Searching for GOD...

[Shaker]

I am quite certain that my gift of awareness could not be generated by the physical process of evolution driven by natural selection.  So I conclude that my awareness, together with my conscious free will, are gifts from our Creator.

You have precisely zero basis for your 'certainty.'

[BeRational]

I am quite certain that my gift of awareness could not be generated by the physical process of evolution driven by natural selection.  So I conclude that my awareness, together with my conscious free will, are gifts from our Creator.

You canon t be certain as there are no facts to base it on.

You just assert it because you really really think it is true.

[Alan Burns]

Quote from: Alan Burns on Today at 04:30:44 PM

    But without the gifts of self awareness and free will the concepts of love and compassion would not exist - we would just be biological robots reacting to events according to the deterministic laws of science with no real freedom of thought or action.

That's just delusional assertion.

Based on nothing so it can be ignored.

My logic is based on the deterministic laws of science.  Love and compassion can't be defined without some form of free thought and free will to turn it into action.  Love not freely given is no love at all, merely reaction.

[BeRational]

That's just delusional assertion.

Based on nothing so it can be ignored.

My logic is based on the deterministic laws of science.  Love and compassion can't be defined without some form of free thought and free will to turn it into action.  Love not freely given is no love at all, merely reaction.

Word salad with no logic

[Shaker]

Love and compassion can't be defined without some form of free thought and free will to turn it into action.  Love not freely given is no love at all, merely reaction.

This constant stream of assertion and pretension to knowledge is really starting to piss me right the fuck off.

Which is what BR just said except with less finesse.

[Alan Burns]

You have precisely zero basis for your 'certainty.'

Until you can define how awareness can exist in purely material terms I have a substantial basis for my conclusions.

[Shaker]

Until you can define how awareness can exist in purely material terms I have a substantial basis for my conclusions.

No, you do not. All you have is (a) what you would like to be true based on (b) dislike of the consequences and ramifications of it not being so.

[BeRational]

Until you can define how awareness can exist in purely material terms I have a substantial basis for my conclusions.

No, this is faulty thinking.
We just do not know.

Not knowing one thing DOES NOT make something else the likely answer.

[Gordon]

That's just delusional assertion.

Based on nothing so it can be ignored.

My logic is based on the deterministic laws of science.  Love and compassion can't be defined without some form of free thought and free will to turn it into action.  Love not freely given is no love at all, merely reaction.

There are a fair old fankle of fallacies in that lot, Alan.

[torridon]

Until you can define how awareness can exist in purely material terms I have a substantial basis for my conclusions.

Can you define how fear can exist in purely material terms ?   If you say boo to a goose it will feel fear and yet you insist that geese don't have souls with which to feel things.

[torridon]

I must contradict Shaker's analogy of me shoe-horning my belief system into small gaps of scientific knowledge.  To me it sits comfortably alongside current scientific theory with no conflicts.

I guess in part that is because your claims lack substance and detail. You never tell us what a soul is made of, or how it attaches to a body or by what mechanism it interacts with a brain, despite not being there at all as far as science is concerned.  At what point in human evolution did souls start appearing, at what point during foetal development does an individual human get its soul; would a half human/half neanderthal hybrid have had half a soul ? You never tell us any measurable detail, it is all just sufficiently vague to avoid any conflict with any investigation we could do to test it out. Would you believe my claim that I keep an invisible magic dragon in my garden shed if I refuse to provide any means to substantiate it ?

[Shaker]

There are a fair old fankle of fallacies in that lot, Alan.

You know what, until just now I'd never even heard of the word fankle and yet thanks to Gord of the Board I still know what it means

[ippy]

But I would not be able to believe in anything without the awareness and free will of my soul.

Again a soul, you only BELIEVE you have a soul, you don't know you have a soul, no matter how loud you might chose to shout it; untill you can prove otherwise it can only be a BELIEF and the likelyhood of you being able to substantiate this BELIEF of yours, well, it's not going to happen, no matter how much I'm sure you would like to find something to lift it out of the ficton department.

ippy

[Rhiannon]

I believe in love and compassion, which stems directly from my Christian faith.

Ok, so I'll give up asking for an answer to my original question...

Does love and compassion exist without your Christian faith?

[Shaker]

Ok, so I'll give up asking for an answer to my original question...

Does love and compassion exist without your Christian faith?

At least three people (me, ippy and BeRational) have said exactly this, except that I fully expect Alan to come up with some feeble, enervated, bloodless would-be rationalisation as to why those who say so are actually doing Jesus's work after all, they're just shrouded in a dark veil of ignorance and blindness about it.

[Alan Burns]

Ok, so I'll give up asking for an answer to my original question...

Does love and compassion exist without your Christian faith?

As I said on a previous post, I can see no way that love and compassion can exist without our God given human soul through which we have the gifts of awareness, free thought and free will.  Without the soul we become a deterministic biological robot which just reacts to events in a way entirely defined by the laws of science.  And I see no room for love and compassion to exist in this latter scenario.

[Alan Burns]

Can you define how fear can exist in purely material terms ?   If you say boo to a goose it will feel fear and yet you insist that geese don't have souls with which to feel things.

I can certainly see that a Goose will react in a predictable way when someone says "BOO".  But there is no way that you can know what is going on inside the mind of the goose.  But even saying this, I would not class fear in the same category as love and compassion.  Fear is more of a natural reaction than a true feeling.

[Gordon]

Fear is more of a natural reaction than a true feeling.

I'd imagine those who are fearful will truly feel it, and probably quite intensely too.

I reckon you are making this up as you go along, Alan - with a little twist here and a little twist there!

[Alan Burns]

I'd imagine those who are fearful will truly feel it, and probably quite intensely too.

I am afraid of heights.  I recognise it as a natural reaction over which I have no real control and I admit that I am intensely aware of it.

Love and compassion are feelings too, but I have full control over these.  This is the difference I was pointing out to Torridon.

[Sassy]

Ok, so I'll give up asking for an answer to my original question...

Does love and compassion exist without your Christian faith?

Is it anything but for selfish reasons without the Christian faith?

You see Christians...(which you would know had you known God personally) have a spirit of love and care placed upon their heart. It is a care that comes from selflessness. Not about feeling right for themselves but doing it for a sincere care of another.


So whilst believer and non believer can feel love and compassion their actions and motives are quite different.
Non believers do it to make themselves feel better. Whilst believers do it solely to make the other person feel better.

So different reasons for feeling compassion and love.

[BeRational]

Is it anything but for selfish reasons without the Christian faith?

You see Christians...(which you would know had you known God personally) have a spirit of love and care placed upon their heart. It is a care that comes from selflessness. Not about feeling right for themselves but doing it for a sincere care of another.


So whilst believer and non believer can feel love and compassion their actions and motives are quite different.
Non believers do it to make themselves feel better. Whilst believers do it solely to make the other person feel better.

So different reasons for feeling compassion and love.

I think you are speaking about yourself there.

I do feel better most of the time, but that is not the driver.

I do it to make the other person feel better. I put myself in their place, and think what I would want.

Feeling compassion and love is instinctive in humans and is due to our tribal nature, and nothing to do with religion.

[Maeght]

Is it anything but for selfish reasons without the Christian faith?

You see Christians...(which you would know had you known God personally) have a spirit of love and care placed upon their heart. It is a care that comes from selflessness. Not about feeling right for themselves but doing it for a sincere care of another.


So whilst believer and non believer can feel love and compassion their actions and motives are quite different.
Non believers do it to make themselves feel better. Whilst believers do it solely to make the other person feel better.

So different reasons for feeling compassion and love.

You cannot say what the motivations of a non Christians are Sassy since you aren't one and you cannot generalise like that.

[Bubbles]

Is it anything but for selfish reasons without the Christian faith?

You see Christians...(which you would know had you known God personally) have a spirit of love and care placed upon their heart. It is a care that comes from selflessness. Not about feeling right for themselves but doing it for a sincere care of another.


So whilst believer and non believer can feel love and compassion their actions and motives are quite different.
Non believers do it to make themselves feel better. Whilst believers do it solely to make the other person feel better.

So different reasons for feeling compassion and love.

One could also argue that when a Christian gives, it's out of self interest as they expect to be rewarded in heaven.

A non believer doesn't necessarily.

Often non believers don't help others to make themselves feel better, they do it to make other people feel better.

Some Christians it could be argued do so because they want to be seen by their peers to be a good Christian.

Christians won't be truly selfless until they drop the heaven/ hell  ( reward / punishment ) scenario.


If you expect to get rewarded in some way, then it isn't truly selfless IMO.

[torridon]

Love and compassion are feelings too, but I have full control over these.  This is the difference I was pointing out to Torridon.

Not sure that is right.  Does anybody choose who to fall in love with ? I don't think so; just try falling in love with someone you really don't like. We don't choose which feelings to have, rather they arise within us and they guide our choices.

[torridon]

I can certainly see that a Goose will react in a predictable way when someone says "BOO".  But there is no way that you can know what is going on inside the mind of the goose.  But even saying this, I would not class fear in the same category as love and compassion.  Fear is more of a natural reaction than a true feeling.

That's as maybe, but your subtle evasion is noted. Fear is one of the primary emotions that all animals have; if you say 'boo' to a goose and then you say 'boo', to a lawyer you will induce a feeling of fear in both your victims, and there is no particuar reason to think that the feeling of fear is qualitatively or fundamentally different. Lawyers and geese share a common ancestry which is why we share the six or seven primary emotions with all other vertebrates. It is not coincidence. I agree the goose's reaction may be predictable, I agree the goose does not have free agency; but on your part, you ought to understand that the goose does have internal mental states; it has feelings, inner experience, emotions, just like us, and if you can see that then you are half way there to seeing that the hard problem of consciousness is not some iniexplicable magic unique to humans, but rathers conscious experience is pretty ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom. The testimony of every bat, every lobster, every haddock, every goose and even every lawyer (yes even lawyers), is that inner mental states are the same thing as neural activity, just understood and experienced from a different perspective. Mental states are what neural activity feels like.