The existence of God

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Except not all religions are the same.

In my eyes through my primary belief they are, all religions beliefs are simply rituals designed to tap into the energy (be that god, sun spirits or trees). Now I'm not saying that's a negative thing to strive towards as it cause bring about great happiness. But I chose a goddess that I can prove to myself exists and actually does things for me (nourishment and enlightenment) and in return I walk softly and respect her other denizens.

If you are in dire need of a god it is a simple matter to make one up. There is, according to most rational observers, nothing in the multiple interactions of natural processes, no bias in favor of life and the way things are going humans are becoming outstandingly successful in destroying the current life favorable environment.

No. Dennett's example sufficies:

"Love is just a word."

A) "Love" is just a word.
Trivally true - begins with L, has four letters. "Cow is just a word, chessburger is just a word".
B) Love is just a word.
False - it's an experience, a relationship, an illusion, but more than a mere word.

"Deepities" are basically when one equivocates between two meanings - one trivally true and the other false but would-be remarkable.

So how exactly does this "deepity" disprove my theory? (or did you just bring that up to state a point?)

My point against your theory is that much of it is ill-constructed and reliant on deepities.

No they are not. To have faith is, by definition, to believe in something without any substantial evidence whatsoever.



Well, yes, you probably are just using this as an excuse to avoid answering me. When making a claim, it is your duty to back it up."I don't know, it just is" is not a counterargument, it is called "dodging" or "handwaving".

Nonetheless, I just showed, in that same post, that the only organisms that can be said to have anything remotely resembling consciousness is anything with a central nervous system. Bacterium and rocks don't have this. So, if everything is one big collective consciousness, then where does it come from? How does a rock (or other inanimate object) have consciousness? I want you to demonstrate to us how this can be, not merely hand-wave it away.



And yet in previous posts you claimed that it is we humans, with our big collective consciousness, who make up reality as we go. Don't you think this statement contradicts your claims?

And what about disease? This is completely unrelated to our consciousness. If they are also part of this collective consciousness then why can't we, you know, tell malaria to be gone or something?

The reason I pointed this out is because the existence of wars, disease, famine, etc. directly shows just how ludicrous the claim that the collective consciousness (and the existence of gods/goddesses, etc.) really are.



Yes, people are certainly scared of death. But this is irrelevant. As for "ardent atheists" taking up religion before they die, it happens far, far less often then you'd think...



You are dodging again. Your claim was:



So, why is it that meditation does not impart the knowledge of hunter-gatherers that live way back when, or modern scientific knowledge held by the scientific community. Especially since you say that meditation allows "access the past 300,000 years of human knowledge".



Read what I said above.



I have a better idea. Why don't you show us that this method actually works, and then I might consider it. The burden of proof is on you, not me. This quote reminds me of the crackpot who claims that perpetual motion machines are possible, but refuses to provide details on how to build one and demonstrate.



Because you know I will kick your ass if you try? Like I said before, the onus is on you to prove to us, or at the very least provide a compelling argument, to take your belief seriously. Right now it's looking like complete hogwash. This is a public forum, and your beliefs are equal game for being torn right apart. Why don't you start by actually addressing my questions instead of dodging or handwaving them away.



Then why are you trying so hard to promote your belief in the first place?




I did. Now it's your turn. It's time for you to start actually addressing our points, or retract everything you said and admit defeat.

No, It's late, I need to sleep and I've answered all your questions.

I won't retract my statements, I've given all the facts and went into this knowing fully that I wouldn't convince those unwilling to be convinced. Deal with it.

Peace.

I love the self-righteous arrogance in this statement - "I've went into a debate, given tortured arguments based on horrible misuses of the facts, and have failed to convince anyone. It's your problem! Deal with it!".

Only if Invisible Pink Unicorns can also be proved!

With genetic engineering on the march it's only a matter of time before someone constructs a pink unicorn. People have been trying for thousands of years to construct a believable god and nobody has even slightly approached success.

If things stayed exactly as they are, not likely. I mean that in the sense that enough people, intelligent and logical even, will find enough trends in nature or will notice that certain things that seem like sure markers get buried on the back burner by society (society has this strange way of rejecting anything that gets too slushy, complex, etc.) and these forms of evidence will be enough to clinch it for them.

On the other hand though its similar to the process of a court and jury; its an educated guess. That's not typically something that can typically form an easy equation, theorem, or postulate, and being that even the facts themselves exist in what a lot of people would call gray area (scientific to theological thought ends up just being beliefs reflected onto reality, the loudest evidences of spiritual activity being buried in mountains or fraud where people can quite often debate whether any of it is legit at all).

I'm pretty sure that if there is a God, this is exactly as he wants things for the time being. As for why, your guess is as good as mine.

The irony is so delicious, isn't it? Their beliefs rest entirely on being able to keep vague and handwave away anything that might challenge their world view. It all changes when someone actually comes around and calls them out on it. And then when you defeat them, they either whine about it, try to take the moral high ground, or try to pretend that none of it mattered.

Of course he's not going to answer any of my questions, because that would actually force him to re-examine his beliefs. And we can't possibly have that happening!


That said, it was certainly by far the quickest knock-out I've ever had in a debate. It took only 2 posts!



The problem comes when you claim that said deity is all-good and/or intervenes in daily life; you bring up the unresolvable Problem of Evil. Pretty much, the only solution that theologians (or other religious leaders) have ever come up with is to handwave the obvious logical problems away.

The funning thing is that I was very patient with them. I asked Amber-Miasma several questions to make sure I wasn't strawmaning their position before dismissing it. Every time I asked a question, it seemed the topic became more obscured.

Thats what I was getting too from my attempt to suss out some coherency.

Nature can take revenge despite its mindless state
dreams are made corporeal but still cant define my fate.

Thats my summary of the screed.

As is typical of postmodern philosophy/religion. Of course I DO believe in the God of the Bible and creation alone is enough to convince me. So the idea of each of us making our own god/goddess is pure nonsense to me. It's a very self-centered view (not "selfish" in the negative sense, just centered on self rather than a kind of universal view, etc.).

The main problem, regardless of whether you're a believer of some kind (Christian or other) or atheist/anti-theist, is such thinking is logically unsound. A statement rejecting absolutes in terms of God, truth, reality, existence, and so forth is itself a statement of what the arguer believes to be absolute. It doesn't matter what she says after that--everything she says will be wrong. Either God exists or He doesn't. Either truth exists or it doesn't. You can make a good logical case either way. But the problem of someone stating that we just make it up as we go puts her feet planted firmly in mid-air.

No wonder we've all had a lot of fun with this one!