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Author | Topic: I Know That God Does Not Exist | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
No, the third person does not forgive. The third person judges, arbitrates, sets the penalty, levies the fine.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
Oh, I answered that I while back, I think. Your response was to say that because some people find a rationale, nobody can say it's inherently irrational.
But anyway. The old notions of a thunder god and such were shown to be irrational as our increasing knowledge showed the natural origins of lightning, volcanoes, comets, storms, etc. It's interesting to think that the newer notions of gods were plagued with questions like, "Why is the steeple (or minaret, etc) on a house of god so vulnerable to lightning strikes coming from heaven?" Now, what is the notion of a god (nowadays, in the West)? A god that rewards us with heaven after death (or punishes, as the case may be)? Interesting, but not falsifiable. A god that created the universe? Interesting, but again not falsifiable: if you say an intelligent being pushed the button that set off the Big Bang, there's no way to prove or disprove this. A god that parted the Red Sea, buried golden-inscribed plates near Palmyra, New York, brought back the dead, swamped the planet in a Noachian Flood, stopped the Sun in its tracks to help Joshua, cured leprosy...? All either obviously false (the worldwide flood is nonsense, geologically) or legends no more rational than those of Prometheus or Atlas. C. S. Lewis made an attempt at a rationale, in Mere Christianity, but it's merely talented sophistry incited by the hungriest will-to-believe I've ever encountered.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
You've made three assertions, so I'll take each in turn.
Just because one person might believe in unicorns does not mean unicorns exist. I'm not denigrating the logic of people in the past who may have thought that a volcano was, by analogy, like an enormous forge and so required an enormous and powerful blacksmith (did they really think that way, or was it just a fun story to tell around the campfire?). Would you reason the same way nowadays? Of course not. Such reasoning is irrational. Believing in something that is not falsifiable is a perfect example of something taken on faith, rather than by reason.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
The Flood has numerous problems, among which are that many of the geological strata are volcanic, which floods do not lay down.
C. S. Lewis had some rather odd notions that cannot be described in a few paragraphs. Here's one example. We find everyone, in every culture has a sense of morality. If there is a standard of moral behavior common to mankind, then there must, Lewis argues, be an author and arbiter of that standard.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
I think you've lost yourself in sophistry here. You write "We're not talking about belief in a idea. We're talking about the idea itself and the reasoning behind it." I'll go back to one example I've described to you at least one time before. Someone who thinks a volcano contains a forge with a powerful being in it may be making a rational deduction by the standards of their time: they see a human working a forge that smokes and spits sparks so they, by analogy, imagine a bigger forge under the mountain. (I have no idea if that is how the ancient Greeks came to have the idea of Hephaestus, but that's neither here nor there). It is not rational by our standards, however, because we know where the logic is flawed. (If you can't see where the logic is flawed, then . . . why don't you worship Hephaestus?)
Now you may say the various pieces are "rational" in the sense that there is such a thing as a blacksmith, a forge, sparks, smoke and so on. But if you put those "rational" pieces together illogically you can no longer make a claim that your reasoning is rational.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
But there's nothing wrong with their premises, is there? Volcanoes smoke and glow and emanate heat. Forges do the same. Blacksmiths work in forges. Reasoning logically they (we will assume they reasoned, for the sake of argument, rather than taking it on faith, since I have no idea of their real thoughts on the matter) developed the idea of Hephaestus. What's wrong, the logic or the premises?
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
Since all of the things that supposedly had a "creative intelligence" behind them, from ancient aliens helping the Pharaohs build pyramids to the evolutionary development of our species, turned out not to have anything supernatural involved, I tend to think there was nothing supernatural involved.
But I'm willing to be convinced if there is evidence out there.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
Here's one from the Institute for Creation Research Excessively Old "Ages" For Grand Canyon Lava Flows | The Institute for Creation Research
quote:The ICR are arguing about the ages of the strata, but they are not claiming the lava was anything other than strata laid down over sedimentary layers (with later sedimentary layers on top).
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
Used to be some deity was mucking about, perpetually getting her hands dirty with forming humans out of dust or slicing out a rib and somehow changing a Y-chromosome to X while cloning that first human. Now the religionists are having their Supreme Being develop the specs of Kepler's Law or fiddle with the charge on the electron way way back billions of years ago when there was nobody around to witness it.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
quote:But wait, you said before that good reasoning combined with bad premises could lead to incorrect conclusions. Since there aren't any thunder gods or volcano gods etc. and you claim their reasoning is sound you must have some argument with their premises.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
ringo writes: So this has all been a futile exercise in useless speculation? All because you want to pretend that the idea of a deity is not irrational, under some weird, convoluted conditions? I didn't claim their reasoning was sound. I said it could have been sound. I've been assuming, for the sake of argument, that the people who believed in the thunder gods, the volcano gods, etc. were reasoning logically, by their standards. Here's what I wrote, if you forget: sarah bellum writes: It doesn't matter what their thinking processes were! The idea of a deity is not a rational one, as I hope I've demonstrated, and no appeal to the intelligence or the rationality of neolithic people will change that.
we will assume they reasoned, for the sake of argument, rather than taking it on faith, since I have no idea of their real thoughts on the matter
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
I've posted this before (message 1469 EvC Forum: I Know That God Does Not Exist). You may have read it. Here it is again. If you disagree with it, please tell me your reasons.
sarah bellum writes: You claim since the Greeks knew about logic they may not have thought their belief in gods was irrational. Perhaps. I've already told you, I have no idea what their thought processes were, whether they were reasoning by analogy (Hephaestus is a powerful blacksmith in a really big forge) or whether they were just telling stories (the way we do with Spiderman and Deadpool) or whether they had a faith-based approach. How is their thought process relevant? If they reasoned that women shouldn't be allowed to vote, should we accept their reasoning?
The old notions of a thunder god and such were shown to be irrational as our increasing knowledge showed the natural origins of lightning, volcanoes, comets, storms, etc. It's interesting to think that the newer notions of gods were plagued with questions like, "Why is the steeple (or minaret, etc) on a house of god so vulnerable to lightning strikes coming from heaven?" Now, what is the notion of a god (nowadays, in the West)? A god that rewards us with heaven after death (or punishes, as the case may be)? Interesting, but not falsifiable. A god that created the universe? Interesting, but again not falsifiable: if you say an intelligent being pushed the button that set off the Big Bang, there's no way to prove or disprove this. A god that parted the Red Sea, buried golden-inscribed plates near Palmyra, New York, brought back the dead, swamped the planet in a Noachian Flood, stopped the Sun in its tracks to help Joshua, cured leprosy...? All either obviously false (the worldwide flood is nonsense, geologically) or legends no more rational than those of Prometheus or Atlas. C. S. Lewis made an attempt at a rationale, in Mere Christianity, but it's merely talented sophistry incited by the hungriest will-to-believe I've ever encountered.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
Perhaps. Ringo's thinking is rather murky. The idea of a deity is both wrong (though I must add, for completeness, that perhaps one day evidence will be discovered that there is a deity, so in the future the idea of a deity may well be right, just as someday unicorns may be found in some unexplored jungle in the Amazon rainforest or Arunachal Pradesh) and irrational. But Ringo seems to attach some importance to the fact that the ancient Greeks had gods.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
I don't know the thought processes of the ancient Greeks concerning this matter. You ask me to analyze something that I've told you is both irrelevant to our discussion, nor am I familiar with. It's a red herring, as if I'd demanded that you comment on Li Po and those who accused him of treason.
If you don't like this explanation for why the idea of a deity is irrational, please tell me where you disagree. sarah bellum writes:
The old notions of a thunder god and such were shown to be irrational as our increasing knowledge showed the natural origins of lightning, volcanoes, comets, storms, etc. It's interesting to think that the newer notions of gods were plagued with questions like, "Why is the steeple (or minaret, etc) on a house of god so vulnerable to lightning strikes coming from heaven?" Now, what is the notion of a god (nowadays, in the West)? A god that rewards us with heaven after death (or punishes, as the case may be)? Interesting, but not falsifiable. A god that created the universe? Interesting, but again not falsifiable: if you say an intelligent being pushed the button that set off the Big Bang, there's no way to prove or disprove this. A god that parted the Red Sea, buried golden-inscribed plates near Palmyra, New York, brought back the dead, swamped the planet in a Noachian Flood, stopped the Sun in its tracks to help Joshua, cured leprosy...? All either obviously false (the worldwide flood is nonsense, geologically) or legends no more rational than those of Prometheus or Atlas. C. S. Lewis made an attempt at a rationale, in Mere Christianity, but it's merely talented sophistry incited by the hungriest will-to-believe I've ever encountered.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
If you wish to describe the thinking of the Ancient Greeks on the subject of religion, feel free. I'm not stopping you.
You asked why I think the idea of a deity is irrational. I've posted an answer. Here it is again. sarah bellum writes: If you don't like this answer, then tell me what you don't like about it, but please stop pretending that I haven't answered your question.
The old notions of a thunder god and such were shown to be irrational as our increasing knowledge showed the natural origins of lightning, volcanoes, comets, storms, etc. It's interesting to think that the newer notions of gods were plagued with questions like, "Why is the steeple (or minaret, etc) on a house of god so vulnerable to lightning strikes coming from heaven?" Now, what is the notion of a god (nowadays, in the West)? A god that rewards us with heaven after death (or punishes, as the case may be)? Interesting, but not falsifiable. A god that created the universe? Interesting, but again not falsifiable: if you say an intelligent being pushed the button that set off the Big Bang, there's no way to prove or disprove this. A god that parted the Red Sea, buried golden-inscribed plates near Palmyra, New York, brought back the dead, swamped the planet in a Noachian Flood, stopped the Sun in its tracks to help Joshua, cured leprosy...? All either obviously false (the worldwide flood is nonsense, geologically) or legends no more rational than those of Prometheus or Atlas. C. S. Lewis made an attempt at a rationale, in Mere Christianity, but it's merely talented sophistry incited by the hungriest will-to-believe I've ever encountered.
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