551. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87210 by phasmagigas on November 11, 2007 at 1:43 pm

I suppose I am wondering how life looks from an atheistic point of view; whether an atheist suffers feelings of guilt which blight her life and hold back her ability to live life to the full; what resources she has when life goes badly wrong; and (moving away from the completely personal) whether an atheist has any solutions for a suffering world; and whether any of it matters anyway.

i find my atheism somewhat adaptive, when i drive im as careful as i can realistically be, i dont eat/drink/use phone in the car, these are things i can do here in the USA incredibly enough.

anyway it may be not cause and effect but lets assume that 8 of 10 US drivers are believers, when im wanting to turn left and some jerk/jerkess speeds round the corner with burger in one hand, cell phone in the other and elbow on the steering wheel i cant help but think 'daft christian', now why is that (aside from the fact that they are daft for driving like that and most likely christian)? its partly (and i may be totally wrong here) because i bet their confidence in their dangerous driving is partly or wholly (even if subconciously) aided by the belief that god is watching them or somehow helping them through the day, they therefore take more risks and because of this i find myself surrounded by dangerous driving.

If 50% of believers drive via elbow then too might 50% of atheists then i'll be talking crap but asides as im quite convinced that this is the only life I have im going to take reasonable precaution to keep mine and others safe.

552. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87179 by phasmagigas on November 11, 2007 at 11:48 am

ah, thats what they are , i thought they were golfing clubs....must be my ontological reality thing going on :) i think the jumper made me think golf for some reason...sorry, haha.

553. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87173 by phasmagigas on November 11, 2007 at 11:33 am

No, please no - don't let DG loose on cricket

eepeist, what do you care, looks to me you are a golfer :)

554. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #87167 by phasmagigas on November 11, 2007 at 11:24 am

Indeed I find it probable that modern atheism will play a positive role by helping bring religion's many flaws to the surface which will force religious people to deal with them and clean up their house as it were

im not sure that would happen

imagine a deist god unambiguously made its prescence known to the whole planet (sky turned green, amputees all healed simultaneosly and all your old battered toys in the closet were suddenly brand spanking new, better than anything on ebay) , it says 'the atheists are wrong, i am here and set the universe in motion, however the creationists are wrong too, I didnt even know if life would start i just set the constants and sat back for 15 billion of your years and watched things unfurl, im very happy with my experiment and I made some wonderful creatures but alas humans are not special, they do think more than most other creatures so i felt it was time to reveal all as arguments over me cause much misery'

anyway you get the idea. the atheists would most likey say 'incredible, tell us what we dont know' (thats what i'd say), the creationists would say 'nonsense, you are not our god, or this is a trick, we did not come from monkeys.......wheres our bibles'.

555. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #87159 by phasmagigas on November 11, 2007 at 11:12 am

Phasmagigas (post 470, or #79134):

DG
'the obvious but by now demonstrably false idea is that objective reality is just how it looks when we look around'.

me
'actually i can agree with the last sentence, if one was on LSD'
'

DG:
If you study some physics you'll see that the last sentence is factually true. For example if you look around you you'll see many colorful things; but even naturalists now agree that there are no actual colorful things in reality.

my sentence re LSD actually continued and demonstrated that I agreed that objective reality is not what we see, i used lsd to demonstrate that it can be even more obviously distorted from that of a 'straight' mind. I only respond here as it appears i was misunderstanding that what we see is a representation of objective reality, I understand of course that colours dont exist but the EM radiation that propogates from/out of objects does.

556. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87149 by phasmagigas on November 11, 2007 at 10:47 am

So, we live and we die

thats all that we can be absolutely sure of (important to keep Dr.Benways #3 upheld here) so most of us here place a VERY high regard for the 'we live' bit.

557. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87139 by phasmagigas on November 11, 2007 at 10:03 am

Atheists are real people with human emotions and come in all stripes. Just look at Hitchens. What brought you to the conclusion, after watching him, that atheists were somehow politer than others?

this is a very interesting situation.

the religious somehow think that if atheists arent nice then they are right and you do need god. Atheists dont make claims about being good, they simply dont accept a belief in god. It seems ironic that its atheists who seem to be under more pressure (im not sure where from but certainly from believers) to be good as if they have to somehow display their 'look, we can be good without god' mentality. Im not sure im explaining what i mean very well but im hoping ive put 'pen to parer' correctly here. on CH, he can be a boor as such and he would get called up for this by the religious but of course if CH is right and their is no god then he has every right and every expectation to be a boor, the religious should be rejoycing in the fcat hes a boor!! anyway im still not sure im conveying what im 'feeling' here but there it is.

558. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87137 by phasmagigas on November 11, 2007 at 9:50 am

I am surprised that the people in this forum seem more interested in picking hole in my puny arguments than in asserting their own view of truth.

thats an interesting point, im glad that was noticed, the religious tend to do the exact opposite: they fail to pick holes in arguments (well thats from my point of view of course) but more imortantly they excell in ASSERTING their own view of truth. I think its infinitey more preferable to have somebody picking holes in your puny arguments than asserting their view of truth.

559. Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules

Comment #87133 by phasmagigas on November 11, 2007 at 9:32 am

a bit like a dog breeder who opposes evolution but is happy to use selective breeding to get the right dog to hopefully sell at a good price.

a bit like the biochemist who opposes evolution but works on antibiotics under the assumption that it happens hopefully to sell at a good price.

very strange, cognitive dissonance at an extreme. then again this isnt too different from what i see all the time. I live right next to a jehova church, sunday morning all the big SUV's arrive, everybody gets out in their finest clothes, no doubt theres some good money makers out there with technical jobs, then they spend the best hours of the week sat engaged in something telling them how to arrange their lives best, like a bunch of kids in nursery school, very strange, im not understanding, not one bit.

560. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86828 by phasmagigas on November 10, 2007 at 8:41 am

Now you are really making things up as you go along. Nice try though, not bad for science fiction. Sounds kind of like the Island of Dr Moreau

as i always say, ask 10 creationists (seperately) 'why do humans and chimps share 98% of their DNA but a gorilla a bit less than that with either?' and you will get 10 different answers, possibly 10 very different and even contradicting answers, enough said.

That in itself doesnt disprove creation of course (nothing can disprove creation which is one good reason to assume its bollocks) but its says quite a lot anyway.

of course to be fair you could ask 10 accepters of evolution and get 10 different answers (well in detail of course you will) but only in the same fashion as asking 10 people 'how do you make an omlette', of course nobody will suggest that they turn their back, click their fingers, say omlette backwards and turn around to reveala fully fledged omlette (well, unless they are mad or a liar or having a yolk)

561. Georgia plans service to pray for rain

Comment #86596 by phasmagigas on November 9, 2007 at 5:03 pm

idiot. thats all i can say. the british have prayed for sun for 1000's (well 10's of years for sure that ive heard of first hand) of years and they still never get any.

562. Velociraptor and prehistoric co. breathed like birds: study

Comment #86446 by phasmagigas on November 9, 2007 at 8:43 am

unfortunately creationists will point out that given a saddle the velociraptor would have made an even better designed steed (than previously imagined) for the people living along side them, proof that goddidit!!

563. On Being Not Muslim Enough

Comment #86369 by phasmagigas on November 9, 2007 at 5:05 am

a couple of my closest friends come from a muslim background, they are not muslim and are essentially humanists. When i encounter their 'more' muslim family and friends members there is lots of politeness but i can sense a certain unease, its a case of 'ah, you are one of the western friends, ah, one of those, not one of us'. So despite our friendship for all the right reasons that is not enough for them, very sad.

564. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86367 by phasmagigas on November 9, 2007 at 4:52 am

i welcome ADH on here, id rather read the discourse between ADH and others rather than between DG and others.

565. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86366 by phasmagigas on November 9, 2007 at 4:37 am

its funny how there is that slippery slope between what we accept as normal and as crazy. warning kids about hell, hmm, if one does that to your own kids in an effort for them to be good is seen as one thing but if you take it further (and i cannot see why all hell believers dont do this) you stand on street corners with a placard. now i dont see any difference between one and the other in terms of aims (the warning)but the majority of people pass off the guy with the placard as a nutcase, and understandibly so. I could give more respect to the placard holder as at least hes willing to stand up there and make himself look foolish and take the scorn from believers and non believers alike.

Funny how middle of the road believers scorn others, eg christians who see literal creationists as nutters, to those moderates i say 'tell that to them'.

566. Mother dies after refusing blood

Comment #86144 by phasmagigas on November 8, 2007 at 8:58 am

heres an excerpt from the beebs atricle:

'But when giving birth to her twin girls by emergency Caesarean section - prematurely at 30 weeks - Ms Underhill began to understand the reality of her choice.'

yup, im glad the word 'reality' was used there, although i think the article should be more explicit and explain just which ontological reality they are talking about in case any of use get confused.

and heres a few words of wisdom from one of the JW:


"We are not anti-medicine. When it comes to medical choices we go through the same process as anyone else - but we take the Bible seriously."

He adds: "Many believe blood equals life and no blood equals death - it is not that simple. Abstaining from blood often cuts out the chance of other diseases and other health outcomes."

thanks for that mr JW.

567. Mother dies after refusing blood

Comment #86143 by phasmagigas on November 8, 2007 at 8:50 am

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071108/ap_on_re_us/southern_drought_prayer

a bit off topic so to speak but heres another bloody idiot. maybe we should all pray to STOP rain falling over the western british isles.

568. Jesus Camp: A scary movie that should frighten us all

Comment #86141 by phasmagigas on November 8, 2007 at 8:47 am

I also remember thinking how extremely bizarre it was that all these adults were pretending to speak another language, everyone knew it was pretend, and no one would admit it.

inadequate, unfulfilled, infantile, insecure individuals who will practice group delusion in order for them to feel included in the playground games. whatever the make up of their mind I can happily say I do not understand the mentality nor do i possess it, very strange behaviour indeed.

569. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86084 by phasmagigas on November 8, 2007 at 5:09 am

I'm perfectly happy with natural selection as the means whereby God's intentions for each species were actualised, though I guess there could be other, alternative explanations.

No I don't believe chimps have souls. I believe God singled out homo sapiens as his image bearers.

this coincides (if im not mistaken) with the catholic churches official position on evolution, ie we evolved but we uniquely have a soul.

My main problem with this (and this is one of those cases where when you bring it up it shows the complete lack of understanding of the evolutionary process, faces start going blank here) is that at which point did god insert the soul exactly???? at which point did god separate mother from child and say, ok 'this child is what i will call human and give her a soul, her mother doesnt quite cut the mustard so she doest get one'.

All people understanding evolution and the continual link betweeen generations will see the very real problem with the catholic position, the average creationst will have no idea what you are talking about because as usual they have no idea what evolution actually is.

now lets assume that the catholic position is correct and that god did intervene about 100,000 years ago or so and start adding souls, well thats all fine but once again its pure assertion, not the slightest shred of evidence anmd once again makes one think 'why the hell would i even BEGIN to consider this as a valid notion' (i have to condiser all the other origin myths and variations too).

I get great satisfaction that my world view could be at any time totally falsified, it has yet to be so, I find the religious mind so arrogant as to walk around with unfalsifiable notions with pride!! I am the one who is ready to be shown to be wrong, my mind could one day be shown to be wrong in some type of after life, the religios mind can never experience being proven wrong: if there is an afterlife they experience that they were right, if there isnt, well they dont know eitherway!!

I'm happy to be proven wrong someday, i wonder just what type of insincere mind likes to know that it can never be shown to be wrong??

570. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #86081 by phasmagigas on November 8, 2007 at 4:56 am

i have to say that i really enjoyed Rd's delivery, i found myself laughing quite a lot.

Its interesting that listening to dawkins and scott there is lots of humour with genuine reasons to mix laughter with serious problems (sometimes one just has to laugh at creationists in particular), listening to the 'opposition' i notice their smiles and jokes will have a less sincere tone, reminding me of one of those permanent smiles upon a rather scary looking clown, just what is it with foaming creationists and their staring eyes and manic smiles???

571. The truth in religion

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

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

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

i'll get my coat

i'll agree that donner meat is particularly fatty.

572. The truth in religion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

574. Evolution to be taught in SA schools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

575. Arguments Against Evolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

580. A new website addition: Debate Points

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

decius.

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

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

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

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

ok a quick one and work in progress:

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

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

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

582. A new website addition: Debate Points

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

584. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

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

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

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

585. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

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

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

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

Anyway obviously thats a cultural, not a genetic trait.

586. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

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

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

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

587. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

588. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

589. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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

dianelos:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

591. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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

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

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

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

592. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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

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

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

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

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

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

and dont actually bother replying to this one DG.

593. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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

dianelos:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

594. Christopher Hitchens at AAI 07

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

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

good point.

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

He is making a statement that stands alone.

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

595. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

596. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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

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

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

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

597. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

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

bluejway.

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

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

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

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

598. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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

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

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

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

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

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

599. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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

doc benway

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

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

600. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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

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

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

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