Nonsensical Atheists? Agobot?

A person that asks a rhetorical question that implies that atoms in a bridge move and interact in an organised fashion in the same way the atoms in your body move and interact predictably is the best example of atheist nonsense you can come up with? In your reply to the above statement you implied that a bridge does not display any emergent properties and that this was because it was not alive/conscious. That is nonsense. Indeed, the Cap'n then went on to reply to you to discuss, in brief, his understanding of emergent properties with at least one real life example thereof - the very opposite of denouncing emergent properties.I'd rather make no sense to you, than make sense to you, if your nonsense detection apparatus is calibrated as it is.

This one:

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Does not each of them have to "constantly move and interact in an organised fashion" just as surely and predictably as the atoms in your body?

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From Message 31. I will bold the section where I inferred this:

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This is complete nonsense and it's a shame that atheists can spread drivel 7/24 here. A bridge does not have emergent properties, it's not alive and it's most definitely not conscious. If this board was not biased toward atheism you'd get at least temporary suspension.

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I am not going to teach you how the term is used, look it up. If you think atheists are liable to talk nonsense about it, how about a definition from theists? I should probably note, the link I gave for theist's definition is specifically talking about the Emergent Properties of Biological Systems, but I'm sure you can generalise having looked through some of the other links from google.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I did not state that you did say 'because'. I said that you implied it. It was implied because you added "it's not alive and it's most definitely not conscious" as if to qualify your statement "A bridge does not have emergent properties". That implies that the reason why a bridge does not have emergent properties should be seen as evident from the facts of its nonlivingness.This is implicitly, not explicitly stated. If you didn't mean to say that, then that is fine. If you did mean to say it, it is nonsense.I appreciate English isn't your first language, so rather than cast aspersions as to your intelligence as you were so quick to make comments about my integrity I will simply comment that you should take your time and try to understand what others are saying before flying off the handle. I could, for instance, engage the same play you just did. I could say that I never used the word magical - and I could further comment that that is a "Lie what you are putting into my mouth". It wouldn't be constructive of me to do that though, would it?Did you read any of the links I provided that explain what an emergent property actually is? With that information, can you not figure it out for yourself? Perhaps you should propose a new topic where we can all debate what is and what is not an emergent property. It is actually a rather interesting topic, and I'd be happy to take part.It isn't the topic here. The question I asked you, if you had forgotten, was is this rhetorical question 'the best example of atheist nonsense you can come up with?'. Your playground-level of attempted insult is not an answer to my question. Instead of being puerile, perhaps you'd like to answer?

Thank you for answering the question. Even if I squint and try to interpret his words in the least charitable way, I don't think 'nonsense' is really the word I would use and I don't think it is comparable to being a factor of 1 million out on the age of the earth.Are you suggesting that as an atheist I know what he said was nonsense, but am deliberately trying to cover for him because he may or may not be an atheist? (I have no idea what metaphysics he subscribes to incidentally, have you seen him declare somewhere?).I read the post and made sense of it. Either I am lying to you, or the post wasn't nonsense, or I am deluding myself into thinking it makes sense (like the opposite of God-goggles, I presume). It seemed to me that Capt Stormfield was simply expressing that there is nothing 'magic' happening in life, from an atomic point of view. It was essentially an argument against vitalism, vis its relationship to emergence.

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"there is a very important difference between the vitalists and the emergentists: the vitalist's creative forces were relevant only in organic substances, not in inorganic matter. Emergence hence is creation of new properties regardless of the substance involved." "The assumption of an extra-physical vitalis (vital force, entelechy, élan vital, etc.), as formulated in most forms (old or new) of vitalism, is usually without any genuine explanatory power. It has served altogether too often as an intellectual tranquilizer or verbal sedative”stifling scientific inquiry rather than encouraging it to proceed in new directions."

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Quoted by wiki, source here.You may or may not agree with the argument, as you will, and you might think the argument irrelevant to the point you were trying to raise, but if I blanket labelled everything I disagreed with or thought irrelevant as 'nonsense', I'd be calling a heck of a lot of things nonsense.If the Admins suspended on this basis, there would be a very small membership here, or at any forum, and the membership would consist purely of sycophants.I appreciate I am not going to convince you that it isn't nonsense, I just thought I would at least explain to you why I didn't think it was. I have no desire to do any of that. That is why I refused to get into an in depth discussion with you, on this thread, about what an emergent property actually was. I simply want to see what kinds of things you think are examples of atheist nonsense as per the OP.If you can dig up some more, I'd be keen to hear them. There will be no sweeping under the rug - your opinion is imprinted on this thread time and again. It would be a shame to spend 300 posts arguing over this one single incident - it certainly wouldn't show any trend of atheists treating one kind of nonsense differently. For all we know - it might evidence that atheists are more charitable to new posters than to older ones.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.