving their god characteristics, achievements, and methods to which he has done everything.  When those things leave the supernatural world and enter this world, we can test some of them.  In the bible God made all the animals as they are, however we can prove through evolution and common decent that never happened.  Just like the flood of Noah there where all but 2 (or 7 whichever book you are reading) of each animal that was killed.  We can look through genetics to see if there was a population bottleneck at a given point in a species history (like the Cheetah 10,000 years ago).  However for the story to be true all animals would have to have gone through this bottleneck which they haven't.  Disproving the achievements of the supposed deity bring both the veracity of its sacred texts into question and the existence of its deity into question thus it becomes relevant to the existence of the deity.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"

Quote from: "braxhunt"The reason is because if it's true, it only answers the question of how life arose, but it doesn't answer how the universe came to be.

Just a small correction here, evolution explains the variety of life, the big bang explains the origins of this universe (although not what came before it currently), and abiogenesis explains how life began. No theory is going to be all encompassing, evolution only explains the variety of life.

Indeed.  He's setting the bar for evolution artificially high, and it's as if he's here claiming that germ theory needs to also be able to explain gravity.

Look, the point is it wouldn't affect the question of God.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"However when certain apologists start saying that the bible is the inerrant word of God (to my knowledge you haven't said that braxton so i'm not including you in this) then evolution becomes very relevant to the existence of god.  This is because they are giving their god characteristics, achievements, and methods to which he has done everything.  When those things leave the supernatural world and enter this world, we can test some of them.  In the bible God made all the animals as they are, however we can prove through evolution and common decent that never happened.  Just like the flood of Noah there where all but 2 (or 7 whichever book you are reading) of each animal that was killed.  We can look through genetics to see if there was a population bottleneck at a given point in a species history (like the Cheetah 10,000 years ago).  However for the story to be true all animals would have to have gone through this bottleneck which they haven't.  Disproving the achievements of the supposed deity bring both the veracity of its sacred texts into question and the existence of its deity into question thus it becomes relevant to the existence of the deity.

Now I'm no expert on Hebrew literature, but I can say with some certainty that the Bible was not ment to be interpreted in the same way as a 21st century legal document. Besides, there would be practical consequences if the Bible were to explain evolution. If you were alive 4,000(edit: years ago), would that make you more or less likely to believe the Bible?

Quote from: "Reginus"Now I'm no expert on Hebrew literature, but I can say with some certainty that the Bible was not ment to be interpreted in the same way as a 21st century legal document. Besides, there would be practical consequences if the Bible were to explain evolution. If you were alive 4,000, would that make you more or less likely to believe the Bible?

First off did you not read my first sentence?  People say the bible is the inerrant word of God.  About 1/3 of the population of the United States call themselves Evangelical Christians, who believe in the literal word of the bible.  (Obviously they are relaxed on the laws of the OT)  There is no interpretation or mystical hidden messages if you want to know what any author is saying you read his/her words.  (A good book if you want to learn the history of the NT and alterations that were made is Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman)

Now for the second part.  What practical consequences would there be if the bible were to explain evolution?  What practical consequences would there be if the bible explained that the earth orbits the sun and its a sphere, or that there are germs and bacteria that kill people?  Or that there are no witches, djinns, monsters, etc.?  Come on now if I were a god and I was doing miracles to help people believe in me what harm would I cause by saying, by the way the planet is 4.5 billion years old you are circling the sun?  If they are supposed to believe me I don't think they will say, "Well you parted the red sea to help me escape slavery, you protected us and provided everything we have and cherish, but the planet is a sphere and circles the sun ... thats too much sorry I can't handle it."

If you were alive 4,000 what?  If it was years ago and some magic man in the sky was explaining evolution to me after he did all these miracles and proved he was god then i'd listen.  I wouldn't say, "Don't lie to me I know how you made us, from magic dirt, see even I know how you did it and was that stuff about microscopic organisms?  MAGIC DIRT!!!!!!!!"

Quote from: "braxton"Look, the point is it wouldn't affect the question of God.

Did I not make good points?  Why?

I would just like to make a point about Bart Ehrman since my personal friend Mike Licona has debated him. If you read the book you cited he builds his case on 4 or 5 supposed "mistakes, or alterations" to the bibilical text. However, 1) Bibles almost universally put the passages in question in brackets and note on the page that these were not in the very early manuscripts. 2) None of the passages he cite make the slightest difference theologically or doctrinally speaking. He makes it sound as though this is some well kept secret that the church doesn't want you to know about, but as I said almost every Bible I have, and I have a bunch, make it well known.

Also, evangelicals absolutely do not universally believe the same view of interpretation. In fact I just read 4 scholarly works by conservative evangelicals on the bibliology and none of them were as you characterized. BTW, you did not directly claim that the evangelicals believe universally in the same view of innerancy, I'm setting the record strait.

Quote from: "braxhunt"I appreciate your willingness to talk about it, but it (evolution) just has zero relevance to the question of God.

Braxhunt, I agree with you that evolution has no relevance to the question of God. I get impatient when it's brought up in that context.
What, then, does have relevance to the question of God, in your opinion?

Just to be pedantic, evolutions DOES have relevance to the question, as it can help explain the commonality of belief in deities and the ways neurocortical mechanisms have been hijacked by religion.

Quote from: "braxhunt"I would just like to make a point about Bart Ehrman since my personal friend Mike Licona has debated him. If you read the book you cited he builds his case on 4 or 5 supposed "mistakes, or alterations" to the bibilical text. However, 1) Bibles almost universally put the passages in question in brackets and note on the page that these were not in the very early manuscripts. 2) None of the passages he cite make the slightest difference theologically or doctrinally speaking. He makes it sound as though this is some well kept secret that the church doesn't want you to know about, but as I said almost every Bible I have, and I have a bunch, make it well known.

I've read the book and he uses more then 4 or 5.  The book has 7 chapters where he cites multiple examples in each chapter though a few he refers back to in different chapters to reinforce points.  Which bibles?  I don't see them in the King James I have or the New International Version (Not really a "new" book It says copyright 1984).  That 2nd one is wrong some of the references he makes changes the character of Jesus like in Mark 1:41 when he heals the leper, Jesus heals the man then gets angry at him.  In Mark 3:5 Jesus again gets angry at a person he heals.  But not only that 2 of the 4 Gospels (I can't remember which ones off the top of my head) had endings added to them.  Early Christians used to change texts to fight those who criticized their beliefs.  Texts were changed based on popular belief and sometimes on hatred of competing religions.  There were wide variations of the bible, and we have surviving texts of people openly criticizing early Christian beliefs and people responding not by denying the accusations but trying to spin their alterations of the texts as a good thing.

I'm going off on a tangent so i'm going to stop.  Basically since Ehrman was a biblical scholar his book was aimed at saying even if the original message was divinely inspired or written by God that the alterations that early Christians made of the bible (and even when it was picked up by monks and professional scribes) whether on accident or otherwise has been so distorted that we no longer know the original message.  I think he makes a good case and it was a good book.  But he isn't aimed at discrediting any one particular thing in the bible so included in his book are works by "heretics" like Marcion and some writings by people that openly criticized Christianity, and defended it.  If you haven't read it, its a good read whether you agree with his conclusion or not.  

Quote from: "braxton"Also, evangelicals absolutely do not universally believe the same view of interpretation. In fact I just read 4 scholarly works by conservative evangelicals on the bibliology and none of them were as you characterized. BTW, you did not directly claim that the evangelicals believe universally in the same view of innerancy, I'm setting the record strait.

My apologies i'm under a misconception.  I think I meant to paint Evangelical Christians with the same brush which is a poor mistake on my part.  Is there a special ... denomination or classification you give people who do believe in the absolute inerrancy of the bible?

Now I can't help but notice you didn't answer my previous questions.  I'd like to discuss why evolution doesn't have any bearing on if a god exists or not.  Apparently i'm in disagreement with several people.  Perhaps some discussion will get me to change my view or vice versa ^_^

Quote from: "iNow"...evolution DOES have relevance to the question, as it can help explain the commonality of belief in deities...

Indeed.  There is in fact a recent study (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/belief-and-the-brains--god-spot-1641022.html) which seems to provide some evidence related to this very subject. I started this thread (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2948) several months ago referring to the article linked above.   Interestingly, from what I read in the piece in The Independent, one of the lead scientists in the study (at least the mouthpiece for it here) is a theist.  In fact he seems to give indication in his quotes that he thinks the results can be read as favorable to the theist position.

 

Quote from: "Steve Conner, quoting Professor Jordan Grafman in The Independent,""When we have incomplete knowledge of the world around us, it offers us the opportunities to believe in God. When we don't have a scientific explanation for something, we tend to rely on supernatural explanations," said Professor Grafman, who believes in God. "Maybe obeying supernatural forces that we had no knowledge of made it easier for religious forms of belief to emerge."

I have my doubts that Grafman is justified in taking the results the way he does.  I think it's actually a very interesting example of a theist scientist doing a fair job of taking evidence that on it's face seems contradictory to his position and turning it into proof for his belief.

Right on.  Thanks for sharing that.


Here's some more on the topic of our evolved tendency to believe in deities, and how religion tends to hijack our neocortical mechanisms.

[youtube:17vuoxpc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iMmvu9eMrg[/youtube:17vuoxpc]

Quote from: "Andy Thompson"If you understand the psychology of [why we crave] the Big Mac meal, you understand the psychology of religion. We evolved adaptations for things that were crucial and rare... the sugars of ripe fruit... fat of lean game meat... for salt... those were crucial adaptations in our past. And now the modern world creates a novel form of it that comes from those adaptations, but hijacks them with super-normal stimuli... not ripe fruit, but a coca-cola... not lean game meat, but fat hamburger and french fries soaked in meat juice... and it creates these super-normal stimuli, but they're based on ancient adaptations.

Let me take you on a bit of a tour of a few of these cognitive mechanisms.

The first is Decoupled Cognition... <more at the video>

A few additional quotes from the above video:

Quote from: "Andy Thompson"Children know more than they learn... We come into the world with these systems already in place. It is natural, from very early on, to think of "disembodied minds." Now, you can flip it around and you can understand why this is crucial. If I required a body [to be physically present] to think about [someone elses] mind, that's a real liability... It's burdensome... I need to be able to think about somebody, and think about what's going on inside of them, and what their intentions or goals might be... without them present.

QuoteAnother thing about children is that they are causal determinists... What does this mean? Well... any mind that is oriented toward seeing intentions... and desires and goals... is gonna "over-read" purpose. If you ask a child, "What are birds for?" [that child will respond with something like,] "To sing." [If you ask a child] "What are rivers for?" [that child will respond with comments such as,] "for boats to float on." [If you ask a child,] "What are rocks for?" [that child will respond with something like,] "for animals to scratch themselves."

We over-read causality... we WAY over-read causality and purpose.

He argues how our complex social interactions with unseen others (think visualization and mental rehearsal) are just one step away from communicating with a dead ancestor and one step further to communicating to a god or gods. He also illuminates our susceptibility to optical and other illusions, and how these same "gap filling" tendencies in the brain lend a giant opening for supernatural figures. It's called intuitive reasoning, and it underlines the essence of religious ideas.



Additionally:

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1581 (http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1581)

QuoteBoyer does not make an attempt to take an atheist stance and explain away God as a figment of our imaginations, but rather to explain why we believe what we believe and why some beliefs are so persistent.
<...>
The other problem with this account of the origin of religionâ€"where religion is used as an explanation for natural eventsâ€"is that religious concepts tend to make things more mysterious and complicated than other types of explanations.
<...>
Boyer discusses specific properties of the human mind, for example, how we produce our inferences, and how they affect our inference systems and our templates to generate different kinds of information about religion. He also discusses which concepts are most likely to be adapted and which ones are not.
<...>
I think one of the most important concepts that Boyer covered was that diversity can rise out of simplicity. Here we have very simple templates about the way the world works, and we have inference systems that help us piece together new bits of information and create new information. Using these inference systems, we are able to build up a more complex body of knowledge about the supernatural, thus creating very complicated religious concepts from very simple beginnings. Just as different varieties of atoms can arise from a few changes in electrons and just as complex macromolecules and organisms can be built from different arrangements, so too can complex ideas and supernatural agents be built from humble templates.

I also found Boyers’ explanations of the way the human brain works very revealing.

There's a lot more meat on this bone, but it may warrant its own thread.  Enjoy.