Author Topic: Searching for GOD...  (Read 3899132 times)

Shaker

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7050 on: January 02, 2016, 12:43:36 PM »
Non material things cannot be measured.
Actually they can, but only in quite vague and wholly subjective terms. Justice is a non-material concept - you can't put justice inside a room as you can a wardrobe, for example - but people make judgements about situation A being more just (or unjust) than situation B.

Beauty is another example of a non-material concept about which people make subjective measurements - classical music buffs deciding that the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante is more beautiful than Too Drunk to Fuck by The Dead Kennedys, let's say.

Still concepts entirely dependent on material brains, you'll notice, as I've been saying.
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

SusanDoris

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7051 on: January 02, 2016, 12:47:34 PM »
Alan Burns


Do you feel a sense of pride in the way you constantly assert things which totally lack any objective, scientific evidence? It certainly seems to me that way. |If so, how do you justify this to yourself?
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Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7052 on: January 02, 2016, 01:13:50 PM »
Actually they can, but only in quite vague and wholly subjective terms. Justice is a non-material concept - you can't put justice inside a room as you can a wardrobe, for example - but people make judgements about situation A being more just (or unjust) than situation B.

Beauty is another example of a non-material concept about which people make subjective measurements - classical music buffs deciding that the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante is more beautiful than Too Drunk to Fuck by The Dead Kennedys, let's say.

Still concepts entirely dependent on material brains, you'll notice, as I've been saying.
If you say measurement of the non material takes place you are. Affording existence to them.

Are these things generated materially or discovered?

If there were no brains would mathematics till govern the physical universe.

Would some future intelligence be aware of any kind of imperative to be moral?

Does awareness emerge out of or into these non measurables.

No matter what, the materialists argument is still circular.
Indeed it begs both a non natural providence and a leap of faith.

Shaker

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7053 on: January 02, 2016, 01:22:59 PM »
If you say measurement of the non material takes place you are. Affording existence to them.
Yes - an existence dependent on material brains. Again.

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Are these things generated materially or discovered?
The former, in my view.

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If there were no brains would mathematics till govern the physical universe.
If there were no brains, who would know?

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Would some future intelligence be aware of any kind of imperative to be moral?
Why wouldn't they?

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Does awareness emerge out of or into these non measurables.
Out of. What does "into" even mean?
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

jeremyp

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7054 on: January 02, 2016, 01:49:15 PM »
What do you mean by personal incredulity? God of the Gaps?
We have been talking about these concepts since the old BBC days and it's only now that you have decided to admit that you don't know what they mean.
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Sassy

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7055 on: January 02, 2016, 01:58:10 PM »
Well, your posts are full of dishonesty and abuse of other people.   I'm baffled as to how you might claim that this is a Christian attitude.   But then the most abusive people here are Christians - again, that is puzzling, but fortunately, there are some Christians who are not like that.

In truth Wiggy,

He speaks out when people are doing wrong and answers back when they attack him.
Human characteristic's but nonetheless if there was no attacks against man and God because of faith. Then this would not be happening...

The truth is believers are often attacked because they just speak the truth.  It is a fact sometimes human nature gets the better but we learn and move on forgiven and renewed.
We know we have to work together to abolish war and terrorism to create a compassionate  world in which Justice and peace prevail. Love ;D   Einstein
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Shaker

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7056 on: January 02, 2016, 02:07:45 PM »
In truth Wiggy,

He speaks out when people are doing wrong and answers back when they attack him.
It's been said before, looks like it has to be said again. Pointing out fallacies and when people are deploying bad arguments (or no argument at all) isn't attacking anybody, no matter how much it suits the martyr complex of some to think so. Only the free ride that religion has had for so long allows this sort of thing to happen - you don't get it in politics.
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

Sassy

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7057 on: January 02, 2016, 02:16:38 PM »
It's been said before, looks like it has to be said again. Pointing out fallacies and when people are deploying bad arguments (or no argument at all) isn't attacking anybody, no matter how much it suits the martyr complex of some to think so. Only the free ride that religion has had for so long allows this sort of thing to happen - you don't get it in politics.

BAD MANNERS... make it insulting... Because you don't know and cannot prove what the other person says as being wrong.
Good grace would allow for benefit of the doubt. There are no bad arguments or good arguments when it comes to different opinion. The fact is YOU cannot disprove or prove God to anyone. Just as the believer cannot do themselves to YOU.
But there is no way you can disprove the believers knows and experiences something you do not.

However, the bible tells you how to find God, if you really seek him truthfully and sincerely.
It is fair to say you don't seek him and don't want to know if he is really there.
The buck stops with you. Because you are the only person keeping yourself from knowing God, both you and all the others...
We know we have to work together to abolish war and terrorism to create a compassionate  world in which Justice and peace prevail. Love ;D   Einstein
 "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

Shaker

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7058 on: January 02, 2016, 02:23:30 PM »
BAD MANNERS... make it insulting... Because you don't know and cannot prove what the other person says as being wrong.
Frequently you can, actually.
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There are no bad arguments or good arguments when it comes to different opinion.

Yes there are - lots of them.

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However, the bible tells you how to find God, if you really seek him truthfully and sincerely.
Seems to be a rather hit and miss affair given the number of people who do seek God with passionate sincerity and find zilch.

You are, of course, teetering on the edge of the No True Scotsman fallacy here, as expected.

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It is fair to say you don't seek him and don't want to know if he is really there.
How would you know what's fair to say about me? That's right, you don't.
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The buck stops with you. Because you are the only person keeping yourself from knowing God, both you and all the others...
I would have to be furnished with some convincing reason that there's anything to know in the first instance. I'm still waiting.
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

Leonard James

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7059 on: January 02, 2016, 02:26:33 PM »
Len, just to remind you of my thinking on this:
The natural explanations you have offered involve literally billions of apparently random beneficial mutations in DNA to produce the vast complexity of life.   No one can come up with a realistic probability of these beneficial mutations occuring by chance.

Sadly, Alan, you don't understand how evolution works. Shaker has pointed out your error already, so I won't repeat it.

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But my alternative explanation of God using His power of free will to induce these events has some credibility when you realise that human free will can show that this universe is not determinate, and that intelligent design can and does occur.

Your "explanation" is built on a "God" for which there is no scientific evidence, so it is a non-explanation.

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Your explanation is an alternative, but it does not rule out the possibility (or probability) of mine being true.

My explanation is built on scientific evidence, Alan, yours is built on none.

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7060 on: January 02, 2016, 02:43:50 PM »
Yes - an existence dependent on material brains. Again.

Alas the universe could continue mathematically without Brains........Unless of course some ultra brain which we cannot materially detect is generating it.

It matters not ......that evidence is material is a circular argument and you have moved to a non materialist position by acknowledging the non material.

Enki

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7061 on: January 02, 2016, 02:45:05 PM »
I have read nothing in the replies to my posts which contradict what I have stated.  There have been some alternative explanations, and many labels such as "God of Gaps", "assertion", "non sequitur", "personal inredulity" etc.  But nothing which directly shows I am wrong in what I say.  So there is still no credible alternative for me.  As the Psalmist so aptly put it:  In God alone is my soul at rest.

I, as do others, contradict your views at times, Alan(e.g. souls/animals, evolution) but I suggest that generally your views are so amorphous as not to be able to be contradicted. This of course does not make your views impossible, but simply to give God as an explanation for any supernatural element(x) is to give no explanation at all. Unless you can produce evidence that x exists, where it is located, by what means it interacts with the material universe, and, most importantly, exactly how God is needed for x to function, then you constantly lay yourself open  to the cry of 'assertion'.

If, for instance, we take the hard problem of consciousness, which science has no answer to at the present moment, to say it comes from God does not explain anything unless you can provide its location, produce the mechanisms by which He makes it work(in detail) and for which He could only be responsible. Now science at least tries to answer these questions with, for instance, a range of hypotheses from the growing field of quantum biology, which can be argued about, tested, challenged, modified, rejected etc. If, on the other hand, I simply say that consciousness comes from God, and we don't need to examine it(notice I said WE not I) but accept it as a matter of personal faith, then all that can possibly mean is that I accept it without explanation. This then becomes the world of assertion.

Several times you have suggested that all you want to do is convince others on this forum of the possibility that your God exists. I think that it is a little naive on your part to think that others have not considered this themselves and come to their particular conclusions. For me, I have no problem in fully accepting the possibility that your God exists, so you are preaching in my case to the converted. I would, of course, have to say, in the interests of rational thinking, that there is always the possibility that any god exists. However, in my case and for many reasons, possibility does not lead to belief at all.
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Alan Burns

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7062 on: January 02, 2016, 03:09:04 PM »
Alan Burns


Do you feel a sense of pride in the way you constantly assert things which totally lack any objective, scientific evidence? It certainly seems to me that way. |If so, how do you justify this to yourself?
I am simply doing what I feel called to do - to share my view of how God fits in to the reality of our existence.  I feel no personal pride in doing this.  And I admit that I do not enjoy reading the negative feedback I get from my posts.  However I have had several positive personal messages from members of this forum encouraging me to continue.  And I have had encouragement and inspiration from my prayer life.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
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Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7063 on: January 02, 2016, 03:14:15 PM »
We have been talking about these concepts since the old BBC days and it's only now that you have decided to admit that you don't know what they mean.
Guilty of neither I'm afraid.
What you call personal incredulity is really you moaning at people who aren't like you heavily into some promissory scientism. We aren't waiting for a material answer....we have already experienced God............but as I said to Shaker if a material answer which goes beyond any doubt or debate which eliminates God.........let us know.

Yours not holding his breath
Vlad

jeremyp

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7064 on: January 02, 2016, 03:16:57 PM »
BAD MANNERS... make it insulting... Because you don't know and cannot prove what the other person says as being wrong.

That explains Bashful Anthony, TW, Johnny Chip-on-his-Shoulder and your posts then.

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Good grace would allow for benefit of the doubt. There are no bad arguments or good arguments when it comes to different opinion. The fact is YOU cannot disprove or prove God to anyone. Just as the believer cannot do themselves to YOU.
That would all be very fine if the people who had the opinion that there is a god would recognise it as such and therefore not try to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.

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However, the bible tells you how to find God, if you really seek him truthfully and sincerely.
Please can you tell us how to do this in your own words.
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jeremyp

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7065 on: January 02, 2016, 03:24:28 PM »
Guilty of neither I'm afraid.
Why did you ask Shaker for a definition then? Are you admitting to evasion by definition?

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What you call personal incredulity is really you moaning at people who aren't like you heavily into some promissory scientism.
You try to dress up a simple concept in big words to camouflage the fact that you do not have the intellectual equipment to make a sensible argument. The above quote from you is just pompous word salad.

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we have already experienced God

Nobody doubts your experience. The argument is whether it was caused by a real being or your own subconscious. Given that there are thousands of different versions of the being you all experience, the odds are that you all imagined him/her.
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Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7066 on: January 02, 2016, 03:28:36 PM »
Why did you ask Shaker for a definition then? Are you admitting to evasion by definition?
You try to dress up a simple concept in big words to camouflage the fact that you do not have the intellectual equipment to make a sensible argument. The above quote from you is just pompous word salad.

Nobody doubts your experience. The argument is whether it was caused by a real being or your own subconscious. Given that there are thousands of different versions of the being you all experience, the odds are that you all imagined him/her.
Total bollocks as expected.

bluehillside Retd.

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7067 on: January 02, 2016, 03:29:50 PM »
Hi again Gonners,

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Before I ask and this is my last post of 2015 I would like to say to you old son, all the best for 2016, may you and yours have a very happy, fruitful and healthy new year, lang may yer lum reek, and the same to every poster on this forum.

The same to you my friend, and my apologies for the tardy reply.

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Now Blue old son :P :P just what are you asking here,

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Quite. I'd be genuinely interested to hear an argument for an objective, "true for you too" god worthy of debate. We've seen the same broken ones countless times, but there are plenty of intelligent and nuanced theists about so some of them presumably must have something in the locker.

Are you asking for a God that you and me can believe in??

No, all I'm asking for is an argument for "god" that isn't hopeless. If one such could ever be brought to the table I'd have no choice but to reconsider. As it stands though, the endless litany of empty assertion, logical fallacy and poor reasoning we see here serve only to reinforce the atheism I started with.

Seems to me that there must be intelligent believers in an objectively true god who have asked themselves this question and come up with a persuasive answer, so I'm interested to hear what that answer might be.
"Don't make me come down there."

God

bluehillside Retd.

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7068 on: January 02, 2016, 03:42:01 PM »
Vlunderer,

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No arguments have yet destroyed my position.

You aren't the first to suggest they have though but as always when challenged they can't seem to produce the goods.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha - oh stop it now - tee hee hee hee hee - oh my sides - really, please, I can't breathe - mwah-ha ha ha...

...priceless, just priceless.

Just to remind you, your "position" consists of a god you can't define that you think to exist because of an attribution you've given to something you think you've "experienced" and an claim of objective truth for the rest of us entirely based your personal "intuition", the whole tottering edifice supported only by an utterly ass-backwards reliance on your misunderstanding of the term "materialism".

And when this position is consistently "destroyed" by those capable of rational thought you respond only with contempt, insult, dishonesty, irrelevant diversionary tactics or, in the last resort, with silence only to return a bit later to repeat your previous mistakes.

And now you have the unadulterated front to claim that "no arguments have yet destroyed my position"???!!!?!?!?!?!?!

Un-be-freakin'-lievable!     
« Last Edit: January 02, 2016, 03:43:37 PM by bluehillside »
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God

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7069 on: January 02, 2016, 03:44:26 PM »
Hi again Gonners,

The same to you my friend, and my apologies for the tardy reply.

No, all I'm asking for is an argument for "god" that isn't hopeless. If one such could ever be brought to the table I'd have no choice but to reconsider. As it stands though, the endless litany of empty assertion, logical fallacy and poor reasoning we see here serve only to reinforce the atheism I started with.

Seems to me that there must be intelligent believers in an objectively true god who have asked themselves this question and come up with a persuasive answer, so I'm interested to hear what that answer might be.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz repetition of almost everything.......or should that be attempted hypnosis.
If what you were saying were true we would know about it.

Walt Zingmatilder

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7070 on: January 02, 2016, 03:45:25 PM »
Vlunderer,

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha - oh stop it now - tee hee hee hee hee - oh my sides - really, please, I can't breathe - mwah-ha ha ha...

...priceless, just priceless.

Just to remind you, your "position" consists of a god you can't define that you think to exist because of an attribution you've given to something you think you've "experienced" and an claim of objective truth for the rest of us entirely based your personal "intuition", the whole tottering edifice supported only by an utterly ass-backwards reliance on your misunderstanding of the term "materialism".

And when this position is consistently "destroyed" by those capable of rational thought you respond only with contempt, insult, dishonesty, irrelevant diversionary tactics or, in the last resort, with silence only to return a bit later to repeat your previous mistakes.

And now you have the unadulterated front to claim that "no arguments have yet destroyed my position"???!!!?!?!?!?!?!

Un-be-freakin'-lievable!   
Hand waving.

bluehillside Retd.

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7071 on: January 02, 2016, 03:48:31 PM »
Vlunderer,

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Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz repetition of almost everything.......or should that be attempted hypnosis.
If what you were saying were true we would know about it.

That there are credible arguments for "god"? Perhaps you're right, so the fact that we've heard none rules that god out then.

It tool you a long time, but thanks for conceding the point.
"Don't make me come down there."

God

Shaker

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7072 on: January 02, 2016, 03:50:07 PM »
Post #7366 is the point where Vlad gives up even pretending to try to answer posts from others.
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

bluehillside Retd.

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7073 on: January 02, 2016, 03:51:31 PM »
Vlunderer,

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Hand waving.

Translation: "I Vlad cannot begin to offer a counter-argument, so I'll just throw insults like "bollocks" or "hand waving" at it in the hope that no-one will notice".

OK, so you've finally thrown in the towel then.

Fair enough - even for you your relentless trolling was getting unsustainable I guess.
"Don't make me come down there."

God

bluehillside Retd.

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Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #7074 on: January 02, 2016, 03:55:04 PM »
Shakes,

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Post #7366 is the point where Vlad gives up even pretending to try to answer posts from others.

To be fair, I'm not sure he ever even started doing that did he? From memory, I don't think he's ever answered a question of any kind. Standard Vlad operating procedure is to respond to a question with a different question so as to distract from his inability to muster an answer. And when he tires of that, insult will do.
"Don't make me come down there."

God