Searching for GOD...

[jeremyp]

I have never said that or implied it.

All I say is that both lives matter.

And thank you for recognising that it is a baby - not just a foetus.

If you make abortion illegal, you'll be forcing doctors to save the baby over the mother in some instances. Even worse, you'll be asking them to watch both die when they could save the mother with an abortion in some instances.

[jeremyp]

Roman Catholic priests are required to take a vow of chastity, which precludes all sexual relationships.

Doesn't work though, does it.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

To be fair, the RCC doesn't just have to ensure a repeat supply of children to feed the needs of the paedophilic priests it protects. A much bigger number is required to replenish the perhaps hundreds of thousands that are avoidably killed each year by AIDS, hunger etc because of its teachings on contraception and its concomitant demands for unsustainably large families.

You continue to confirm the implication in Sassy's opening post by consciously choosing to look for reasons to fulfill your obvious desire to deride the Roman Catholic church, just as you deliberately look for reasons to deny God's existence along with your own spiritual nature and freedom to make consciously driven choices.

[jeremyp]

You continue to confirm the implication in Sassy's opening post by consciously choosing to look for reasons to fulfill your obvious desire to deride the Roman Catholic church, just as you deliberately look for reasons to deny God's existence along with your own spiritual nature and freedom to make consciously driven choices.

Nobody would be deriding the RCC for this if they had acknowledged the problem, sought to bring the paedophiles in their ranks to justice and worked to prevent such cases in the future.  Instead they tried to cover up the issue and protect their priests from answering for their crimes. These are not the actions of an organisation deserving of respect rather than derision.

[Alan Burns]

If you make abortion illegal, you'll be forcing doctors to save the baby over the mother in some instances. Even worse, you'll be asking them to watch both die when they could save the mother with an abortion in some instances.

Wrong
Any legislation would prioritise the life of the mother.

[SusanDoris]

I have refrained from posting further since my last post. In my opinion the posts written by AB become more and more unpleasant as they continue.

[SusanDoris]

Wrong
Any legislation would prioritise the life of the mother.

And would that get 100% support from the RC hierarchy?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

You continue to confirm the implication in Sassy's opening post by consciously choosing to look for reasons to fulfill your obvious desire to deride the Roman Catholic church,…

Even by your standards this is bizarre stuff. My ”reason to deride the Roman Catholic church” as you put it is that their decades old policy and practice of protecting paedophilic priests from prosecuton has caused untold and unnecessary further misery to children.

Why don’t you actually address that rather than duck and dive as if it didn't happen?

…just as you deliberately look for reasons to deny God's existence…

Wrong again. What I “deny” is your assertion that there is a “god” when your attempts to validate the claim consist only of fallacies. Fix that problem rather than always run away from it and there’ll be something to talk about. 

…along with your own spiritual nature and freedom to make consciously driven choices.

“Spiritual nature” being something else you’ve made up and “freedom to make consciously driven choices” being something you’ve had corrected countless times without ever even attempting to rebut with an argument of your own.

[torridon]

Nothing changes completely or for all time. As you have agreed, there is a broad change in thinking compared to earlier times. We ARE more civilized and universal in outlook than before. Even religious leaders are largely able to tolerate other religions and see things in a secular way.  More vegetarians, more animal rights, more women's equality, less discrimination etc etc.

It is always possible to pick out individual cases of bigotry or discrimination or cruelty. That is nitpicking.

Humans have broadly evolved into civilized beings from animals to savages to tribal communities to kingdoms to nations to one world. This as been the journey which has been mainly facilitated by religions through their message of love, compassion, universal brotherhood.

I think that civilisedness is a veneer.  We flatter ourselves with notions of universal brotherhood, yes, we can talk that talk so long as it doesn't cost us personally too much.  Rich western countries give a fraction of their GDP in overseas aid, but when the poor come knocking, hoping for a real slice of the pie, we start building walls to keep them out and our true colours are made manifest. We can be compassionate but only so long as we can preserve our own way of life.  All the fine words and sentiments of the world's religions will not save us when ecological catastrophe starts to bite and the global world order starts to unravel.  Our civilisedness is a product of our civilisation; when our civilisation is gone, so will our civilisedness.

[Sriram]

I think that civilisedness is a veneer.  We flatter ourselves with notions of universal brotherhood, yes, we can talk that talk so long as it doesn't cost us personally too much.  Rich western countries give a fraction of their GDP in overseas aid, but when the poor come knocking, hoping for a real slice of the pie, we start building walls to keep them out and our true colours are made manifest. We can be compassionate but only so long as we can preserve our own way of life.  All the fine words and sentiments of the world's religions will not save us when ecological catastrophe starts to bite and the global world order starts to unravel.  Our civilisedness is a product of our civilisation; when our civilisation is gone, so will our civilisedness.

It is too much to expect that everyone will sacrifice his own life for someone else. We still have the basic survival instincts intact. That will not go away...and probably should not. That does not mean we are not civilized.

We have evolved different brain structures to accommodate different mental levels. They all exist together.

Try this......

https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2018/03/03/the-triune-brain/

[Alan Burns]

And would that get 100% support from the RC hierarchy?

Yes

[Alan Burns]

"Spiritual nature” being something else you’ve made up and “freedom to make consciously driven choices” being something you’ve had corrected countless times without ever even attempting to rebut with an argument of your own.

But your so called corrections do not come anywhere near to being a valid explanation for what emerges from your mouth or what you type with your fingers.  Your explanations are quite simply a pathetic attempt to explain away your obvious freedom to drive your own thought processes in order to make this reality fit it into your blinkered view of an entirely predetermined universe.  And the more you try to justify your position, the more evidence you provide for the truth that you have conscious control over your own thoughts.  To try to explain this away by theorising that all your thoughts must be predetermined before you are consciously aware of them is preposterous.  Your freedom to drive your own thoughts is undeniable evidence for the existence of something you do not want to believe.

[Stranger]

Once again we enter the magical nonsense world of Alan's version of freedom...

But your so called corrections do not come anywhere near to being a valid explanation for what emerges from your mouth or what you type with your fingers.

How do you know? Also, it has the advantage of being logically self-consistent, unlike your own version of freedom which is self-contradictory.

Your explanations are quite simply a pathetic attempt to explain away your obvious freedom to drive your own thought processes in order to make this reality fit it into your blinkered view of an entirely predetermined universe.

It is based on logic and reasoning, unlike your blind faith in the logically impossible.

And the more you try to justify your position, the more evidence you provide for the truth that you have conscious control over your own thoughts.

Back to the same lie that what we all experience is evidence for your impossible nonsense.

Your freedom to drive your own thoughts is undeniable evidence for the existence of something you do not want to believe.

This is absurd in the extreme. Your nonsense version of freedom makes no sense at all. It's not something anybody can possibly want or not want because it simply makes no sense. As soon as you apply any rational thought to it, it evaporates into contradictions and infinite regress.

The logic has been explained to you many, many times, and you have still never even tried to face up to it directly - just the endless assertions that it can't be right because you can't imagine how it could be right.

[Sebastian Toe]

But your so called corrections do not come anywhere near to being a valid explanation for what emerges from your mouth or what you type with your fingers.  Your explanations are quite simply a pathetic attempt to explain away your obvious freedom to drive your own thought processes in order to make this reality fit it into your blinkered view of an entirely predetermined universe.  And the more you try to justify your position, the more evidence you provide for the truth that you have conscious control over your own thoughts.  To try to explain this away by theorising that all your thoughts must be predetermined before you are consciously aware of them is preposterous.  Your freedom to drive your own thoughts is undeniable evidence for the existence of something you do not want to believe.

Your post demonstrates the workings of a biological brain making choices entirely under deterministic principles with no magic, logic free, fantasy ridden soul required.

[Enki]

Quote from Alan Burn's post 34986:

Your freedom to drive your own thoughts is undeniable evidence for the existence of something you do not want to believe.

So, to follow your own reasoning, if I didn't want to believe that there was a flying spaghetti monster of godlike proportions which controls everything and is particularly malevolent, and that there are no other gods apart from this, then your proposed freedom for me to drive my own thoughts would be undeniable evidence that this FSM actually exists! What pathetic reasoning.

[Alan Burns]

This is absurd in the extreme. Your nonsense version of freedom makes no sense at all. It's not something anybody can possibly want or not want because it simply makes no sense. As soon as you apply any rational thought to it, it evaporates into contradictions and infinite regress.

But your conscious ability to apply rational thought contradicts the absurd logic you put forward.

The logic has been explained to you many, many times, and you have still never even tried to face up to it directly - just the endless assertions that it can't be right because you can't imagine how it could be right.

The explanations you put forward do not explain the freedom I have to contradict these explanations.  Yes, I have the freedom to consciously make assertions.  Assertions which can't possibly be predetermined by the past, because they are determined by my conscious awareness - which exists and acts within my present state of mind.

[Alan Burns]

Quote from Alan Burn's post 34986:

So, to follow your own reasoning, if I didn't want to believe that there was a flying spaghetti monster of godlike proportions which controls everything and is particularly malevolent, and that there are no other gods apart from this, then your proposed freedom for me to drive my own thoughts would be undeniable evidence that this FSM actually exists! What pathetic reasoning.

Your ability to imagine a flying spaghetti monster of godlike proportions which controls everything and is particularly malevolent offers ample evidence of your freedom to drive your own thought processes.  A freedom which can't be explained by physically predetermined reactions.

[Stranger]

But your conscious ability to apply rational thought contradicts the absurd logic you put forward.

No, it doesn't. You have never once been able to point to a contradiction in my position and you have never once been able to point out a logical flaw in the argument that your own view is contradictory.

Stamping your foot and insisting the opposite, doesn't make it so.

The explanations you put forward do not explain the freedom I have to contradict these explanations.

Yes, they do.

Assertions which can't possibly be predetermined by the past, because they are determined by my conscious awareness...

False dichotomy.

...which exists and acts within my present state of mind.

Meaningless.

Your ability to imagine a flying spaghetti monster of godlike proportions which controls everything and is particularly malevolent offers ample evidence of your freedom to drive your own thought processes.

It is a lie to say that what we experience is evidence for your explanation of it, rather than anybody else's.

A freedom which can't be explained by physically predetermined reactions.

Baseless assertion.

[SusanDoris]

Checking synonyms of bigotry, I see that they reinforce my opinion that AB's posts are full of it. He continuies to fail to  come up with rational discussion or even the slightest possibility that he might be wrong about aspecs of evolution and thought processes.

Why do I continue to read, one might well ask. The reason is that I admire and learn from the  rational, reasoned, unbiased, thoughtful posts of others.

Sriram's posts I find annoying but there are, fortunately, not so many of them as there are of AB's!

[Enki]

Your ability to imagine a flying spaghetti monster of godlike proportions which controls everything and is particularly malevolent offers ample evidence of your freedom to drive your own thought processes.  A freedom which can't be explained by physically predetermined reactions.

Stop trying to change what you said. You said that the freedom to drive your own thoughts is undeniable evidence for the existence of something you do not want to believe. I gave you an example of something that I might not want to believe, i.e. the FSM. By your reasoning therefore the freedom of not wanting to believe in the FSM leads inexorably to the conclusion that this is 'undeniable evidence' of its existence. There was no mention of the idea that the ability to imagine the FSM is 'ample evidence' of my 'freedom' to drive my own thought processes, only that this 'freedom' offered ample evidence for the existence of the FSM.

The conclusion I reach is that your reasoning is highly suspect and, on the basis of your above post, seems to get very close to dissembling rather than honestly and directly responding to what I have said.

[Alan Burns]

Stop trying to change what you said. You said that the freedom to drive your own thoughts is undeniable evidence for the existence of something you do not want to believe.

You are getting confused because this reply was aimed specifically at Bluehillside and my assessment of the reason for his denial of his own freedom to control his thoughts.  This freedom is evidence for a non physical cause, but I am postulating that Hillside does not want to believe in the existence of a non physical cause because this would imply the existence of his spiritual soul.  In essence I am offering this as confirmation of Sassy's opening post in which she sees that people such as Hillside do not want to believe in God or anything of a non physical nature and look for reasons to support this non belief - hence his denial of the reality that we have freedom to drive our own thoughts.

[Alan Burns]

No, it doesn't. You have never once been able to point to a contradiction in my position and you have never once been able to point out a logical flaw in the argument that your own view is contradictory.

Stamping your foot and insisting the opposite, doesn't make it so.

Yes, they do.

False dichotomy.

Meaningless.

It is a lie to say that what we experience is evidence for your explanation of it, rather than anybody else's.

Baseless assertion.

It is not me that is stamping my foot.

I am just pointing out the reality that we have freedom to control our own thoughts - a freedom which you continue to choose to deny.  But you fail to acknowledge that this freedom is an essential requirement needed for you to consciously make this denial.  Your conjecture that your choice to deny this freedom was entirely predetermined before you became consciously aware of it is absolute nonsense.

[Stranger]

This freedom is evidence for a non physical cause...

The freedom we experience is not evidence of a non-physical cause because it is just being free to do as we want, which is entirely consistent with a deterministic mind.

The 'freedom' you are trying to argue for is nonsensical gibberish.

In essence I am offering this as confirmation of Sassy's opening post in which she sees that people such as Hillside do not want to believe in God or anything of a non physical nature and look for reasons to support this non belief - hence his denial of the reality that we have freedom to drive our own thoughts.

Since you are the person who is is trying to dispute simple logic with nothing more than personal incredulity and blind faith, I suggest that it is much more likely that you are the one in denial of reality, based on what you want to be true.

[Alan Burns]

The freedom we experience is not evidence of a non-physical cause because it is just being free to do as we want, which is entirely consistent with a deterministic mind.

The 'freedom' you are trying to argue for is nonsensical gibberish.

Since you are the person who is is trying to dispute simple logic with nothing more than personal incredulity and blind faith, I suggest that it is much more likely that you are the one in denial of reality, based on what you want to be true.

No.
Our ability to consciously deny anything requires the consciously driven freedom to make such a denial. If a consciously thought out reason to deny something is entirely predetermined by uncontrollable reactions then it becomes meaningless.

[Enki]

You are getting confused because this reply was aimed specifically at Bluehillside and my assessment of the reason for his denial of his own freedom to control his thoughts.  This freedom is evidence for a non physical cause, but I am postulating that Hillside does not want to believe in the existence of a non physical cause because this would imply the existence of his spiritual soul.  In essence I am offering this as confirmation of Sassy's opening post in which she sees that people such as Hillside do not want to believe in God or anything of a non physical nature and look for reasons to support this non belief - hence his denial of the reality that we have freedom to drive our own thoughts.

Doesn't make the slightest difference.  The same reasoning applies.