It's widely believed that Charles Darwin lost his faith when he discovered evolution. And many contemporary atheists proclaim themselves followers of Darwin in this sense. Michael Shermer, for instance, writes that he abandoned Christianity when he learned about evolution; finally he could see how there could be design--or the appearance of design--without a designer. Richard Dawkins writes that it was Darwin who finally made it possible to be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist."
In reality Darwin's atheism had little to do with his discovery of evolution. First of all Darwin was never a very devout Christian. He was raised as a nominal Anglican. It says something about Anglicanism in Britain that a lukewarm Christian like Darwin actually considered becoming a clergyman. What turned Darwin against Christianity, however, was two things.
First, several of his children either died or has chronic illnesses. This was probably heriditary, as Darwin himself suffered for most of his life from one ailment or the other. When Darwin's daughter Annie died at a young age, however, Darwin was inconsolable. Usually a man of the stiff upper lip, Darwin could not stop himself from weeping even in public. Darwin blamed God for Annie's untimely death. This was several years before Darwin published his Origin of Species.
After Annie's death, Darwin began to reflect morbidly on mortality, and during his process he recalled that his own famous grandfather Erasmus Darwin, as well as several other family members and friends, were unbelievers. Since Darwin saw them as good and respectable people, he angrily fulminated against the doctrine of eternal damnation, asking what kind of a God would consign good people to hell just because they refused to accept Christianity? The thought of all these people in hell filled Darwin with such revulsion that he completely jettisoned Christianity.
At the same time Darwin recognized that his theory of evolution was quite compatible with Christianity. When the American biologist Asa Gray wrote Darwin to say that his theory of evolution demonstrated how God created species, Darwin congratulated Gray for being the first one to see the point. In England, the preacher-poet Charles Kingsley argued for the compatibility with evolution and Christianity, and Darwin encouraged his efforts.
True, evolution is inconsistent with the six-day account of creation, but since the earliest days of Christianity, Christian writers like Augustine have had no problem with interpreting the first book of Genesis allegorically. After all the Hebrew word can mean "day" but it can also mean "period" or "epoch." Only a small segment of Christians--mostly fundamentalists--are uncompromisingly wedded to the six-day account.
Evolution, however, says nothing about who or what created the universe. Evolution doesn't even say anything about how life got started. Evolution merely describes how one life form gave rise to another. Somewhat comically writers like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett argue that evolution is a kind of master key that unlocks the universe. It isn't hard to see that atheism is getting in the way of clear reasoning here. If you doubt this, go to Youtube and watch again my debate with Daniel Dennett. Unfortunately I cannot also direct you to my debate with Dawkins, since Timorous Richard doesn't want to get into the arena with me.
Darwin lost his faith over the "problem of evil," an issue that has been coming up in my recent debates, and one that I intend to address in future blog postings. It's time to set at rest, however, the old myth that evolution is a scientific refutation of theism in general or Christianity in particular. Darwin himself knew it was not so, even if his dimmer acolytes haven't figured that out yet.
Reader Comments ( Page 85 of 86)
1261. "My concern is that by arguing against straw men (essentially the spooks inside your head that you imagine the Hate Object to be) you weaken your arguments, and we rationalists will conclude that your arguments are weak." - Mike
I don't know much about you Mike so I'm not accusing you of being anything except that you seem to look like someone who is a god freak. If you are not a god freak and don't believe in god then please have the intellectual honesty to speak authentically instead of playing coy games.
Your arguements are not rational Mike.
It's not possible to argue that god exists as a fact since there isn't any rational basis in reality to argue that since it requires a non-rational leap of faith that god exists.
While you seem educated you also are quite deluded as indicated by the arguments you put forward in support of a god that can't be proven to exist.
Peter at 12:31AM on May 14th 2008
1262. "Yet, Nietzsche's big complaint against Christianity was that it was against revenge. He saw this as a weakness." - Mike
I'm not concerned with Nietzsche's morals or ethics.
I think for myself independent of becoming a blind follower of philosophers. To follow blindly is to be just as delusional as any god freak is to follow their whacked god beliefs.
Think for yourself.
"'Bless those who persecute (you), bless and do not curse them. ... Do not repay anyone evil for evil; be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, on your part, live at peace with all." - Mike wrote.
You miss the point which is that ANY EVIL AND VILE MORAL OR ETHIC OR COMMAND IN THE BIBLE IS ENOUGH TO POLLUTE THE ENTIRE BOOK SINCE THOSE WORDS ARE ATTRIBUTED TO GOD, REGARDLESS OF WHO WROTE IT.
Yes, it's clear that the bible was written by men. Today however people take their beliefs from the bible. Simply attend a catholic or Christian mass and you hear that explicitly as the beliefs from the bible are rolled out on the verbal red carpet as the morals and ethics to uphold.
You can be as selective as you want by ignoring the dark side of the bible but then you miss the dark side of the god concept as documented by the bible.
"Fundamentalists and atheists disagree with the traditional churches about all this; but, curiously, they agree with each other. I suppose that's why one Orthodox theologian commented that being a fundamentalist was not much different from being an atheist."
That's utter nonsense. There are many different interpretations of the bible, obviously yours is one, and there are thousands of others. Just ask around and you'll find that pretty much every Christian has a different point of view selectively having their own favorite quotes from the bible while ignoring the rest and often being ignorant of the evil bits - even when they have a deep knowledge of the scriptures.
Raised in a christian church and schools the bible was present in church and at school. I've seen and read enough of it to see that it's a pointless book to life today. Other than the fact that god freaks like yourself and others think it has relevance in their lives.
The point is that the values of the bible - even if you selectively filter out the vile evil crap - are still evil and vile in and of themselves especially as expressed by christians in their churches or in personal conversations.
Human values and morals have evolved to a higher level than those presented and kept alive in the bible. It's time to jettison that book as a relic of an era gone by.
Peter at 12:47AM on May 14th 2008
1263. The specific details of your god delusion are not relevant to the proof that god exists. Objective reality, so to speak, does not care what the bible says or how you interpret it since your beliefs do not shape the nature of objective reality. Neither does an imaginary god that doesn't exist by being outside of reality.
Your abstracted notion of god is simply a means to create a set of fallacious arguments as a means of suckering in otherwise intelligent people who have some sembalence of reason in their lives. It won't work with those of us who base their lives on reason and put emotion secondary to rationality when it comes to knowledge of objective reality.
We atheists, which really isn't an accurate label but if that's what you want to use then fine, are simply the kind of people that REQUIRE proof and evidence and explanations that make sense, that don't violate well tested and known laws of nature. And YES, we are also the kind of people who when presented with verifiable and repeatedly testable evidence and proof who will not need to believe or take leaps of faith since the evidence or proof is in. We are the kind of people who can change on a dime, but not the dime that is clear that god freaks (including you if you are a god freak) will take blink leaps of faith into a lack of all reason and into the irrationality of believing ridiculous crap; crap like jesus rising from the dead as a real fact even though it violates the laws of nature and biology.
To take a leap of faith as almost every god fearing freak does is an irrational act and undermines all of your rational thinking capacities putting into question any rational thinking that comes out of your brain.
Do you, Mike, believe in god?
Do you, Mike, believe that jesus actually rose from the dead after three days of his body rotting and decaying?
Failure to answer by prevarication and avoidance or obfuscation or coyness will be taken as your acceptance of these two questions with a yes and a yes.
If you believe in god please describe your god. Please be as descriptive as possible listing all of your gods traits, attributes, powers, etc.... so that we can have a full as possible picture of your god.
Mike if you believe in god why would you worship your god?
Peter at 1:04AM on May 14th 2008
1264. What you fallacious see as 'fundamentalism' in atheists is really - ironically - Occam's razor at work chopping and slicing to get to the minimal representation, hypothesis, theory, fact of nature that would explain or accurately as possible represent the territory of the objective reality.
It just so happens that YOUR religious beliefs in god and jesus are quite susceptible to being sliced to shreds in the cold light of Nature.
It's about finding and fine tuning a minimal as necessary map - without creating unnecessary entities - that we can mentally use to represent objective reality.
We are well aware that the map is not the territory and that's why it's important to be able to revise one's map at a moments notice given evidence that one's map is not reflecting the territory accurately enough.
Sometimes it's ok to have a non-accurate map as long as it's generally correct. For example, for most people it's perfectly fine to represent in their minds that the Earth is a sphere. However, if you are going to require a little more precision when navigating for example, it's important to know that it's an oblate spheroid to within 100 meters across the 40,000 km diameter divide by the constant PI. What's important to know is that one's low resolution map is low resolution and that one can "upgrade" it as needed by education.
The problem with god freaks is that you are people who refuse to upgrade your belief systems to cut away the 2,000+ year old model of the world and universe for the modern one. You refuse to enter the real world where the best and most accurate maps of reality are waiting you. Instead you focus on fallacies which are known with certainty to be false: e.g. jesus rising from the dead is physically impossible thus it is a fallacious belief; sure it might have been a magic trick or an impostor or simply never happened at all, but these more probable scenarios are never taught since they don't require a person to make a leap of faith into the particular cult's belief system.
Life is hard enough without the mind pablum of beliefs in god. Grow up people. Grow up Dinesh D'Souza. Grow up Mike. Grow up Colleen. Grow up Renzo. Grow up all of you believers. Take the Red Pill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redpill) and we will welcome you to objective reality; even though it's harsh at times it's also very beautiful.
Peter at 9:05AM on May 14th 2008
1265. "My concern is that by arguing against straw men (essentially the spooks inside your head that you imagine the Hate Object to be) you weaken your arguments..." - Mike
Peter
Your arguements are not rational Mike.
While you seem educated you also are quite deluded ...
Mike
Heh. The juxtaposition is enlightening.
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Peter
It's not possible to argue that god exists as a fact since there isn't any rational basis in reality to argue that since it requires a non-rational leap of faith that god exists.
Mike
I've already said that, although not in a run-on sentence. Remember that "fact" is the participle of a verb: factum est. It means "something that has been accomplished, something that has been done or fabricated." (Compare the German term: Tatsache, "deed-matter.") Falling bodies are facts; gravity is not. Dead bodies are facts; vile evil is not. This chair is a fact; "chair" is not. The second term in each case is a mental abstraction from the material facts.
Further, if by "reality" you mean only "material existence" then it is obvious that there can be no "basis in reality" for God, given that he has not been supposed a material being by the Jews, Christians, or muslims. You can no more (dis)prove God by measuring individual natures than you can (dis)prove Frank Whittle by measuring the components of a jet engine.
But if by reality you mean to include the real existence of universals (coyly, you have not said whether you are a realist or a nominalist) then your statement fails on the rocks of such unprovables as the universe, natural laws, love, truth, beauty, three, yellow, and so on - or even old vile evil. That is, "terms of the first abstraction" do not possess material being, only mental being, and cannot be proven empirically.
As for "rational basis" and "non-rational leap of faith," I must offer the historical record as a refutation. There is nothing in a leap of faith that requires it to be 'non-rational.' Many of those who have faith -- in physical reality, in beauty, in God, in three, or even in "It just is!" -- have perfectly rational bases for their beliefs. Sure, some do not. Some have faith in the physical universe without ever having given it a moment's thought. They simply accept it without question.
The medieval Christians for example reasoned the following from their faith in God:
1. The universe is real because God created it. (Gen 1:1)
Corollary: The heavens are just another material, created thing.
2. The universe is ordered because God is rational.
3. This ordering is permanent and universal because God is faithful to his promises.
4. The ordering is discoverable by human reason because God is rational.
5. The universe is contingent, not necessary and so must be learned by study of facts and not by reason alone because God's will is absolute and everything could have been ordered in some other way.
6. The ordering is discoverable because God has "ordered all things by number, weight, and measure."
7. The causes of material events lies in the material bodies themselves because God has endowed matter with "natures" capable of acting autonomously.
8. The search for such causes and laws is worthy in itself because God "gave [us] sound knowledge of existing things, that [we] might know the organization of the universe and the force of its elements..." (Wis 7:17)
So: If God, then propositions #1-8 hold. Applying Carnap's inductive principle: IF p implies (q1,q2,...,qn) AND (q,q2,...,qm), THEN p is "probably true" with probability m/n. We conclude from reason that it is not unreasonable to believe p.
That doesn't make it true. It just makes it not unreasonable.
However, for True Believers like yourself, any disagreement must be Wrong-with-a-capital-W. Any kind word for Jews must mean the person is a Jew-lover, or perhaps a Jew himself. Any kind word for Christians must mean the person is a Christ-lover, or perhaps a Christian himself. The opponent must be deluded rather than mistaken; and the Other becomes a Hate Object. The use of ritual curses (deluded, freak, vile evil, grow up, etc.) becomes almost a verbal tick, a sort of Tourette's Syndrome.
Please note that it is not necessary to believe what the Christians believed in order to deal honestly with the facts of history. Because =they= believed as they did, the Western world invented Science, and not just an ad hoc collection of facts, lore, techniques, and rules of thumb that everyone else came up with. You may despise your mother; but that doesn't make her not your mother.
This is because if you start from the axiom of God, it is possible to reason out consequences and draw conclusions. If you start from the axiom of "It just is!" it is difficult to see how any of this would come about, since there is no basis to reason from a mere assertion of brute fact. Instead, we get stuck with Popper's conclusion that all of science is based upon the logical fallacy of asserting the consequent. (IF p then q AND q, THEREFORE p.) And thus began the atheist demolition of Enlightenment science.
Mike at 10:41AM on May 14th 2008
1266. "Yet, Nietzsche's big complaint against Christianity was that it was against revenge. He saw this as a weakness." - Mike
Peter
I'm not concerned with Nietzsche's morals or ethics.
Mike
Chesterton observed that Christianity had the unique property of being denounced by various factions for precisely opposite deficiencies. I cited Nietzsche not to convince you of anything (you seem immune to reasoned argument) but to indicate that while you denounce Christianity for preaching vengeance, Nietzsche denounced Christianity for preaching forgiveness. On the whole, and based on empirical evidence of what Christians actually taught, Nietzsche has the better case.
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Peter
I think for myself independent of becoming a blind follower of philosophers. To follow blindly is to be just as [cant phrase] delusional as any [ritual curse] god freak is to follow their [verbal tick] whacked god beliefs.
Mike
For myself, if I am not a wheelwright, I would hesitate to reinvent the wheel. Those who refuse to have anything to do with philosophy have usually become enslaved to outdated forms of it.
I notice that you seem unable to comprehend "following" without it being "blind." For that matter, you seem to confuse "have read" or "understanding" with "following." But surely the Conversation need not be limited to those now living. Not when we have Aristotle, Epicurus, Tacitus, Darwin, Tolstoy, Newton, Dostoevsky, Montaigne, and others. Tradition is, after all, based on the notion that our ancestors were not, by and large, fools -- and lets "the majority" vote.
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Peter
Think for yourself.
Mike
Unless you have a supercollider in your basement, there must surely be some things you take on the word of others.
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Paul of Tarsus:
"'Bless those who persecute (you), bless and do not curse them. ... Do not repay anyone evil for evil; be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, on your part, live at peace with all." - Mike [sic] wrote.
Peter
You miss the point which is that ANY EVIL AND VILE MORAL OR ETHIC OR COMMAND IN THE BIBLE IS ENOUGH TO POLLUTE THE ENTIRE BOOK SINCE THOSE WORDS ARE ATTRIBUTED TO GOD, REGARDLESS OF WHO WROTE IT.
Mike
No need to shout, or even to use your cant phrases. The repetition becomes boring and bespeaks a certain mental laziness.
Again, you mistakenly attribute to the traditional Christians your own fundamentalist beliefs. The Christians believed that the Bible was inspired in matters of faith and morals, not that it was dictated word-for-word. It was wll understood that the books had been written by men subject to all the wisdom and ignorance of their eras. They thought that the truths were always allegorical and certainly anagogical. Some matters served as horrible examples; others were matters dictated by the time and place. When you read what they wrote it is clear that they are reading the texts from the viewpoint of their beliefs. They are not searching the texts to discover what those beliefs ought to be.
Your notion of ritual pollution of a book sounds more like superstition than reason. Or the "one drop" rule used in the Jim Crow South.
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Peter
Yes, it's clear that the bible was written by men. Today however people take their beliefs from the bible.
Mike
Yes, it's a modern heresy informed by Science.
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Peter
Simply attend a catholic or Christian mass and you hear that explicitly as the beliefs from the bible are rolled out on the verbal red carpet as the morals and ethics to uphold.
Mike
You forgot the Orthodox. But then fundamentalists often do. I'm not sure why. Also, "Christians" other than Orthodox, Roman, and High Anglican do not have "masses." Thirdly, the Orthodox and Roman churches have never taught the literalness of the Bible. The Orthodox go so far as to cite the Traditions, including the Bible as one of the Traditions, albeit the most important one. The Catholics talk about "the Bible and the Traditions." This often irriates sola scriptura types, like atheists, since their whole Bible-based argument falls apart once the Traditions and non-literal readings are admitted. (Then, the accusation becomes that the Orthodox, Catholics, and other traditionalists are "cheating.")
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"Fundamentalists and atheists disagree with the traditional churches about all this; but, curiously, they agree with each other. I suppose that's why one Orthodox theologian commented that being a fundamentalist was not much different from being an atheist."
Peter
That's utter nonsense. There are many different interpretations of the bible, obviously yours is one, and there are thousands of others.
Mike
I only note that the reading protocol of atheists and of fundamentalists is essentially the same. I also noted that the Orthodox, Catholic, Coptic, and Assyrian Churches preach uniform interpretations. Although they differ in some respects from one another, each is uniform within itself on dogma. And they account for the vast majority of all Christians.
Once you hit the fringey, do-it-yourself religions, then of course you do get the Church of Fred, the Bible of Peter, and so on.
Besides, if diversity is a problem, what are we to make of the five mutually contradictory versions of quantum theory?
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Peter
Raised in a christian church and schools the bible was present in church and at school. pointless -- god freaks like yourself -- selectively filter [ritual fundy condemnation of Catholics] -- vile -- evil crap -- evil -- vile
Mike
A fundamentalist church, it seems, since you think beliefs come from a Bible read literally.
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Peter
Raised in a christian church and schools the bible was...
Mike
I can't resist.
Your sentence is truer than you think. The Bible =was= raised in a Christian church and schools, specifically in the Orthodox, before it split into Coptic, Assyrian, and Roman branches. The Church did not come out of the Bible.
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Peter
Human values and morals have evolved to a higher level
Mike
More mystical woo-woo. How can immaterial concepts like values and morals "evolve"? They are not material entities.
Mike at 10:48AM on May 14th 2008
1267. Peter
Objective reality, so to speak, does not care what the bible says or how you interpret it since your beliefs do not shape the nature of objective reality.
Mike
That depends. What people believe is objective reality. As Lukacs was fond of saying, "What matters in history is not what happened, but what people think happened."
Of course, "objective reality" is a tricky point. Objectively, sound, taste, etc. do not exist. (See Galileo, "The Assayer")
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Peter
Neither does an imaginary god that doesn't exist by being outside of reality.
Mike
It's really not necessary to repeat you ritual prayers.
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Peter
Failure to answer by prevarication and avoidance or obfuscation or coyness will be taken as your acceptance of these two questions with a yes and a yes.
Mike
How much easier it is for you when you can not only ask the questions, but also put answers in the other person's mouth. Your need to put people in boxes and stereotype them has already been noted. We do not need constant reminders.
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Peter
What you fallacious see as 'fundamentalism' in atheists is really - ironically - Occam's razor at work chopping and slicing to get to the minimal representation, hypothesis, theory, fact of nature that would explain or accurately as possible represent the territory of the objective reality.
Mike
That would be Brother William of Ockham, OFM, a medieval monk who argued from God's complete autonomy. He specifically said that his metaphysic -- you cannot "prove" Ockham's Eraser -- applied only to what we today call "models," and not to the universe itself. Physical reality (which as a Christian he accepted as a consequence of God) could be as complex as God pleased.
He felt that the traditional scholastic model of cognition had too many variables in it and claimed that by reducing the number of variables in the model, the model would be more comprehensible.
And of course, Ockham's Eraser was well known to the medieval scholastics. It was called the Principle of Parsimony. Aquinas used it in his theological arguments before Ockham was even born.
Mike at 10:41AM on May 14th 2008
1268. Peter: Human values and morals have evolved to a higher level [than those of the bible].
Mike: "More mystical woo-woo. How can immaterial concepts like values and morals "evolve"? They are not material entities."
No need for any of your mystical woo-woo nonsense. Immaterial concepts like value and morals "evolve" by having human brains, something you obviously lack from the way that you replied, evolve them! Obviously it takes a sentient being such as us to step by step refine value, ethics, and morals to higher levels.
For example the bible wants us to commit revenge and vengeance in Psalms 137:8-9 (thank you for clarifying that extra verse) of god's evil and evil command to kill one's enemies babies by dashing them upon the rocks. Nice moral way to behave there god and god freaks.
From the cycle of never ending wars that people such as Irish of Northern Ireland have finally quieted down we learn that vengeance and revenge won't solve anything - except trigger the next round. I wonder how long before it takes the various religious factions in the middle east to recognize this, or for Bush to get it that his Unending War on Terror itself is likely to be the Terror of the next N decades, as it is now.
Revenge begets nothing but revenge, vengeance nothing but vengeance. That is the old moral, the new enlightened and evolved moral is to do what it takes to avoid vengeance and revenge.
If your particular variant of a religion preaches the newer evolved moral then that's great. Unfortunately I've met enough people of faith who fail to see that vengeance is a problem, personally or at the State Mass Killing+Murder level. To many extents Western Culture is a revenge and vengeance culture, as are Middle Eastern and other cultures around the world. There are a few that have evolved their morals to a higher level.
By the way Michael it's one thing to ask for a clarification and another to do it while mocking when you know what I meant. Clearly abstract ideas don't exist outside of us as ideas live within the brains/minds of living sentient beings.
That is the point actually. Your god, however you want to define him/it/her/they only exists in the brains/minds of sentient beings such as yourself. Without human beings god dies for there is no god in the objective universe or outside of the objective universe. When the last human brain is gone so will god and all the other gods be gone. Nothing in the universe will even miss us.
Peter at 6:13PM on May 14th 2008
1269. Mike mistakenly wrote: "However, for True Believers like yourself, any disagreement must be Wrong-with-a-capital-W. Any kind word for Jews must mean the person is a Jew-lover, or perhaps a Jew himself. Any kind word for Christians must mean the person is a Christ-lover, or perhaps a Christian himself. The opponent must be deluded rather than mistaken."
Wow, quite the polemic there Mike. You are deeply mistaken.
First it seems that you aren't just saying a few friendly words for Christians, you're vigorously arguing their delusional world view as if it was your own.
I use the word "delusional" in a very specific way: "false belief".
For example, the false belief that jesus arose from the dead after his body was rotting for three days. That is clearly a false belief since it violates the known and well tested laws of nature and biology. Every believer that I've every known who believes in Jesus believes that he came back from the dead. Since this clearly is a false belief it makes the person believing it delusional. It's a "miracle" they claim. Accepting a "miracle" is a leap of faith that robs the person of their freedom and their faculties of rational thought.
So it's the CONTENT of your beliefs or the points that YOU put forward that are what is nonsense. If you really don't believe them then I think you are being disingenuous and you should clearly spell our your purpose in this blog comment forum. Everyone else seems to have at least been genuine about their beliefs, if not as well spoken as you or as eloquent at arguing as you.
I really don't care with religion, cult, sect, group you are with or what your religious orientation. What matters is whether or not your are deluded with a god belief. You seem to argue for god thus it is reasonable for people to assume that you are a god freak.
Oh, god freak. Yeah, freak is a technical term to describe those who are delusional god believers. For it would take a freak of nature to believe in god especially someone in a modern western society with our science education and technology levels.
Members of the Jim Rose Circus Side Show love to be called freaks as it sets them apart from the usual boring civilian. Being a god freak means that you're just a freaky person who is delusional with god in your brain and polluting your mind.
I do not hate you, you are not a hate object; not for me anyway.
When I call you delusional it is because what you are saying clearly is a belief and a false belief.
Since I've never met you I can't make a psychological assessment to determine if your delusion just goes to the level of god beliefs or if it is wholly and deeply systemic.
"Please note that it is not necessary to believe what the Christians believed in order to deal honestly with the facts of history. Because =they= believed as they did, the Western world invented Science, and not just an ad hoc collection of facts, lore, techniques, and rules of thumb that everyone else came up with. You may despise your mother; but that doesn't make her not your mother."
Of course the facts and events of history are the facts and events of history; most clouded in murky mystery, some with details that can be verified with high probability while others being nothing more than mythology. Oh, unless that mythology became a major religion, which seems to have happened a bit too many times for our own good.
Before you go crediting Christianity with inventing the western world you should go an read a lot more history oh buddy Mike.
The ground work for western civilization and science and technology were laid long before the destructive god cult of Jesus the Evil Christ ever came into this world.. In fact many historians have the point of view that the Christians held humanity back for close to a thousand years with a little thing called their thirst for power and blood and conquest aka the Dark Ages and beyond.
Yes, some devout christians have made significant contributions to history, no doubt about that. Others might have been Christian but that was really irrelevant.
That's is all besides the point. Just because a group, the Christians, or the Jews, or the X-People, made a contribution to advancing humanity doesn't give them an excuse for the harm they did or give them the right to impose their god upon the rest of us.
If you can't handle the heat of the debate then skip it.
Peter at 10:50PM on May 14th 2008
1270. Peter: "Objective reality, so to speak, does not care what the bible says or how you interpret it since your beliefs do not shape the nature of objective reality."
Mike: "That depends. What people believe is objective reality. As Lukacs was fond of saying, "What matters in history is not what happened, but what people think happened."
Ah, no it does not depend. The term objective reality referrers to the objective world that we exist in.
What you are mistakenly thinking is what is known as subjective realty where what people think happened is important. Much of our lives are spend in thinking about our and others subjective realities while we actually exist in objective reality.
Mike: "Of course, "objective reality" is a tricky point. Objectively, sound, taste, etc. do not exist."
Now you are just getting yourself all confused for no good reason other than to spread confusion. No wonder you are a difficult person to discuss things with, you don't seem to even comprehend basics about the distinction between objective and subjective realities.
I really don't care about our subjective points of view. When I speak of objective reality I'm not speaking of our view of objective reality I'm speaking of the actual objective reality where we exist. Existence. The place where gravity and the other forces of Nature are the masters of what is permitted. Not your silly - and highly deadly - ideas of god.
Peter at 10:58PM on May 14th 2008
1271. Peter: "Failure to answer by prevarication and avoidance or obfuscation or coyness will be taken as your acceptance of these two questions with a yes and a yes."
Mike: "How much easier it is for you when you can not only ask the questions, but also put answers in the other person's mouth. Your need to put people in boxes and stereotype them has already been noted. We do not need constant reminders."
Evidently you seem to have no intention of answering the question asked of you so many times since you prevaricated and avoided answering it yet again. That shows that you have zero intellectual honesty and really no desire to have an honest debate or discussion. You are not worth my time if you are not going to be authentic and honest.
I no longer know what to make of you Mike.
Peter at 11:03PM on May 14th 2008
1272. "Further, if by "reality" you mean only "material existence" then it is obvious that there can be no "basis in reality" for God, given that he has not been supposed a material being by the Jews, Christians, or muslims." - Mike
No by objective reality I mean all of existence even anything or any nothing or any gods that exist out side of our universe; I mean it to include ALL parallel universes, alternative realities, other dimensions, everything unsubstantial or substantial, all forms of energy, matter, and everything else left out.
For any god to exist it must exist within some sort of environment even if that environment i outside of our universe.
You and the other god freaks can suppose that god exists as a non-existent being outside of reality all you want. Without proof it's just a belief and if you take it on as if it's true then it becomes an unsupported belief. Since it's highly probably that the possibility of god existence is essentially zero then your beliefs are delusional. Oh, since a wide number of the claims about god that are in the bible and that comes out of god freaks, and freaks like you, provably violate well tested and known laws of Nature you are proven to be delusional.
Jesus is not rise from the dead unless he was a fake doing a hokey magic trick. Rising from the dead after three days of your body rotting is simply impossible even given modern medicine today and especially 2,000 years ago. Objective Reality rules override what god freaks believe.
Sorry to rock your world with the fact that your are delusional if you believe in god.
If you don't believe in god then what the heck are you doing arguing against the obvious facts of objective reality as expressed by your humble fellow human being Peter (and others here who have done an excellent job of destroying EVERY argument put forth by the god deluded)?
Peter at 11:15PM on May 14th 2008
1273. Peter: Human values and morals have evolved to a higher level [than those of the bible].
Mike: "More mystical woo-woo. How can immaterial concepts like values and morals "evolve"? They are not "material" entities.
Peter: Immaterial concepts like value and morals "evolve" by having human brains, [ritual mockery: something you obviously lack...] evolve them!
Mike:
You seem unaware of Darwinian theory. How, exactly do human brains evolve values -- as opposed to human beings thinking and discussing them.
If all you're doing is using "evolution" as a synonym for "change," then you have said nothing more than that values change. Not exactly a stunning revelation. If you are using it to pretend to a scientific aura by piggy-backing on Darwin's theory, then you are engaged in cargo cult.
In what way are =values= subject to population pressure on resources. Do they reproduce? Do they compete for food? Do they even have the =material= existence necessary to do all this. That's what makes it mystical: The cargo cult mentality that imagines that by imitating the outward forms of scientific method, and by applying an assortment of superficially empirical theories to nonempirical realities we "can summon forth actual hard clinical results, as from the treasure houses of the gods."
Peter:
Revenge begets nothing but revenge, vengeance nothing but vengeance. That is the old moral, the new enlightened and evolved moral is to do what it takes to avoid vengeance and revenge.
Mike:
You are merely spouting Christian propaganda.
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Peter
By the way Michael it's one thing to ask for a clarification and another to do it while mocking when you know what I meant.
Mike
That this comes from the vendor of "pointless -- god freaks like yourself -- selectively filter -- vile -- evil crap -- obviously lack [a brain] -- evil -- vile" raises your tears to the level of crocodile and your plaint to the level of self-parody.
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Peter
Clearly abstract ideas don't exist outside of us as ideas live within the brains/minds of living sentient beings.
Mike
Ideas "live" within the brain? And here I thought that people had ideas and talked about them. Are you some sort of Dawkinsite? Dawkins does not do metaphysics at all well.
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Peter
there is no god in the objective universe or outside of the objective universe.
Mike
Is there another sort of universe? Or do you choose to exclude sound and smell and taste and thought from your universe? And why should the Ultimate "Subject" be found in an "Object," anyway?
I wonder how you know what is outside the universe. Have you ever been out there? Me, I haven't even left the planet. I have, however, left the continent. Does that count?
Mike at 11:21PM on May 14th 2008
1274. Just because you can reason about a mythical god as if it's real doesn't make you a nut job, well not to big of one anyway.
What makes you a nut job is ASSUMING THE TRUTH of your beliefs in GOD as if it's true that he exists. That is what 99.9999% of god fearing folk do. What makes you a nut job is to not be able to see that your beliefs are unsupported by ANY facts or laws of Nature. There isn't any proof to support your beliefs, that is what makes you and them a nut job at best and a con man at worst for propagating, or really at worst a killer driven by his beliefs in a mythical unproven god.
I really don't get why you god freaks don't just give up your silly notions about god. You know we can still teach being nice to others without god as other traditions have done for many thousands of years. We can still teach and advance humanity forward without the need for unproven and as you also claim unprovable gods. Hitchens had it right, religion poisons everything.
Peter at 11:22PM on May 14th 2008
1275. Mike, and Renzo, and Dinesh D'Souza, you guys seem to forget or don't seem to know that logic in isolation from empirical tests against objective reality is likely to be irrelevant to the Nature of Objective Reality. In other words when it comes to the Nature of Objective Reality logic without testing is likely to be irrelevant nonsense (aka mind poo).
That applies to the "medieval Christians" reasoning (eg. "The universe is real because God created it. - Gen 1:1") and to today's christians who reason fallaciously like Dinesh D'Souza, Renzo, Mike. It's mind poo since all their statements can be refuted when tested against the Object Reality of Nature and Existence.
Occam's razor can be used to slice through the unnecessary entity, god, by simply stating the fact that "the universe exists because the universe exists". No need for any entities that are not proven.
Peter at 11:37PM on May 14th 2008