Mad gibberish!!!!!good and evil are on our minds. From an universal point of view they dont exist.
I -- and the rest of the philosophical community -- await your proof with bated breath.
why a god is impossible
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I -- and the rest of the philosophical community -- await your proof with bated breath.
Z
Variable Constant
Um.... no. Most of the 'philosophical community' is still divided on the issue. There's quite a few who agree that 'good' and 'evil' are nothing but human concepts, and don't exist objectively.
You might like to catch up a bit.
Now, as to this (snicker) argument...
A perfect thing fulfills a purpose. Which means a perfect thing must have a purpose. God's purpose, obviously, is to create - thus, he has neither needs nor wants, beyond fulfillment of purpose, and is therefore perfect.
After all, a thing without purpose is useless... and therefore not perfect. See 'philosophical argument', 'quale', and 'HPC' for examples.
friend! we consider evil anything that hurts humans. Thats the human idea of evil. An animal or plant or an Alien may be of a different opinion especially if they love human meat.
I should have known youre a philosopher..always walking in circles,aint ya?
Earthborn
Terrestrial Intelligence
There is no reason to suppose this. Some believers in an immaterial mind have compared the brain with a receiver. If you tinker with a television, the image on the screen will change. If the brain is a receiver, it is also to be expected that if you tinker with it, you'll change the mental states that are communicated outward.
I don't think this is true. It is only true of a very narrow brand of dualists, but most major religions recognise that animals have similar mental states as humans. Most have taboos and rules on how animals are to be treated (such as: 'kill them quickly so they don't suffer too much'), what parts of an animal can be eaten ('Not the blood as it carries their soul') and that one must ask for forgiveness when killing it.
That is of course because all medical and scientific evidence is limited to the physical. It is not a very good philosophical argument if you know you are locked in a closed room and unable to get access to evidence from outside the room, to say "all evidence I have of existence points to the inside of the room, therefore it is unlikely that there is anything outside the room."
There is no reason to accept any of your premises, and your argument assumes at least one other premise: that God is unchangeable and unchanged by creating the universe. Your argument falls flat on its face if we assume that before Creation God was perfect except for one thing; It had a need or want to create the universe. Then by creating the universe It became perfect and it would cause no contradiction to call It perfect and having deliberately created the universe.
All your argumentation shows is that it is just as foolish for an atheist to try to prove there isn't a God as it is for a theist to try to prove that there is.
That may be your consideration of "evil." It's hardly universal, even among humans.
No.
Perhaps I can put this in simpler terms.
Premise 1a -- "Pentagonality entails the lack of needs or wants."
I reject that premise because that's not what the word "pentagonal" means.
Premise 1b -- "Purpleness entails the lack of needs or wants."
I reject that premise because that's not what the word "purple" means.
Premise 1c -- "Paramagnetism entails the lack of needs or wants."
I reject that premise becaue that's not what the word "paramagnetic" means.
Premise 1d -- "Perfection entails the lack of needs or wants."
That premise is exactly as flawed, and for exactly the same reason, as premises 1a-c.
No. It doesn't. That's not what "perfect" means.
thats why i first said i was more of an agnostic than an atheist. It looks impossible to prove or disprove God, but it seems possible to debunk things often attributed to god by believers
Ichneumonwasp
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Earthborn said:
Hmmm, but certain parts of the receiver are responsible for language, some for personality, some for mathematics, some for word recognition, some for vision, etc., etc.
If the message is a unity, as virtually all ideas of "soul" involve, how can we explain such findings? Why do we not see any obvious change with large damage to certain areas and huge changes from small regions of damage?
slingblade
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This is why I never submit any logical arguments. I'm just not that good. Earthborn
Terrestrial Intelligence
Some parts of a television are responsible for sound, others for colour, some for the picture itself, some for displaying teletext...
That is of course not just a problem for a "receiver" model of the mind, but also for a completely physical model. We experience our conciousness usually somewhat as a unity, but how exactly all those parts of the brain work together and produce a consistent and unified mind is still a mystery.
Nothing in about a "receiver" concept of mind would prohibit this. If you damage the teletext circuit of a television, you won't experience obvious change. Nobody ever uses that anyway. If you damage the part that produces stereo sound and you'll end up with mono sound, it is no great loss. Mess with the colour decoder, and you may notice change, but not a great loss in function. You may still be able to watch telly in black and white. But even small damage to the transformer, and it won't work at all. None of this is evidence that television programs originate from within the television itself.
No amount of tinkering with the brain can be definitive proof that the mind or soul are not received from some otherworldly realm. You may believe that there is no reason to suppose that it does, but that's a philosophical position and not proof.
Earthborn
Terrestrial Intelligence
Yep.
Yes, it is. You just avoided all the things that are often attributed to God that can be debunked, and focussed on the things that cannot. But go ahead if your idea of fun is trying to do the impossible while easy tasks are waiting...but it seems possible to debunk things often attributed to god by believers
Ichneumonwasp
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But the television signal is not a unity. There are different codes within it for sound, for visual information, etc. The soul is supposed to be a unity, not a collection of different modes of information.
Actually, no, it is not a problem for the physical model because there is a big difference between a metaphysical unity and a perceived unity. To use the TV example, we experience a unitary signal that actually consists of flickering and inconstant visual images. We fill in the missing bits. Gestalt has shown us how common this process is. But with a unitary soul, unity is a metaphysical concept, not merely a way of experiencing the world.
We aren't talking about parts of the brain that don't serve any function here. You can say that you remove any particular part of the TV that doesn't function or that someone doesn't use, but with the brain there are areas that definitely serve functions that we do not notice when they are missing -- the real reason is because we are not good at testing these functions. Some function is always lost. The important issue here is that if soul is a unity, then why does removal of a large area not result in such obvious problems as removal of a small area? It cannot be based on size as many people would like to argue if microtubules are responsible. It is purely based on function.
Not arguing for definitive proof, only for the more likely. The OP argued for definitive proof of the non-existence of God, which was clearly in error; but the mental aspects he proposed as only more likely.
With the brain we don't have tissue that sits there, like a receiver. It is the most metabolically active tissue in the body with constant opening and closing of ion channels. We have models that show us that information can be manipulated by such systems -- all we need is positive and negative with varying circuitry. So there is no need to suggest any entity outside the brain. Is it possible that there is a soul and the brain receives messages? Well, only if we have some means of determining how. How does this dualism work? How does the completely other -- the immaterial -- interact with the material?
Of course no one can completely discount the possibility, but no one has ever supplied any workable solution to the problem. Sorry, I just couldn't let the receiver model go by without challenge. There are more serious problems with it than there are with a physical model of consciousness.
That's a not a very convincing argument. I see no reason to accept premise 3 , 4,or 5, and every reason to reject them.
As you yourself admit, theists can find ample reason to reject #3 on the basis of Scripture. I reject it on a more simple basis. It just doesn't make sense.
Similarly, I see no reasons why "simple curiosity" would qualify as a "need or want." Basically, I have no reason to believe that any of premises 3, 4, or 5 are true.
--You also offer no reasons not to think they are true, which leaves you
no counter-argument. For example, you cannot dismiss the concept of
perfection being used without demonstrating that a different definition
of perfection - and a valid one - is used in Christian theology.
Everything you wrote is already addressed in the argument itself.
wollery
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I'd take your teachings over the bible any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Could you maybe make your OP a little shorter in the future. Unless it's coming from a forumite I highly respect, I wouldn't even bother reading through something that size at first pass (time is valuable ). If you want to get your message out, try doing it in one reasonable sized paragraph, rather than several large ones.
More people will read your rantings that way, take it from an expert!
). If you want to get your message out, try doing it in one reasonable sized paragraph, rather than several large ones. More people will read your rantings that way, take it from an expert!
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196
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It was copied from an article on About.com. Beerina already called the OP out in an earlier post, but the point got lost in the discussion. It is from an article by Austin Cline at http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsagainstgod/a/LifeMaterial.htm.
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Piggy
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idunno, I don't like your chances.
You seem to want to debunk bogus philosophy by engaging in more philosophy.
I don't recommend it.
It's like trying to debunk homeopathy on the basis of invalid homeopathic principles. You'd do better to simply demonstrate that homeopathic principles are inherently flawed and be done with it.
My advice is to get out of the clouds and argue with your feet planted firmly on the ground.
There are much better ways to demonstrate that God is a fiction. And you'll never get there if you continue to tie your head up in abstract arguments about airy concepts such as perfection, I'm afraid.
Leave all that, please, and get real.
And I say that because, if we don't, we're forever going to be drawn into endless, pointless, groundless back-and-forth nattering over baseless philosophical principles rather than tackling the honest nuts and bolts of the matter.
You seem to want to debunk bogus philosophy by engaging in more philosophy.
I don't recommend it.
It's like trying to debunk homeopathy on the basis of invalid homeopathic principles. You'd do better to simply demonstrate that homeopathic principles are inherently flawed and be done with it.
My advice is to get out of the clouds and argue with your feet planted firmly on the ground.
There are much better ways to demonstrate that God is a fiction. And you'll never get there if you continue to tie your head up in abstract arguments about airy concepts such as perfection, I'm afraid.
Leave all that, please, and get real.
And I say that because, if we don't, we're forever going to be drawn into endless, pointless, groundless back-and-forth nattering over baseless philosophical principles rather than tackling the honest nuts and bolts of the matter.
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
Well, if basic physics holds true for deities, for every god there should be an equal and opposite god.
