Tuesday, June 19, 2012

R.I.P. K.C.A.

Kalaam is dead, we should not mourn
Nor heap it with deserving scorn
While believers thought it heaven sent
It never was an argument
More of a mixture of truth and lies
A statement of faith in thin disguise
By force of logic fast undone
(It's flaws right there in premise one)

By words alone it conjured forth
The building blocks of matter
One must, in order to believe that
Be madder than a hatter

Thank you and Amen...


201 comments:

  1. I suppose it can be said that premise one is okay and it's premise two and three that are flawed, but that doesn't rhyme, now does it?

    Premise one posits creation with matter/energy as material. The following two premises assume no such thing, quite the contrary in fact.

    So, do I get my poetic license revoked or not?

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  2. "It is clear that I have a good point and that it refutes the KCA."

    Um, that remains to be seen.

    "I didn't say that it does so because the KCA is circular"

    Let me quote you from the previous thread:

    "But the KCA is an argument for God, so how can premisss 1 be granting that God made at least the stuff out of which a tree grew, out of which a carpenter used the wood to make a chair, and it not be a circular argument?"

    "W.L.Craig is relying on the fact that he can pick and choose which points to respond to, deliberately missing the point of the KCA's critics, and if anyone writes down a detailed enough account of why the KCA equivocates or is circular or whatnot, he'll just ignore it, claim he's answered the various charges already."

    "This is why the KCA is equivocating AND is circular, since we cannot invoke designers(efficient causes) within this material universe to deduce a designer OF this material universe."

    "Everything that begins to exist has an efficient cause, effecting material.
    The universe began to exist. (This isn't telling us that material came into being. All that follows from premiss one is that material was rearranged somehow.)
    Therefore the universe has an efficient cause.(AS you say, some unknown cause like lightning or the wind-blown pebble.)
    But where'd the stuff come from?
    ...and that's why it is circular."

    "Eric, back at you, ".. pay attention here: the point I was making is that it IS circular. If efficient causes can be agents *or* impersonal forces, things, etc., then the KCA is STILL circular, full stop."

    "The conclusion is, apparently some kind of unique efficient cause which DOES CREATE MATTER, and it's the SAME MATTER that all the premiss one efficient causes rely on. Which makes it circular."

    "Once again Eric, you're the one who are trying to dispute the circularity of the KCA on the grounds that there are categories of efficient causes that I left out since it's so obvious that it is aiming at a designer.
    But all the efficient causes of premiss one neither create nor destroy matter, but for their effects, 'this thing or that thing to have begun to exist', the material cause is a given.
    You then introduce, as the conclusion, an apparent efficient cause, the only one ever, that we are to believe created matter ex nihilo.
    Not only that, it created all the matter that is necessary for the existence of all the 'things which begin to exist', from which premiss one is concocted."

    "Now, since premiss one is still fine with the detail(matter, material) specifically added, but there's a problem with premiss two since the statement doesn't account for that detail.(matter, material), and the conclusion itself is implying that very detail, then it becomes circular."

    Phew, now that that's clear...

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  3. This is fun.

    I really love you Eric. You're something else.

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  4. Eric, you win, it's not circular. Of course, it's still invalid for the reasons pboy delineated. And your focusing on the circularity thing rather than that, is telling, sir.

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  5. "And your focusing on the circularity thing rather than that, is telling, sir."

    Huh?!? I just quoted Floyd claiming nearly a dozen times that his issues with efficient/material causation show that the KCA is circular, and I'm somehow wrong for 'focusing on it'? You're kidding me, right? Why not just admit that Floyd was caught talking about things he doesn't understand.

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  6. Brian, since you seem to agree with Floyd, why don't you explain his objection to me, as clearly as you can.

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  7. You didn't read my first post. I'm insulted. :-(

    I'll cut and paste it in here for you:

    "Premise one posits creation with matter/energy as material. The following two premises assume no such thing, quite the contrary in fact."

    I can replace 'posits' with 'assumes' and it might be a bit more well stated, but there you have it. It invokes materiality out of a bunch of words. It does this by it's last two premises being structured as if the first premise, when put in action, didn't (always) rely on previously existing materials (matter/energy) to 'create' the 'new thing.' The first premise doesn't describe one single event of ex-nihilo creation, just the normal re-structuring of existing matter and energy. But then the following two ASSume that it does, Eric! They assume that it does!
    You're not seeing it that way? Please explain to me why not... Keep in mind my rule about simple, clear arguments that happen to be true as you wax eloquent, por fovor mi amigo...

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  8. I didn't say it wasn't circular Eric, once again you're just playing politics.

    I said it was a bait and switch argument which MAKES IT CIRCULAR!

    Unless you can list a bunch of efficient causes which actually create material out of nothing at all, much like a wizard casting a spell and 'poofing' in some gold coins then the premisses are stuck being in a different category of efficient causes than that supposed first efficient cause which we are supposed to believe somehow 'poofed in' all the material that is the universe.

    So, put up or shut up.

    Once you concede that all possible real examples deal with what happens within the universe using material that constitutes the universe, then it becomes clear that the conclusion is being invoked by the first premiss.

    Or are you assuming a magical being as that first cause which can be the efficient cause that just zaps in material as required?

    It doesn't 'remain to be seen' at all. There is no escape for the efficient causes in premiss one, they NEED the material supposedly CAUSED by the conclusion since without it they wouldn't 'begin to exist'.

    If you need the conclusion to support one of the premisses, it's circular Eric.

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  9. The most logical conclusion I can draw from the KCA is that materiality, the presence of existing matter and energy along with of course space and time, is necessary for all 'creation' events. Of course, they're not really 'creation,' more of a 're-arrangement' thing actually. Thus the universe is eternal in some way, the materials having always been there in some form.
    It can say nothing whatsoever about actual ex-nihilo creation event(s).

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  10. My problem with the KCA is the everything in premise one. Really? We know about everything?

    I'd anticipate that one could accuse me of arguing from silence, but I'm really not. But as far as I know, arguing from silence is claiming x happened because one can't demonstrate that x didn't happen (apologist specialty #415). It's not arguing from silence when you accuse someone of making baseless assertions from near total ignorance.

    Granted, we wouldn't be in a position to make this critic 750 years ago, but dammit, we know how how at least how big the universe is now and we should know better than to make claims like that.

    What in the world do I gain even if I succeed in impressing [you and Brian and Ed and Ian and Brian and Harvey and Jerry and Mac and MI and probably Mike]?

    Affirmation. Like I said.

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  11. we know how how at least how big

    I swear I don't have Parkinson's. Bad editing...

    We know at least how big the universe is. At least!!!

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  12. "I didn't say it wasn't circular Eric, once again you're just playing politics."

    No, you said it is circular ("the point I was making is that it IS circular"), and that it doesn't fail because it's circular ("I didn't say that it [i.e. your point] does so [i.e. refutes the KCA] because the KCA is circular"), but that it's circular because it's a bait and switch ("I said it was a bait and switch argument which MAKES IT CIRCULAR!"), which is why it fails ("It is clear that I have a good point and that it refutes the KCA")...sheesh! Floyd, please, take your medication before posting here. The fact that anyone else thinks that this drivel makes an ounce of sense shows how badly atheism corrupts the very possibility of rational thinking...

    Now, your point about material and efficient causation (which has *nothing whatsoever* to do with circularity) amounts to this: premise one of the KCA posits that whatever begins to exist has a cause, but this premise is supported by appealing to our experience of causation in the world, and in our experience all causation has both an efficient and a material cause; hence, the conclusion of the KCA, which posits an immaterial efficient cause, is not in fact supported by the first premise, and to the argument is a non sequitur. Note, it's not circular, it's a non sequitur, and the non sequitur come about because of an equivocation in the use of the term 'cause,', which is the one part of your critique that was at least coherent.

    Now, is that an accurate summary (and, ahem, clarification) of your fundamental objection?

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  13. Brian's First Rule just blown up with an atom bomb.....

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  14. "Brian's First Rule just blown up with an atom bomb....."

    What?!? The following isn't *clear*?

    "Now, your point about material and efficient causation (which has *nothing whatsoever* to do with circularity) amounts to this: premise one of the KCA posits that whatever begins to exist has a cause, but this premise is supported by appealing to our experience of causation in the world, and in our experience all causation has both an efficient and a material cause; hence, the conclusion of the KCA, which posits an immaterial efficient cause, is not in fact supported by the first premise, and [s]o the argument is a non sequitur. Note, it's not circular, it's a non sequitur, and the non sequitur come about because of an equivocation in the use of the term 'cause,', which is the one part of your critique that was at least coherent."

    You're kidding me, right?

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  15. I understand it fine... I'm more speaking about where you're about to go with all of this. I know you.

    Your clarification sir, was far more involved than any of my statements or pboy's. And that's just you warming up.

    Are we talking to a machine or something with a personality that understands how not to be a total dork?

    Descend from your high perch atop a mountain of sophisticated bullshit and learn to communicate rather than equivocate. Be real. Once when I had a shorter temper (been working on that) I told you to 'be real or be gone.' I was wrong in my anger to threaten you with censure. (That's more the kind of thing a religion does, egad!)
    But the sentiment remains, less the rage. Be real. If not for us, for you. I am not even sure that you know how to.

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  16. Once again Eric.

    Yes or no, the material used/acted upon/whatever by the efficient causes in premiss one is just 'there', we take it for granted, it is a 'given', yes or no?

    If yes, is there anywhere in the KCA that there is some kind of implication of where that material comes from in regards to efficient causes?

    I claim that the conclusion attempts to invoke all the material of the universe.

    Yes or no? When they say that the uncaused efficient cause caused the universe, they are invoking all the material in the universe, yes or no?

    But premiss one needs that material for 'things which begin to exist' to go ahead and 'begin to exist'.

    (BTW I'm going to dispute your assertion that lightning is an efficient cause since matter is equivalent to energy)

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  17. By your 'declarification' there, you open the doors to shifted meanings and argumentative tactics that stretch the truth... you know... philosophy speak.... that's where you need this to go. And that's because you aren't capable of refuting it as it stands. Because hey, it's true.
    Sad.

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  18. The whole 'efficient cause' thing seems to be dreamed up by theological philosophers to benefit their own POV. For example, "The giant dam broke causing millions of gallons of water to wipe out an entire city! Sources close by tell us it had a curious efficient cause called gravity! Gravity, we hear is 'efficient', as opposed to the material cause, all that water! The efficient cause of gravity? Matter."

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  19. "Yes or no, the material used/acted upon/whatever by the efficient causes in premiss one is just 'there', we take it for granted, it is a 'given', yes or no?"

    This question makes no sense. P1 simply states that whatever begins to exist has a cause, i.e. for any X, if X begins to exist, X has a cause (where 'begins to exist' means, simply, that X exists at time T and there is no time Tn before T at which X exists). P1 says nothing whatsoever about 'material' or whatever else you seem to think it says. For example, a Kantian who would say that we can never know how anything 'really is' could use P1 without any commitment to existing 'material.'

    "If yes, is there anywhere in the KCA that there is some kind of implication of where that material comes from in regards to efficient causes?"

    Again, this is an utterly senseless question. You are far from understanding the first thing about the KCA, Floyd.

    If X begins to exist, then whatever X is, X has a cause.

    The universe began to exist.

    Hence, the universe has a cause.

    Nothing you've said even begins to touch on a single premise, or on whether the conclusion follows from the premise.

    "I claim that the conclusion attempts to invoke all the material of the universe."

    Um, yeah, it does -- that's kinda what 'universe' means (and Craig is clear that he's using that term to comprise the multiverse, should it exist).

    "Yes or no? When they say that the uncaused efficient cause caused the universe, they are invoking all the material in the universe, yes or no?"

    Um, again, yeah, at least for native English speakers.

    "But premiss one needs that material for 'things which begin to exist' to go ahead and 'begin to exist'."

    It does? Why? *This* is the very point I made in my clarification of your argument. Care to defend this?

    "(BTW I'm going to dispute your assertion that lightning is an efficient cause since matter is equivalent to energy)"

    I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in discussing yet another topic you don't understand (and your remark here makes it clear that you're thoroughly confused about the notion of 'efficient causation.') Make your point if you want, but I'm not going to waste time correcting incorrigible Floyd on yet another issue when you refuse to be corrected on this one.

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  20. "The whole 'efficient cause' thing seems to be dreamed up by theological philosophers to benefit their own POV. For example, "The giant dam broke causing millions of gallons of water to wipe out an entire city! Sources close by tell us it had a curious efficient cause called gravity! Gravity, we hear is 'efficient', as opposed to the material cause, all that water! The efficient cause of gravity? Matter.""

    Oh my goodness! I feel like I'm watching one of those 'inside the mind of a serial killer' shows, only here it's 'inside an irrational and thoroughly confused mind.' I can't take it anymore.

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  21. Gave the doggy his dewormer today as per orders. YARGH! YUCK! Why didn't they warn us!!!???!!!

    First a marching band of worms came out playing 'The Stars and Stripes Forever!', followed by some high-kicking 'rockettes' types, finally, bringing up the rear, the pipes and drums, playing one of those two tunes that go with them.(brought tears to my eyes!)

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  22. "Yes or no, the material used/acted upon/whatever by the efficient causes in premiss one is just 'there', we take it for granted, it is a 'given', yes or no?"

    This question makes no sense.
    .................................................

    Right Eric, right.

    Example:- Michelangelo is the efficient cause of the statue David. Since this is W.L.Craig's example of an efficient cause, I'm thinking that you'd agree. Yes or no?

    Now, given that this is an example of an efficient cause given by Craig demonstrating what efficient causes are, as per premiss one in the damned KCA, and that it's a given(also 'given' by W.L.Craig himself) that the material cause is a fucking given, that it's marble, how can Craig give an example and you agree with him yet disagree with me?

    I know, you don't have to tell me. It's the same reason that the right wing candidates can disagree with everything Romney stands for when it's politically expedient, then suddenly agree with everything Romney stands for now that that suits them.

    Once again you simply imagine that you can talk your way around everything, which is politics, not philosophy.

    Philosophy fail.

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  23. Or perhaps you're willing to admit that what you term philosophy is actually just politics using philosophical jargon, the politics of theology?

    I guess you have to pretend that historical philosophical figures who said this or that are 100% right if they agree with your position, or at least 'righter' than me if they disagree with my POV?

    You seem to be saying NOW that I'm just reading way to much into the KCA's premisses and conclusion and as long as you can keep it vague, it boils down to who is the better debater.

    You just cannot help yourself can you? Divert, divert, divert away from the point I'm making, even though you stated it yourself a few comments back. All you're arguing here is what my point implies now.

    "Oh my goodness.."

    Really?

    Who the fuck are you now, Donald Rumsfeldt? I'm thinking that he's not much of a philosopher either and that he imagines himself a great philosopher.

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  24. (eatin' popcorn, sippin' on a smoothie...)

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  25. Oh my goodness! I feel like I'm watching one of those 'inside the mind of a serial killer' shows, only here it's 'inside an irrational and thoroughly confused mind.' I can't take it anymore.
    -------------------
    Proving that the irrational see the rational as irrational and their peer group, the 'also-irrational' as the rational.
    Interesting. Makes total sense when you think about it. There's a good maxim in there somewhere...

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  26. Can you not imagine Eric debating the existence of God with an atheist.

    "First off I'd like to point out that my opponent is insane, his arguments are pointless and he understands nothing! Well, that didn't take long at all now did it? Thank you and good night all!"

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  27. I feel like I'm watching one of those 'inside the mind of a serial killer' shows, only...
    -------------------------
    Welcome to the club, incidentally. That's how I felt when I first started arguing with you.
    Still do. Not a serial killer of course, but still, someone with a totally different reality than I do. It used to freak me out, but now it's just interesting.

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  28. I can't take it anymore.
    ------------------
    C'mon Eric...

    It is incumbent on the intelligent to be intelligent enough to make themselves understood by those willing to. We're not cretins. And we're willing. If you had anything really good on your side you'd have been able to win us over. If the only people that you can convince are already believers, then what kind of philosopher are you? The annoying thing is, you can't admit defeat, because that's against your rules. And yet, all you bring to the fight is semantics, never anything sensible. You avoid sensible like the plague. I had to deal with personal anger management because of youuuuuuu.... among other things. And you're the one running out of patience? Get real, man.

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  29. Also Eric, the KCA is treating the universe as a 'thing' rather than the 'set of all existing things.'
    Isn't that a problem? Didn't even Platinga think it was?

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  30. This is a good question amongst some good questions

    Why is there nonculpable (reasonable) nonbelief in God?

    I think Eric's even on record stating that there are rational arguments for the non-existence of god(s).

    So since belief is a requirement for salvation, and god is supposedly the "author of reason", just why is that?

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  31. God lies a lot. He likes us to not believe in him. So we go to hell. He's a sadist. God DeSade.

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  32. Thanks for the link Ryan.
    Also check out the discussion at Evolutionblogs

    http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2012/06/19/state-schools-vs-the-ivy-league/

    There is a discussion about the erosion of small group dynamics and instruction in state university liberal arts programs (but not the sciences).

    It occurred to me reading the long entry by the professor about how these small sessions function, that part of the problem we see in a lot of discussions here is a disconnect between the small group discussion approach in the sciences from the liberal arts.

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  33. The question "Why is there something rather than nothing" presupposes "nothing" as being the normal state of affairs. Why believe that? Why can't we flip the question on its head? In other words, why can't it be the case that the normal state of affairs is for things to actually exist and nothingness itself would be weird?
    ------------
    I liked those questions Ryan... this one interested me.

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  34. why can't it be the case that the normal state of affairs is for things to actually exist and nothingness itself would be weird?
    ------
    Hawking's latest book describes that very notion.

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  35. The trouble with capitalism is that people are not single minded about the concept no matter how single minded they portray themselves to be.

    For example, as a town grows larger every new business is welcome to sell whichever goods and services they please at whatever price they choose to set, this is called free market capitalism.

    And if you believe THAT, you're a fucking idiot. As soon as the people of the town decide to make a town hall ostensibly to fix the roads, build the hospital, garbage collection, police force and court and so on, the merchants themselves set out to control government in order to block new business from competing with their little 'gold mine'.

    It's as if 'free market' is the driving force as the electricity to power a motor is, and the businessmen themselves are the reverse current which builds up in a motor limiting it's capability.

    So, the greed to just make as big a mess a you feel and not give a crap about the environment is tempered by your outrage that other businesses, especially those which do the same business as yourself, are making some kind of toxic moonscape out of your home.

    I think that I should be free to go up to the source of the local river and dump 50,000 gallons of detergent into it, just so I can watch the bubbles.

    What about the environment?

    Well what if I had a business and it coincidentally ruined the environment, would that be okay?

    What if I bought ads to get the politician I want into power and he understood that the poisoning of the environment must continue!?

    Basically the only difference between my dream of a bubbly river and the businessman buying politicians and voters is who is getting paid.

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  36. I'm sure glad of the Dog Whisperer. Just understanding the 'claiming of territory', fucking brilliant. My little guy sits there looking at the passing dog not challenging it. The other dog stands there like WTF? I stand there like, "I'm the 'man' here.", and the other dog agrees, and gives me respect, about 20-30 feet of respect.

    Some of the footage from Moscow demonstrating how, if you do not demand respect, the pack leader will take full advantage of the situation and one could get mauled. Dogs understand the idea of a stick as an object demanding respect too.

    There's a huge difference between an old lady crippling along with a 'third leg' and that same old lady standing straight up showing her 'give me some fucking respect' stick, and every dog knows it.

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  37. "Why is there something rather than nothing"

    I think the philosophical "nothing", although not quite the "round triangle", is like Eric's "p-zombie". Something philosophers find useful to think about, but not something that actually exists*, except more so (see Hawking and Mlodinow's book the Grand Design, like Pliny said, also I can't imagine Laurence Krauss' book, which address this, is as bad as the internet apologists are making it out to be, but I've not read it).

    Queue Eric calling me a moron for using "exists" when describing philosophical "nothing".

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  38. What if the entire idea of 'nothing' is a fallacy. What if it's not possible anywhere?
    What if there's always been *something?*

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  39. On a certain mind altering substance I can clearly see that the universe is *alive* and by that, one organism. One organism. Even the hardest interstellar vacuum is a living part of it.

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  40. Of course, the organism I might be seeing might be me. That's a consideration.

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  41. Perhaps James T. Kirk can help.

    Is it. A vast expanse. Of nothing. Or, SpockBonesScotty? Not even an. Expanse?

    A rocketman. Burning. Through the tubes. Of. Hamboneland.

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  42. "What if the entire idea of 'nothing' is a fallacy. What if it's not possible anywhere?
    What if there's always been *something?*"

    That's precisely the theist's response, Brian! Unfortunately, the naturalist can't use it. Why not? Well, if nothingness is impossible, then existence is necessary. (Think about that one for a few moments -- let it really sink in.) But what sort of entity/thing/being can exist necessarily? Not things like you and me -- we haven't always existed, and won't always exist (inter alia). Not things like the stuff out of which we're made, for it changes and its existence is contingent upon the existence of space and time (inter alia). (Further, it strikes just about everyone as ridiculous to suppose that each and every quark, or whatever the ultimate subatomic particle turns out to be, in the universe exists necessarily -- there literally could not have been one more or one fewer quark.) So what could exist necessarily? Well, it turns out that when you trace the logical implications of necessary existence out to their conclusion, you end up with something identical to the sort of God that Aquinas ended up with (in his natural theology, mind you -- not in his revealed theology).

    "(see Hawking and Mlodinow's book the Grand Design, like Pliny said, also I can't imagine Laurence Krauss' book, which address this, is as bad as the internet apologists are making it out to be, but I've not read it)."

    Um, not only apologists have panned these books and the philosophical messes they make.

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  43. Eric; since you are a renowned particle physicist, please tell us which scientific observations lead you to the conclusion that quarks are contingent.

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  44. "Why is there nonculpable (reasonable) nonbelief in God?
    I think Eric's even on record stating that there are rational arguments for the non-existence of god(s).
    So since belief is a requirement for salvation, and god is supposedly the "author of reason", just why is that?"

    This is one of the best questions I've ever come across on this blog, Ryan. Thanks.

    First, we have to distinguish between what's reasonable and what's true. A belief can be both reasonable and false, after all. So clearly there's something more to truth than reasonableness.

    Second, remember that Catholics have no problem with 'nonculpable nonbelief' that is truly nonculpable -- remember the notion of 'invincible ignorance'? So a premise of your question is false -- explicit belief is not necessary for salvation.

    Third, we're not merely rational beings; we're also moral beings. So, though one can be 'invincibly ignorant' of the truth of Christianity, one in such a state cannot attain salvation if he, say, knowingly flouts the natural law. (N.B. the content of the natural law can be known through unaided reason, or can be apprehended immediately, but it's not a *product* of reason, hence both our obligation to live under it, and the distinction between rational and moral being.)

    Finally, as to why there even should be 'reasons' for atheism if the Christian god exists, I'd adduce at least three: (1) the notion that sin clouds reason, and we're all sinners, (2) the notion that moral and theological freedom require a certain degree of 'divine hiddenness', and (3) moral freedom opens to door to moral evil, which gives people reasons (ultimately superficial reasons, but reasons nonetheless, in my view) to doubt the existence of god.

    That's a quick and brief response, Ryan, but thanks again for the great question.

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  45. "Eric; since you are a renowned particle physicist, please tell us which scientific observations lead you to the conclusion that quarks are contingent."

    Can a quark exist without space and time? Oh, it can't? So it's existence is contingent upon the existence of space and time. Do different kinds of quarks have different properties that are determined by electric charge, spin, mass, etc? Now, are these properties themselves contingent? Think about it, Ryan. Further, quarks can change 'flavors,' right? That's a bit of a problem for something that exists necessarily. And, as I said, there's the further problem of supposing that each and every quark in the universe exists necessarily, which means that it's logically impossible to suppose that there could have been one more or one fewer quark than there in fact are. Bizarre, eh?

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  46. Can a quark exist without space and time?

    Hell if I know. Do you?

    Otherwise all your other objections can also be applied to your god.

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  47. Eric, it's not the answer. Your god. It isn't the answer.

    I realize that you can accept nothing else, and that's sad, but I don't care about your obsessions and fixations, it's just not the answer regardless, so seek help or something. Jeeze. You sound ridiculous. A babbling child. Sorry. Not mad at ya... you just sound ridiculous.

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  48. I mean, I read your post, over and over, and all I get out of it is gas. A stomach ache. Dyspepsia.
    Do you wish to be a buffoon all your life or something?
    Cut the theistic bullshit. It's just pathetically sad. Makes me feel pity for you, and I don't think that's what you're going for.
    (as if you're even capable of 'cutting the bs...' It's a part of you now, isn't it?)

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  49. I'd adduce at least three: (1) the notion that sin clouds reason, and we're all sinners,
    -Actually, it's one sin, the sin of Pride, that clouds reason. And it can be beaten.


    (2) the notion that moral and theological freedom require a certain degree of 'divine hiddenness',
    -How can you even write this drivel, you poor sot? No further comment necessary here... it's BS on the face of it.


    and (3) moral freedom opens to door to moral evil, which gives people reasons (ultimately superficial reasons, but reasons nonetheless, in my view) to doubt the existence of god.
    -Yes, when thinking people see all the moral evil in religion, they tend to become atheists.

    All arbitrary crap. Made up things. Man-made ideas that do not portray reality in anything like a realistic manner. You have no understanding of sin, even. No understanding of morality. No understanding of anything. Just pride, which blinds you to these facts and allows you to believe that you're just incredibly awesome in your own mind.

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  50. Can a quark exist without space and time?
    ---------------
    Gee Eric, you got it rather wrong.

    Of course a quark can exist without space and time. Quantum-sized objects are subject to quantum weirdness. So a quark, or even a larger object like a proton, can just vanish, and re-appear elsewhere. Theoretically it can appear anywhere in the universe. Without traveling through the intervening SPACE or TIME.
    Physics Fail.

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  51. Furthermore it can 'spread' so that it can occupy essentially two locations, or at least go through two slits, simultaneously.... bilocation.

    There's so much that we DON'T know in this area, that to speak of it with such philosophical certainty as you do, is risible. It's just pride; yours, and the pride of all who came before you and developed your religion for you. Shallow human pride. If you're a victim of it, you can never tell. Only some event in your life that brings in true humility can vanquish it. Usually a traumatic one. Without that, I'm afraid that you're basically a lost soul. Not much chance of ever seeing the error of your ways at all. It just feels too good and right to you, for you to ever be aware that it isn't.

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  52. I'm still chucking over the phrase 'divine hiddenness.'

    That's fucking funny!

    He's hiding? Well, that explains everything!

    He probably hid in the wardrobe and got stuck in Narnia then, explaining why it appears that he doesn't give a shit about us.

    Or maybe he's very, very timid. Like a small lemur. Or a tamarind.

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  53. Ahh, enough of this silliness.

    Eric, I do have one slightly related question. About sin.

    Do you see as I do, that the sin of Pride holds a special place in the pantheon of sins, that it is the 'Enabler Sin' if you will, the sin that blinds us, thus opening the door to all other kinds of sin? Can you see it's dangers?

    Can you see that at least?

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  54. A belief can be both reasonable and false, after all. So clearly there's something more to truth than reasonableness.

    Well, yeah, that's the whole point of the question.

    Second, remember that Catholics have no problem with 'nonculpable nonbelief' that is truly nonculpable -- remember the notion of 'invincible ignorance'? So a premise of your question is false -- explicit belief is not necessary for salvation.

    First off, good for Catholics, but the premise is most certainly not false if we take the point of view of most of the other Christian Sects. I understand you are Catholic, and argue as a Catholic, but I find this particular Catholic doctrine indefensible given a plain reading of your religions primary text. And secondly, this misses the point entirely. Someone who is invincibly ignorant hasn't reasoned themselves into atheism (which you maintain is possible and I know is possible). So the question still stands.

    (1) the notion that sin clouds reason, and we're all sinners

    Speak for yourself. But this is interesting, are you asserting that "The Fall" metaphysically tainted reason somehow?

    (2) the notion that moral and theological freedom require a certain degree of 'divine hiddenness'

    Your god only chooses "divine hiddenness" now that we have smart phones...

    (3) moral freedom opens to door to moral evil, which gives people reasons (ultimately superficial reasons, but reasons nonetheless, in my view) to doubt the existence of god.

    Clarify please, agnosticism = evil?

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  55. I think that means that since god supposedly gave us the freedom to be evil, some people see that god allows evil and doubt in god.
    It's the standard apology to defeat quite rational doubts in god due to all the evil that he allows to happen.
    Third-grade-level argument though.

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  56. That's why Eric calls them 'ultimately superficial reasons.' Because after all, god is definitely real, and definitely gave us free will, so they must be superficial reasons.

    I wish I had a larger font to type the ASS part of ASSumptions.

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  57. Freedom to be evil. Pretty funny. As if anybody wants to be evil. Even evil people believe they're good. That's how they can be so evil.

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  58. Eric, in catholic dogma, what is considered the *reason* that god made mankind?

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  59. A belief can be both reasonable and false, after all. So clearly there's something more to truth than reasonableness.
    -------------------
    Yet the beliefs of the catholic church are not even reasonable unless you're already a believer in them. In fact, they're quite insane-sounding. So where does that leave you?

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  60. I guess you can retreat to 'well Brian, a belief can also be outrageous and true...'
    Since it's all you've got.

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  61. Or will you be unable to see the unreasonableness of your beliefs?
    Of course.

    I forgot that option.

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  62. "Of course a quark can exist without space and time. Quantum-sized objects are subject to quantum weirdness. So a quark, or even a larger object like a proton, can just vanish, and re-appear elsewhere. Theoretically it can appear anywhere in the universe. Without traveling through the intervening SPACE or TIME.
    Physics Fail."

    Er, Brian, there's both a physics fail and a logic fail on your part there, not on my part.

    If a quark goes from point A to B *without* traversing the space between them, then (1) this very property is contingent on space and time (there's the logic fail), and (2) if the quark doesn't traverse the space between the two points, *it's not at any time between the two points*, so it decidedly does not 'exist' sans space and time (that's the physics fail).

    "Do you see as I do, that the sin of Pride holds a special place in the pantheon of sins, that it is the 'Enabler Sin' if you will, the sin that blinds us, thus opening the door to all other kinds of sin? Can you see it's dangers?"

    Of course. See C.S. Lewis's chapter on pride in Mere Christianity -- it's reputed to have converted a few prominent former atheists. Check this out. (In fact, you sound a bit like Lewis there: "The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.")

    "First off, good for Catholics, but the premise is most certainly not false if we take the point of view of most of the other Christian Sects."

    Sure, but in terms of sheer numbers, Catholics constitute roughly half of all Christians. To that you could add many of the more liberal Christian denominations. So, your 'Christian sects' comment ignores the actual numbers (purposely, I suspect).

    "but I find this particular Catholic doctrine indefensible given a plain reading of your religions primary text."

    Care to support that claim?

    "And secondly, this misses the point entirely. Someone who is invincibly ignorant hasn't reasoned themselves into atheism (which you maintain is possible and I know is possible). So the question still stands."

    No, it does not. Invincible ignorance isn't mere ignorance because it can indeed involve circumstance such as reasoning one's way to atheism, Buddhism, etc. so the question does not stand.

    "I think that means that since god supposedly gave us the freedom to be evil, some people see that god allows evil and doubt in god.
    It's the standard apology to defeat quite rational doubts in god due to all the evil that he allows to happen.
    Third-grade-level argument though."

    Hmm, then why don't you lay out for me a tenable argument from the reality of evil (or suffering if you prefer) to the nonexistence (or to the more probable than not nonexistence) of the sort of god Christians believe in. If the Christian responses to such arguments are 'third grade level,' it should be easy for you to construct such an argument. Let's see it.

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  63. Hmm, then why don't you lay out for me a tenable argument from the reality of evil (or suffering if you prefer) to the nonexistence (or to the more probable than not nonexistence) of the sort of god Christians believe in.
    --------------------
    So you want me to connect the reality of evil to the idea of there being no god?
    Hmm. I concede that many people have tried to connect the two. I mean god allows a lot of evil to happen, if he exists, right?
    However, I see the idea of 'no god' as a basic truth. I don't have to see evil in the world to think there isn't any god, at least not any like the god of christianity. That's silly, like a cartoon. I don't believe that the Roadrunner is god, either.

    I'd say back to you, that I see a million reasons why your god isn't true, and suffering is one of the least among them. The bible is a corrupt and completely unreliable text rife with errors, and that's the sole source text for your religion. You have bigger problems than the reality of evil and your god allowing it or even encouraging it.
    I'm just amused at the 'evil' apologetic, where god gives us the free will to do evil, but punishes us if we 'freely' choose it.
    Actually, this is retarded. I need to get to bed and talking about this ridiculous silliness is giving me a headache. Goodnight.

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  64. I was talking to my wife about this, and she said that it's too bad that god hates masturbation because then it would give christian philosophers something productive to do.

    I think her opinion is even more negative than mine is, lol...

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  65. Sorry.... ahem... I'm losing my sense of decorum.
    Eric, there's something I like about you. I have to admit it. You;re a very smart person, and I respect that. From my pov it's, well, a perverted kind of intellect that is enslaved to a very harmful brand of superstition, and that to me carries a real sadness with it, a sense of loss even, of your intellect to such folly, but you're smart, no doubt. I hope for you that you are smart *enough.* Smart enough to eventually really figure things out. This, I wish for you.

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  66. So many people are good with words in our society, manipulate the meanings, to get what they truly believe is desirable, to achieve their ends... They become heartless cynical manipulators of facts and feelings. I hope that you can avoid that. Dinesh D'Souza is a good example to me of such a person, lost, so lost in his own egotism, a sad and crippled soul. I truly want better for you than that sort of thing. Am I wrong to want that for you? Is it my egotism that even believes it possible?

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  67. Why do you guys bother? This is a guy who'll defend C.S.Lewis and W.L.Craig.

    Bahahahaha.

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  68. I know Pboy. I think, crazy as the impulse must be, that there's a part of me that, well, um, wants to *save* him.... ?!?!?!
    At any rate, he fascinates me. a totally different world view, a foreign paradigm. Smart, but (sorry Eric!) so naive in his confidence.

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  69. Here's a weird thing. Let's say that there is an uncaused cause and lo and behold it's a boy! Not only that, some billions of years ago, he decided it was time to begin the universe!

    So how does he go about doing that? How is this any different from the universe popping in from nothing? Isn't God a convenient artifact of God-believers to explain why they believe?

    Now since God-believers come in all shapes and sizes of believingness, all convinced that each other are at least heretics, each tending to believe the one mom and dad believed, isn't it more likely that early childhood beliefs are one's core beliefs than that there actually is a supernatural realm but all these other believers in a supernatural realm have got it wrong?

    Believers, it seems are looking for contact with the ultimate dad, even if it's just some kind of hidden, 'through a glass darkly', kind of contact, no?

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  70. Thinking of a new blog or a subtitle to my blog, "Hideous Atheism!"

    "He deliberately stirs his coffee anti-clockwise!"

    "He puts one sock on, then a shoe, if you can stomach that idea, then the other sock! WTF?"

    "Of course he's an Atheist, there's no other way to explain why he cultivates a sociopathic relationship with his wife, may she never be right, e-fucking-ver!"

    ... and so on.

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  71. There is endless material there, low hanging fruit for the picking!

    Instead of, "Morning honey, you up for some coffee yet?", it's, "Harrumph, your eyes are open already, why must you be so wrong all the time?", and, "Tell me how much pain you are in this morning honey, I relish the thought of your chronic or exquisite pains! Love the smell of pain in the mornings!"

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  72. Let's imagine for a second that we all believe that there is free will, but only some of us realise that there isn't.

    Who would this give an advantage to? If I know that there isn't free will, but I'm the biggest advocate OF free will, hey, I'm on the free willers side as far as they know. This gives them license to be themselves, be predictable, since one is only trying to be unpredictable if one assumes that the other guy is claiming it's bullshit!

    Out of all the libertarians, there must be a certain percentage, say 10% that are laughing at everyone else, knowing that they, just as long as they believe they have real choice, can be manipulated.

    For example, Ron Paul. He talks the libertarian talk, has everyone convinced that he's walking the libertarian walk, implying that every single issue is down to laisser-fairre(fuck the spelling), but, with a capital b, u and t, Paul is a fucking Southern Baptist!

    My GAWD is there anything so narrowminded as a Southern Baptist? The only reason they're not just 'Baptist' is 'cos they hate the niggas, we all know that, in fact it's politically incorrect to mention it. Being Southern Baptist is being the most bigotted of bigots, willing to make laws which criminalize being non-white and or non-Christian and or non-white, non-Christian and non-straight!

    Perhaps we could add non-misogynist too!?

    Here's the deal. In the name of 'absolutely' the freedomest freedom that we could possibly think of, Paul is elected the Prez, but hey, 'we're a nation of laws', and guess what, womens' rights, gay rights, liberal rights, non-whites' rights, just about anyone and everyones' rights they no likee, can be in jeopardy, libertarian govt. or no.

    "You cannot claim to be one thing and do the exact opposite!", I hear you thinking.

    But from my POV, from real world perspective, sure you can, sure you fucking can. :o) It's just what you're willing to do to get your way.

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  73. Hilarious!

    http://mydirtyglove.com/2010/06/09/where-white-man-went-wrong/

    When asked, Indian Chief, Two Eagles said, "When white man find land, Indians running it, no taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, clean water. Women did all the work, Medicine man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing, all night having sex. Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve on system like that."

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  74. This is such an odd place:

    We have no free will, and there are no moral facts, but if you don't *choose* to support liberal political candidates and their views, but *choose* to support conservative candidates and their views instead, then you're *immoral*!

    Yeah, makes perfect sense.

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  75. Dr. Who accidentally caused the nuclear explosion that caused abiogeneis to occur on earth, right? So who knows?

    Speaking of being a boy, how do you think Eric explains god explicitly being a father, but most certainly not being a mother, but not male, as it were, 'cause he's god you know (male pronoun? Oh that's fine...)

    I'm sure it'll be very sophisticated...

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  76. We have no free will, and there are no moral facts
    -------------------
    But there is morality. Harm none. Your side is HARMFUL. Harmful to innocents, millions of innocents. Harmful to the poor, and the middle class. And harmful to the world. To the environment. And it lies. A lot. Mostly lies, with only enough of a trace of truth to make the lies credible. It's that simple. Lies exist on both sides but of late the republican party has forsaken all morality for avarice. ALL morality.

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  77. But there is morality. Harm none

    Sure, but what's the foundation for that? I say there isn't one other than shared homo sapian evolution.

    Just to be clear, since Eric isn't...

    Eric's saying...

    Without God there is no morality...

    He's not saying atheist are inherently immoral (since he assumes god exists)...

    But rather, if god didn't exist (irrespective of if you believe in him (it?) or not), then morality wouldn't exist, as a "thing", floating around in space... with Plato...

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  78. Eric, the fact that you cannot see the immorality on your side or think it equal on both sides, shows me that your moral code, is, well, broken. You lack a moral compass. It would seem that it's a popular thing to lose on your side. They leave morality at the door in their quest for power. In their hatred. In their bigotry. In their selfishness. In their PRIDE.
    You're on the side of evil, of immorality whilst proclaiming the HIGHEST morals of yourselves, and I have no doubt about that whatsoever. Your side claims to be the holy one, the side of god, and that's how they got so fucking evil.
    Jesus Christ is good enough to hide an awful lot of evil in a man, Eric. That's how your side is so harmful all the while proclaiming themselves better than others. By hiding behind Jesus' robes and wrapping themselves in the Flag. Pathetic lot of sorry mouthbreathing losers who believe themselves to be angels in training.

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  79. Sure, but what's the foundation for that?
    -------------
    Logic! Pure logic. Logically it's the on and only path to eventual peace in the world, period.
    And isn't logic a better basis for morality than some asshole amoral bad-father-archetype deity trying to define it in illogical, hurtful ways?

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  80. Yeah, when Eric talks like his pathetic sad god is the basis of all morality I puke a bit in my mouth.
    That's the path of iniquity, believing in such drivel. It frees people up to think morality is something outside themselves, a *thing* and not something they need to awaken within themselves.
    Morality = harm none = love
    How fucking hard is THAT?

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  81. The people that preach that kind of 'morality' have not the slightest clue what 'humility' is. And they would need to know that in order to begin to be moral. Instead they're proud of their morality!!!!???!!!??? INSANITY!

    Pride cancels out morality, and here these dipshits are PROUD of theirs! So morons from the get-go.

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  82. But there is morality. Harm none

    Sure, but what's the foundation for that? I say there isn't one other than shared homo sapian evolution.
    -----------------
    That is only true if you mean, the evolution of the logical mind. Because it really is pure LOGIC that tells us what morality needs to be, has to be, or it will be without any real meaning.
    Christian morality (not Jesus morality) starts wars. Always did. So that can be ruled out right away as anything REAL and TRUE. I mention Jesus, because gee, he seemed to base MOST of his morality, in HARM NONE! Unfortunately, christians like eric, word-twisters, found loopholes. Or so they believe.

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  83. Logic! Pure logic. Logically it's the on and only path to eventual peace in the world

    I don't think that's true. A Stalin could bring about "peace" just as effectively, if not more so, than a Gandhi (idealized Gandhi, not the douche Gandhi of reality...)

    I mention Jesus, because gee, he seemed to base MOST of his morality, in HARM NONE

    Except non-believers of course. Harm them lots...

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  84. I don't think that's true. A Stalin could bring about "peace" just as effectively, if not more so, than a Gandhi (idealized Gandhi, not the douche Gandhi of reality...)
    ----------------
    Et tu, Ryan?

    Now, if Stalin had as a goal, actual world peace, and also in the pursuit of that goal to harm none, then Stalin would have gone far to bring about real world peace and never become a murderer as he was. Of course, then it would be less likely that Stalin would have had all (or indeed, any) of the power required to achieve it, since he wouldn't have been able to harm anybody in the pursuit of it in the first place.
    Human logic, not as in a chain of justifications, but at each step in the chain, asking yourself "does this harm anyone?"
    And the goal of the peaceful loving man is logically world peace, so the logic employed is set to that goal, no matter how far in the future it might be. At each step trying to harm none, or as few, as possible. At each step asking one's self the question "am I proceeding in the cause of eventual world peace, or am I hindering that cause?" and trying as best as possible to adhere to this, always.
    Is it me? I see this as common sense logic here. Where's the disconnect?

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  85. "We have no free will, and there are no moral facts, but if you don't *choose* to support liberal political candidates and their views, but *choose* to support conservative candidates and their views instead, then you're *immoral*! "

    Ask a five year old if he would like an ice-cream cone or a chocolate bar. The kid will pick one or the other, I think we can grant that. Is that what you mean by 'free will' Eric?

    Let's say the kid really likes chocolate bars, is he now exercising free will if he picks what he likes?

    Let's say that the kid tosses a coin, is he using his free will now?

    How is this not the same for political affiliation?

    I changed my mom's mind for her in five minutes one time, on the way to vote. She was for the law and order candidate and I was for the Marijuana Party guy, and I asked her if she'd like one of her grand-daughters to have to go to court and perhaps have her life choices ruined by being convicted of a drug charge, if the police found a joint in her purse.

    Turns out that my mom thought it was fine if anyone else was busted for possession of drugs, but that it was ridiculous to imagine that her grandkids' reputations and good names might be at stake over a stupid joint.

    But I knew that, so it was simply a question of personalizing it for her, and she had no real choice.

    Not only that, I don't think you have any real choice about how you argue for free will at all.

    The point of the choice of voting for Paul's libertarianism or not was that what you're getting isn't what you're voting for. The right isn't against the government getting revenue, it's about how that revenue is collected, and of course the rich don't mind if the poor and middle class pay a crippling percentage of their income through payroll taxes and flat fees.

    But if the poor and middle class are forced to bear the entire burden of infrastructure upkeep, services and govt. payrolls, and on and on, this will have a depressing effect on the economy.

    The only thing 'growing' under these circumstances are the class of people who cannot 'get by' and this underclass then is forced into criminal activity such as prostitution, petty theft, break and enter, robbery putting them in the same position as drug users doing these activities to maintain their lifestyle.

    Can you tell the difference between a shoplifter who steals clothes to avoid having to wear rags which would then force him/her out of the job market completely and a shoplifter who is earning money to buy drugs?

    Do you think that there is/there isn't a difference? Which do you imagine would have more choice here?

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  86. I think that the most moral of people could be those that do not believe we have free will. A judge, believing that everyone has an equal and free choice in all matters, would have no choice but to treat everyone exactly the same no matter what the circumstances, as if there were indeed absolute moral truth.

    If one believes that peoples' actions are entirely circumstantial, it becomes a question of how easily those circumstances can be replicated. For example, a priest molesting children may stop because he has little opportunity and is much less likely to stop if it becomes about the scandal the church will face if he is exposed.

    The authorities are well aware that one needs to have the means, the motive and the opportunity in order to commit a crime. Well the truth is that everyone has the means, motive and opportunity to do everything they do, so what's free willy about that?

    Let's say I think I could do a good job as POTUS. Well, I like most people on this planet am not qualified, not having been born in the USA. But most people are in the category that there is more chance of the gas in a box compressing itself into one of the corners for no other reason than that is one remote possibility than they have of becoming POTUS anyways.

    But let's talk about you Eric. How is it you think that your philosophy meshes so exactly with your religious POV? Free will?

    Or are they just not 'different' at all?

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  87. Oh yea, and saying that to have choices is equal to having free will is so bogus.

    Every now and then you need to go poo and you go sit on your toilet, never bothering with the choices available. You might choose to shit in your pants or in your bed if that's where you are. You might knock on a neighbour's door and shit on his kitchen table. 'Choices' are endless, and 'there' whether we think about them or not. Simply because you don't metachoose(choose to think of all the choices) isn't the reason that you don't take a crap on your lawn or hallway, is it?

    Choices don't make free will. We could put a worm in a maze but that wouldn't grant it this free will surely.

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  88. Pboy, you know the whole point of the 'free will' argument is as an excuse for all the evil done in the world, that god *let's happen,* right? God could have made us so that we didn't sin at all of course, being omnipotent and all, but he obviously didn't so they needed to come up with a reason for that, and it was that god wanted us free from HIM and HIS will, so that we are able to commit sin and are not constrained against doing so by divine edict or design. So you're arguing that we do not have free will and in the senses that you mention we kinda don't. But in the sense that if I decide to kill somebody god doesn't appear to me and tell me to 'knock that shit off,' we do. And I think that's the only kind they're concerned about.
    I mean, in that sense, of course we do, because there *IS NO GOD* like that to appear to us in the first place.

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  89. So of course we have this free will to sin, no ability to tell if god is even real, and if we do sin we get to go to hell forever. For Ever. Some free will.
    The difference between punishment and torture is often the duration. Punishment forever, is torturing. Is sadism. Is evil.
    But we know all that.

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  90. I understand what you're saying Brian, and I agree 100%. It ties in like that story about a seer predicting 'Tom's' existence before he was born.

    As if there are seers.

    As if there is a God.

    I'm thinking that they love the early church fathers, Justin Martyr for example, who, as Deacon Duncan is pointing out on Evangelical Realism, is worshipping a primitive version of God the unbegotten, Jesus the begotten and in third place, the Holy Spirit.

    Sure good news for them that a couple hundred years later they sorted out that God, Jesus and the H.S. are one and the same God, now God the Father, Jesus, still the only begotten, but since always. So, how does God beget a child in the spiritual fashion?

    I suppose HE gets drunk, since that way it has at least something to do with spirit.

    Oh, wait, it's a metaphor, an allegory and time means nothing to Gos so he can come down and impregnate Mary and 'poof' HE's back at time zero with his other personality, Jesus!

    We don't want to know how the Holy Spirit 'happened', I'm thinkin'.

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  91. Oh yea, that story about Tom's existence comes from Stanford's Encyclopedia on Philosophy, which, it seems to me, if they have to conjure up a 'seer scenario', are just a bunch of doofi.

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  92. "Oh yea, that story about Tom's existence comes from Stanford's Encyclopedia on Philosophy, which, it seems to me, if they have to conjure up a 'seer scenario', are just a bunch of doofi."

    Yeah, just like those 'doofi' who had to conjure up a riding-on-the-end-of-a-beam-of-light scenario (eegit Einstein), or a demon-who-can-act-without-doing-any-work scenario(moron Maxwell), or a-cat-that's-both-dead-and-alive scenario (stooopid Schrodinger)...If only they had had access to the abundant wisdom and intellectual resources of PBFloyd, Einstein, Maxwell and Schrodinger might have actually accomplished something!

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  93. Hey doofus, those scenarios are to help describe scientific models, if they didn't help, they'd be shite.

    Stanford's mighty philosopher is using a seer, someone who can predict the future, to try to demonstrate something about existence.

    But there are no seers.

    Last I checked we can ride, we can act, there is uncertainty, and so on.

    But no-one can see the future, it's not certain since we don't have all the variables. This stupid model is trying to tell us something about future existence from the perspective of being a certainty, since a seer (wink wink) sees the future.

    But then if you weren't stoopid, you'd likely have noticed that, dick.

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  94. What I'm trying to plainly say, is that it's okay for Einstein to have us imagine travelling at the speed of light, and while imagining this he can explain the difference between that and our common experience.

    But it's not okay to imagine a World where we can predict the future and use that to try to explain existence itself.

    I'm absolutely positive that your 'view' of the notion 'existence' is different from mine, and, hey, as far as I know you might actually believe that it's possible for a person to have the unrealistic expectation that he/she can, in fact, tell us 'the future' as if it were already determined.

    This is strange to me since I'm saying that if we could account for all the variables, which we never could, we would, in fact, be able to, but in doing so we'd alter it, like me saying, "There is no free will!", encourages you to try to figure out how to disprove me!

    But you seem to want to imagine that there is free will, yet there are people who could tell us exactly what you're going to be up to, just as if they could fathom all the variables of a completely deterministic universe.

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  95. "Some scientific materialists have been criticized, for example by Noam Chomsky, for failing to provide clear definitions for what constitutes matter, leaving the term 'materialism' without any definite meaning. The problem of providing such a definition seems particularly challenging given the fact that contemporary physics does not have a single notion of matter..."

    It bothers me that this leaves dualists with half a theory they don't know(I'm sure they wouldn't want to try to tell us that they know more than physicists), and the other half juxtapositioning itself on the first half.

    "What is the supernatural realm?", well, it simply must be that that isn't natural, but that that is natural is ill defined enough surely.

    I'm quite sure that Eric can invoke Kanada, Kant and some other cunts to swizzle it all around to suit himself while berating me as if, after all this time he still imagines his sophistry as awed me perhaps a tiny cubed amount.

    Asi es la vida. Eric can't help himself, he's just as stuck in the groove as everyone else.

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  96. On politics, I'm thinking that the SCofUSA(I always wondered wtf SCOTUS was... lol) is promoting a Free Market or Free Enterprise democracy.

    This is pitiful since the other name for that is Plutocracy.

    "I have all the money, shouldn't everything be in my favour? Shouldn't I get to buy the govt. I want? Shouldn't they always do my bidding?... and so on."

    Must be another one of those puzzle things where they hammered disparate pieces together and they won't come apart anymore.

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  97. Every time I hear the word 'plutocracy' I think 'ruled by that Disney dog?' Then I notice the pluto/goofy dichotomy, which is of course that we have two dogs, clearly dogs, in the same cartoon series, knowing the same characters and all, in the same 'universe' as it were, and one of them walks upright and is sapient, albeit not very bright, and the other one walks on all fours, is not sapient, and acts more like a dog. I see this as an extension of the biblical technique of trying to force you to hold two opposites in your mind at the same time thus breaking down your critical thinking ability. Or something. At any rate, obviously a goofocracy is vastly preferable to a plutocracy.

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  98. Eric, didn't you know that the church has long ago made the transition from 'prophets' to 'profits?'

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  99. I see there is a supposed philosophical problem and a scientific problem with materialism.

    This is so bullshit, it's like imagining that if everything on Earth consists of tiny marbles, that those marbles themselves must be composed of tiny, tiny marbles and so on down.

    But the material world ends with protons, ions of hydrogen, and btw the end result of a loose neutrons, neutral particles being unstable.

    People are rightfully amazed that the simplest particle, hydrogen is mostly 'space'. In a way it is, but it's not. All the electromagnetic forces that make up solidity, what we think of as matter is right there in that electromagnetic range, is the result of electromagnetic forces.

    Below that, well, what happened was we peeled off all the layers of the onion to find there was 'nothing' there.

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  100. B, not to speak for Ryan, but I think that one of the points being made is that logic alone is not enough to define morality. We see the flaw of this approach in the apologetics. Logic without foundation is not truth. People logically argue about false things all the time.

    The apologist argues that absent natural laws we are condemned to relativism. The flaw in the argument is obvious. The answer is clear: of course it does! The apologist's slight of hand is based upon a general level of discomfort for this fact. Unless we are governed by a higher morality people are essentially free to decide as they may - precisely the sort of behaviors we actually observe. This is unpleasant and uncomforting. But discomfort and pleasantry does not belie the truth.

    So if logic is insufficient and belief in natural laws is false, what do we have left? It's a great question and one which I do not claim to have the answer. But I suspect that logic tempered by a deeper study and pragmatic acceptance of human nature as an evolutionary process, offers the best hope for the long term.

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  101. Matter is bound forces, interlocking fields... there is nothing truly 'solid' anywhere in the universe.

    I don't get this chomsky guy.... what definition is he wanting that science isn't giving him? I haven't read him so I don't know, but it sounds like he's wanting something that doesn't exist and wondering why it isn't scientifically defined.

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  102. I am afraid that I do not understand you Pliny.

    Is it that I say 'pure logic' and you assume it's undirected? The goal is world peace. The direction is peace between all people of all lands and faiths. This is one possibility, the other one is likely eventual extinction as a species. So which one do you choose logically? So that choice made, how does one get there? Logic defines the barriers to it. People lack in empathy, are not taught to 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' They do not see others as equals to themselves. They don't get that. They do not understand love. They never understand the basic equation of empathy, harm none, love thy neighbor and so forth.... and this implies and indeed necessitates that we learn to ignore our differences... But if they did, if everybody really did get that, world peace would happen instantly. Voila! It's all it takes.
    So how is any of that illogical?

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  103. Try to picture in your mind a particle, massless, which exists in our timeframe, travelling at the speed of light, and, get that, and, existing in it's own, like 'zero' timeframe, outside of time altogether. This is how photons of electro-magnetic energy are described.

    Is it 'more amazing' that if we make machines to actually smash the fuck out of the tiniest particles, that we get these weird results?

    Frankly, I'm amazed that people are amazed by this.

    This old saw that mere material can't do this or that is astonishing to me, as in, "See this rock, how could that 'think'?", I think, "Are you just being a block-head, or are you so involved with the assumption of God, with the idea that we can't know if the material universe is all that there is for us, and, that there is no real transference from, nothing 'transcending' from the sub-atomic realm, just some stuff which is obviously not to do with an intelligence 'there', more than an, "Oh that's fucking weird how tiny particles act.", that it opens the door to supernaturalism, that we're willing to root for this entirely imaginary supernatural realm.

    "Y'know, we could look at it from the other side, from primitives anthropomorphising the World and get to a supernatural realm from there!"

    I don't think so.

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  104. "The apologist argues that absent natural laws we are condemned to relativism. The flaw in the argument is obvious. The answer is clear: of course it does! The apologist's slight of hand is based upon a general level of discomfort for this fact. Unless we are governed by a higher morality people are essentially free to decide as they may - precisely the sort of behaviors we actually observe. This is unpleasant and uncomforting. But discomfort and pleasantry does not belie the truth."

    But the riposte to this sort of reasoning is obvious, isn't it?

    If what you say is true, then no one is under any obligation to live in accordance with the truth as opposed to his desires.

    That is, let's suppose that there are no moral facts, but that Jones wishes that there were. Well, if Jones chooses to live as if there were moral facts, and to argue that there are moral facts (even though he knows there aren't any), then so what? He's not doing anything for which he could be judged morally culpable -- remember, there are no moral facts. And he's not in any moral sense to be judged inferior to Smith, who both knows that there are no moral facts and lives in accordance with this knowledge.

    So, to take it further, the scientist who fudges the data to reach the outcome he desires has done nothing morally wrong, he's just not acting as you personally would prefer him to act; and you, when you accurately represent the data and follow the evidence to its conclusion, whether you like the conclusion or not, are no better morally than the scientist who fudges the data. And the scientist who uses his political connections to obtain living human beings on which to perform experiments is no better or worse than you are, morally; indeed, if we're judging by scientific progress alone, he's going to be much better than most of his colleagues who refuse, on stodgy and untenable moral grounds, to experiment on live human beings. You get the point.

    But in case you don't, let me lay it out for you: we all know when we read examples like those above that there are moral facts. Experimenting on live human beings isn't simply 'not pragmatic and not sustainable'; it's morally wrong, even though it would undeniably increase scientific progress. Fudging the scientific data isn't merely unhelpful or harmful to the scientific enterprise, it's morally wrong. Any argument against these conclusions would have to use premises that are less obviously true than the notion that there are moral facts, which is why arguments for moral anti-realism inevitably flounder, fumble and ultimately, fail.

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  105. "I see there is a supposed philosophical problem and a scientific problem with materialism.
    This is so bullshit..."

    Nonsense. The problems with materialism are legion; indeed, while, as I've said before, atheism is rationally tenable (though not necessarily nonculpable, as we discussed above), materialism is not. In my judgment, materialism cannot be rationally maintained, for both philosophical and scientific reasons. (Chomsky alludes to interface of these issues above, i.e. the difficulties that modern physics -- the science -- has presented us with when it comes to formulating a coherent conception of matter -- the philosophy.)

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  106. " Experimenting on live human beings isn't simply 'not pragmatic and not sustainable'; it's morally wrong.."

    How is this different from my mother thinking that everything to do with illegal drugs must be wrong, since they are illegal, but when it comes to her kin, her grandchildren, she not only makes an exception, she's outraged that complete strangers cannot see that her precious off-spring are special?

    Now you might counter that in your circles, morality and legality are totally different, and that only a some uneducated twit wouldn't know that. Let's face facts Eric, according to those specifications, almost everyone is actually 'some uneducated twit' and the truth is that most folk confuse morality and legality, trusting that either the legal system is itself moral or it has no basis for creating laws at all.

    So, you can either claim that legality and morality are deeply connected, or, that our Judeo-Christian-secular society is completely immoral or moral only by coincidence.

    If I make enough points you can high-grade/low-grade them and rebut the easiest ones, that is true. Not very impressive though, is it?

    I honestly think that philosophers are deliberately fucking with us when they claim that materialism(i.e. all is energy/matter/space/time.) is suspect. Seems to me that you have already admitted that, what, 80-90% of philosophers agree with me.

    Hey, I could be wrong about the philosophers, but no amount of rhetoric or politicking will make me believe in a supernatural realm, that would need to be demonstrated.

    Some of these so called arguments against materialism actually appeal to solipsism, I'm sure you are equally surprised and aghast as myself at this.

    LMAOROFL!

    IOW, not really though, eh?

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  107. Here's the deal Eric.

    Matter depends on energy/space/time

    Energy depends on matter/space/time

    Space depends on energy/matter/time

    and

    Time depends on energy/matter/space.

    Nothing is missing here.

    Let's see, what about your supposed spiritual/supernatural realm?

    No energy/matter/space/time you say?

    Bullshit, right?

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  108. Eric Quixote... tilting at the windmills of reason.
    And missing them.

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  109. I still don't see where science hasn't presented a coherent concept of matter. So far it's very coherent. We don't know everything yet of course... is that the gap you're driving through here in your godmobile, Eric?

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  110. Christian philosophers want a coherent concept of matter, but lack a coherent concept of god. Pretty funny.

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  111. Floyd, it's undeniable that if we could find a socially and politically practical way to experiment on live human beings, we could make much more scientific progress than we are right now.

    So, suppose that this could be done with .00001% of the Canadian population per year (roughly 340 people per year out of a population of 34 million). Further suppose that such experimentation would save or help 34,000 Canadians alone (and a much larger number of people around the world). Suppose that the a majority of the Canadian people voted to institute a lottery, administered randomly (with a host of safeguards to protect against rigging the system), in which 340 people per year between the ages of 18 and 75 were to be chosen from *all* Canadian citizens (no class, wealth, or political exceptions) as subjects for these scientific experiments. Finally, suppose that this system is socially and politically sustainable, and that a solid majority of the citizens continues to support it year after year.

    Now, I have two questions:

    (1) Would you support such a system?

    (2) If yes, why? If no, why not?

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  112. *Further suppose that such experimentation would save or help 34,000 Canadians alone [per year](and a much larger number of people around the world).

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  113. "Now you might counter that in your circles, morality and legality are totally different, and that only a some uneducated twit wouldn't know that."

    Of course they're not "totally different," Floyd. They often overlap, but not always. Most of the folks who think that adultery is immoral wouldn't want to see people jailed for it, and most of the people who think it's fine to legislate that we drive on one side of the road don't think it's immoral for other nations to decide to legislate driving on the opposite side. They're not "totally different," but they're not identical either. Indeed, *you* don't think that they're identical either, do you? If you did, you'd have no problem with states in which the teaching of creationism in schools is mandated, or in which abortion is illegal, or in which public attendance at religious ceremonies is mandatory.

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  114. I'm curious- other than our resident theist, which of the following would describe your viewpoint:

    A) there are inviolate moral facts delivered from on high,
    B) there just are inviolate moral facts
    C) moral facts are simply all relative to culture
    D) moral facts are simply perceptions that have an evolutionary basis
    E) C and D
    Other combination? None of the above?

    Second ?:

    We perceive the notion of moral facts (assuming you aren't a sociopath), does human perception, something known to be unreliable, provide any meaningful insight into your above answer?

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  115. Floyd, it's undeniable that if we could find a socially and politically practical way to experiment on live human beings, we could make much more scientific progress than we are right now.

    What Eric is missing is that this is considered wrong by most, because of our culture and upbringing.

    When apologists argue about the existence of moral facts, it basically just comes down to shaming their interlocutors by proposing scenarios their interlocutor have been raised to find wrong and then saying "Surely this is wrong!!!". If Eric was having this argument in a kaffeehaus in 1938, he'd be saying something like "Floyd, it's undeniable that the Jew is not human, so it's socially and politically practical way to experiment on live human beings, however, human man..."

    Pliny; I'm sure it's no surprise given the above, I go with E.

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  116. B, I wasn't saying that your position was illogical at all. My point is that it will take more than logic to solve the problems you mention. We know full well that arguments can be very logical and quite ridiculous at the same time. Your point appears based on the notion that people should perceive the importance of things like fairness, the environment and peace. But they don't seem to. So what's missing? Is it logic, or something else?

    I suspect it's something else.

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  117. A) there are inviolate moral facts delivered from on high,
    -No, too stupid an option to even consider.

    B) there just are inviolate moral facts
    -One. Harm none. All others are derivative of it. But it's more of an accurate perception of maximum efficiency in the survival of the species and the happiness of the individuals that comprise it, than it is a 'fact' in the sense that someone had to prove it. It's like sunlight. Sunlight is a fact, even though some are blinded and cannot perceive it.

    C) moral facts are simply all relative to culture
    -Harm none applies to all cultures. If Aztec priests cut out hearts against the victim's wish, it was morally wrong no matter what their religion or rules said. If the victim did it voluntarily and even happily is was not morally wrong in the same sense, because the victim is happy about it, but it still is morally wrong in the sense that their religion had set in place a set of rules that caused the whole culture including that person to be under the delusion that there was an afterlife or whatever and that his sacrifice was useful to his fellow people and so forth, causing needless suffering and death. The fact that they were taught that their blood is looked upon favorably by their god, is immoral. It should be obvious that is possible to be unaware that morality (harm none) exists, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist as an ideal behavior pattern yet to be discovered, for it is plainly the ideal behavior pattern for a human. And a million years from now, if we still exist, it still will be.

    D) moral facts are simply perceptions that have an evolutionary basis
    -Perhaps; empathy is necessary to perceive the rightness of 'harm none.' Empathy was evolved for. Unfortunately it is too readily defeated by Pride, which was evolved for first and therefore is the stronger gut impulse. Empathy must be extended to include all life.

    E) C and D
    -Meh.

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  118. B, I wasn't saying that your position was illogical at all. My point is that it will take more than logic to solve the problems you mention. We know full well that arguments can be very logical and quite ridiculous at the same time. Your point appears based on the notion that people should perceive the importance of things like fairness, the environment and peace. But they don't seem to. So what's missing? Is it logic, or something else?
    -------------
    Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

    That's very different. I knew *that.*
    It is still the optimum most logical conclusion, the best possible answer to the question 'what is the best way to think about yourself and others and the world?'

    Implementing is faces many huge barriers. Which in no way means that it isn't worthwhile to still try. All the time. As much as we can.

    The enemy, is Pride. From that does all misperception flow.

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  119. "What Eric is missing is that this is considered wrong by most, because of our culture and upbringing."

    Hmm, Ryan, the notion that morality is determined by 'culture' and 'upbringing' is itself a product of, well, culture and upbringing -- after all, you most likely wouldn't accept this view if you had been raised in a Muslim nation, or if you had been raised in Rome in the heyday of the Republic. Hence, your argument is self refuting.

    But in addition to that, we all look to the past (distant and recent) and see people who stood against the dominant cultural and moral milieu (both in ways we support and ways we reject). If we're all conditioned by our culture and upbringing, then this sort of historical phenomenon shouldn't occur -- yet we all know that it does. Almost inevitably, these people appeal to a higher law, to a transcendent law, to a law that supersedes culture and upbringing, and they work to *persuade* others that they are right. If morality is determined by culture and upbringing, and not by nature (i.e. human nature in the world, or natural law), then how do you explain this?

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  120. Hence, your argument is self refuting.

    Ergo Jesus, except for all the neuroscience and sociology...

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  121. If we're all conditioned by our culture and upbringing, then this sort of historical phenomenon shouldn't occur

    Wow, really? Sometimes I give you too much credit. You think cultures never mix and upbringings are identical and the results are predictable?

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  122. Almost inevitably, these people appeal to a higher law, to a transcendent law, to a law that supersedes culture and upbringing, and they work to *persuade* others that they are right. If morality is determined by culture and upbringing, and not by nature (i.e. human nature in the world, or natural law), then how do you explain this?
    ------------------
    No no no, this is the wrong way. The wrong answer. Precisely the wrong answer. This is how evil comes into the picture... degradation, corruption, imperious leaders in their lofty towers commanding mass destruction and genocide.... And almost inevitably EVERYBODY THAT HAS EVER LIVED has appealed to a higher law. Unfortunately that is a mirage and that law can just as easily reflect our 'bad angels' as it can our 'good angels.' This is opening the door to personal egotism, to Pride, with the temptation of secular and even 'spiritual' power, power in one's own mind, and power over others... this is an EGO TRIP.

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  123. And this ego trip is why what you believe Eric, is evil, as in, it HARMS MANY.

    How can a man be so blind as not to see this? It's remedial!

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  124. Hmm, Ryan, the notion that morality is determined by 'culture' and 'upbringing' is itself a product of, well, culture and upbringing --
    -------------
    Except of course for 'harm none' which has appeared in one form or another across all cultures, and is usually revered in an individual, unless the culture is too barbaric and warlike. 'Harm none' is not cultural so much as it is pro-survival and pro-individual happiness, both at the same time. Any culture that doesn't revere those things, isn't a worthy culture to survive, and eventually, doesn't.

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  125. Of course, I'm speaking to a man that thinks that the Crusades were moral.

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  126. But in addition to that, we all look to the past (distant and recent) and see people who stood against the dominant cultural and moral milieu (both in ways we support and ways we reject). If we're all conditioned by our culture and upbringing, then this sort of historical phenomenon shouldn't occur -- yet we all know that it does.
    ----------------
    Does this also explain me? Nonbelievers *definitely* go against the dominant cultural and moral milieu. So apparently the very HIGHEST power one can appeal to, is the power of the Vast Nothingness that is there instead of your god.

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  127. to a transcendent law, to a law that supersedes culture and upbringing,
    -----------
    This from a man whose Holy Book tells us to kill our disobedient sons.

    There is nothing transcendent about your religion except in how it causes you to transcend logic and correct thinking. The only moral law, is the obvious core of all true morality, which is HARM NONE, in whatever words you want to cloak it. Do unto others... you don't believe in "Do unto others..."? It's in your book. What, does Leviticus cancel that out for you?

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  128. Thanks for proving the point about moral relativism. Would we feel this way if we'd been from a Muslim culture? Who knows. But having come from a deep immersion in Roman Catholicism I can say with authority that it is possible to reject sophisticated childhood programming.

    Would we feel this way if we were in ancient Rome? Probably not for many reasons. The big reason of course is that in ancient Rome (and the 15th century one for that matter) the penalties were a bit different for having divergent views.

    But perhaps the biggest reason is that we now have empirical disciplines and the sciences to compete with the classical arguments. For me, that's more than enough.

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  129. Excellent point Pliny. I'd forgotten that angle. We really DO know better now, even though our knowledge is far from complete; what we CAN see now that is demonstrably true, is still more than enough to negate bronze-age superstitions and obvious hypocrisy.

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  130. " If you did(think that morality and legality were identical), you'd have no problem with states in which the teaching of creationism in schools is mandated, or in which abortion is illegal, or in which public attendance at religious ceremonies is mandatory."

    Sure Eric, sure. The people who mandate these things know that they are being immoral, or they know that anyone who doesn't agree with them are immoral, or, wait, I'm getting a bit confused here, since you seem to be saying that morality is relative.

    I had thought that that was our argument, not yours. You can't run too far from dipshits who, after all, believe they are acting from the absolutest of absolute moral standards can you? You might, like Forrest Gump, find yourself alone, and, as he noted, this would be a very bad thing.

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  131. I think your 'experiment on humans' idea is silly.

    1)I'm not sure that just any randomly chosen person would necessarilly make a good subject.

    2)Not sure there would be many doctors who'd imagine either (1) or that they'd be happy with that idea on general principles.

    3)two words, fetal tissue!

    4)Hey, the fuckin' plutocrats are experimenting on us all anyways, aren't they?

    ...which leads directly to ..

    5) You could never convince me that there was some kind of fair system where there was no possibility of cheating, even if I were wrong about (1), (2) and (4)

    6)Who says that if doctors experimented on living humans that they'd be able to save lives?

    7)I'm pretty sure that somewhere they're doing fetal tissue transplanting on animals, to be ready for that shining day when you and I can have some new teeth or lungs. Perhaps a new brain for you, since you don't think that your mind is connected and all.

    Hey, I agree with you that your mind isn't connected.

    Now, since I answered you, how about explaining to us how Jesus can be God's only begotten son, be 'there' since the beginning of time, AND be one of God's personalities?

    That's some trick to juggle all that inside your mind still imagining that your worldview is coherent, no?

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  132. This just popped into my head.

    Eric's new twist on the 'Brain-in-bucket' thought experiment.

    Just the bucket.

    LMAO

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  133. "Any argument against these conclusions would have to use premises that are less obviously true than the notion that there are moral facts, which is why arguments for moral anti-realism inevitably flounder, fumble and ultimately, fail."

    Can there indeed be moral facts? How is it that people seem to be more than willing to demonize, disenfranchise, entire out-groups and other in-group people so easily fall for it?

    It doesn't take much propaganda for a lot of us to imagine that there is nothing immoral about torture per se, just so long as we give it a new handle like 'enhanced interrogation technique', and of course it's being performed on the hated 'them'.

    On the other hand it didn't take much propaganda to rationalise executing Japanese soldiers, since the hated 'them' were doing something absolutely factually immoral, right?

    I seriously doubt that Dick Cheney imagines that he is abandoning a moral fact when he is defending the use of torture on anyone he suspects.

    I seriously doubt that the Catholic Church imagined that it was abandoning a moral fact while they were in the bitch-burning business (sorry, witch) and the heretic torturing racket.

    Surely the church in ye goode olde dayse and neocons nowadays aren't entitled to their own facts?

    Hey, maybe you imagine that 'torture is immoral' is simply a matter of opinion or fashion?

    This would be the same for proponents of sacrificing live Canadians in medical experiments for the greater good of all. How I feel about it is neither here nor there really, is it, when you think about it? There'd be the politicians enacting this law, the doctors willing to perform 'the procedures' etc. etc. who'd all have to imagine that what they were doing was all 'moral enough', if not the height of morality.

    Pretty sure that Paul Ryan imagines his morals impeccable since it's a moral fact that government is stealing peoples' property when they tax them and cutting off govt. support for the poor, the sick and the elderly is simply encouraging them to, you know, pull themselves up by their bootstraps or move in with those rich relatives or whatnot.

    No, nope, what we seem to have here is a bunch of moral opinions. The torture thing, the social safety net(or no), even the medical experiment thing and the abortion/Creationist teaching/whatever else that was State laws, all apparently a matter of perspective.

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  134. I find it interesting how when Eric is here we all have so much to say to him and he has so much to say to us but as we talk we are trying this, trying that, to break through, to get a non-doctrinal response or an admission of our arguments having a grain of truth to them, since they do, after all, and he spends his time never giving us any of that. Really, there doesn't seem to be a 'there' there. It's like we're talking to a book. A book doesn't change it's mind, either. Plus, he has copious footnotes.

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  135. Eric, is a law or a behavior moral if it hurts people? Hurts both innocent and guilty? Hurts mostly the innocent?
    You christians love to make hurtful laws, draconian laws even. You also love to NOT make laws that would help people or save lives.
    You can't 'HARM NONE' if your lives depended on it, because it's just too much fun to force people to 'respect your authority!' In your minds you are godly, god's chosen, special special special! This is the source of your (in general and in the specific) incredible sense of entitlement and overweening PRIDE that blinds you to how evil you really are in the world.
    Christians can't believe that HARM NONE is the real core of morality for one simple reason. HARMING is one of the things they do that makes them feel better about themselves, and they'll do anything to feel good about themselves. Yahweh had no problem harming people at whim, so like Father like sons.

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  136. Here's an great example. How can you find the Paul Ryan budget moral? How can one single follower of Jesus Christ think it moral? Can you make a case for it's morality for us, so that we can finally see it?

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  137. 'Cause from my point of view, christians are among the least moral people in the world. They have a 'morality of convenience.' It's very, very flexible. Nothing seems to guide it. What guides it? You tell me... I can't see a consistency. It doesn't seem to be based on anything. There's no logic to it. It seems totally arbitrary. Baseless. YOu say that I'm wrong when I say the core or basis for all real morality is HARM NONE or "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." And that's in your book, too. But christians definitely do not follow that one at all... they seem to like Leviticus better than Jesus when it comes to their morality... If anything, the basis of the moral code of christianity is 'do as I say, not as I do!'
    You tell me the one sentence that your morality is based upon. You already know mine. What's yours?

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  138. You don't have such a sentence. You have a loose concept that is not measurable. For you, morality is based on 'god's law.' But 'god's law' is all over the charts.... sometimes loving, sometimes not, sometimes hateful and jealous, sometimes humble. You've got two gods, and one of them is an asshole, but you can't tell the fuckers apart! This causes you all to be morally schizophrenic!

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  139. You've got ten rules. And eight of them are out of date.

    I mean, here:

    Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth

    Or:

    Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me

    The first one is stupid; the second one is evil. Your moral authority likes to punish innocent children!

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  140. This 'visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons' is a very big deal to christians. Punishing the innocents is de rigeur. To christians, they're not innocent, there is a magic stain of sin on those babies! Cast them onto rocks! Quick, so we can get home for dinner!

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  141. Just the sentence 'I am a jealous god.'

    I mean, wow. That says a lot. Jealous, really? And you're god, right? Superior being god? And you're jealous? Jealous?
    What, are you a teenage girl?

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  142. The christian moral code is a nonstop train to psychosisland. But you can't see it... because you've got the psychosis!
    So many sick people, all believing they're the healthy ones!

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  143. It just hit me. I mean, I knew this but hadn't verbalized it yet.
    Christians are egotists because their god is an egotist. Christians are self-righteous because they worship a self-righteous god. All their many moral flaws come from their deity! They believe they're holy as they commit sin, because their god goes by that rule... they like to issue commands and write laws for others to follow because their god does! And they're violent, because GUESS WHY!

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  144. See what I've gone and done Eric?
    I've told all your secrets.
    Those two commandments, just the two I listed, are patently not moral at all. Any fool can see that. Who in their right mind today would punish innocent children for the sins of their great-grandparents, would think that a moral thing to do? NOBODY in their right mind, that's who!
    I've proven your moral code is totally flawed at the base of it. No really, I have! The rules themselves, are easily seen to be immoral! Your god, Yahweh, is easily seen to be immoral, and indeed provides for us the Ultimate Bad Father archetype... he's a cartoon caricature of small-mindedness and petty hatreds with no tolerance and no forgiveness in his nature whatsoever. You couldhave based your moral code on Jesus and his version of
    HARM NONE' but you and your religion chose NOT TO. They prefer the father to the son. They should call themselves Yahweists. Utter Morality FAIL, Eric.
    The only thing you can come back with is lies. And you will, I have faith, you will! You have to.... heck, you've lied to yourself first and foremost, so how could you help it?

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  145. Heck, Bill and Ted got it!
    Be excellent to each other! How great is that?!

    Bill and Ted VS Your God:

    And it's Bill and Ted by a mile!

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  146. It wouldn't be so bad if this religion just existed wherein it's members are all deceived and deluded into thinking they're special and chosen and holy and good even when they're not any of that...
    But they want ME to be that way too! They want to legislate me into their mold!
    How fucking EVIL is that?!?!

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  147. Eric, don't you recognize yourself in the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector in the temple? That's a powerful tale. I see you there. You're in it. Do you know which one is you? Guess!

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  148. Or is the apologist unfamiliar with bible stories and such? Small details I guess, when you've got Aquinas and all that.
    The words of Jesus Christ in your bible, support me and not you in this argument.
    Now that's irony!

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  149. In fact, when you take away the antisocial and ridiculous parts of the Ten Commandments, what you have left can be distilled down to two words:
    HARM NONE

    And yet, that's not how the christians tend to roll, is it?

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  150. Notice how the righties are all making strong leadership decisions to have closed door meetings about every topic they're asked about these days?

    Isn't this just another way of saying that it's really none of your business, your job is to vote them in power, and, we'll see what we can come up with?

    Rubio, making the strong, concrete, nailed down decision not to talk about a possible VP offer!

    What? "That would be telling!"

    Why is this news and why aren't the press all over crap like this. "Rubio hedges on possible VP offer!", "Romney hedges on every fucking this under our Sun!", and so on.

    They let them slide with this bullshit all the time, strongly, forcefully, showing their leadership qualities, hedging.

    This says to me that politics has been infected by the same cognitive dissonance that their leaders inflict on their supporters.

    The strongly, and with great leadership, hedging for one.

    The clergyman extolling that Christianity is going great guns then bemoaning the fact that people are staying away in droves, perhaps in the same sentence.

    It seems to work. The closer the two opposing ideas are put together the better, and I suppose the effect of your leader telling you that he expects you to believe two opposing ideas, and you wanting to accept what he is telling you, somewhere in your mind there is a little disconnect, a split in your mind where ideology can fester and grow, undisturbed by reality and common sense.

    Example:- God made all the animals to give Adam a 'help meet'. Didn't work so God made Eve for him. Apparent this explains how every man must leave his mother and father and cleave to a wife.

    Wait, what? God freshly made Eve, apparently after just trying to mate Adam with an animal, now all of a sudden everyone knew all along that there'd be mothers and fathers and all that good stuff?

    Aw come on, I can hear Eric thinking. That's just so naive of us to notice this! Even this apology itself is blaming the pigeon. The story isn't naive, it's your interpretation of the story that is naive! A dose of strong leadership quality type dithering is in order there and Eric is there to give us, well not his wisdom exactly, just his condescension, tit-for-tat for our condescension of the basis of his worldview.

    Yes, yes, it's obviously an allegory! But an allegory is a fictitious story, with fictitious characters, that demonstrates a moral or, for example how people deal with cognitive dissonance, "The fox and the out of reach grapes(sour grapes)", for example.

    Eric doesn't even need to explain to us the point of this supposed allegory, since it's a pointless allegory, nothing like the simple exposure of 'sour grapes' reasoning to make oneself feel better if one cannot get what one wants.

    Nono, this story now has to remain in some kind of cognitive dissonance limbo where it is about very real God, the first man and the first woman, and a mysterious story signifying 'something' that just has all the appearance of a silly story.

    Hey, why isn't Adam and Eve for that matter, the begotten children of God, since Jesus has always been there while at the same time being 'the only begotten Son'?

    If it's a spiritual begetting, surely Adam and Eve fit that criteria?

    No, nope, once again Eric will be constrained to be at least as condescending as he feels we are being and that'll put paid to that, "Leave our damned mysteries alone! After all they open a crack in peoples' minds where ideology can fester and grow, hidden from common sense and reality!"

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  151. Pboy, do you see validity in the idea that having to hold the two diametrically opposed 'gods' of OT Yahweh and NT Jesus in the head at the same time, causes psychosis? How can one reconcile the two extremes, literally of hate and love, in the mind at the same time? It's like 'now Johnnie, of course god loves you even more than mommy does and you need to love him even more than you do me, but you know that when god does something that looks exactly like hatred or evil or meanness, or even murder, that when god does it, it's love?'

    When god does it, it's love.

    That must be how it goes. There's so much contradiction in the religion, in the bible, and they're supposed to believe all of it. Insanity!

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  152. Yes, yes, it's obviously an allegory! But an allegory is a fictitious story, with fictitious characters, that demonstrates a moral or, for example how people deal with cognitive dissonance, "The fox and the out of reach grapes(sour grapes)", for example.
    -------------------------
    So then the moral of the 'allegory' of the Garden, is that women suck, men are stupid, and god is unfair.
    (but when god does it, it's love!)

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  153. Christian god loves to smite.

    Christians too. Like Father, like sons.

    So of course christians can't base morality on 'HARM NONE.'

    What was I even thinking? Harming some, is necessary to them. Part of their personalities. The 'us' that we love and the 'them' that we hate. Like in the bible. Hafta persecute 'them' people over there, they're not like us and god hates people like that!

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  154. Something I ran across as a kid. An attitude. At the time it seemed to make sense; in retrospect it screams psychosis:
    Only god can murder. It's god's prerogative to kill people.
    This even goes so far as to hint 'only god can have that pleasure.'
    It's only a sin if a man or a woman does it. God has the right to 'take out' the ones that he 'brought into this world.'

    And he is envied that right, by his followers.

    Interesting, no?

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  155. The difference between christian morality and real morality, is the difference between being told not to do wrong or else face horrible punishments, and not wishing to do wrong because it would make you feel awful.
    It's really that simple.

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  156. Of course it's even worse than that, because they also have very odd ideas of what exactly constitutes 'wrong' or a 'sin.' All sorts of things on that list that don't belong there. And quite a few things that aren't, but should be.

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  157. Yea, Brian, of course they are opposites, the authoritative Father versus the love promoting Son. You get told that God is a split personality and you get to reconcile this to suit yourself.

    All one seems to have to do is give Jesus' teachings a nod, and it's covered, "This is not the time to turn the other cheek!"

    You can be nice, and that is Godly and you can be mean, and gosh-darn-it, that's Godly too.

    This kind of dissonance is translated into politics as how free you guys are, how 'they' hate your freedoms, yet how horribly and unjustifiably you are so overtaxed for the benefit of the 50% of unAmericans(poor) who choose not to self-deport or aren't completely disenfranchised(swept under the rug).

    Eric can debate with us all day long about how two particular opposite ideas aren't really two opposite ideas at all, or just slough it off as us not being smart enough to work through the steps which make the two opposite ideas not opposite.

    Believers don't have to do this 'work' of course, they accept mutually exclusive ideas tied together, 'Harsh judge God somehow IS All Loving God' as spiritual, Holy, like little puzzles given to retest your gullibility(i.e. faith)

    But Eric, for all his learning isn't interested in pointing out opposing ideas brought together to further amplify the mystery of Christianity, he will deny that this is a standard technique but practice to perfect it himself.

    Ideology. With ideology filling the crack in his mind, he can reconcile the presence and absence of God here on Earth.

    How's that for the ultimate dissonance, HE is everywhere, all around, all the time, AND, cloaked in HIS HOLY Hiddenness, nowhere to be found, why, HE doesn't even exist-in-space-and-time!

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  158. Here's another one. The KCA.

    1)Apparently the Uncaused Cause caused the Universe and all the material in it to begin to exist.

    2)We can, within this Universe point to 'things beginning to exist' using the material of the Universe, by simply rearranging some of the material that is already here.

    If you believe (1) and see the mundane truth in (2) it's not very spectacular. But if you point out (2) and use it to deduce (1) by leaving out the parts about material, you might convince people that you've gone part way to proving that there must be God.

    It all hangs on the meaning we give to the idea of 'beginning to exist', doesn't it? If there were such things as magic and miracles, and practitioners could indeed cause things to 'begin to exist' ex nihilo, that'd be one thing, and obviously not the same thing at all as constructing a dwelling or chipping a marble block into a statue.

    But if you have your ideology filling the crack in your mind, 'poofing' something into existence is, apparently exactly the same as making a chair or rolling a joint.

    Method:- keep it vague. a thing that began to exist is a thing that began to exist whether a carpenter made a table or a wizard poofed in a dragon. Same thing. Only one of these is the same as causing a universe to begin to exist.

    IOW, here we have Eric promoting cognitive dissonance as 'The Great Mystery' of the unbegotten Father, begotten Son and FABULOUS(?) Holy Spirit that we call, the ONE TRUE GOD, Who, is All-loving yet owes you no favours but you're 'allowed' to beg.

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  159. Playin' with the dog and his toy Harvey the Aardvark. I went 'the other way' and told Moe that Harvey loves him and we're just hanging together, me and Moe and Harvey.

    I said, "Be nice to Harvey."

    Moe is like, "Sure thing boss, right after I kill him!"(shakes the shit out of Harvey.)

    lol

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  160. You named your dog's toy after Harvey?

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  161. I wonder, is there a natural christian inclination to give a 'father' more credence than a 'son?'

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  162. Which Harvey you thinkin' about Ryan? The extra-dimensional Harvey in that story?

    No, it's an aardvark, well some kind of cloth toy ant-eater, it's grey with a white and black stripe. looks eerilly like a grey cockatiel with no head.(gulp)

    So anyways, what to name toy since Emma was getting fed up of hearing, "Go get your aardvark!", "Oooo, Mighty Moe the aardvark slayer!", and such?

    So Harvey the aardvark seemed to naturally slip off the tongue. Plus, and I just thought of this, if I huck him hard enough he'll bounce off the wall, Harvey wallbanger! (yes, yes, I can ESP the groaning from here.)

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  163. Wonder how many sons of good Christian patriarchies, became 'lost' to the faith until they knocked up their g/f and suddenly found good reason to continue that patriarchical line, since daddy owns a business, can loan money for college or hire you, that kind of thing.

    Or the other way would be to get 'lost' from the faith while at college and rebel a little while sage father waits for you to sow your oats and find the one you want to get preggers, knowing that you're gonna need your inheritance once you have your own son to pass that to.

    "I don't know what happened, I believed in the Creation, went to college where they told me that the Creation was total horse-shit, now I have a wife with a bun in her oven and all I have to do to have a comfortable life is go along with Big Daddy? I'm in!" (noise of repaired mind loudly recracking!!! LoL)

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  164. It's the pressure to fit in, and of potential ostracism as well. It's almost as hard to come out as an atheist in some areas as it is a gay person.

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  165. Some students at private schools in Louisiana are being taught that Scotland's fabled Loch Ness monster is real, a claim that is then held as evidence disproving Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the Scotsman reports.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/louisiana-students-loch-ness-monster-disprove-evolution_n_1624643.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

    Every time I'm convinced that there is a bottom to the pit of stupidity on the right, they go and prove me wrong.

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  166. Apparently they also teach that the KKK did some good, and that dinosaurs used to breathe fire.

    No, really.

    How can this be happening?

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  167. I'm thinking that that tack might come back and bite them. How many of the students are going to grow up a bit and find out that these things are nonsense and tie it straight to the terrible Creationist teaching?

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  168. Some of them, but many will go to christian colleges and so forth. Carry the idiocy right on through to adulthood.

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  169. Think: Michelle Bachmann. Can you imagine her saying 'no, sorry, the loch ness monster is a myth'? I mean, when presented it as 'evidence' for Darwin being wrong? I can't see her doing it. She'd go along...

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  170. Dinosaurs used to breathe fire!

    This made it risky when Jesus rode on one.

    Asbestos sandals was the key.

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  171. I hope that Eric is very proud of his crowd of reality-deniers. After all, this is his team. These are the people that will buy his books. These are the people that he's fighting for. And they'll love him.

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  172. "1)Apparently the Uncaused Cause caused the Universe and all the material in it to begin to exist.
    2)We can, within this Universe point to 'things beginning to exist' using the material of the Universe, by simply rearranging some of the material that is already here.
    If you believe (1) and see the mundane truth in (2) it's not very spectacular. But if you point out (2) and use it to deduce (1) by leaving out the parts about material, you might convince people that you've gone part way to proving that there must be God.
    It all hangs on the meaning we give to the idea of 'beginning to exist', doesn't it? If there were such things as magic and miracles, and practitioners could indeed cause things to 'begin to exist' ex nihilo, that'd be one thing, and obviously not the same thing at all as constructing a dwelling or chipping a marble block into a statue."

    This is precisely what I said earlier that your objection amounts to:

    "Now, your point about material and efficient causation (which has *nothing whatsoever* to do with circularity) amounts to this: premise one of the KCA posits that whatever begins to exist has a cause, but this premise is supported by appealing to our experience of causation in the world, and in our experience all causation has both an efficient and a material cause; hence, the conclusion of the KCA, which posits an immaterial efficient cause, is not in fact supported by the first premise, and to the argument is a non sequitur. Note, it's not circular, it's a non sequitur, and the non sequitur come about because of an equivocation in the use of the term 'cause,', which is the one part of your critique that was at least coherent.
    Now, is that an accurate summary (and, ahem, clarification) of your fundamental objection?"

    OK, now that that's out of the way (though I suspect that most of you will still deny that I was right), what's wrong with your objection?

    Well, as usual, it shows that you don't understand the KCA very well! See, the causal premise is *not* supported by our experience of causation in the world; rather, it's supported, as Craig says, "first and foremost...[by] the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come into being from nothing." What's at the back of this 'intuition' (be careful -- this probably doesn't mean what you think it does here)? It's the fact that nothingness has no properties, and hence no potentialities. Second, Craig supports the causal premise with the argument that *if* things could come into existence from nothing, and if nothing is unconstrained by any properties, then we can't explain why anything and everything doesn't pop into existence all the time. This is where Craig appeals to experience to justify the causal premise -- we never observe cats and igloos and asteroids popping into existence from nothing, but if nothing has no constraints (because it has no properties, because, well, it's nothing), then why is this the case? Finally, Craig appeals to our experience of causality not as justification for his causal premise, but as confirmatory of it. Remember, causality as such (which is what Craig is referring to) is a metaphysical concept, not a physical one; so it must apply to being as such; and hence the confirmatory nature of our experience of causation in the world vis-a-vis Craig's causal principle.

    Now that is a simple and clear exposition of Craig's basic defense of the causal premise of the KCA, and it shows that Floyd has badly misunderstood it. I doubt any of you will agree with me (not that the KCA is sound -- I'm not sure that it is -- but that Floyd has misunderstood it), but there it is.

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  173. Interesting though how we've learned that 'nothingness' isn't really possible in this universe. And of course we don't know that it's possible anywhere. In fact it seems that the whole idea of utter nothingness is a mental construct not seen in reality.
    It would seem that 'there was always something.'
    But of course, do go on....

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  174. "Interesting though how we've learned that 'nothingness' isn't really possible in this universe."

    Which is something that theists have been saying explicitly for at least a thousand years...

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  175. See, the causal premise is *not* supported by our experience of causation in the world;
    -------------
    It 'employs' causation. It claims that things come into being, but it doesn't mention that in all known instances of that the necessary materials were already at hand. That is a deception. To not acknowledge this, is another deception. To assume that utter nothingness is even possible, is fallacious reasoning.
    So what's left of it? Is it technically valid in it's logical form? So what? It's premises are based on fallacies. Buh bye.
    What are you even still defending about it? Let's move on. R.I.P. K.C.A.

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  176. Which is something that theists have been saying explicitly for at least a thousand years...
    --------------
    Theists have been saying a lot of things for a thousand years. 99 percent of them have been proven untrue. All your eggs are in that left-over one percent basket. Your god has few remaining gaps to occupy. And as each one closes, apologists just like you struggle to keep it open anyhow.

    So a thousand years ago, they were talking about an eternal universe or series of them? Because that's what it means that there isn't any such thing as real nothingness. No, your 'theists' were supposing that there was god a thousand years ago, not primitive matter or whatever.

    Can't you stop the lying, ever?

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  177. "It 'employs' causation. It claims that things come into being, but it doesn't mention that in all known instances of that the necessary materials were already at hand."

    Brian, reread my post -- the whole point of it, which you somehow missed, is to refute the notion that the causal premise is primarily supported by our observations of causation in the world; it's not. Hence, the 'but we only observe causation in which some material is already there, and in which it rearranges to form something else' objection is largely irrelevant. Again reread my post -- the causal premise is supported by the fact that nothingness has no properties, so something can't come from nothing (which is another way of saying, as Morriston has pointed out, that whatever begins to exist has a cause!).

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  178. "So a thousand years ago, they were talking about an eternal universe or series of them? Because that's what it means that there isn't any such thing as real nothingness. No, your 'theists' were supposing that there was god a thousand years ago, not primitive matter or whatever.
    Can't you stop the lying, ever?"

    It's amazing how it's you guys who are so frequently guilty of the sort of sophistry you always accuse me of! You said that nothingness as such is impossible, and I agreed. But to say that nothingness as such is impossible is just another way of saying that something exists necessarily, which is what, as I said, theists have been explicitly saying for at least a thousand years.

    So you completely misconstrued what I said to accuse me of lying, which means, if you did it deliberately, that you lied to do it. Nice. And if you didn't lie, then you're reading comprehension skills are in serious need of improvement. This doesn't leave you in a very good spot, Brian.

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  179. Eric; please go into law. You'll do great!

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  180. " Craig appeals to our experience of causality not as justification for his causal premise, but as confirmatory of it. Remember, causality as such (which is what Craig is referring to) is a metaphysical concept, not a physical one..."

    So Craig talks around it by appealing to something, a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world although the term is not easily defined.

    But this cannot work for Arguments for God since if a philospher, let's grant Craig that, already believes that God is part of the fundamental nature of being, then in Craig's mind, he can't go wrong, there's that circular 'thing' again, right?

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  181. Hence, the 'but we only observe causation in which some material is already there, and in which it rearranges to form something else' objection is largely irrelevant. Again reread my post -- the causal premise is supported by the fact that nothingness has no properties,
    --------------------------
    The fact that nothingness (which you've admitted is impossible) has no properties. Including being a genuine concept. Gotcha.
    Why didn't you say so earlier?

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  182. So something exists necessarily. Cool. No need for insubstantial gods to create anything then. Clear as day.
    You didn't sound like you were agreeing with me. That's what threw me off.

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  183. For something, is some thing. And not a permanent thing, a changeable thing, or else it would still be here in it's same form. God wouldn't count, because he would have to represent the same amount of matter and energy we have now in the universe in order to not invalidate the KCL argument that 'things always existed.' Since the KCL argues that the building blocks of matter and energy had to always be around, had to always exist in some form in some place, that rather neatly removes the need for a creator deity.
    I'm getting to like the KCL.

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  184. Plus, who can explain how Starbucks and Kingdom Halls spring up?

    This should be fairly easy to sort out though, right Eric? Which prominent philosophers feel that metaphysics, being the fundamental nature of being, include God/supernatural realm in that nature?

    And which part of, 'after all this time how could you possibly imagine invoking 'metaphysics', or having Craig invoke 'metaphysics'', did you imagine concerned me, any other atheist, any one of those billions of 'uneducated twits'(i.e. anyone who doesn't know or care about 'metaphysics', either believers or no)?

    It's not 'cos they don't lack understanding of metaphysics that those 9/ll terrorists rammed those planes into the towers or that millions of you guys' sheep actually think that a wooden statue cries oil after it is oiled every day is a frickin' miracle, is it?

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  185. Plus if god created the universe ex nihilo, then something didn't always exist, did it? Again, god ccan't be that 'something.' Once again we must conserve matter and energy, so a beginningless god couldn't just decide to poof all that extra matter and energy into existence, now could he?

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  186. So, unless you tell me how wrong I am and explain it, how wrong I am, it's seems hardly likely to me that anyone but a philospher who already has the notion of God 'existing' as part of his philosophy is saying anything significant to anyone at all. Certainly not people who agree with him and he might as well be saying, "I love Jesus!", to everyone.

    Why would we think that hugely rich people would help vote in government officials that don't necessarilly want them to look after their own interests, but that we ought to pretend that they might do that?

    On the 'metaphysics' thing, Eric. You seem to imagine that a materialist might be swayed by some 'three card Monte' version of 'existence' where there's, physical existence, notional existence and supernatural existence(some blend of the first and second, all since you feel that gods and spirit realms are, what?, possible?

    Let's hear how Justin Martyr, Origen, most of the Popes, or maybe even Jesus carefully explained The Big Bang, dark energy/matter, quantum weirdness, what?

    I'm still going "WHAAAAAT?", that you'd invoke 'metaphysics' as why Craig is 'good to go' on his baloney. Do you have big goofy front teeth and can't pronounce your words without them tripping over your bottom lip?

    I'm sorry, but that's the picture I have of you now.

    Eric's secret ingredient:- "Vetaphiphix!" .. LOL

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  187. Was that what he did? Was his 'nothing' a metaphysical nothing that couldn't even exist as a real 'nothing' or it would even violate the KCA? Because to me it seemed that he was basically saying what I was there for a while...
    I don't believe even Eric would counter an actual 'there cannot be a true nothingness' with 'I know but here's a metaphysical nothingness so that works just as well...'

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  188. Let's see if we can bash through the concrete wall that Eric has surrounding this thick skull.

    The KCA can be explained so simply to everyone. Two premisses and a conclusion. There's nothing wrong with my rebuttal of it, that only the conclusion admits that the universe was supposedly caused ex nihilo.

    But no, Eric says, since Craig opens 'Door No. 3', all the metaphysical baggage that he has been taking for granted and is willing to let slip out now and then while assholes like Eric are tittering since they knew that Craig was coming from this esoteric POV.

    This is Eric saying, 'See how simple it is AND but it carries all this other metaphysics crap with it, so not so simple then, eh?'

    Cognitive dissonance. If you can say, 'What's wrong with this simple argument?', and are ready to pounce with, 'but perhaps 1/100th of one percent of all believers know anything about how esoteric the reasoning must be to make it not 'non sequitur' or 'bait and switch' or circular.

    Eric from what, must be years past. "KCA looks simple but we invoke metaphysics to clear up any nonsensical looking non sequiturs or bait and switches!"

    Here's a guy, we can say, here. is. a. guy. who is searching for the truth through philosophy.

    Craig, on the other hand is holding metaphysics as an explanation up his sleeve like some kind of God-card, Joker or Ace of Spades, isn't he?

    Eric, on the other hand is, I think, imagining that everyone has read Aristotle and agreed 100% with everything Aristotle says.

    This is like saying, "Of course when I said 'disappeared' I meant disappeared from view, not from existence. Excuse me, of course the coin is in my other hand."

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  189. And of course Eric cannot see how the KCA allows God to disappear from view since 'cause' is being used in this 'general' context, and not an overt 'metaphysical' context, where the existence of God dwells, philosophically speaking.

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  190. It's a very handy thing, to have two or more realities to argue within. Less limiting. Hard to know when he switches though.
    A slippery one, this Eric... He's like oil on water, always has to come out on top...

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  191. The Dark Side is strong in this one.

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  192. So, who would have thunk it that mystery religion seems to rely heavily on the unimaginable concepts of infinity and nothingness(hey that should be the title of a book) and deliberately confusing people?

    And who would have thunk it that the supposed wise men defending that mystery religion would rely on pretty much the same thing?

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  193. Eric; your thoughts on Teilhard de Chardin?  Both on how his writings apply to this topic and, more importantly (for us heathens anyway), how your church responded toward them.

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  194. " Craig appeals to our experience of causality not as justification for his causal premise, but as confirmatory of it. Remember, causality as such (which is what Craig is referring to) is a metaphysical concept, not a physical one..."

    If this is true then Craig doesn't understand how syllogisms work and apparently neither do you!

    The premisses justify the conclusion. One is justified in believing the conclusion is good if you believe the premisses are good.

    What you seem to be saying is that you already knew the conclusion to be a valid statement and the premisses are there, not in the way that premisses are usually there, that it's not really a syllogism working the way syllogisms normally work? Is that right?

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  195. I'm putting up a new post now, just a continuation...

    NEW POST!

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