We should not attack Iraq

Yanny - you are just a step away from an Athiest. Consider the possibility of no “Higher Power”. The world just got simpler, more basic, no goals, no destiny, just life living for the sake of living and/or surviving. No grand plan, no chess board, no pawns (us). Cultures develop religion to personalize the world they don’t understand. Even with our wonderful science and technology, we really still don’t understand. That’s why religion still exists, to cover your unanswered questions - The Higher Power. Let it go. Join us…

No grand plan, no chess board, no pawns (us).

A chessmaster is nothing without his pieces.

Exactly my point, no chessmaster…

Agreed on all points. This can still be achieved without the burden of a “Higher Power”. We don’t know how our existence began, so give credit to a diety, quite unnecessary. Leave it to the unknown, possibly beyond our arrogant comprehension…

@Yanny:

Name one culture that developed an Athiestic Culture from the get-go. Name one culture who didn’t develope a Religion.

You can be atheist and religious; by exemple the buddhist. But well… without any religion or believe in mythology; none, none that i know anyway… so ?

Scientific Law - Something cannot come from nothing.

False. Study just a little quantum physic… you won,t need to go very deep into it to see how wrong you are. Even if it was true… there is not a single reason to believe it could be a form of intelligence…

Where did the first “thing” come from anyway? All that matter had to come from SOMEWHERE.

No… but even if Yes, it does not mean it is a god, an intelligence. You must understand that we are very weak, we are not very close to any objectivity, most of the time we use our legendary short vision to understand an object. When the first man look at the rain, they said it was the tear of a god, because it was for them the only way to understand sometime exterior; by passing by themself to understand. Same thing goes for the universe, for order et cetera… When something is ordered, “it must come from intelligence”, this is all non-sence, a short vision base on ourself as the ultime model to understand anything. You look how in history people try to find explanation based on the model of humanity, the sun was carried out by a god, the moon was the eye of a god, humans were created by human-like god (polytheis, & monotheism).

Fin

False. Study just a little quantum physic… you won,t need to go very deep into it to see how wrong you are. Even if it was true… there is not a single reason to believe it could be a form of intelligence…

To help clearify what FinsterniS is trying to say, I will give you an example of quantum mechanics of something from “nothing.”
In quantum electrodynamics you can have subatomic particles (electron, positron, and photon) that can come into existence through a vacuum fluctuation. They exist for a brief time, and then annihilate each other, leaving no trace behind, which would actually violate energy conservation (is this possible?). These particles have a beginning in time, but they have no cause because vacuum fluctuations are purely random events. In fact there have been many theories that our universe is actually one such vacuum fluctuation, though I have to read into this more.

At any point, what Yanny is talking about is more on the grounds of the Creationist trying to use some sort of pseudologic with the Information Theory* claim, which is I often find a rather unsubstantiated claim (with no real scientific proof) made by creationist.

• = Information theory states that “information” never arises out of randomness or chance events. Our human experience verifies this every day. The creationist ask, how can the origin of the tremendous increase in information from simple organisms up to man be accounted for? Information is always introduced from the outside. It is impossible for natural processes to produce their own actual information, or meaning, which is what evolutionists claim has happened. Random typing might produce the string “dog”, but it only means something to an intelligent observer who has applied a definition to this sequence of letters. The generation of information always requires intelligence, yet evolution claims that no intelligence was involved in the ultimate formation of a human being whose many systems contain vast amounts of information.

That is pretty much what FinsterniS is trying to say when he mentioned,
“When something is ordered, ‘it must come from intelligence,’.”

@Yanny:

Name one culture that developed an Athiestic Culture from the get-go. Name one culture who didn’t develope a Religion.

None, of course.
Atheism needs knowledge. Theism and religions do not.
No culture developed with an already high standard of knowledge, the gain of knowledge often is combined with the rise of cultures.
Therefore, your question has to be answered negative.
A positive answer would be more of a proof for a “god”, as this culture must have received a lot of knowledge instantanously, ad hoc … that would be a more of a miracle.

Scientific Law - Something cannot come from nothing.

Nonsense.
See above on what TG wrote on Quantum Field Theory. And as well:
Our universe itself came from nothing, even “more nothing than nothing”: it created space and time out of “more nothing”=“not even space and time”.

Where did the first “thing” come from anyway? All that matter had to come from SOMEWHERE.

Why? It had to come from somewhere for the same reason that you need a god :)
Where did the universe come from when there was no space to come from? What was before the universe when there was no time before it?

What sense does it make, to use concepts/attributes that do not (in our example: did not) exist to describe and explain something?

There was no universe before the start of the universe!

Sounds trivial, but it seems like most creationists/theists like to ignore or do not understand that fact !

@F_alk:

@Yanny:

Name one culture that developed an Athiestic Culture from the get-go. Name one culture who didn’t develope a Religion.

None, of course.
Atheism needs knowledge. Theism and religions do not.

F_alk: of course this derives from the assumption that every culture/person ignorantly wondered “where did these pretty lights and me come from - must be God!” Atheism - a belief that there is no God - requires that you do not have any knowledge of a God, whereas in this day and age, i believe that theism may (and many times does) require the knowledge of a God - many times a personal one. I don’t think that it’s anything special to not believe in something, or to believe in the absense of something when it is not demonstrated to us that it exist (i.e. a non-belief in the tooth fairy requires knowledge???). To believe in something contrary to a rational discourse (i still do not believe for a moment that atheism is more rational than agnosticism) requires a knowledge that those supporting the “rational point of view” do not have.
FinsterniS, in another post, you accuse me (and other theists) of not having the will to discern that there is no God. This of course is derived from your feeling that any relationship that i have with said being comes from that little bit of psychosis all of us have in our heads that manifests when we consider ourselves to be communicating with this being - that is, the psychsis that some people have brilliantly, in a flash of reasoning and intelligence, neutralized. Of course you have no knowledge of my “faith journey”. You do not know the amount of time i’ve spent pondering these issues, or how closely i’ve teetered on the edge.

@cystic:

@F_alk:

@Yanny:

Name one culture that developed an Athiestic Culture from the get-go. Name one culture who didn’t develope a Religion.

None, of course.
Atheism needs knowledge. Theism and religions do not.

F_alk: of course this derives from the assumption that every culture/person ignorantly wondered “where did these pretty lights and me come from - must be God!” Atheism - a belief that there is no God - requires that you do not have any knowledge of a God, whereas in this day and age, i believe that theism may …

You are right. I take my position from that assumption.
Your counterargument is more or less uselss, as you state it’s valid in our times. We on the other hand were talking about the history of cultures. That is a few 1000 years back :)

I don’t think that it’s anything special to not believe in something, or to believe in the absense of something when it is not demonstrated to us that it exist (i.e. a non-belief in the tooth fairy requires knowledge???). To believe in something contrary to a rational discourse (i still do not believe for a moment that atheism is more rational than agnosticism) requires a knowledge that those supporting the “rational point of view” do not have.

I think it would be very special for anyone not to try and “explain” phenomena that he/she sees. If you have a scientific background and knowledge, you may find explanations there. If you don’t have that, you start looking around…. you have seen (as a kid) that your parents could do “amazing” feats, and were nearly “almighty”… why not assume that the parents of all parents’ parents …etc … could do even more amazing feats, like let it rain, let their spirits watch over me and my family, just like they did when they were alive …

You assume a situation of today, with a huge knowledge about how nature works. This then offers the question: intelligent design, or luck/antropic principle. But for people 3000 years ago, what was the source and reason for the annual flooding of the nile, the flooding that let them grow crops and survive, live… it was a life-giving event! And therefore, as it was supporting them, it clearly had a purpose (the pupose of supporting them), which means it must have been “caused”, by something “superior, intelligent and caring”…
i bet they would have called it god.

Pretty much the same argument for the intelligent design, isn’t it?

There was no universe before the start of the universe!

Sounds trivial, but it seems like most creationists/theists like to ignore or do not understand that fact !

No, I believe there was. Of course we just dealing with our universe, the one we know of.

FinsterniS, in another post, you accuse me (and other theists) of not having the will to discern that there is no God. This of course is derived from your feeling that any relationship that i have with said being comes from that little bit of psychosis all of us have in our heads that manifests when we consider ourselves to be communicating with this being - that is, the psychsis that some people have brilliantly, in a flash of reasoning and intelligence, neutralized. Of course you have no knowledge of my “faith journey”. You do not know the amount of time i’ve spent pondering these issues, or how closely i’ve teetered on the edge.

As I said before, we really need one, well ordered debate between the two sides.

I don’t know TG. Do you think that’s necessary? If there was to be further debate, it would need to be both organized and orderly, with a specific question blah blah blah.
My problem with actually entering a debate is my lack of facility with the process etc. I’ve had no philosophy training (aside from medical ethics), no religious study (aside from reading the bible and a bit of history on my own time - and even that’s remarkably poor), and i have no experience with debating at all.
I think that irrespective of my knowledge (limited tho’ it might be), my thoughts and feelings (which i do not believe would be appropriate in a “debate setting” yet contribute greatly to my beliefs and arguments) and my ability to reason and scientific acumen that FinsterniS would likely take me to the cleaners. Someone with more training/knowledge than me would have to be involved in a formal debate.
(also i follow the philosophy of Hans Denk - a central Germany early anabaptist)

I don’t know TG. Do you think that’s necessary? If there was to be further debate, it would need to be both organized and orderly, with a specific question blah blah blah.

Nonsense. You are by far one of the most intelligent Canadians I know, and that’s saying a lot. And I think it is necessary. All this time, the whole religion issue has gone to who knows where (we’re even talking about religion in a Topic Entitled “Should we attack Iraq”) and I think this would give us the perfect to chance to clear the battlefield and start off fresh.

My problem with actually entering a debate is my lack of facility with the process etc. I’ve had no philosophy training (aside from medical ethics), no religious study (aside from reading the bible and a bit of history on my own time - and even that’s remarkably poor), and i have no experience with debating at all.

Debating isn’t that hard. I could show you some previous debates if you like. Logic is not that hard and neither is philosophy (at least in the contents of this discussion). However, what I think you do need is a good understand of science - of all types.

I think that irrespective of my knowledge (limited tho’ it might be), my thoughts and feelings (which i do not believe would be appropriate in a “debate setting” yet contribute greatly to my beliefs and arguments) and my ability to reason and scientific acumen that FinsterniS would likely take me to the cleaners. Someone with more training/knowledge than me would have to be involved in a formal debate.

The problem is that people tend to let emotion interfere too much in a discussion.

@cystic:

I don’t know TG. Do you think that’s necessary?

Well… maybe not… but anyway i’ll enter in it if it was to happen :)

But i am not sure this is the right place…

If there was to be further debate, it would need to be both organized and orderly, with a specific question blah blah blah.

THAT would be great… i don’t know how much time i and falk were repeating the same thing… Not that i want to win an argument ad nauseum but we never get any counter argument… YB (or anyone else) say something, we give a counter argument, silence… then the same basic argument came up again !

My problem with actually entering a debate is my lack of facility with the process etc. I’ve had no philosophy training (aside from medical ethics), no religious study (aside from reading the bible and a bit of history on my own time - and even that’s remarkably poor), and i have no experience with debating at all.

Well i have no training in philosophy, i just get a lot of reading about the subject when my faith was getting weak.

About feeling; everyone feel they are right, you just need argument, rational or empirical, to make a solid thesis, otherwise everything would be only subjective.

@FinsterniS:

Well i have no training in philosophy, i just get a lot of reading about the subject when my faith was getting weak.

About feeling; everyone feel they are right, you just need argument, rational or empirical, to make a solid thesis, otherwise everything would be only subjective.

but that is how i experience the world.
i interpret what i see, feel, think, hear, etc. with a very subjective tilt. Certainly i am a scientist, trained in critical thinking and analysis - particularly where the material world is concerned, but i am, after all, a romantic, a feeler of feelings, a wannabe mystic (a la Hans Denk). My heart shakes to certain kinds of music, my stomach plummets to the tone in my girlfriend’s voice, my fascination with physiology is readily distracted by my interpretation of a conversation i had earlier in the day.
A discussion based on rational (i hesitate to say empirical, for is that not also subjective to our interpretation of the world?) objective knowledge leaves out far too much of who i am and what i know.
I’m sure a computer program might well be designed to settle this kind of a debate tho’.

A discussion based on rational (i hesitate to say empirical, for is that not also subjective to our interpretation of the world?) objective knowledge leaves out far too much of who i am and what i know.

I still cannot understand how you can claim god exist. Sure every christian feel and interpret the “relation” they have with god, but with a little objectivy it all fall down.

I’m sure a computer program might well be designed to settle this kind of a debate tho’.

It need to much jugement, information and sometime creative logic. Anyway… not only theist use fallacious argument; they do not agree on the basis. I am sure you know some young earth creationist; they use fallacious argument, ignore lots of facts and do not agree on the basis of thermodynamic, very complicated to speak with them…

Fin

Yanny - You are correct. I’ll certainly agree that anything is possible. However, I would hope the rest of the universe didn’t handle things as humans do. Concepts of the divine are clearly a human phenomenon. We need to control, to know, to have purpose above life itself. The “possible” reality is that these concepts are irrelevant in the universe and human understanding of it is horribly inaccurate…

THAT would be great… i don’t know how much time i and falk were repeating the same thing… Not that i want to win an argument ad nauseum but we never get any counter argument… YB (or anyone else) say something, we give a counter argument, silence… then the same basic argument came up again !

Yeah, I see this happen a lot. That is why it would be nice that everything would be ordered and concise to prevent this from happening.

A discussion based on rational (i hesitate to say empirical, for is that not also subjective to our interpretation of the world?) objective knowledge leaves out far too much of who i am and what i know.

CC, then start reading! :) I’m sure creationist have a logical argument somewhere. That will be key to your success.

@TG:

A discussion based on rational (i hesitate to say empirical, for is that not also subjective to our interpretation of the world?) objective knowledge leaves out far too much of who i am and what i know.

CC, then start reading! :) I’m sure creationist have a logical argument somewhere. That will be key to your success.

unfortunately these forums are the closest things i have to recreational reading. I really need to hone up on my “harrison’s internal medicine” “Cecil’s essentials of medicine”, and a dozen other texts, as well as about 30-40 hours of anatomy before i do any more reading (besides, i think i’ve spewed much of the relevent current thinking on creationism in previous posts)