AB,
But the logic and evidence I see points overwhelmingly to the truth of God's existence.
Doesn’t work. The terms “logic” and “evidence” have meanings independent of what you (or I for that matter) might like them to mean. Thus various logical constructions
are fallacious regardless of whether or not you like the outcomes they produce. It’s no good calling them “man-made” or some such in the hope they’ll just go away – it you want to play on the turf of logic, then you cannot complain when logic itself defeats you. Similarly with evidence – you could claim an apple on the ground to be “evidence” that a pixie put it there if you wanted to, but you’d so devalue the term if you did that it’d be meaningless.
In short, that you “see” what you think to be logic and evidence does not of itself make it either logical or evidence.
The conclusions you draw do not make any sense to me.
But they do make sense to people capable of understanding the logic and assessing the evidence. Your personal incredulity about that does not give you licence to insist that your alternative conjectures must therefore be facts (another logical fallacy), and certainly not to assert them to be so to children.
Your faith in the capabilities of emergent properties derived only from material reactions seems incredibly optimistic.
You’re abusing the term “faith” here by conflating it with the religious version (effectively speculations gussied up as supposed facts), and my conclusion is neither optimistic nor pessimistic – it’s just a function of where the evidence points.
And if we are both just emergence from material reactions, why does your emergence conflict so much with mine? And why should your be right and mine be wrong???
First, that’s a
non sequitur (another logical mistake). Why our positions conflict and how we decide on right and wrong tells you nothing about the case for consciousness as an emergent property.
Second, why wouldn’t we have different opinions? The chains of cause and effect that led to them are unfathomably long and complex, and have been subject to who knows how many disruptive influences along the way.
Third, by introducing right from wrong you’re implying some kind of absolute standards rather than opinions and instincts. I argue for no such thing.
Final thing: you’ve tried to argue (ok, to assert) that when the evidence contradicts your personal perceptions your personal perception must be right. This is palpably nonsense, and I and others have given you examples of when personal perceptions are clearly wrong. Rather than just ignore that as you so often do why not this time try to be honest and either explain why we’re wrong about that or withdraw the argument?
