Searching for GOD...

[Shaker]

Our knowledge of God is restricted by what our physical senses can perceive, which is why God made Himself known to us by becoming one of us.

The assertion juggernaut keeps a-rollin' ...

I must have something in common with Jane Goodall ...

You do - an inordinate propensity for woolly thinking and a strong liking for fallacy, from where I'm sitting.

[Shaker]

The piece that Alan Burns has quoted is very beautiful and, to me, it describes a dreamy, spiritual experience - something that can happen to all of us.  It doesn't mean it is "religious" as such

Try the final two sentences of the quote - Goodall thinks that it was/is.

[Shaker]

A statement without verifiable proof!

As are they all, Floo.

As are they all.

[floo]

As are they all, Floo.

As are they all.

True!

[Alan Burns]

A statement without verifiable proof!

Not every sentence we make can be accompanied with proof, but we can at least offer some things for intelligent consideration or analysis, rather than have it rejected outright because it does not come with verifiable proof.

[Enki]

It is interesting to note that Jane Goodall has quite strong spiritual belief in souls and in God - see Reason for Hope - a spiritual journey.

And just to back up Shaker's point that there is increasing evidence that animals can discern what is good or bad especially within their social setting, be they whales, rats, dogs, wolves or penguins. What Jane Goodall's personal beliefs have to do with the questions that you posed, I am at a loss to understand, unless, of course, you can show how she produced evidence for the idea of a soul or of any god. 

[Shaker]

Not every sentence we make can be accompanied with proof, but we can at least offer some things for intelligent consideration or analysis

I look forward to it.

rather than have it rejected outright because it does not come with verifiable proof.

But the things you assert are things which you present to us as absolutely and objectively true for everyone, not just you personally - so much so that you speak in the most dogmatic terms about being literally unable to believe any other way, at all, ever ... unless you become clinically insane, apparently.

[Nearly Sane]

But unless you have proof you can't claim it is true. What you claim for the deity is the stuff of fantasy and a vivid imagination, not intelligent consideration, imo!

You continually misuse proof for evidemce
 

[Enki]

Thanks for your interesting post.
I would be interested to see how you get on with this book.
I found it fascinating because it touches upon several logical scenarios which I had conceived myself in my early twenties, but explains them in a much more eloquent way.

At the moment I'm dissecting Chapter 4 of C.S.Lewis's 'Miracles', so I haven't yet come to any final judgement. However, it doesn't look good. So far, and especially in chapter 3,  he seems to have a tendency of putting up strawmen which he then seeks to knock down. I read some time ago his 'Mere Christianity' and I found parts of that to be quite appalling, some parts even downright unpleasant, although I am aware that he was to some extent conditioned by the times in which he wrote it.

[Enki]

Can I suggest, Gonzo, that when one person who is an atheist makes a statement, you don't assume that they are making a statement for all atheists? Particularly when you have asked for personal experiences. Treat people as individuals.

Couldn't agree more.

[ippy]

We visited Notre Dame Cathedral in 2001, it was a good experience, but not one I would attribute to the deity!

It makes me admire St Pauls in London, Notre Dame a dark and dingy place by com paris on.

ippy

P S Sorry.

[Shaker]

You've done it again Shakes; nothing like it when you strike the nail squarely on the head.

Ever heard about cognitive dissonance? Now where do you think there could be a precise example of this complaint, I know it's a difficult question, but do your best Shakes?

ippy

Hi ipster,

I don't think it's quite cognitive dissonance per se in the way that the term is usually used; what we see at work in this part of the discussion (and in many other places too for that matter) is an absolutely desperate desire on Alan's part to uphold human exceptionalism - the view that human beings are special, distinctive, set apart somehow from the entirety of the rest of the living world. Alan really, really, really wants humans to be set apart from every other kind of living creature that exists, which is why he expends so many useless electrons pushing his ideas of a God-given soul, free will and suchlike. In Alan's classification of the living world there are only two groups: (1) humans and (2) everything else, and I do mean very much in that specific order. That's pretty much it - humans are the ones with souls and free will, everything else is pretty well an operating-on-instinct meat machine.

That this flies in the face of pretty well everything we know about the oneness of life as revealed by evolutionary science is a given, but there's really no point in trying to explain this to someone who is patently so wedded to his beloved ideas not on an intellectual but on a purely emotional basis. People are rarely reasoned out of something they were never reasoned into in the first instance. It can and does happen, but it's neither common nor usual. Alan thinks that atheists like me are missing out for not believing in a God that he sees as an absolutely and utterly undeniable truth which he regards as so obvious that it's as self-evident or even more so than his own existence. I think he's missing out on the staggering beauty, complexity in the specific details but fundamental simplicity and elegance and awe-inspiring grandeur of the unity of every living thing in this world which makes every creature, us included, a more distant or less distant relative of every other. This uplifts and inspires me and I think that anybody who doesn't see this or understand it or, worse by far, doesn't want to understand it, is very much the poorer for it. It's the sort of emotion that Darwin knew - read the closing paragraphs of the Origin -, that anybody who has ever been captivated by evolution has known. We as a species have roots, and we can know a great deal - not everything, but a great deal - about those roots. Not to know this is one thing, but not to want to know is not to want to know where we came from and how we actually did come to be where and what we are. I don't understand this at all; I never have and never will.

That might suggest that the two camps are talking past each other, futilely, doomed to be speaking two mutually incomprehensible languages for ever. That view seems superficially plausible, with the signal and salient difference that I have a Himalayan mountain range of evidence for my view of life, whereas Alan has a paltry pantry of to him intense, to him utterly compelling but basically baseless personal conviction founded upon the jerry-built footings of bald assertion and logical fallacy.

So I don't think that Alan's views are cognitive dissonance as such but are maintained as a flight from it. He has to maintain his human exceptionalism which is such an integral part of his theism because if that starts to wobble the entire edifice may come crashing down about his ears, and as I've said before, if Alan's worldview unravels it's going to be a very messy spectacle indeed. Some worldviews are incredibly fragile; they're like the blown glass Christmas tree baubles from the 50s and 60s of which I can remember a few still hanging around when I was little (and they were old-fashioned even then) - you could shatter one of the things almost by breathing on it. Worldviews such as Alan's are like a house of cards; start pissing about with them at almost any point in the structure - anywhere, not just the bottom - and the integrity of the whole thing is threatened. If Alan or anybody else with his views ever once started seriously and honestly to question human exceptionalism - to absorb and understand evolutionary science - to see the kinship of all life which has a billion twigs but one trunk - to see ourselves as human animals in our right place as a species amongst species, kneaded and moulded by the selection pressures and pushed and pulled by the instinctual drives that shape everything else - then the house of cards stands a very good chance indeed of no longer being a house of cards but a random scattering of hearts and clubs all over the floor.

Cognitive dissonance is the thing that upsets apple carts, metaphorically speaking (or at least can do so); Alan does everything he possibly can to insulate himself from it, everywhere, all the time.

[OH MY WORLD!]

Make me gag! Many words come quickly to the mind while reading that spew of yours. Condescending, arrogant, snotty and pompous just for starters.

Hold up a second Shaker I'll be right back..............


OK, so I had a quick look at your stats, WOW dude! I'll tell ya this, if somebody tells you to get a life, listen to them, they care.

[Shaker]

Make me gag!

Certainly. Fist, soaked towel, or will a broom handle do?

Many words come quickly to the mind while reading that spew of yours. Condescending, arrogant, snotty and pompous just for starters.

It's a gift, but even so I work hard at it.

Hold up a second Shaker I'll be right back..............

Oh ... do you have to be?

[Nearly Sane]

Certainly. Fist, soaked towel, or will a broom handle do?

I just assumed Johnny would bring his own ball gag.

[Shaker]

I just assumed Johnny would bring his own ball gag.

Unlikely; nobody yet has found a way of gagging his balls.

[Outrider]

Dear Outrider,

Fairytale, nevermind eh!!

Gonnagle.

It's what I see it as. It's a story which attempts to teach moral lessons and life-guidance, and which has changed forms through various incarnations - both before the current earliest known version was written and since.

Fairy-tales are more than just bits of fiction, they're the fragments of legends that have survived time and translations because they have something to say.

To put the Bible in the same bracket as fairy-tales is to put it outside of mere novels, and not in quite the same bracket as literature - it's not Chaucer or Shakespeare in part because of the format and in part because of the mystery of its actual origins, but neither is it the relative banality of, say, The Wishing Chair.

It's not the magic of Harry Potter, it's the magic of The Epic of Gilgamesh, of the Kalevala, of The Odyssey and The Iliad. Fairy tales, not just fantasy stories.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Our knowledge of God is restricted by what our physical senses can perceive, which is why God made Himself known to us by becoming one of us.

No, our "knowledge" of "god" is "restricted" by our ability to reason our way to his existence or otherwise in the first place.

And speaking of which, I asked you a while back whether you're familiar with the idea of logical fallacies and suggested that perhaps if you understood them at least a little you might avoid using them so frequently, and thereby clear away the brushwood so as finally to make a cogent argument for this god of yours.

As you seem to have ignored it, should I take it that the term "logical fallacy" just didn't compute or that you'd rather not talk about it at all?

[Alan Burns]

Alan does everything he possibly can to insulate himself from it, everywhere, all the time.

I thought I would compare some of my "paltry pantry of baseless personal convictions founded upon the jerry-built footings of bald assertion and logical fallacy" with your "Himalayan mountain range of evidence for your view of life".

I suggest that free will and self awareness are evidence of a human soul.
I am told that free will is an illusion and self awareness is an emergent property of the material in our brains, but no one knows how it works.

I dare to question whether the process of natural selection and random mutations alone is sufficient to generate the complexity of life.
I am told that I do not understand evolution.

I also question the probability of the first living cell being generated by random natural forces.
I am told that there are enough planets and conditions in the universe to make this probable.

I question the fine tuning of the forces in this universe needed to produce the stars and planets.
I am told that there are probably an infinite number of universes, one of which must have the right conditions.  But there is no tangible evidence of the existence of other universes.

[Shaker]

I thought I would compare some of my "paultry pantry of baseless personal convictions founded upon the jerry-built footings of bald assertion and logical fallacy" with your "Himalayan mountain range of evidence for your view of life".

Fantastic. Let's go for it, Al.

I suggest that free will and self awareness are evidence of a human soul.

What good is a fucking suggestion? I couldn't give two shiny ones about your suggestions; I want to see some evidence if I'm going to take something to be provisionally true.

I am told that free will is an illusion and self awareness is an emergent property of the material in our brains, but no one knows how it works.

Indeedles. Some people are able to say "I don't know" instead of claiming absolute and unshakeable certainty. It's a humble, intellectually respectable position to take but it disturbs those who claim perfect and absolute knowledge.

I dare to question whether the process of natural selection and random mutations alone is sufficient to generate the complexity of life.
I am told that I do not understand evolution.

That's right. You don't. We know this because of the evidence of same that you keep churning out every time the subject arises.

I also question the probability of the first living cell being generated by random natural forces.
I am told that there are enough planets and conditions in the universe to make this probable.

No you're not. Not if you're honest, at any rate, which is hanging by a thread.

I question the fine tuning of the forces in this universe needed to produce the stars and planets.

... and what you should be told is that the fine-tuning argument as an argument for conscious, deliberate and intelligent planning by a mind of some sort of the kind that you allege you believe in is a dogshit argument employed by the clueless. Victor Stenger's The Fallacy of Fine Tuning will give you the skinny on this, if you care to read it.

I am told that there are probably an infinite number of universes, one of which must have the right conditions. But there is no tangible evidence of the existence of other universes.

Not by anybody who understands science, you're not.

All that, and not a fucking sniff of the evidence for evolution anywhere. So remind me here Al; when you say "I thought I would compare some of my 'paultry [sic; possibly you were thinking of the word poultry, as in a chickenshit pseudo-argument] pantry of baseless personal convictions founded upon the jerry-built footings of bald assertion and logical fallacy' with your 'Himalayan mountain range of evidence for your view of life,' where actually is this comparison? Because I've looked and looked and looked and looked again, and I still can't see it.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I thought I would compare some of my "paultry pantry of baseless personal convictions founded upon the jerry-built footings of bald assertion and logical fallacy" with your "Himalayan mountain range of evidence for your view of life".

It's "paltry" but cool, go for it!

I suggest that free will and self awareness are evidence of a human soul.

Actually you assert it to be so rather than just "suggest" it, but ok...

I am told that free will is an illusion and self awareness is an emergent property of the material in our brains, but no one knows how it works.

Yes - emergence is a well-known property in all sorts of areas of study, and the idea of consciousness (or "mind") as an emergent property of our brains shows every sign of being the correct explanation. Whether we'll ever understand how exactly it works is moot, but for now it makes sense to go where the evidence provisionally at least leads. Sadly "soul" is what scientists call "not even wrong" - it lacks definition, testable means of verification etc.   

Your argument here is in other words akin to you pitching up at the Large Hadron Collider and shouting that we don't fully understand the Higgs-boson, therefore it must be fairies.

I dare to question whether the process of natural selection and random mutations alone is sufficient to generate the complexity of life.

Again, you don't just suggest it - you assert it to be so but ok...
 

I am told that I do not understand evolution.

Correctly so. When you've attempted to give us your understanding of what evolutionary theory says, you've almost always got it wrong. 

I also question the probability of the first living cell being generated by random natural forces.

Again you....well, you know the rest but ok...

...and it depends what you mean by "random", but if you mean "purposeless" then yes, that is what the evidence tells us.

I am told that there are enough planets and conditions in the universe to make this probable.

Highly probable according to some models, yes.

I question the fine tuning of the forces in this universe needed to produce the stars and planets.

Again etc etc...

...and there is no "fine tuning". That's just one of the basic errors in reasoning you keep falling into. You may as well be Douglas Adams's puddle "reasoning" its way to the notion that the hole it sits in must have been specially designed given how well it fits the water it holds.

I am told that there are probably an infinite number of universes, one of which must have the right conditions.  But there is no tangible evidence of the existence of other universes.

It's a theoretical model that would satisfy a considerable number of unanswered question, but that's right - the jury is out still. That's why those who argue for it don't just assert it to be so.

Now compare that with those who assert the equally evidence-free "god".

Do you see the problem here?

Anything?   

[Leonard James]

The fact is that we can recognise the evils in this world, and that we can differentiate between good and bad - not only within this world but within ourselves.

There is no such thing as "good" and "bad" outside the human mind. Everything just IS.  The things we don't like we call bad and the things that suit us we call good.

 

We recognise that none of us are perfect, and this world is not perfect.  We know there can be something better.

For us, yes ... so we work to achieve it.

This scenario is surely not what you would expect from an evolutionary process which moulded us into the reality which exists on this earth.

It is EXACTLY what any thinking person who understands evolution would expect.

 

Unlike the other animals, we do not just accept this reality.  Humans have a vision of perfection.

Possibly, although everybody's view of "perfection" will not be the same. In any case it's only a vision ... we have no hope of achieving it.

Jesus shows us how we can achieve this perfection.

Not really! He just told us about HIS idea of perfection, but as a Jew, he was handicapped by a false start.

[Enki]

Dear enki,

New word for today, Respect.

Understanding the atheist, that's the goal.

Let me start by saying, Church was boring, I had a read of Outriders reply to me ( I will try to reply to his post ) he also mentioned boredom, so a quick note to any Christians who might be interested, if you are genuinely interested in gaining new followers, think on.

When you say you later became a member of the Methodist youth fellowship, can I assume that you grew up in an age where Church gave the best chances for meeting others of your own age group, see!! reading your post I am forming an impression that Christianity had more of an impact than you realise.

Once again I see that Christianity/religion is playing a part in your upbringing but I can only agree that this "one true way" is a big stumbling block, maybe one truth we can all take from this and other threads/posters is that religion/faith is a very personal thing, actually as I think about this, it is bleedin! obvious but I am open to others arguing against this.

The Gospels are the starting point for me, more importantly the Two Greatest Commandments ( sorry, when I say starting point, I mean, understanding ) you may have noticed that I am a big Karen Armstrong fan, she mentions that practice comes first and then belief ( my simplistic understanding of her message ).

If you see some of the Gospels as enlightening and useful, and you practice them, then belief is not my department, that's Gods.

Christianity has shaped you in some way, would you be annoyed if I call you a "cultural Christian".

Never boring, atheists on this forum make me think, the list is too long to mention all the names, I will simply say, enter stage left old almost sensible.

C.S Lewis, had a quick look, sounds a bit Vladdish.

Sorry but from your post a big part is culture, a drip feed effect, I don't mean that in a bad way but I do think Christianity has affected you quite a bit.

Oxfam and Amnesty, oh! they have both stepped away from any Christian connection but they have been influenced, but that is not my point, I don't decry charities which are non religious, my point is privilege, but maybe privilege is the wrong word, could the word be respect.

Well first I have to state the obvious, they want your soul for Jesus, they want to further their religious message, but going back to my last sentence, do they deserve privilege, respect, I don't see how you can argue against, without Christian charities the government/NHS would be snowed under.

Gonnagle.

On the subject of whether being a part of a Methodist Youth Club/Fellowsip had an influence on my thinking as a youngish teenager, almost certainly. However it probably didn't in the way you imagine. If anything, it began to focus my mind on why I didn't see much point in the Christian message that to believe in God was particularly important.

On the subject of the gospels, I did say I find some parts enlightening(i.e. seem to gel with and develop ideas that I already had/felt) but I also find other parts of them terribly dull, and the theological message as having no relation to me at all. Also, as an aside, the gospel depiction of Jesus has always seemed to me to be rather lacking in humour.

Would I be offended if you called me a 'cultural Christian'? Not at all. I wouldn't label myself in such a way, but there again I'm not into labelling people like that, mainly because I see each person as an individual with all sorts of influences which may have helped shape them as the person they are. In my case, my interest at that time in rock, blues and jazz music I count as of much greater importance, and, in later years, my interest and pursuits in birding, for instance, have had a powerful linkage to my interest in evolutionary biology and nature in general.

If you change the word 'privilege' to 'respect' then I would say something that is basically the same. I am willing to respect any charity which at its heart has its aim to help people in need, no matter from what religious persuasion/non persuasion it comes.

If anyone/organization wants 'my soul for Jesus', as you put it, then my respect for that person/organization diminishes probably in relation to how ardently they pursue that goal.

Finally, as regards how the NHS functions and how any government at any time carries out its responsibilities towards its people, it is such a huge subject that I could not possibly respond adequately on a thread such as this. But, if I was to deal in such simple generalities, then my response would be any inclusive, well run charity of any religion/non religion whose aim is to support and help those in need would have my respect.

Incidentally, I see you on here as one of the Christians who have a much less rigid approach than others, and, despite your humorous asides(or maybe because of them), you seem very willing to be challenged without simply closing the shutters. So, my questions are(and apologies if you have ever answered this), how and when did you become a Christian? What were your early influences?

[Shaker]

New word for today, Respect.

Nice word, even nicer concept, far too often misused as a cover for tolerating bullshit.

[Alan Burns]

where actually is this comparison? Because I've looked and looked and looked and looked again, and I still can't see it.

Most of your arguments were stated in some detail in your previous reply to ippy, so I did not need to repeat such detail.  I was mainly wanting to show that the points I make are not as paltry as you were suggesting.

I may have come across as too assertive, but my aim is to get people to open the door to the possibility of God's existence, then see where it takes them