Searching for GOD...

[Sebastian Toe]

Anybody else thinking of the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail at this stage?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
 

[Alan Burns]

Only through assertion and irrational logic.

I claim victory over the marmite monster for the same reasons.

You cannot be taken seriously, until you understand that your arguments are not sound.

And what is the alternative logic?
To convince myself that free will does not exist - it is an illusion.
To assume that I am just an emergent property of brain material.
That all life came into existence by accident in this hostile universe.

[Outrider]

And what is the alternative logic?]/quote]

No, not an alternative logic, that would suggest that you had 'a' logic on your side, which you don't. Logic is an alternative, but there are any number of unsubstantiated belief systems you could alternatively adopt.

To convince myself that free will does not exist - it is an illusion.

It's possible to accept the idea of free will yet not accept the claims of deities - cognitive dissonance in action. It's possible to believe in God but not believe in free will - Calvinism?

To assume that I am just an emergent property of brain material.

Why 'just'? Why is the magical explanation somehow better or more impressive?

That all life came into existence by accident in this hostile universe.

Unless you can support another explanation with a methodology... yes.

O.

[BeRational]

And what is the alternative logic?
To convince myself that free will does not exist - it is an illusion.
To assume that I am just an emergent property of brain material.
That all life came into existence by accident in this hostile universe.

You NEVER use logic, just assertion and logical fallacies.

You lose I'm afraid, you have nothing but the argument from personal incredulity.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

And what is the alternative logic?

Just “logic”, not “alternative logic”. It’s your abandonment of logic that’s your undoing here.

To convince myself that free will does not exist - it is an illusion.

As that’s what the evidence tells us, then yes.

To assume that I am just an emergent property of brain material.

Not, not to “assume” it but to accept the evidence for it.
 

That all life came into existence by accident in this hostile universe.

Depends what you mean by “accident”, but essentially yes – there’s no reason to think that an overarching, purposive designer was involved.

Oh, and to sum up yet again you’re attempting a basic logical fallacy here – the argumentum ad consequentiam. That you happen not to like the answers says nothing whatever to the accuracy or otherwise of those answers.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

[Gordon]

And what is the alternative logic?
To convince myself that free will does not exist - it is an illusion.

The 'free will' = God claim is yours, Alan, and other theists believe in God (wrongly in my view) but without getting tangled up in 'free will'

To assume that I am just an emergent property of brain material.

Nothing wrong with that assumption.

That all life came into existence by accident in this hostile universe.

As things stnd it certainly seems that way.

[Dicky Underpants]

I feel that many people on this forum are not so much searching for God, but actively hiding from Him.

Two names immediately come to mind which have probably influenced your thinking on this - St Augustine and Francis Thompson. Their separate psychologies are interesting, and I wonder whether the 'restlessness'* of both is not in part explained by their gnawing guilt feelings. St Augustine was a notorious libertine, and Thompson was a failed priest who later developed a massive opium habit. Guilt can be crippling, and though the idea that "Jesus accepts us" may have beneficial effects, it is no guarantee that this reflects any timeless reality.

*“You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.”  Augustine

[Enki]

Far from accepting defeat, I claim victory over sin and death in the name of Jesus.

And if it makes you feel better, Alan, then go for it. I would only add, like others, that if you wish to convince people here who are not as like minded as you, then you need to present sound arguments and evidence which you have so far singularly failed to do.

[Shaker]

That all life came into existence by accident in this hostile universe.

The most obvious rejoinder to this one is that the only life we know about for certain exists in only one spot - this planet. It exists within a narrow range of parameters and in specific environmental niches, which is explained by evoutionary theory.

The brain-sodomising size even of the observable universe - that's just the bit we can see, not the whole thing - is such that I'm firmly of the party who would bet a very large sum of hard cash on there being other life elsewhere, but we know nothing of that as yet. For now Earth is the only place we can study life, and all the indications are that it came about randomly. Once established a part-random-part-deterministic process such as natural selection takes care of the rest.

[Alan Burns]

......  You don't place any premium at all on logic and rationality, Alan, preferring to hold it to be true that your ardent beliefs are a synonym for demonstrable fact, but many of us do.

But the big mystery to me is how you could possibly come up with such detailed arguments against the points I make without the free thought processes and awareness that can only come from the human soul.

Without the spiritual source of your soul, you would just be a deterministic robot reacting without any control or manipulation.  You would merely comprise of a series of cause and effect chain reactions which were pre determined since the begining of time.  But I know you comprise of much more than this. 

[BeRational]

But the big mystery to me is how you could possibly come up with such detailed arguments against the points I make without the free thought processes and awareness that can only come from the human soul.

Without the spiritual source of your soul, you would just be a deterministic robot reacting without any control or manipulation.  You would merely comprise of a series of cause and effect chain reactions which were pre determined since the begining of time.  But I know you comprise of much more than this. 

One issue is that you do not make points just unevidenced assertions.

They do not need arguing against, as you did not use a logical argument to derive them

[Shaker]

But the big mystery to me is how you could possibly come up with such detailed arguments against the points I make without the free thought processes and awareness that can only come from the human soul.

Without the spiritual source of your soul, you would just be a deterministic robot reacting without any control or manipulation.  You would merely comprise of a series of cause and effect chain reactions which were pre determined since the begining of time.  But I know you comprise of much more than this. 

Even if it were the case that the sort of libertarian free will that you bang on about so endlessly actually exists, about which I have strong doubts to say the very least, its mere existence does not in any way, shape or form whatsoever indicate the existence of the sort of God you purport to believe in or the existence of the "souls" you go on about at equally wearisome length. You can't get to the latter from the former.

[Alan Burns]

.... Unless you can support another explanation with a methodology... yes.

Why does God's interaction with this world need to be supported by the human idea of a methodology?

Is human creativity not sufficient to show that creative interaction with this universe is possible by acts of will?

[Shaker]

Why does God's interaction with this world need to be supported by the human idea of a methodology?

To find out if the idea has any traction. Short version: to see if it's true.

Is human creativity not sufficient to show that creative interaction with this universe is possible by acts of will?

By humans, yes. Not by gods.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But the big mystery to me is how you could possibly come up with such detailed arguments against the points I make…

No detailed arguments are necessary. The “points you make” are demonstrably wrong, so all that’s necessary is to explain why they are wrong. That you just ignore those explanations is a different matter.

…without the free thought processes and awareness that can only come from the human soul.

Yet again, flat wrong. First, you still fail to grasp that the “free” of “free will” as you misunderstand it is unnecessary. All that is necessary is the appearance of “free” will, albeit that in reality it’s actually the outputs of unfathomably long chains of cause and effect.

Second, if you want to introduce the notion of a “soul” nonetheless, then still you have your work ahead of you to tell us what you mean by it, and then to demonstrate its existence at all.   

Without the spiritual source of your soul, you would just be a deterministic robot reacting without any control or manipulation.  You would merely comprise of a series of cause and effect chain reactions which were pre determined since the begining of time.  But I know you comprise of much more than this.

You know no such thing, and again you’re just relying here on an argumentum ad consequentiam.

Given that you now know what that means and that you now know it’s very bad reasoning, why do you repeat it nonetheless?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Why does God's interaction with this world need to be supported by the human idea of a methodology?

Is human creativity not sufficient to show that creative interaction with this universe is possible by acts of will?

Given that this god you claim is supernatural then how it would "interact" presumably wouldn't need to be evidenced by anything.

Your problem though is in providing a method of any kind to show that this god is there at all in the first place, and that you're not barking up entirely the wrong tree about that. Only once you manage that do you need to consider how this god would interact with anything.

[wigginhall]

Two names immediately come to mind which have probably influenced your thinking on this - St Augustine and Francis Thompson. Their separate psychologies are interesting, and I wonder whether the 'restlessness'* of both is not in part explained by their gnawing guilt feelings. St Augustine was a notorious libertine, and Thompson was a failed priest who later developed a massive opium habit. Guilt can be crippling, and though the idea that "Jesus accepts us" may have beneficial effects, it is no guarantee that this reflects any timeless reality.

*“You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.”  Augustine

Very interesting point, Dicky.  There have been a number of attempts to correlate our guilt and fear and sense of helplessness with religion, in the sense that a heavenly figure makes everything OK.  I suppose Freud's is the most famous attempt, and he pointed out that religion is often hostile to outsiders, '"A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it."   Presumably, this pleases our sense of ingroups and outgroups, as long as I am in the ingroup!

Even more amazing in Christianity is that the Reformation seemed to make the guilt and fear more ferocious, so that you end up apparently unable to be good, unable to do anything really.    Or if you like, in the jargon, the sinner cannot keep the law, and the law must be satisfied.  Gulp.   But then Paul had said that nothing good dwells in me.  Gulp. 

[Shaker]

Very interesting point, Dicky.  There have been a number of attempts to correlate our guilt and fear and sense of helplessness with religion, in the sense that a heavenly figure makes everything OK.  I suppose Freud's is the most famous attempt, and he pointed out that religion is often hostile to outsiders, '"A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it."   Presumably, this pleases our sense of ingroups and outgroups, as long as I am in the ingroup!

Contradicted by Buddhism, paganism, etc., I'd have thought ... ?

[Alan Burns]

Two names immediately come to mind which have probably influenced your thinking on this - St Augustine and Francis Thompson. Their separate psychologies are interesting, and I wonder whether the 'restlessness'* of both is not in part explained by their gnawing guilt feelings. St Augustine was a notorious libertine, and Thompson was a failed priest who later developed a massive opium habit. Guilt can be crippling, and though the idea that "Jesus accepts us" may have beneficial effects, it is no guarantee that this reflects any timeless reality.

*“You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.”  Augustine

I can say that my major influences are:
John's Gospel
The writings of St Paul
Brother Roger of Taize
CS Lewis
Julian of Norwich

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I can say that my major influences are:
John's Gospel
The writings of St Paul
Brother Roger of Taize
CS Lewis
Julian of Norwich

Nothing on logic then?

[Leonard James]

I can say that my major influences are:
John's Gospel
The writings of St Paul
Brother Roger of Taize
CS Lewis
Julian of Norwich

You were born for romance, Alan! 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

AB,

Nothing on logic then?

One of my influences is the Agnostic Carl Sagan.

If any of your influences were supposedly big on logic i'd ask for my money back if I were you.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Nothing on logic then?

I won first prize in a Mensa IQ competition organised by our local evening paper 

[Gonnagle]

Dear Leonard,

You were born for romance, Alan

Your wee short sentence sent me on a journey to find romantic atheists, poetic atheists and boy!! did I find them

http://thehumanist.com/arts_entertainment/books/5-famous-atheists-in-literature

Which led me onto.

http://www.publicliterature.org/books/necessity_of_atheism/1

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The chunterings of the atheist back in the 1800's are not much different to the chunterings of the 21st century.

The snake in the garden of Eden is actually a phallic symbol, well according to 18th century scholars, never heard that one before, a talking penis

Gonnagle.

[Outrider]

Why does God's interaction with this world need to be supported by the human idea of a methodology?

Because otherwise there's no reason for humans to accept it any more than any other unsubstantiated claim like Zeus, Thor, alien abductions or a hollow Earth full of Tibetan monks.

Is human creativity not sufficient to show that creative interaction with this universe is possible by acts of will?

Only via physical, measurable, demonstrable interaction. We can be creative, but until that creativity is put into a material manifestation it can't be shared with anyone, no-one else has any reason to think that it exists.

O.