[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]Makavali wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]Makavali wrote:
Do you believe in the birth of a man with no father?
Fairy tales.[/quote]
No.
Ad hominem attack.[/quote]
No it isn’t.
Are you admitting Jesus had a human biological father?[/quote]
No. You said no father.[/quote]
So you understood what I meant, but you chose to engage in semantics to evade the point?
Cool.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]Makavali wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]Makavali wrote:
Do you believe in the birth of a man with no father?
Fairy tales.[/quote]
No.
Ad hominem attack.[/quote]
No it isn’t.
Are you admitting Jesus had a human biological father?[/quote]
No. You said no father.[/quote]
So you understood what I meant, but you chose to engage in semantics to evade the point?
Cool.[/quote]
No, I was pointing out that you give me too much credit.
[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
[quote]ironcross wrote:
Joab- Thanks for getting the thread back on topic.
Two things:
This thread is not about whether or not God exists. It’s about whether it’s more logical to believe what’s written by a religion or by sociologiests about the development of religion. Subscribing to a religion is not the same thing as being a theist or athiest. You can let go of an attachment to a religion that doesn’t make logical sense while still retaining belief in a creator.
I am not arguing about WHY a religion says God made Satan. I am just asking whether it’s more logical to go with the religious explanation or the anthropologist/sociologist’s.[/quote]
Well the options you have presented are also a false dichotomy for religion especially if you are referring to Christianity.
I have presented something logical about what religion(in this case Christianity) says about your first premise. Methodological Naturalism which is used by anthropologist/sociologist’s doesn’t have bearing on whether behaviors such as rape and pillaging are good or evil and rules free will out of the picture since by its nature is deterministic. It only speaks in terms of behavior which doesn’t address much of your first premise.[/quote]
Qre you saying that you choose to believe that a religion is true regardless of the fact that the sociologist’s explanation about the reasons your religion developed make more sense than the rational provided by the religion?
[quote]Cortes wrote:<<< You should take this statement into the epistemology discussion already underway in the Why did God create Satan thread and see where it gets you.
And for that matter, so should the OP, as this thread is HIGHLY redundant being that the other thread about basically this exact topic already reached the maximum 1000 posts and a new thread has already been started beyond that.
[/quote]My buddy Cortes hits a homer right here. Round and round and round we go… again. I do have some of my more relevant posts copied and at the ready for like the 10th or 12th time some of em. I see Mak is still trippin around here with his pants around his ankles bumpin his head on stuff. I’m probably not sanctified enough yet, but if I had the money I would pay my own way to debate one of these cocky children on their own turf in the auditorium of their choosing brimming with their atheistic brethren. I would likely enjoy that far too much for the wrong reasons which is why the Lord in His fatherly wisdom will not let me do it at the moment.
Cortes is right too. This is ALL about epistemology. Until we know HOW we know ANYTHING at all there’s no point in discussing anything else.
The usual suspects. The same tired arguments.
Dead End.
Iron, run now while you can, unless your boredom is stronger than your intellectual stamina.
Pat will rely upon the age old and hotly disputed cosmological argument to prove his creator. He will ignore the inherent flaws in the CA and challenge you to “disprove” something that cannot be disproven or proven, because we have incomplete knowledge.
Brother Chris will ultimately tell you, “because the Catholic Church says so”. Where the rubber meets the pavement, that’s the basic foundation of all his arguments.
The other guy, I forget his name, will be along any time now to tell you the bible is the LITERAL word of God and that you, Pat and BC and the rest of the Catholics (and Muslims and Jews, and everyone else) has it all wrong.
Did I miss anyone? 
[quote]ironcross wrote:
[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
[quote]ironcross wrote:
Joab- Thanks for getting the thread back on topic.
Two things:
This thread is not about whether or not God exists. It’s about whether it’s more logical to believe what’s written by a religion or by sociologiests about the development of religion. Subscribing to a religion is not the same thing as being a theist or athiest. You can let go of an attachment to a religion that doesn’t make logical sense while still retaining belief in a creator.
I am not arguing about WHY a religion says God made Satan. I am just asking whether it’s more logical to go with the religious explanation or the anthropologist/sociologist’s.[/quote]
Well the options you have presented are also a false dichotomy for religion especially if you are referring to Christianity.
I have presented something logical about what religion(in this case Christianity) says about your first premise. Methodological Naturalism which is used by anthropologist/sociologist’s doesn’t have bearing on whether behaviors such as rape and pillaging are good or evil and rules free will out of the picture since by its nature is deterministic. It only speaks in terms of behavior which doesn’t address much of your first premise.[/quote]
Qre you saying that you choose to believe that a religion is true regardless of the fact that the sociologist’s explanation about the reasons your religion developed make more sense than the rational provided by the religion? [/quote]
No but I am rather pointing out the limitations of science. What criteria has one explanation make more sense than the other? The only criteria I see that would give the sociologist’s explanation credence over the religious one is that questions which cannot be answered by the scientific method are considered to be meaningless where the only meaningful question is which explanation best explains the behavior.
This in essence is scientism that truth can be only accessed through the scientific method and if the question can’t be answered by science then its meaningless. Of course scientism is self refuting since the truth of that statement cannot be verified scientifically but is instead a philosophical statement which happens to be false.
I do hold that science is a great tool for discovering truths about normative facts of nature which consist in God. But it is not the only tool, moral and aesthetic truths not accessible to science are not meaningless just because they can’t be accessed through the scientific method. When this is realized explanatory scope also enters the equation and the religious(Christian) explanation is not to be simply discarded but looked at more closely and is seen to be the better explanation.
[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:<<< This in essence is scientism that truth can be only accessed through the scientific method and if the question can’t be answered by science then its meaningless. Of course scientism is self refuting since the truth of that statement cannot be verified scientifically but is instead a philosophical statement which happens to be false. >>>[/quote]Indeed. And the sandy philosophical foundation upon which unbelieving scientism is built also happens to be not only false, but sinful as well. [quote]Brother Chris wrote:<<< Except Catholicism. :)[/quote]Please precious merciful Lord Jesus let me meet dearest Christopher in person before we die. PLEASE!!!
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]ironcross wrote:
Groo- I completely agree that the supernatural can’t be disproven. I just like to present alternative thought patterns for those who don’t normally question the first possibility they’re presented with.[/quote]
You really honestly don’t think your breaking any new ground here? You think we theists are backwoods sister fucking, bible thumping nimrods devoid of education?
You haven’t done your homework, if you really want to discuss this or you will lose hard.[/quote]
so doing your homework is your espousing old theories that you find attractive over other equally plausible theories?[/quote]
Provide the ‘equal’ plausible ‘theory’. I am not acting on the position of a theory. Theory is not involved here.
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]ironcross wrote:
Which makes more sense:
-that an all knowing, all powerful, and supremely loving, perfect being would bring into existance children which he knew before creating them, due to being all knowing, would not choose him with their free will and then would be pillaged, raped, destroyed, and burn in hell for eternity, or that a culture back in the day made a religion that justified their rape, pillage, and taking over of their neighbor’s lands?
-that an all knowing, all powerful, perfect being needs imperfect beings to serve him and sing his praises for eternity, or that a culture back in the day wasn’t sure what would happen when they died, and being welcomed into the presence of a perfect being and surrounded by all their buddies for eternity sounded good?
that people don’t know how to interpret the Bible, or that interpretation changes with the needs/beliefs of the culture you live in?
that religious stories are literally real or that they are a venue to pass down cultural knowledge of food preparation, work habits, sexual activity, and social activities which have helped the culture survive?
that any imperfection can even indirectly result from a perfect being, or that the religion’s human creators had terrible logic skills?[/quote]
Oh brother, another know it all atheist.
Which makes more sense some thing from something or something from nothing? Because if you are atheist you must necessarily believe that something can come from nothing.
This has been discussed like a trillion times it always boils down to the above and nothing else. It always ends up with some atheistic tortured logic where square pegs fit into round holes because they cannot accept that logically something cannot come from nothing. Simply because nothing literally does not exist and what does not exist has no properties, particularly creative properties…
I may just sit back and watch people sodomize very basic simple logic… [/quote]
and here we go with the circular cosmological argument. i leave here for months and you still sing the same tune every time someone puts a quarter in the jukebox. this place is utterly boring, although i did enjoy our prior thread…for a little while. [/quote]
I don’t see a gun to your head. The argument isn’t circular. If you believe it’s circular it means you don’t understand the argument. It’s a linear argument and perfectly deductively sound.
And I am hopelessly predictable because I don’t need anything else. We can take an ontological position, but you need to know your metaphysics well to understand it.
[quote]groo wrote:
[quote]ironcross wrote:
Also Pat, you haven’t still haven’t answered any of the original questions regarding which option is more logical. I presented numerous logic gaps found in one religion and presented a logical explanation. [/quote]
Its pointless to argue with a dogmatic theist. Whether you are an atheist in a narrow or broad sense he is trying to portray that is claiming something came from nothing which is most certainly not the case. That is just a theist having an ill considered understanding of a non theists position. Plus even if we grant the cosmological argument to be true it proves nothing like the existence of a Christian god.
[/quote]
Correct, but you cannot get to the second point if you haven’t dealt with the first. If you do not at leact concede a Necessary Being’s existence, anything discussion beyond that point is meaningless. Arguing properties of something that does not exist is the most useless discussion that can be had.
You cannot understand the second with out the first. You must know what a first cause must in order to understand how that is cross referenced against scripture.
[quote]
Although I don’t fully agree with Wittgenstein it is why I brought up his lectures and his idea that belief and non belief are not necessarily contrary positions. The idea of religious beliefs being a mode of life and the denial of such beliefs being true is not a disputation of those facts, but simply a non agreement to take part in such a mode seems closer to the heart of things. [/quote]
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” - Neil Peart
[quote]ironcross wrote:
Also Pat, you haven’t still haven’t answered any of the original questions regarding which option is more logical. I presented numerous logic gaps found in one religion and presented a logical explanation. [/quote]
You cannot get to those questions if you don’t either establish there is, or is not a God. If there isn’t a God, then the bible is just a collection of fiction and has arbitrary meanings as any piece of literature. If there is a God then we can discuss His nature and how scripture relates to what God necessarily must be to be consistent with all the ‘omni’ positions.
Those aren’t logical gaps, you just haven’t spent much time with them. We were discussing a lot of this the other day. The problem of evil, why God can do things man is forbidden to and shit like that. I sense you pulled a lot of these ideas for one of many atheist propaganda sites as a having read them myself, your criticisms are identical to those criticisms of scripture.
[quote]HoustonGuy wrote:
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
stop it right now. this thread has no place in PWI. there is no place for logic in a discussion about religion…just you wait and see. [/quote]
This may have been intended as sarcasm but it’s absolutely correct. Most religions ask followers to deny logic in many scenarios and do so unabashedly.
If this thread is an attempt to discredit religion based on logic, it is a flawed thread. Religion is not logical and has never tried to be.[/quote]
Oh there is logic to it. Especially moral and ethical philosophy is dealt with heavily.
Keep in mind you are dealing with ancient texts here. You not getting a post modern representation.
[quote]ironcross wrote:
Is it alright if I’m bored? :)[/quote]
Sure but you started it, with you dick out talking about how illogical religion is.
[quote]kamui wrote:
we don’t need a religion to justify our rape, pillage and taking over of our neighbor’s land.
[quote]
-that an all knowing, all powerful, perfect being needs imperfect beings to serve him and sing his praises for eternity, or that a culture back in the day wasn’t sure what would happen when they died, and being welcomed into the presence of a perfect being and surrounded by all their buddies for eternity sounded good? [/quote]
Yet many pagans (and the vast majority of mankind during the vast majority of its history) didn’t thought that “being welcomed into the presence ofa perfect being and surrounded by all their buddies for eternity” sounded that good.
Obviously interpretation changes with the needs/beliefs of the culture you live in. But it just proves that deviant interpretations may arise. It doesn’t prove that all interpretations are equally arbitrary. And it doesn’t prove that there is no “right interpretation” at all.
[quote]
again, you don’t need a religion to “pass down cultural knowledge of food preparation, work habits, sexual activity, and social activities”.
[quote]
show me an imperfection and i will show you someone with quite impressive logic skills.
the irony of this post is that it comes not from a christian, but from another atheist.
Another atheist who happen to think that denial of death, ideological false conscience, social conformism and wishful thinking doesn’t explain religiosity.
the (anthropological) question is interresting. Your easy answers are not. [/quote]
Damn Kam, I am starting to get a man crush
[quote]Makavali wrote:
[quote]kamui wrote:
we don’t need a religion to justify our rape, pillage and taking over of our neighbor’s land.[/quote]
But it certainly helps ease the conscience if you think you’ve been divinely ordered to commit such atrocities.[/quote]
Everybody who is evil has a justification for evil. It helps the conscious too if you feel your evil acts happen in a vacuum and you never reap what you sow. Not giving a fuck about others is equally comforting.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]ironcross wrote:
Which makes more sense:
-that an all knowing, all powerful, and supremely loving, perfect being would bring into existance children which he knew before creating them, due to being all knowing, would not choose him with their free will and then would be pillaged, raped, destroyed, and burn in hell for eternity, or that a culture back in the day made a religion that justified their rape, pillage, and taking over of their neighbor’s lands?
-that an all knowing, all powerful, perfect being needs imperfect beings to serve him and sing his praises for eternity, or that a culture back in the day wasn’t sure what would happen when they died, and being welcomed into the presence of a perfect being and surrounded by all their buddies for eternity sounded good?
that people don’t know how to interpret the Bible, or that interpretation changes with the needs/beliefs of the culture you live in?
that religious stories are literally real or that they are a venue to pass down cultural knowledge of food preparation, work habits, sexual activity, and social activities which have helped the culture survive?
that any imperfection can even indirectly result from a perfect being, or that the religion’s human creators had terrible logic skills?[/quote]
Oh brother, another know it all atheist.
Which makes more sense some thing from something or something from nothing? Because if you are atheist you must necessarily believe that something can come from nothing.
This has been discussed like a trillion times it always boils down to the above and nothing else. It always ends up with some atheistic tortured logic where square pegs fit into round holes because they cannot accept that logically something cannot come from nothing. Simply because nothing literally does not exist and what does not exist has no properties, particularly creative properties…
I may just sit back and watch people sodomize very basic simple logic… [/quote]
and here we go with the circular cosmological argument. i leave here for months and you still sing the same tune every time someone puts a quarter in the jukebox. this place is utterly boring, although i did enjoy our prior thread…for a little while. [/quote]
I don’t see a gun to your head. The argument isn’t circular. If you believe it’s circular it means you don’t understand the argument. It’s a linear argument and perfectly deductively sound.
And I am hopelessly predictable because I don’t need anything else. We can take an ontological position, but you need to know your metaphysics well to understand it.[/quote]
We did this for pages before and it was a stalemate. Brighter men than both of us have done it and reached a similar result. Hell, there was a TV program on recently where a panel of theologist and scientists debated the whole CA and related issues. You cannot prove your premise. And therefore, there is nothing “perfect” about it, other than it’s a perfectly deductive conclusion from an imperfect or unknown/unknowable premise.
I’m not doing this with you again. I respect your intellectual prowess and have even grown to “like” you. I’m bored with it and we exhausted it the last time. Obviously, you have more stamina than I b/c you’re about to do it again. Enjoy
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
The usual suspects. The same tired arguments.
Dead End.
Iron, run now while you can, unless your boredom is stronger than your intellectual stamina.
Pat will rely upon the age old and hotly disputed cosmological argument to prove his creator. He will ignore the inherent flaws in the CA and challenge you to “disprove” something that cannot be disproven or proven, because we have incomplete knowledge.
Brother Chris will ultimately tell you, “because the Catholic Church says so”. Where the rubber meets the pavement, that’s the basic foundation of all his arguments.
The other guy, I forget his name, will be along any time now to tell you the bible is the LITERAL word of God and that you, Pat and BC and the rest of the Catholics (and Muslims and Jews, and everyone else) has it all wrong.
Did I miss anyone? :)[/quote]
Yep, I am predictable. Having an argument that people cannot prove wrong is a lot better than taking no stance, or relying an argument that is in fact wrong. You can’t prove it wrong, nobody ever has. Are you suggesting if I had a weaker argument I’d have a stronger case? Why would I change anything when it works.
You’re leveling meaningless criticisms. So I user the cosmology from the point of contingency, so what? Saying I am repeating it doesn’t make it suddenly less strong. So I fail to get your entire point.
OP said it’s illogical, I am pointing out that it’s the most logical thing in the world. You are floating in the middle saying fallaciously that it’s wrong or circular and providing no evidence. So what’s your point, really?
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]groo wrote:
[quote]ironcross wrote:
Also Pat, you haven’t still haven’t answered any of the original questions regarding which option is more logical. I presented numerous logic gaps found in one religion and presented a logical explanation. [/quote]
Its pointless to argue with a dogmatic theist. Whether you are an atheist in a narrow or broad sense he is trying to portray that is claiming something came from nothing which is most certainly not the case. That is just a theist having an ill considered understanding of a non theists position. Plus even if we grant the cosmological argument to be true it proves nothing like the existence of a Christian god.
[/quote]
Correct, but you cannot get to the second point if you haven’t dealt with the first. If you do not at leact concede a Necessary Being’s existence, anything discussion beyond that point is meaningless. Arguing properties of something that does not exist is the most useless discussion that can be had.
You cannot understand the second with out the first. You must know what a first cause must in order to understand how that is cross referenced against scripture.
[quote]
Although I don’t fully agree with Wittgenstein it is why I brought up his lectures and his idea that belief and non belief are not necessarily contrary positions. The idea of religious beliefs being a mode of life and the denial of such beliefs being true is not a disputation of those facts, but simply a non agreement to take part in such a mode seems closer to the heart of things. [/quote]
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” - Neil Peart[/quote]
a necessary being is not a given in an eternal universe.
you’re in a “time trap” that we discussed before.
you’re trying to “grok” this thing within the limitations of the human mind.
i believe there is no time as we conceptualize it. i believe the universe, or those that preceededit or exist contemporaneous with it, have always existed…forever, in one form or another. that makes much more sense than a necessary being that “came from nothing”. using your logic, the necessary being required another necessary being and so forth…unless this intelligence sprung forth from nothing, which is pretty much what you’re against in principal when it comes to the physical universe.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]ironcross wrote:
Also Pat, you haven’t still haven’t answered any of the original questions regarding which option is more logical. I presented numerous logic gaps found in one religion and presented a logical explanation. [/quote]
You cannot get to those questions if you don’t either establish there is, or is not a God. If there isn’t a God, then the bible is just a collection of fiction and has arbitrary meanings as any piece of literature. If there is a God then we can discuss His nature and how scripture relates to what God necessarily must be to be consistent with all the ‘omni’ positions.
Those aren’t logical gaps, you just haven’t spent much time with them. We were discussing a lot of this the other day. The problem of evil, why God can do things man is forbidden to and shit like that. I sense you pulled a lot of these ideas for one of many atheist propaganda sites as a having read them myself, your criticisms are identical to those criticisms of scripture. [/quote]
this is a bit of intellectual dishonestly. There can be a God, and the bible can be utter fiction, just as christians claim other religions are wrong. because God did not land on earth, gather its citizens and hand over “the book” untouched by human hands, we cannot except upon blind faith, claim any authorship other than human to the bible. chain of custody my friend. when it comes to chain of custody, and actual identity of authorship, the bible is pretty muddied. hell, you got gospels named for authors that biblical scholars admit most likely didn’t author the passages they are credited with
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
The usual suspects. The same tired arguments.
Dead End.
Iron, run now while you can, unless your boredom is stronger than your intellectual stamina.
Pat will rely upon the age old and hotly disputed cosmological argument to prove his creator. He will ignore the inherent flaws in the CA and challenge you to “disprove” something that cannot be disproven or proven, because we have incomplete knowledge.
Brother Chris will ultimately tell you, “because the Catholic Church says so”. Where the rubber meets the pavement, that’s the basic foundation of all his arguments.
The other guy, I forget his name, will be along any time now to tell you the bible is the LITERAL word of God and that you, Pat and BC and the rest of the Catholics (and Muslims and Jews, and everyone else) has it all wrong.
Did I miss anyone? :)[/quote]
Yep, I am predictable. Having an argument that people cannot prove wrong is a lot better than taking no stance, or relying an argument that is in fact wrong. You can’t prove it wrong, nobody ever has. Are you suggesting if I had a weaker argument I’d have a stronger case? Why would I change anything when it works.
You’re leveling meaningless criticisms. So I user the cosmology from the point of contingency, so what? Saying I am repeating it doesn’t make it suddenly less strong. So I fail to get your entire point.
OP said it’s illogical, I am pointing out that it’s the most logical thing in the world. You are floating in the middle saying fallaciously that it’s wrong or circular and providing no evidence. So what’s your point, really? [/quote]
it can’t be proven wrong b/c it’s just a mental exercise in deductive logic that starts with an unprovable, presently unknowable premise. you know that. i know that. we covered this for pages before. so to claim “it can’t be proven wrong” in the context you do, is intellectual dishonesty.
i don’t mind your dogma, but i think you’re far too intelligent to play that game.