Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

I know for certain that doing so again will not help you find any passage in which Nagel asserts evolution does not happen.

Reread page 5-6.
It's funny how you think you "know for certain" something that plainly isn't true.

It plainly is true. If you reread pages 5-6, in the first full sentence you will learn that Nagel does not deny evolution:
"What I would like to do is explore the possibilities that are compatible with what we know - in particular what we know about how mind and everything connected with it depends on the appearance and development of living organisms, as a result of the universe's physical, chemical and then biological evolution."

You're a quarter right in your claim but also three quarters wrong.

Nagel hopes for some form of Materialist ideology to win through, it's true. He's not religious. But he does not think that Evolutionism, the Darwinism you know, has anything to it. He thinks that what we currently are being told is "scientific evolution" must go, because it's misleading and stifling science itself.

He writes, "It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of physical accidents together with natural selection [i.e. Darwinism]...What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a non-negligible probability of being true." (6)

He adds, later, "My skepticism is not based on religious belief, or in any belief in a definite alternative [i.e. any reformed version of Darwinism]. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in spite of the consensus of scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. That is expecially true with regard to the origin of life." (7)

[Dontaskme]

No, it's very simple logic, and utterly devoid of manipulation.

If you're dead-and-done, you can never know anything. If you're not, you can.

That's indisputable.

IC..You talk about dead-and-done, as though you already know 'Death' is an actual human experience.

And how can you know that you or someone else is dead, if like you say...when you are dead you can never know anything? here you seem to be making the claim that death is an experience one can have. But then go on to say, when you are dead you know nothing, certainly nothing of your death. So how can you even use the word ''Dead'' if there is nobody to know the experience of it.

Are you talking about ''Death'' as being an actual conscious experience one can have?

Or am I misunderstanding you IC? ..could you please clarify.

[phyllo]

Note to AJ:

You explain it to him.

Derangement interests me. Both his variety (compounded by alcohol and psychedelic drugs) and your variety.

As much as I’d like to talk about all varieties I find it impossible. You-plural lose all capacity to reason calmly.

So all I can do is to *note* it.

Come on, AJ, this guy actually thinks that I am the racist here! When in fact my own political prejudices take me in exactly the opposite direction.

You're the one who used this phrase:

The slant-eyed Chinks, as some prefer?

Nobody else did.

You repeatedly use "yellow" to describe people.

[Dontaskme]

Very easily. Human empirical knowledge -- knowledge of facts of reality -- is always probabilistic. So if the word "know" means anything at all, in regards to empirical reality, it means, "You can have a very high level of certainty about..."

If you believe God, then you will know what He has told you. And it will turn out to be right. That's as good as "knowledge" gets.

Yes, so it seems, knowledge based on pure direct self-evident experience is fact, yes of course it is, it's the experience of being a human who has directly experienced fact of reality. No human being needs to believe their own personal direct experience is a fact, it is wholly self-evident in the experience...no belief is necessary.

But then you flip things around to include the concept of ''BELIEF'

Why include a ''God'' to believe in, whom has told you the knowledge you already have...since you have already known the knowledge via experiencing it as a direct self-evident human experience?

When you were a baby, you had no knowledge, you learnt knowledge through other people who came before you. You are the author of knowledge, you are the author of your name...you are the source of knowledge.....so why say this SOURCE is God?

You might as well say to every schoolchild in the world... you are not you, this you that you think you are is God.

So instead of a teacher saying to a child...hey you, can you pay attention while I'm talking...why not just say to the child...hey god, can god pay attention while I'm talking.

Lets flip the word 'god' back to 'you'

Why would you have to believe you are you...you would be obviously self-evident in the actual direct experience of you.

No need for a BELIEF here.....you simply are you, without doubt or error.





.

[Immanuel Can]

No, it's very simple logic, and utterly devoid of manipulation.

If you're dead-and-done, you can never know anything. If you're not, you can.

That's indisputable.

IC..You talk about dead-and-done, as though you already know 'Death' is an actual human experience.

You're very funny sometimes.

You're back into wildly, irrationally speculative mode, I guess. I'm sorry...I'm just not interested in any of that.

[Dontaskme]

No, it's very simple logic, and utterly devoid of manipulation.

If you're dead-and-done, you can never know anything. If you're not, you can.

That's indisputable.

IC..You talk about dead-and-done, as though you already know 'Death' is an actual human experience.

You're very funny sometimes.

You're back into wildly, irrationally speculative mode, I guess. I'm sorry...I'm just not interested in any of that.

Ok, but I thought it was a valid thing to discuss with you, but you obviously do not know how to respond to what I've said, except to say, I'm always the funny irrational one, as if I'm not being serious, when I truly am. So that's fine by me, I just totally give up ever thinking I could discuss these issues with someone like you who is simply not interested.

This is the last post you will ever hear from me, I'm just so done thinking you ever cared about anything I say to you...so I will never speak to you about these things ever again, much to your relief, I'm sure.

I know that's how you deal with cross examination...you just cut people dead out of the conversation. So be it.

Bye.

[iambiguous]

Derangement interests me. Both his variety (compounded by alcohol and psychedelic drugs) and your variety.

As much as I’d like to talk about all varieties I find it impossible. You-plural lose all capacity to reason calmly.

So all I can do is to *note* it.

Come on, AJ, this guy actually thinks that I am the racist here! When in fact my own political prejudices take me in exactly the opposite direction.

You're the one who used this phrase:

The slant-eyed Chinks, as some prefer?

Nobody else did.

"As some prefer" was my point! In other words, making a distinction between those who broach race up in the theoretical clouds like AJ and those who are more, shall we say, colorful...or "down to earth"?

You repeatedly use "yellow" to describe people.

Yeah, and I use white, black, brown and red as well. Why? Because that is the color of their skin.

wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_ter ... y_for_race

"Identifying human races in terms of skin color, at least as one among several physiological characteristics, has been common since antiquity."

On the other hand...

"It was long recognized that the number of categories is arbitrary and subjective, and different ethnic groups were placed in different categories at different points in time. François Bernier (1684) doubted the validity of using skin color as a racial characteristic, and Charles Darwin (1871) emphasized the gradual differences between categories. Today there is broad agreement among scientists that typological conceptions of race have no scientific basis.

On the other other hand, ask AJ to link you to his own favorite scientists in this debate.

Still, if I offended anyone here by making note of the word "yellow", I do apologize. It was never my intention to use it in a derogatory manner.

But then consider...

"The Martinique-born French Frantz Fanon and African-American writers Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, and Ralph Ellison, among others, wrote that negative symbolisms surrounding the word "black" outnumber positive ones. They argued that the good vs. bad dualism associated with white and black unconsciously frame prejudiced colloquialisms."

But then...

"In the 1970s the term black replaced Negro in the United States."

Then down the "politically correct" rabbit hole some will go: https://www.uah.edu/diversity/news/1556 ... e-of-color

Now, let's get back to AJ taking his "theoretical" conclusions about the Northern European stock down out of the clouds and hear him out on what he himself embraces in terms of political policy and legislation regarding the demographic crisis in America.

Me, at least I'm willing to acknowledge that my own value judgments here are rooted largely in political prejudices rooted largely in dasein existentially. I certainly don't possess the optimal or the only rational manner in which to broach, discuss, analyze and evaluate race among the human species.

How about you?

[Immanuel Can]

IC..You talk about dead-and-done, as though you already know 'Death' is an actual human experience.

You're very funny sometimes.

You're back into wildly, irrationally speculative mode, I guess. I'm sorry...I'm just not interested in any of that.

...you obviously do not know how to respond to what I've said...

In just the way I did. That's it.

[Harbal]

What does "disbelieve" mean, in that sentence, is the question.

To become aware of some claim, give it some consideration, and conclude that it lacks enough plausibility to be taken seriously, therefore not including it among proposed accounts of states of affairs one regards as being true, or likely to be true.

Does "disbelieve" mean, "not have any information to go on, either way"?

All I intend the word "disbelieve" to mean is having an absence of belief that something is the case. The none acceptance of a truth claim.

Or does it mean "claim to have reason to think there is no God?"

There could be evidential reasons for rejecting the truth of a claim, or it could just be that the claim does not meet the criteria one regards as necessary for it to be considered as a possibility. It's like the unicorn example you sometimes use. If someone claimed that they existed, I would not believe their claim, and I think it probable that I would arrive at that position for exactly the same reasons, and in exactly the same way, as you would. So, any questions you ask me about my non-belief in God, are equally applicable to to your (and my) non-belief in unicorns. And, in anticipation of what you might say to that; the possible consequences of not believing in God, compared to those of not believing in unicorns, are rendered sufficiently irrelevant to me by their vanishingly small likelyhood as to make it unnecessary for them to be taken into account.

Atheists never want to say. Because either answer is a serious problem for them. (I'm not calling you out on this, please understand; I'm just talking about the logic of what Atheism itself holds.)

I doubt that the average atheist perceives any problems inherent in his atheism, after all, it simply means that he is not a theist, and I also doubt that he considers logic to be his enemy. What you have to realise, IC, is that while the issue of God might be a matter of great importance to a theist, it tends to have very little significance to an atheist. I imagine that your belief and faith in God are a major part of your identity, but my atheism -my simple none inclusion of religious belief in my worldview- is only a minor part of mine.

If they just have no information about something, and so "fail to know grounds for belief or unbelief," in the proposition either way, they're agnostic.

I happen to think that, in reality, we cannot be absolutely sure of anything. Our senses can deceive us, and that includes our sense of reason. So, no, I cannot say with 100% certainty that there is no God, but I feel the possibility to be so unlikely as to not warrant questioning. That might technically make me an agnostic, but certainly not in the same way as someone with a 50/50 perspective.

If they say they have any reason to be convinced there actually is no God, they're obviously in error or deceptive -- because one cannot adduce sufficient evidence to prove God does not exist, and there are at least inductive evidences that lead most people to think there well might be. So he's claiming a level of certainty that basic reason tells us he never can possibly have.

Again, you are projecting the importance that you attach to the issue of God onto the atheist. I don't think the typical atheist is interested enough to feel any need to justify himself. Your insistance that he needs evidence before he is entitled to be an atheist might annoy him, but it is very unlikely to motivate him into making the effort to do anything about it.

There clearly are people who do not believe there is a God, and their existence is the evidence for it.

I'm interested.

How would "their existence" be some kind of evidence warranting them to conclude, "There is no God"? Or am I misunderstanding your sentence there?

Yes, it looks like you misunderstood. I was making the point that there is irrefutable evidence that atheists do exist, but I don't remember what I was making it in response to.

[Immanuel Can]

What does "disbelieve" mean, in that sentence, is the question.

To become aware of some claim, give it some consideration, and conclude that it lacks enough plausibility to be taken seriously, therefore not including it among proposed accounts of states of affairs one regards as being true, or likely to be true.

Alright. Let's take that definition and work with it.

On what does one base the "conclusion" that it "lacks enough plausibility to be taken seriously," when it comes to the matter of God? That's an obvious question, because according to neutral statistical gathering (the CIA factbook, for example) 92% of the world's population believes it's plausible, and another 4% thinks it might be plausible...leaving only 4% that are convinced it's not. And that's without taking the historical count into tabulation, which would surely be far higher, since for long periods of time there was practically nobody who thought otherwise.

So the numbers of people who think a thing "plausible" doesn't prove anything. But it surely implies that somebody who confidently asserts that it's "not plausible enough" even to "be taken seriously" would need to supply some sort of rationale or proof himself, if he were to expect anyone to take him seriously.

Does "disbelieve" mean, "not have any information to go on, either way"?

All I intend the word "disbelieve" to mean is having an absence of belief that something is the case.

You can, of course. However, I have to point out that, on an applied level, that won't quite work.

It makes to know nothing at all about X, or to have no opinion at all about a matter as being equivalent to "disbelieving." That seems not to do enough.

I certainly don't think that somebody who claims to be an Atheist wants to say, "Y'know, I've never actually thought about God at all," or "I have no opinion." If he's an Atheist, he has both. He's thought about it, and he has an opinion. I think that's fair, don't you?

But is it a rational opinion, or just a wish? That will have to be established on the quality of the evidence he produces.

...any questions you ask me about my non-belief in God, are equally applicable to to your (and my) non-belief in unicorns...

Hardly.

Almost nobody believes in unicorns, though there are some. But the vast majority of human beings have found the existence of some sort of transcendent deity to be totally plausible. At least, there are very few people with such absolute confidence on the matter that they proclaim, "It's not even reasonable to think that."

And if they do, then surely they owe us reasons why they think it's so unreasonable, don't they?

Atheists never want to say. Because either answer is a serious problem for them. (I'm not calling you out on this, please understand; I'm just talking about the logic of what Atheism itself holds.)

I doubt that the average atheist perceives any problems inherent in his atheism,

Well, that's true.

But I also find that the average Atheist is only interested in thinking about the matter long enough to fix on some singular idea that satisfies him personally that he can dismiss the whole matter, and then stops thinking right there. That's why they never want to give evidence, but prefer to complain, "I don't owe any." It's because their disbelief is, even in their own awareness, not well-founded, and they're very keen not to have their reasoning examined, or their basis of disbelief questioned. It won't stand up well.

What you have to realise, IC, is that while the issue of God might be a matter of great importance to a theist, it tends to have very little significance to an atheist.

If find the opposite is manifestly true.

Atheists are quite obsessed with dismissing God. They work very hard at it, because it's actually hard work. So, for example, when Dawkins or Harris writes a book claiming that God is a "delusion" or a "mass psychosis" or whatever, it's not at all because the matter has "very little significance" to them. It's because the one point on which they agree with the Theist is that it is perhaps the most important matter of all.

I imagine that your belief and faith in God are a major part of your identity, but my atheism -my simple none inclusion of religious belief in my worldview- is only a minor part of mine.

That might be. I don't doubt you.

But that's a very different question than whether or not it's a serious matter. Plausibly, it's a matter that has simply escaped your serious interest. That would produce exactly the same result, would it not? And as I say, it seems a great many Atheists are totally convinced it's a matter of primary importance, one way or another.

I feel the possibility to be so unlikely as to not warrant questioning.

"Feel"?

Is your conclusion that there needs to be no careful consideration of the possibility of God that you simply "feel" that? Or have you another, stronger reason for that conclusion?

That might technically make me an agnostic, but certainly not in the same way as someone with a 50/50 perspective.

Well, Dawkins thinks agnosticism is a spectrum...he claims it goes from "strong" to "weak," or from "hard" to "soft." He pegs himself as a "hard agnostic."

Well, okay. I can buy that. But surely even an agnostic must have reasons why he's convinced of the "strong" or "hard" version of doubt, rather than, say, the neutral or "weak" version. And he should, if he's a rational person, be able to explain his choice.

...you are projecting the importance that you attach to the issue of God onto the atheist.

Not at all. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and all their ilk have chosen their own hobbies...I had nothing to do with it.

Yet they all are obsessed with this issue. Either they're a bit lunatic (which I accept as possible), or they have actually realized it has an importance that perhaps some others have failed to grasp. (in which case, perhaps a personal rethinking is in order, no?)

I suppose you can pick your explanation of their behaviour. I don't mind which you take.

I was making the point that there is irrefutable evidence that atheists do exist, but I don't remember what I was making it in response to.

I don't recall having expressed any doubt that Atheists exist. In fact, their existence seems to me to reinforce the plausibility of thinking that the God question is, for many people, quite pressing.

[iambiguous]

Did John Calvin Believe in Free Will?
MATTHEW BARRETT at the TGC website

The Verdict Is In

So did Calvin believe in free will? That all depends on the meaning. If by free will one means that the unbeliever is in no way necessitated by sin, but has it in his power to either do good or evil toward God, then the answer is no. But if one means that the unbeliever is in total bondage to sin, sinning willfully yet under necessity (not coercion), making him utterly dependent upon God’s irresistible grace to liberate him, then Calvin is your man.

Again, reflect on this particular intellectual/spiritual contraption and tell us specifically in terms of your own behaviors why you believe you either do or do not have free will in relationship to sin and to God. How does Original Sin play out in your own interactions with others...interactions in which conflicts arise as a result of differing moral convictions.

And how [given free will] using the tools of philosophy did you yourself arrive at the most logically and epistemologically sound meaning of free will. Again, given this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

All that to say, next time you are eavesdropping on an enticing theological conversation you can add some insight into the mumbo jumbo, and, like a good reformer, take your listeners back to the source himself.

Exactly! Let's scrap the "worlds of words" here and zero in precisely on your own behaviors. Connect the dots between what you think is true here and how that does impact on the behaviors you choose. And how that impacts on the fate of "I" -- yours -- on the other side of the grave.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Note to AJ:

You explain it to him.

Derangement interests me. Both his variety (compounded by alcohol and psychedelic drugs) and your variety.

As much as I’d like to talk about all varieties I find it impossible. You-plural lose all capacity to reason calmly.

So all I can do is to *note* it.

Come on, AJ, this guy actually thinks that I am the racist here! When in fact my own political prejudices take me in exactly the opposite direction.

Iambuguous, esteemed interlocutor: I fully grasped what he thought. I also fully grasp where you are coming from and what you are up to.

You and I cannot forge a conversation because you tend to hysterical reaction — whether you see this or not. You would have to overcome that — then a conversation would become possible.

I only invest in conversation where there’s a clear benefit to my endeavor (communication, exchange). There is none with you. If you want me to politely apologize for not being available — I just did.

[iambiguous]

Derangement interests me. Both his variety (compounded by alcohol and psychedelic drugs) and your variety.

As much as I’d like to talk about all varieties I find it impossible. You-plural lose all capacity to reason calmly.

So all I can do is to *note* it.

Come on, AJ, this guy actually thinks that I am the racist here! When in fact my own political prejudices take me in exactly the opposite direction.

Iambuguous, esteemed interlocutor: I fully grasped what he thought. I also fully grasp where you are coming from and what you are up to.

You and I cannot forge a conversation because you tend to hysterical reaction — whether you see this or not. You would have to overcome that — then a conversation would become possible.

I only invest in conversation where there’s a clear benefit to my endeavor (communication, exchange). There is none with you. If you want me to politely apologize for not being available — I just did.

Complete bullshit.

You know, if it is bullshit.

Anyway, as I noted to phyllo above, I'm sticking with this...

"Now, let's get back to AJ taking his 'theoretical' conclusions about the Northern European stock down out of the clouds and hear him out on what he himself embraces in terms of political policy and legislation regarding the demographic crisis in America."

You really need to ask yourself why you won't go there.

[phyllo]

You really need to ask yourself why you won't go there.

Cause you're going to do one of your polemic rants and there won't be a discussion of any merit.

[iambiguous]

You really need to ask yourself why you won't go there.

Cause you're going to do one of your polemic rants and there won't be a discussion of any merit.

Ah, back to Stooge mode again.

Now, why don't you actually respond to the points I raised above regarding the other accusation you leveled at me.


Note to others:

Larry and I go way back. He just doesn't like me. Why? Because I suspect that, chip by chip, I am chiseling away at his own murky "rooted existentially in God" moral objectivism. The Christian God I suspect.

Just don't ask him to being his own God or his own moral philosophy down to Earth.

Or, sure, maybe he will do that for you.