Your thoughts on God

[JD50]

so wrong on so many levels. Savatar has explained it quite well for you.

Yes, and it made my point better than I could. The gay is bad because the imaginary man in the sky says so, so here rape my daughter instead.

 

[sandorski]

This is a fallacy. Humans come in a variety of "flavors", that's why belief in God is as diverse as opinions on who makes the best car.






The belief in a greater good still remains, though, no matter who/what that is attributed too. That was my entire point.



Good, but we're not talking about UFO's, New Agers, etc...we're talking about why we seem to have an inherent capacity to believe in a greater good.

You're committing another fallacy here by saying that just because there are many versions of god, NONE of them are true, or likely not true.

How many ways can you think of to kill someone? Does that mean that because of the sheer diversity of opinions on that matter, all of them are potentially ineffective?

And I've questioned my faith, and answered them.

We might as well be talking about UFOs, New Age beliefs, etc. They rely on the same things as does traditional Theism.

"Greater Good" is a rather nebulous term, it doesn't even imply a deity, as many non-theistic ideas also strive for such a thing. We all want something that's better or more Ideal, that has little to do with this discussion. It certainly is not evidence of gods.

By the sheer number of gods that were wholeheartedly believed yet eventually abandoned, it would indicate a flaw in the concept at the very least. All the followers of those long dead beliefs were just as convinced in their belief as you are in yours. If that doesn't trouble you even a little, you are not understanding the point.

I know that someone can be killed, there is evidence for it. I do not know that a god can exist, nevermind does, there is no evidence for it.

 

[JD50]

no because all you know is that one can select from any number (infinite) number of choices but you nor any man knows all of them. That does not make you or anyone else "all knowing".

Yea, if you, god, whomever, knows that someone is going to do 1 of an infinite number of things, that's pretty much worthless. That's like me telling you that I know the winning lottery numbers, then I proceed to give you a list of every possible combination of numbers that could make up the winning digits.

So god knows every possible combination of everything that could ever happen. He is all powerful so he can do anything that he wants. Yet because of "free will" he never intervenes. Sounds kind of worthless to me, he might as well not even exist. And then we get to god's plan. How can god have a plan if we have free will to do whatever we want and he's not going to do anything about it?

 

[JD50]

Who are these people? Certainly, not myself.

Its about time you start being specific about "who" thinks its a good idea to allow their daughters to be raped.

Secondly, just because someone offers an explanation as to why it happened the way it did, isn't indicative of their moral feelings on the action.

That's like saying that just because I'm explaining to you why James Holmes shot up a movie theater, that means I condone mass murder.

So you disagree with Lot's decision? Good.

 

[Savatar]

Well, that analogy makes no sense whatsoever.

If god knows exactly what we're going to do, then we don't a have a choice but to do exactly that. If we choose to do something different, then god didn't know what we were going to do.

It depends on God's perspective on time. To us, time is another dimension from which we can only participate in the present and look backwards (and not even very far backwards - or even absolutely backwards - only from what we've experienced, which we also do not have perfect recollection of). To God, if he sits 'outside' of time then he will be able to observe past, present and future without interfering with it. In essence, from God's perspective, He knows because it may have already happened from where He sits.

To us, of course, that may not make much sense from where we sit - but as we understand more about quantum physics it begins to seem possible. In quantum physics we learned that particles can become entangled with particles that don't even exist anymore (from the past) or don't exist yet (in the future). Here is one reference: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...ntanglement-of-photons-through-space-and-time This raises the shocking question of how this can possibly happen unless something about how this entangling behaves does not respect either space or time as we consider it. Time is, therefore, perhaps just a dimension of this created reality - and from a certain frame of reference it is non-linear. This is part of the strange world that we live in.

If you have time, one of the best explanations I've heard on how God can know what we're going to do and also not interfere is from a commentary by Chuck Missler. I don't remember what part it is in, it's possible it is in the Genesis one, but a discussion on Time and Space is on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJdrhnHj5hE I should note that I don't necessarily agree with everything that he says, there are some parts that I don't, but he makes an interesting point about the possibilities of God's perspective on time.

Edit: Yep, I think that's the one, he starts with the paradox of Fate vs Free will pretty early in that commentary. He starts off with quite a bit of introduction so you'll have to be a little patient to get to that part.

I found a good quote from Einstein in it: "People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between the past, the present and the future, is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

 

[Retro Rob]

So you disagree with Lot's decision? Good.

Whether or not I disagree with his decision doesn't make his decision right or wrong, and you're making a moral judgment that his actions were wrong.

Secondly, I doubt you ever considered that he may have had faith that God would protect his daughters. After all, the Angels did intervene and blind those gays, so it is not unreasonable to think he knew God would protect them as well.

Whatever the case, I don't know why he did what he did, neither do you. All we know is that he offered up his daughters WHO WERE NOT raped.

So you have no point, just baseless and rather uneducated assumptions.

 

[irishScott]

There is no "complete" anything. It is unnecessary. How about just anything when it comes to gods?

I do things from a position of Knowledge, that being what is demonstrably true. I may not have "complete" understanding of what will happen when I get into a car(for eg), but it does not require Faith to get into that car and to use it as I have done repeatedly before. I have sufficient evidence to make that decision without fretting about it.

Again, you are equivocating something for which there is zero evidence for, with something for which there is daily evidence for. Do you not see the difference between these 2 things?

You have no more evidence for your god, than you do for Krishna, Zeus, or the FSM. The only difference is that you have Faith in your god and not those other gods.

I'm not trying to prove God's existence BTW. I'm Taoist, I don't believe in "God" per-se. I'm simply pointing out the role a variety of faith has in daily life, whether one believes in a God or not.

Nor am I saying religion-based faith is equivalent to, call it evidence-based-faith.

I don't believe faith requires zero evidence to be faith. Believing an outcome will occur based on incomplete evidence is also a form of faith. Faith in the evidence at the very least, faith that your own judgement of the evidence is accurate, faith in human reasoning.

Hell in reality most people's religious faith is based on some perceived "evidence". You hear it all the time: "I prayed for X and it came true." Whether objectively true or not, to the religious person that's "evidence" that God exists.

 

[irishScott]

Yea, if you, god, whomever, knows that someone is going to do 1 of an infinite number of things, that's pretty much worthless. That's like me telling you that I know the winning lottery numbers, then I proceed to give you a list of every possible combination of numbers that could make up the winning digits.

So god knows every possible combination of everything that could ever happen. He is all powerful so he can do anything that he wants. Yet because of "free will" he never intervenes. Sounds kind of worthless to me, he might as well not even exist. And then we get to god's plan. How can god have a plan if we have free will to do whatever we want and he's not going to do anything about it?

Very easily. Since we're talking about the Christian God here, well according to Christians he created the universe, and as per the old testament there were a number of direct interventions in that universe.

God knows all the outcomes, so he sets the pieces as he sees fit and lets them go along a path that he has entirely predicted. The pieces go along their path of their own free will due to factors God has previously foreseen.

Or so the theology goes.

 

[sandorski]

I'm not trying to prove God's existence BTW. I'm Taoist, I don't believe in "God" per-se. I'm simply pointing out the role a variety of faith has in daily life, whether one believes in a God or not.

Nor am I saying religion-based faith is equivalent to, call it evidence-based-faith.

I don't believe faith requires zero evidence to be faith. Believing an outcome will occur based on incomplete evidence is also a form of faith. Faith in the evidence at the very least, faith that your own judgement of the evidence is accurate, faith in human reasoning.

Hell in reality most people's religious faith is based on some perceived "evidence". You hear it all the time: "I prayed for X and it came true." Whether objectively true or not, to the religious person that's "evidence" that God exists.

Thanks for making the distinction, I have a better understanding of where you are coming from. However, whether these are "forms" of Faith is irrelevant. We are still discussing things for which some have plenty of Evidence and the other no Evidence. Equivocating the 2 forms as the same thing is the problem, they simply are not the same.

I know that Theists/Believers take "answered" Prayer(more accurately, they prayed for something and what they asked for occurred) as Evidence, but if one prays for enough things some of what is asked for will occur. That does not mean that the prayer had anything to do with it. It just means that they got what they wanted in the first place. That reminds me of what I heard/read recently from someone who claimed to be a Theist. They were looking for a Job, prayed about it, then shortly thereafter received a phone call from an Employer they had sent a resume to. The problem with it is pretty obvious as people have that happen whether they pray or not, but because that person prayed it was answered prayer to them. That is merely attributing everyday occurrence to the deity of their choice. Kinda like how some theists claim a hurricane or dead soldier is because of some perceived wrong against their deity. Good things happen, Bad things happen, that's just part of life. Neither is evidence of deities, spirits, conspiracies, etc.

 

[Savatar]

Thanks for making the distinction, I have a better understanding of where you are coming from. However, whether these are "forms" of Faith is irrelevant. We are still discussing things for which some have plenty of Evidence and the other no Evidence. Equivocating the 2 forms as the same thing is the problem, they simply are not the same.

I know that Theists/Believers take "answered" Prayer(more accurately, they prayed for something and what they asked for occurred) as Evidence, but if one prays for enough things some of what is asked for will occur. That does not mean that the prayer had anything to do with it. It just means that they got what they wanted in the first place. That reminds me of what I heard/read recently from someone who claimed to be a Theist. They were looking for a Job, prayed about it, then shortly thereafter received a phone call from an Employer they had sent a resume to. The problem with it is pretty obvious as people have that happen whether they pray or not, but because that person prayed it was answered prayer to them. That is merely attributing everyday occurrence to the deity of their choice. Kinda like how some theists claim a hurricane or dead soldier is because of some perceived wrong against their deity. Good things happen, Bad things happen, that's just part of life. Neither is evidence of deities, spirits, conspiracies, etc.

As a christian, the definition of prayer as 'asking for something from God' makes me cringe. I recognize that a lot of people - even Christians - tend to think that's what prayer is to them, but there's so much more to it and I think that misses the main point of prayer. Petitioning God is a part of prayer but it is not the central theme and goal of what prayer is all about, at least from a christian perspective. At its core, prayer is first about bringing God to mind... through prayer, a christian draws nearer to God by reflecting upon Him and His will in our lives. And so, before petitioning our own needs, it is petitioning God to work through our lives to bring about His will.

The fundamental and most important example of prayer is the Our Father, as taught by the savior Himself: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+6:9-13&version=KJV

You may notice that the focus is on acknowledging God and His role in our lives - that we are in need of and are desiring of His mercy. It focuses on God's will (i.e. "Your kingdom come, Your will be done") and so consequently brings to mind what each of us can do to that effect and how we should live our lives.

Here is one source which may help clarify what prayer is and what it means: http://carm.org/christianity/prayer-ministry/what-prayer

Petitions in prayer like "give us this day our daily bread" not only ask for our substance through life - which we recognize with humility that what we really need is really rather little - but likewise also acknowledges that everything ultimately comes from God and we are thankful for His blessings and support through our lives. Also notice that throughout the prayer it says 'our'/'us' and not 'me'/'my'. Such statements seem to apply towards humanity as a whole. Specifically, in 'give us this day our daily bread', this calls to mind to provide for any who are in need of life's basic necessities.

I would agree that it would be very difficult to use a fulfilled petition as 'proof' of it being directly granted by God, otherwise one may likewise pray for any silly thing and irrationally conclude that if it didn't happen God must not exist... prayer isn't primarily about fulfilling our needs, but recognizing God and our current condition/spiritual needs that only God can provide. This isn't to say that God doesn't grant petitions in certain circumstances... but I think this makes clear that the focus is not vain pursuits.

 

[childmild]

For me, Nirvana as a state of no emotion and no feelings does not sound appealing, and so I cannot say that it would be my heaven. In the end, I could not reconcile that with my view that it is right, even important, to get sad at things that are sad, and angry at things that should make a person angry. I see this as fundamental and necessary to the nature of a human being. To end all emotion and feelings would be as becoming less than human. From a christian perspective, we find in scripture that both God and angels feel emotions - sorrow, anger, joy - just as people do... and so it would seem that heaven, or a state of perfection, would likely neither be a complete lack of emotion nor a state of unceasing bliss... at least based on my personal opinion and on Hebrew/Christian/Islamic sources.

The concept of religion buddha knows a lot of planes / dimensions , including the dimension of higher beings and lesser beings .
Reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cosmology

"Heaven" as is so often promised by many religions is just one of planes in Buddhism concept , not the final destination . Where in Heaven , organisms that have good karma will spend good karma . But also the disavantage of " Heaven " is creatures in here shall be difficult to increase the good karma ( because everything is easy and no one suffer in their world ) , so sometimes they are happy to help humans / other creatures outside " Heaven " .

If karma of living beings in the " Heaven " runs out , they will be back in the calculation of karma and will determine the next destination .

Nirvana is the absence in the truest sense , fused into the universe . So Nirvana is emptiness . An "Arahant"(beings has perfected wisdom and compassion and is no longer subject to rebirth ref.http://www.dhammawiki.com/index.php?title=Arahant) who has entered "Nibbana" will disappear from the chain of birth and out of the system .

so where does he go ? he dissapears from all systems .

Not all living beings are able to achieve "Nibbana". Due to reach nirvana , karma calculation ( which is still a mystery ) between good karma and bad karma should reach 0 . I'm not saying this is a simple mathematical calculation such as " good karma - bad karma = ? " .


ref : http://www.dhammawiki.com/index.php?title=Karma

 

[disappoint]

I know what you want.

You want this debate between theism and atheism to end. You (well some of you) are tired of it. I understand.

So I shall gift this request to you. As I have a gift and want to share it.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2355341

 

[irishScott]

Thanks for making the distinction, I have a better understanding of where you are coming from. However, whether these are "forms" of Faith is irrelevant. We are still discussing things for which some have plenty of Evidence and the other no Evidence. Equivocating the 2 forms as the same thing is the problem, they simply are not the same.

I know that Theists/Believers take "answered" Prayer(more accurately, they prayed for something and what they asked for occurred) as Evidence, but if one prays for enough things some of what is asked for will occur. That does not mean that the prayer had anything to do with it. It just means that they got what they wanted in the first place. That reminds me of what I heard/read recently from someone who claimed to be a Theist. They were looking for a Job, prayed about it, then shortly thereafter received a phone call from an Employer they had sent a resume to. The problem with it is pretty obvious as people have that happen whether they pray or not, but because that person prayed it was answered prayer to them. That is merely attributing everyday occurrence to the deity of their choice. Kinda like how some theists claim a hurricane or dead soldier is because of some perceived wrong against their deity. Good things happen, Bad things happen, that's just part of life. Neither is evidence of deities, spirits, conspiracies, etc.

No I'm not. Is it equivocating to say that pickup trucks and sedans are both cars?

Does this make it clear enough?

They both require belief in an unknown (the definition of faith), the only difference is the amount of unknown deemed tolerable.

 

[piasabird]

What about the fact that the evidence of God and faith is not provided to a human until after the walk of Faith? God gives principles and promises in some of his commandments. For instance there is a promise in the commandment to honor and obey your parents. The promise is that your life will be long upon the earth. So many things you have to put to the test and takes God's word on it and see if it is true or not. He doesn't send miracles to non-believers. He does not cast pearls before swine (Its a biblical saying).

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Don't expect the proof you have not earned. If you were an athletic person but did not exercise, you would not be expected to be able to win a marathon. It requires training and exercise on your part to be physically fit and win a marathon.

Take the story of David and Goliath. In the old testament it says David slew Goliath with a sling. However it does not explain very well that a sling can be a deadly weapon in the hands of a well trained person like a shepherd. David had earlier slain a Bear with a sling while guarding his sheep. God didn't miraculously teach him how to use a sling. He prepared himself to be able to use the sling. God just strengthened him enough to be the victor. Don't expect the protection of God until after you have done all that you can do for yourself.

Jews didn't believe in the unknown. God showed his powers to them in the past. People sometimes have to learn by "kicking at the pricks" (Biblical Saying). Some people will believe drinking is bad and they don't drink. Other people have to get drunk and crash their car and go to jail before they will accept it as a fact. That is learning the hard way.

 

[irishScott]

What about the fact that the evidence of God and faith is not provided to a human until after the walk of Faith? God gives principles and promises in some of his commandments. For instance there is a promise in the commandment to honor and obey your parents. The promise is that your life will be long upon the earth. So many things you have to put to the test and takes God's word on it and see if it is true or not. He doesn't send miracles to non-believers. He does not cast pearls before swine (Its a biblical saying).

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Don't expect the proof you have not earned. If you were an athletic person but did not exercise, you would not be expected to be able to win a marathon. It requires training and exercise on your part to be physically fit and win a marathon.

Take the story of David and Goliath. In the old testament it says David slew Goliath with a sling. However it does not explain very well that a sling can be a deadly weapon in the hands of a well trained person like a shepherd. David had earlier slain a Bear with a sling while guarding his sheep. God didn't miraculously teach him how to use a sling. He prepared himself to be able to use the sling. God just strengthened him enough to be the victor. Don't expect the protection of God until after you have done all that you can do for yourself.

Jews didn't believe in the unknown. God showed his powers to them in the past. People sometimes have to learn by "kicking at the pricks" (Biblical Saying). Some people will believe drinking is bad and they don't drink. Other people have to get drunk and crash their car and go to jail before they will accept it as a fact. That is learning the hard way.

FYI that's a Taoist quote. As it it's in the Tao Te Ching which was written centuries before the Bible.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_journey_of_a_thousand_miles_begins_with_a_single_step

I only point it out since you seem to be concentrating on biblical ones.



In terms of philosophy, I think the obvious question to your examples is "what did God have to do with anything?" Honoring thy mother and father may just be a good idea completely independent of God's desires. Likewise with David and Goliath, if David was good to go with the sling already, where did God come in? Maybe the moral of that story should be completely secular. You don't need God to be brave or courageous, nor do you need him to honor your parents. Likewise sometimes it is appropriate to dishonor your parents, as in the case of abuse.

And I don't necessarily need God's miracles to believe in him, I need proof of his existence. Being God, if he's up there he knows exactly what it would take for me to come to him of my own free will, and he could provide such if he wished. If he loves my swine ass so much I don't think that's too much to ask.

In fact that's one of the things that drew me to Taoism. The Tao Te Ching is a text completely without ego. There are no mandates, no enforcements, no punishments, no threats, no demands. It's simply "this is the way the universe/nature works, and if you don't respect it, perfect (literally), but your life is probably going to suck and/or won't amount to anything lasting."

I've found that almost every positive philosophical lesson I was taught growing up as a Christian is found in the Tao Te Ching, only without the Christianity and with far better justifications than "because God tells me so." or"because so-and-so did such-and-such with God."

 

[sandorski]

No I'm not. Is it equivocating to say that pickup trucks and sedans are both cars?

Does this make it clear enough?

They both require belief in an unknown (the definition of faith), the only difference is the amount of unknown deemed tolerable.

No. You are still equivocating between Evidence and No Evidence. You are not making an honest argument here. It does not matter if the term "Faith" can be wiggled to both or not, 1 has Evidence backing it up, the other does not. There is Reason to believe one and no Reason to believe the other.

 

[disappoint]

And I don't necessarily need God's miracles to believe in him, I need proof of his existence. Being God, if he's up there he knows exactly what it would take for me to come to him of my own free will, and he could provide such if he wished. If he loves my swine ass so much I don't think that's too much to ask.

Supposing there is a God, what if God doesn't want you to know he exists? Is faith in him then evil?

If you go to a park you might notice a sign that says don't feed the wild animals (ducks for example). Do you know the reason for this? It is because if you feed them, they will be dependent on you to feed them. They will expect you to feed them all the time, and they will forget how to forage for food themselves.

Since you're not around all the time, they could starve if you "trained" them to get food from you but stopped feeding them at some point. This is bad for the wild animals you see. While you might think feeding them is doing a good deed, actually you did the opposite. A bad deed indeed.

Perhaps God doesn't want you to be dependent on him for everything, or for anything for that matter. So in this sense it makes sense that he would not provide the evidence of his existence you seek. That is up to you.

But you are not telekinetic. You can't pull back the curtain with your mind alone.

 

[irishScott]

No. You are still equivocating between Evidence and No Evidence. You are not making an honest argument here. It does not matter if the term "Faith" can be wiggled to both or not, 1 has Evidence backing it up, the other does not. There is Reason to believe one and no Reason to believe the other.

*sigh*

Note you use the same verb for both, proving my point.


As for equivocating:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equivocate

equiv·o·cat·edequiv·o·cat·ing
Full Definition of EQUIVOCATE
1
: to use equivocal language especially with intent to deceive
2
: to avoid committing oneself in what one says

No, I'm not doing that^^^

I've been quite clear, and I've stated the differences as I see them. You may as well have said that because a pickup truck has a flatbed and a sedan does not, only the sedan is a car, and the pickup truck is not a car.

The mechanisms behind belief in evidence and belief in a deity are one and the same, as you just subconsciously admitted in your very post. The difference is how they're implemented, under what circumstances, and the how well attuned individual personality is to one implementation or the other.

Sorry if it's a blow to your ego Sandorksi, but no matter how much you like sedans, or define yourself by sedans, they aren't the only things that run on internal combustion engines.

 

[sandorski]

*sigh*

Note you use the same verb for both, proving my point.


As for equivocating:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equivocate


No, I'm not doing that^^^

I've been quite clear, and I've stated the differences as I see them. You may as well have said that because a pickup truck has a flatbed and a sedan does not, only the sedan is a car, and the pickup truck is not a car.

The mechanisms behind belief in evidence and belief in a deity are one and the same, as you just subconsciously admitted in your very post. The difference is how they're implemented, under what circumstances, and the how well attuned individual personality is to one implementation or the other.

Sorry if it's a blow to your ego Sandorksi, but no matter how much you like sedans, or define yourself by sedans, they aren't the only things that run on internal combustion engines.

Moot. One is justified and justifiable, the other is not. That is where equivocation comes in. Belief without Evidence is unjustifiable . To argue that "faith" is required everytime you drive you car has no bearing when the discussion is gods, faeries, or any other non-evidential thing. It is fallacious and deceptive, equivocation.

 

[irishScott]

Moot. One is justified and justifiable, the other is not. That is where equivocation comes in. Belief without Evidence is unjustifiable . To argue that "faith" is required everytime you drive you car has no bearing when the discussion is gods, faeries, or any other non-evidential thing. It is fallacious and deceptive, equivocation.

You must think I'm trying to prove something I'm not. Whether the faith is logically justified or not is irrelevant to my point. Logical justification often increases a person's faith, it does not change the nature of it.

My only point, back when all this started, is what you bolded. Atheists and Religious people run on the same fuel (faith), they just implement it differently and respond to different stimuli. It's relevant when the discussion is Gods and such because I've found it good to remind Atheists that they're not as dissimilar from their religious counterparts as they often think (in fact, as they often puff themselves up over) and vice-versa. Call it a philosophical theory of unification. A priest feels about their religion roughly the same way as a scientist feels about their science, because they're both based on implementations of the same thing.

There's an emotional resonance that few in such debates acknowledge. If you're debating with the intent of gaining a broader understanding of the opposite perspective, I've found it's a useful thing to understand. That's all.

 

[sandorski]

You must think I'm trying to prove something I'm not. Whether the faith is logically justified or not is irrelevant to my point. Logical justification often increases a person's faith, it does not change the nature of it.

My only point, back when all this started, is what you bolded. Atheists and Religious people run on the same fuel (faith), they just implement it differently and respond to different stimuli. It's relevant when the discussion is Gods and such because I've found it good to remind Atheists that they're not as dissimilar from their religious counterparts as they often think (in fact, as they often puff themselves up over) and vice-versa. Call it a philosophical theory of unification. A priest feels about their religion roughly the same way as a scientist feels about their science, because they're both based on implementations of the same thing.

There's an emotional resonance that few in such debates acknowledge. If you're debating with the intent of gaining a broader understanding of the opposite perspective, I've found it's a useful thing to understand. That's all.

You are equivocating again/still. That statement is complete nonsense in the context of what that means. The Atheist in no way is basing their lives on what the Theist is.

 

[irishScott]

You are equivocating again/still. That statement is complete nonsense in the context of what that means. The Atheist in no way is basing their lives on what the Theist is.

On the fundamental level yes they are. Just as AMD processors and Intel processors both implement x86, albeit in very different configurations with very different outcomes optimized for very different activities. And that's the last analogy I'm pulling out to explain a simple 3-point tree diagram.

If you were Theist, you could replace "Atheist" with "Theist" in all of our recent posts and you'd have fundamentally the exact same arguments, although instead of logical justification you'd be arguing holiness or eternity or something. I see it all the time in debates like these. I suppose one thing Atheists and Theists undeniably have in common it's a need to differentiate themselves. A Theist prides and identifies himself with his faith just as an Atheist prides and identifies himself with his logic.

But I guess this is where we differ. If you want and/or need to think that your sense of logic makes you fundamentally different from your Theist counterparts, I doubt anything I could say here is going to persuade you otherwise.

 

[sandorski]

On the fundamental level yes they are. Just as AMD processors and Intel processors both implement x86, albeit in very different configurations with very different outcomes optimized for very different activities. And that's the last analogy I'm pulling out to explain a simple 3-point tree diagram.

If you were Theist, you could replace "Atheist" with "Theist" in all of our recent posts and you'd have fundamentally the exact same arguments, although instead of logical justification you'd be arguing holiness or eternity or something. I see it all the time in debates like these. I suppose one thing Atheists and Theists undeniably have in common it's a need to differentiate themselves. A Theist prides and identifies himself with his faith just as an Atheist prides and identifies himself with his logic.

But I guess this is where we differ. If you want and/or need to think that your sense of logic makes you fundamentally different from your Theist counterparts, I doubt anything I could say here is going to persuade you otherwise.

The difference is all about demonstrable Evidence. Sorry, the Theist and your argument has none.

 

[moonbogg]

I decided to let my imagination run away with the idea of a sort of Hindu god scenario, where there is only god and what else could there be? Everything is god and we are enjoying our drama that we created for ourselves.
For a moment, it almost made sense and was nearly believable, just for a moment though. In that moment it felt kind of odd though. The people working around me, totally oblivious to what was going through my head, they were all playing their parts perfectly, masterfully cast actors in the great drama, fully in character. It was like looking at myself across the room, and smiling and waving, yet partially aware of the situation and at the same time, allowing the drama to unfold seamlessly.
In that moment it seemed that any tragedies, no matter how severe, were my own doing for the sake of keeping things interesting, and no one suffers other than myself, by my own choosing, for the sake of the drama and to keep things sufficiently convincing.
It gave me a strange sense of like, i'll be damned, everything is OK. Like a momentary reprieve from my own creation, a brief moment of awareness and reflection only to willingly slip back into character and then on with the show!
Kind of fun actually.

 

[irishScott]

The difference is all about demonstrable Evidence. Sorry, the Theist and your argument has none.

A point which I never denied. I never said there was no difference, I said there was essentially no difference on a fundamental level. Specifically the level that underlies the logic and the theism, respectively.

The evidence for my argument comes from experience and simple insight, but to each his own. Your arguments are hilariously (because you deny it) similar to many Theist arguments in their general structure and nature. Just a different implementation of the same thing.

Know thyself Sandorski. You are more than your logic.