Because we can’t help but make choices in those areas. Do we follow one of the world’s established religions, or do we live our lives without religious considerations? How do we decide what’s right and what’s wrong? How do we know the things we know? What is the best way to govern a country?
These questions are hard to escape. We can ignore politics, but politics doesn’t ignore us. We have to decide what is right to do. We claim to know certain things. I once say a bumper sticker that said “Sleep in on Sunday and Save Ten Percent.” Should we do that, or do we live in accordance with the teachings of a religion? Not to decide, is to decide. Our actions speak for us, even when our words do not.
233 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 233 of 233"I even complimented you on actually - admittedly, with some prodding - calling Linton out. Seems to have shut him up too, so hey, bonus."
In you wildest dreams, cheapchops.
I simply bide my time until there is something meriting a response, Crude.
Crude u r still not getting it, still reading into, rather than reading, what I wrote above.
People can read for themselves 2 decide tired of repetition.
In the words of a famous genius, i'm unsubscribing. :P
No. Crude does not get it. But I am quite happy to read the manner he misconstrues what others have written in order that his own responses appear cogent and relevant to himself. This is a strategy practiced over millennia in Apologetics, the companion operating manual for the arcane bible.
It seems when you have Apologetics, why bother with philosophy?
I thought I'd come back to give an example of what I mean when I said:
From my experience there is either scientifically informed philosophy or there is scientifically uninformed philosophy.
Scientifically uninformed philosophy is a crock, and that's my philosophy. But then, I know something about philosophy to say this.
William Lane Craig is a prime example of this when it comes to defending the inner witness of the Spirit.
See here.
No, I have not read any of the comments here since my last one.
Now if I'm as hairbrained as some of you think then deal with what I wrote. Deall especially with the science of religious beliefs mentioned at the very end which provides a solid defeater to Craig's view as a natural explanation.
Cheers.
John Loftus,
From your blog:
What then do you say to the argument that these claims are subject to the charge of delusion, and as such, no evidence at all even to someone who claims to have had one?
The example is often given of a person who knows he is innocent of a crime but the evidence is stacked against him. He can't let people experience his subjective experience, and he can't produce any evidence for his innocence even though he knows that he didn't do it. He's stuck, and can't prove it, but nonetheless he should not give up his belief that he is innocent of the crime.
How is it possible for a reasonable faith to be based upon a subjective experience?
Same answer as above. Also see Jodi Foster in Contact, and I'm sure you could come up with alternative scenarios. While the person is screwed in respect to convincing OTHERS, his personal experience can and often does override external evidence.
Crude wrote:
"When you're put in the position of implying that abusing and misrepresenting science either only happens, or is only worth commenting about, when it takes place at the first-order science level...."
Nobody ever said or implied that. I guess I'm late to this thread, which seems to have spiraled into junk by now :(
In response to the OP: science without philosophy is empty, philosophy without science is blind.
Papalinton wrote:
"bible.
It seems when you have Apologetics, why bother with philosophy?"
To reach new heights of sophistry, of course.
I am a theist (of a fairly anemic sort, verging on Spinoza), but 'academic apologetics' is an oxymoron. If you are signing statements at Bob Jones saying you will adhere literally to scripture, you are not a philosopher. You are a confabulator.
Catholic thinkers are much more sophisticated than the apologists we read about here.
Zach
"Catholic thinkers are much more sophisticated than the apologists we read about here."
If, by 'sophisticated', you mean catholics have been at it for much longer than the protestant variety. Apart from that insubstantial feature, they are but cut from the same piece of fabric.
Papa you and crude have trouble understanding obvious and important distinctions, in both cases it ruins the flow of conversation as people have to slow down to explain things to you.
You both probably say all black people look alike.
Zach
"Papa you and crude have trouble understanding obvious and important distinctions, in both cases it ruins the flow of conversation as people have to slow down to explain things to you."
Not as anaemic as you make out, Zach. But nonetheless caught in the web of superstitious mysticism. And the flow of conversation slows considerably only when one has to continually demonstrate that the obvious and important distinctions are a product of millennia of Apologetics. Every church decision, every church doctrine, every element of dogma about what is god's truth[?] is decided and determined by committee, and then instantly supernaturalized and sacralized into 'god's word'. If that is 'sophisticated', knock yourself out. But there is no loss of understanding and appreciation on the part of this little duck about the nonsense of an industry capitalizing on people's existential fear s and anxieties trotted out as 'gospel'.
PapaL: our views are empirically indistinguishable, except I have a foundation for morality, mind, and mathematics. You've got fickle moral conventions (nothing would be wrong with killing grandmothers if everyone thought it was OK), you have no idea how mind fits into nature (your "brains" have little electrical pulses, so does my flashlight, but it isn't conscious), and for you mathematical truths are completely inexplicable.
While I am fine with evolution, and all science, my theism gives me a rational closure that atheism will never have. Atheism gives you gaping mysteries that nobody has a clue how to solve. The only mystery for me is how anyone could see the problems, but still subscribe.
Everything makes sense in light of theism, and many things make no sense in light of theism.
Turn on your rational faculties, Papa.
" ... our views are empirically indistinguishable, except I have a foundation for morality, mind, and mathematics. You've got fickle moral conventions (nothing would be wrong with killing grandmothers if everyone thought it was OK), you have no idea how mind fits into nature (your "brains" have little electrical pulses, so does my flashlight, but it isn't conscious), and for you mathematical truths are completely inexplicable."
What utter nonsense, Zach. In fact survey after survey conducted has demonstrated without exception that atheists possess a higher moral standing than theists. Clearly you have not maintained any form of professional or personal reading relating to brain and consciousness research. Thirdly, my mathematics is doing just fine. :o)
If your foundation for morality is based on the bible, then you will appreciate this guide to christian morality, as they are god commanded:
(Incidentally, which of these can you confirm are the bases of your god-given moral compass, point form acceptable)
GE 4:2-8 God's arbitrary preference of Abel's offering to that of Cain's provokes Cain to commit the first biblically recorded murder and kill his brother Abel.
GE 34:13-29 The Israelites kill Hamor, his son, and all the men of their village, taking as plunder their wealth, cattle, wives and children.
GE 6:11-17, 7:11-24 God is unhappy with the wickedness of man and decides to do something about it. He kills every living thing on the face of the earth other than Noah's family and thereby makes himself the greatest mass murderer in history.
GE 19:26 God personally sees to it that Lot's wife is turned to a pillar of salt (for having looked behind her while fleeing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah).
GE 38:9 "... whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked ..., so the Lord put him to death."
EX 7:1, 14, 9:14-16, 10:1-2, 11:7 The purpose of the devastation that God brings to the Egyptians is as follows: to show that he is Lord; to show that there is none like him in all the earth; to show his great power; to cause his name to be declared throughout the earth; to give the Israelites something to talk about with their children; to show that he makes a distinction between Israel and Egypt.
EX 9:22-25 A plague of hail from the Lord strikes down everything in the fields of Egypt both man and beast except in Goshen where the Israelites reside.
EX 12:29 The Lord kills all the first-born in the land of Egypt.
Cont.
[CONT]
EX 17:13 With the Lord's approval, Joshua mows down Amalek and his people.
EX 21:20-21 With the Lord's approval, a slave may be beaten to death with no punishment for the perpetrator as long as the slave doesn't die too quickly.
EX 32:27 "Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.
EX 32:27-29 With the Lord's approval, the Israelites slay 3000 men.
LE 26:7-8 The Lord promises the Israelites that, if they are obedient, their enemies will "fall before your sword."
LE 26:22 "I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children."
LE 26:29, DT 28:53, JE 19:9, EZ 5:8-10 As a punishment, the Lord will cause people to eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters and fathers and friends.
LE 27:29 Human sacrifice is condoned. (Note: An example is given in JG 11:30-39)
NU 11:33 The Lord smites the people with a great plague.
NU 15:32-36 A Sabbath breaker (who had gathered sticks for a fire) is stoned to death at the Lord's command.
NU 16:27-33 The Lord causes the earth to open and swallow up the men and their households (including wives and children) because the men had been rebellious.
NU 16:35 A fire from the Lord consumes 250 men.
NU 16:49 A plague from the Lord kills 14,700 people.
NU 21:6 Fiery serpents, sent by the Lord, kill many Israelites.
NU 21:35 With the Lord's approval, the Israelites slay Og "... and his sons and all his people, until there was not one survivor left ...."
NU 25:4 (KJV) "And the Lord said unto Moses, take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun ...."
NU 25:9 24,000 people die in a plague from the Lord.
NU 31:17-18 Moses, following the Lord's command, orders the Israelites to kill all the Midianite male children and "... every woman who has known man ...." (Note: How would it be determined which women had known men? One can only speculate.)
NU 31:31-40 32,000 virgins are taken by the Israelites as booty. Thirty-two are set aside (to be sacrificed?) as a tribute for the Lord.
DT 7:2 The Lord commands the Israelites to "utterly destroy" and shown "no mercy" to those whom he gives them for defeat.
DT 20:13-14 "When the Lord delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the males .... As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves."
DT 20:16 "In the cities of the nations the Lord is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes."
DT 28:53 "You will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you."
JS 6:21-27 With the Lord's approval, Joshua destroys the city of Jericho men, women, and children with the edge of the sword.
JS 8:22-25 With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly smites the people of Ai, killing 12,000 men and women, so that there were none who escaped.
JS 10:10-27 With the help of the Lord, Joshua utterly destroys the Gibeonites.
JS 10:28 With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the people of Makkedah.
JS 10:30 With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the Libnahites.
JS 10:32-33 With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the people of Lachish.
JS 10:34-35 With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the Eglonites.
JS 10:36-37 With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the Hebronites.
JS 10:38-39 With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the Debirites.
JS 10:40 (A summary statement.) "So Joshua defeated the whole land ...; he left none remaining, but destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded."
cont
[CONT]
JS 11:6 The Lord orders horses to be hamstrung. (Exceedingly cruel.)
JS 11:8-15 "And the lord gave them into the hand of Israel, ...utterly destroying them; there was none left that breathed ...."
JS 11:20 "For it was the Lord's doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be utterly destroyed, and should receive no mercy but be exterminated, as the Lord commanded Moses."
JS 11:21-23 Joshua utterly destroys the Anakim.
JG 1:6 With the Lord's approval, Judah pursues Adoni-bezek, catches him, and cuts off his thumbs and big toes.
JG 1:8 With the Lord's approval, Judah smites Jerusalem.
JG 1:17 With the Lord's approval, Judah and Simeon utterly destroy the Canaanites who inhabited Zephath.
he died."
JG 11:29-39 Jepthah sacrifices his beloved daughter, his only child, according to a vow he has made with the Lord.
JG 14:19 The Spirit of the Lord comes upon a man and causes him to slay thirty men.
JG 15:15 Samson slays 1000 men with the jawbone of an ass.
JG 16:21 The Philistines gouge out Samson's eyes.
JG 16:27-30 Samson, with the help of the Lord, pulls down the pillars of the Philistine house and causes his own death and that of 3000 other men and women.
JG 18:27 The Danites slay the quiet and unsuspecting people of Laish.
JG 19:22-29 A group of sexual depraved men beat on the door of an old man's house demanding that he turn over to them a male house guest. Instead, the old man offers his virgin daughter and his guest's concubine (or wife): "Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do with them what seems good to you; but against this man do not do so vile a thing." The man's concubine is ravished and dies. The man then cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends one piece to each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
JG 20:43-48 The Israelites smite 25,000+ "men of valor" from amongst the Benjamites, "men and beasts and all that they found," and set their towns on fire.
JG 21:10-12 "... Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword and; also the women and little ones.... every male and every woman that has lain with a male you shall utterly destroy." They do so and find four hundred young virgins whom they bring back for their own use.
1SA 5:6-9 The Lord afflicts the Philistines with tumors in their "secret parts," presumably for having stolen the Ark.
1SA 6:19 God kills seventy men (or so) for looking into the Ark (at him?). (Note: The early Israelites apparently thought the Ark to be God's abode.)
1SA 11:11 With the Lord's blessing, Saul and his men cut down the Ammonites.
1SA 15:3, 7-8 "This is what the Lord says: Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass ....' And Saul ... utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword."
1SA 15:33 "Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord ...."
1SA 18:7 The women sing as they make merry: "Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands."
2SA 4:12 David has Rechan and Baanah killed, their hands and feet cut off, and their bodies hanged by the pool at Hebron.
2SA 5:25 "And David did as the Lord commanded him, and smote the Philistines ...."
2SA 6:2-23 Because she rebuked him for having exposed himself, Michal (David's wife) was barren throughout her life.
2SA 8:1-18 (A listing of some of David's murderous conquests.)
2SA 8:4 David hamstrung all but a few of the horses.
cont
[CONT]
2SA 8:5 David slew 22,000 Syrians.
2SA 8:6, 14 "The Lord gave victory to David wherever he went."
2SA 8:13 David slew 18,000 Edomites in the valley of salt and made the rest slaves.
2SA 10:18 David slew 47,000+ Syrians.
2SA 12:1, 19 The Lord strikes David's child dead for the sin that David has committed.
2SA 24:15 The Lord sends a pestilence on Israel that kills 70,000 men.
1KI 13:15-24 A man is killed by a lion for eating bread and drinking water in a place where the Lord had previously told him not to. This is in spite of the fact that the man had subsequently been lied to by a prophet who told the man that an angel of the Lord said that it would be alright to eat and drink there.
1KI 20:29-30 The Israelites smite 100,000 Syrian soldiers in one day. A wall falls on 27,000 remaining Syrians.
2KI 1:10-12 Fire from heaven comes down and consumes fifty men.
2KI 2:23-24 Forty-two children are mauled and killed, presumably according to the will of God, for having jeered at a man of God.
2KI 6:18-19 The Lord answers Elisha's prayer and strikes the Syrians with blindness. Elisha tricks the blind Syrians and leads them to Samaria.
2KI 10:17 "And when he came to Samaria, he slew all that remained to Ahab in Samaria, till he had wiped them out, according to the word of the Lord ...."
2KI 15:3-5 Even though he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, the Lord smites Azariah with leprosy for not having removed the "high places."
2KI 15:16 Menahem ripped open all the women who were pregnant.
2KI 19:35 An angel of the Lord kills 185,000 men.
PS 137:9 Happy will be the man who dashes your little ones against the stones.
PS 144:1 God is praised as the one who trains hands for war and fingers for battle.
IS 13:15 "Everyone who is captured will be thrust through; all who are caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their ... wives will be ravished."
IS 13:18 "Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children."
IS 14:21-22 "Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers."
IS 49:26 The Lord will cause the oppressors of the Israelite's to eat their own flesh and to become drunk on their own blood as with wine.
JE 16:4 "They shall die grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their carcasses shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth."
LA 4:9-10 "Those slain by the sword are better off than those who die of famine; racked with hunger, they waste away for lack of food. ... pitiful women have cooked their own children, who became their food ..."
EZ 6:12-13 The Lord says: "... they will fall by the sword, famine and plague. He that is far away will die of the plague, and he that is near will fall by the sword, and he that survives and is spared will die of famine. So will I spend my wrath upon them. And they will know I am the Lord, when the people lie slain among their idols around their altars, on every high hill and on all the mountaintops, under every spreading tree and every leafy oak ...."
EZ 9:4-6 The Lord commands: "... slay old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women ...."
EZ 20:26 In order that he might horrify them, the Lord allowed the Israelites to defile themselves through, amongst other things, the sacrifice of their first-born children.
cont.
[CONT}
EZ 21:3-4 The Lord says that he will cut off both the righteous and the wicked that his sword shall go against all flesh.
EZ 23:25, 47 God is going to slay the sons and daughters of those who were whores.
EZ 23:34 "You shall ... pluck out your hair, and tear your breasts."
HO 13:16 "They shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up."
MI 3:2-3 "... who pluck off their skin ..., and their flesh from off their bones; Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron."
MT 3:12, 8:12, 10:21, 13:30, 42, 22:13, 24:51, 25:30, LK 13:28, JN 5:24 Some will spend eternity burning in Hell. There will be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.
MT 10:21 "... the brother shall deliver up his brother to death, and the father his child, ... children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death."
MT 10:35-36 "For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law a man's enemies will be the members of his own family."
MT 11:21-24 Jesus curses [the inhabitants of] three cities who were not sufficiently impressed with his great works.
Let's face it, Zach. The christian mythos is a fraud of immeasurable proportions. If your morality accords with those of your christian god, then your morality is nothing but blind, idiotic, delusional and unwise.
Other relevant descriptors germane to the basis of your morality that come easily to mind; brainless, mindless, thoughtless, unintelligent; imprudent, ill-advised, ill-considered, half-baked, foolhardy; absurd, senseless, pointless, nonsensical, inane, fatuous, ridiculous; informal dumb, dim, dimwitted, halfwitted, dopey, hare-brained, pea-brained, wooden-headed, thickheaded, dumb-ass.
These are direct from the bible, some say inerrant, most say god-breathed. They are not my words. They are the embodiment of your god. They are his commands. Where are the benevolent, just, and the gentle?
Papa: I said theism, not the Old Testament, provides a foundation for morality.
Show me where science provides more than mere correlations between brain states and mental states. The brain is just a cell phone: it doesn't generate the content, it just transmits it.
Paplinton,
What utter nonsense, Zach. In fact survey after survey conducted has demonstrated without exception that atheists possess a higher moral standing than theists.
Good grief. You atheists are really incapable of understanding this argument, aren't you? The philosophically interesting question is: "Can naturalists account for objective morality consistently with their worldview?"
It is NOT: "Atheists need to believe in God to be moral, but they don't, so therefore they are not moral."
Martin nailed it. It's a question of who has a rational foundation for moral behavior, not who is more or less moral.
"The philosophically interesting question is: "Can naturalists account for objective morality consistently with their worldview?""
Zach and Martin trotting that old scurrilous trope again about objective morality, 'divine command theory', atheism= nilhilism. What a lot of theistic crock.
C'mon boys, that is after all the level at which your thinking has stultified, you must must come up with a better one liner than, 'You can only be good if you believe in god'. Tripe of the jejune. The notion that naturalism can’t supply a foundational, binding reason why we must obey obligatory moral commandments, and why any particular set of commandments should hold force, is near-sighted.
If there is any disadvantage to naturalism discovering no god or governing intention in reality, when it comes to justifying our moral intuitions to theists, it is wholly and solely rhetorical. Because billions and billions of people on this planet have absolutely no interest in the christian god, a phantasm at best is the usual reaction, it doesn't stop them from being good, moral and ethical. They may have differing interpretations to ours, which is fully a cultural derivative, but nonetheless these people live moral and good lives, not only without, but despite the christian god.
The old Euthyphro dilemma still remains intact despite 2,000 years of obfuscatory christian apologetical attempts to resolve the conundrum in any meaningful way. There is no ultimate, external source of moral authority which makes a particular set of moral rules binding upon us. Only fools would stick to such a nonsense idea.
That we can be good without belief in God is an empirical fact; even most reasonable theists acknowledge that atheists can be moral exemplars. So clearly people can be bound by moral laws whether or not they are thought to have external back up. Indeed, the godism backup is unnecessary.
Scientific investigation [you should really keep, boys], on moral intuitions and altruistic behavior suggests that they played, and continue to play, a key role in the formation of stable groups and communities within which individuals can survive and reproduce. Being good – altruistic, kind, generous, fair, protective – was therefore adaptive and naturally selected, which means most of us are innately inclined to act ethically (You might wish to read Steven Pinker’s recent New York Times Magazine article on the natural basis for morality; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html ).
C'mon, boys, time to put aside childish things, even thoughts.
That we can be good without belief in God is an empirical fact
Zach, check this out... Even after I EXPLICITLY spelled out what the question is (NOT that belief in God is required by morality), Paplinton still can't understand and he just repeats exactly the same thing.
It's incredible. It's like he's physically incapable of understanding the argument.
It's literally pointless to speak with someone whose brain is so clogged up with hate that he can't even read the words that I write.
Ah well...
"Zach, check this out... Even after I EXPLICITLY spelled out what the question is (NOT that belief in God is required by morality), Paplinton still can't understand and he just repeats exactly the same thing.
Martin you may obfuscate, lie for jesus, contort and twist, convolute and contrive all you want, but imagining, nay wishing, that theism be the font of all morality, not just any religion, but christian theism particularly, smacks of nothing other than cheap apologetics, hubris and delusion. A legend in its own mind.
The last superstition of the human mind is the superstition that theism in itself is a good thing.
Sheesh!
Martin
""Can naturalists account for objective morality consistently with their worldview?""
The answer, Of Course! Any reasonable and lucid thinker knows that naturalists can account for objective morality, just not your kind of imagined 'objective morality'.
As history has shown christians having been defeated over slavery, over the nonsense of a theistic cosmology for the universe, the discovery of epilepsy and schizophrenia rather than being possessed by the devil, with the fact of evolution, over homosexuality, so too, will the next big battle over who is the appropriate steward of 'morality', theism will be sent packing. Science is making huge inroads into shattering the illusion, and exposing the delusion, of religion being the exclusive societal custodian of morality.
Martin, chuck christianity; embrace humanity. Anyone who relies on interpretation of ancient texts and primitive philosophy as a basis for life, are simply becoming a laughing stock.
Humanism is our common heritage. The only true divinity is humanity.
If you wish to remain neanderthal, knock yourself out; it's your right. But don't peddle this superstitious nonsense as fact or proof.
Sheesh
Martin that is indeed odd...
Papalinton, divine command theory isn't the only theory out there.Goodness is just God's nature. X is good not because God commands it, but because it aligns with His nature, which is Good.
Still waiting for a refutation of my claim about minds being a huge stumbling block for materialists.
Pinker article is not recent.
It is the old discredited sociobiological junk.
So if it were selectively advantageous to chop your young up and feed them to relatives, that would be what you are calling Good. Theists have a Higher Vision of morality than all that grubbing about in the mud.
Zach
"Still waiting for a refutation of my claim about minds being a huge stumbling block for materialists".
No stumbling block, I'm afraid. Just another theistic invention. The distinction between materialists and theists, especially christian theists, is the cut-off point at which reality becomes delusion. To know the difference between scientifically informed philosophy and scientifically uninformed philosophy, one must be anchored or grounded in the natural world. Grounding in the natural world allows the realist to travel far and wide and deep into one's imagination and creativity, to the very depths of their psyche but capable of returning to ground.
The theist travels the same route but is unable to return to ground, with mythos, mystery, mysticism, reality, naturalism; all swirling indistinguishably, indiscriminately, replete with malevolent spirits, devils, aliens, channelers, voices in the head, transubstantiation, gods angels. nephilim, seraphim, the witness of the inner spirit; eddying and circulating in a maze of supernaturalism and superstition.
So Papalinton you cannot cite a study that shows more than mere correlations between mental states and brain states, so just continue to cut and paste from a thesaurus.
I was wrong. You and Crude are not the same. He at least knew when he was beat.
"So Papalinton you cannot cite a study that shows more than mere correlations between mental states and brain states, so just continue to cut and paste from a thesaurus."
So Zach, what study do you cite that verifies the existence of superstitious supernaturalism. Is it a math book? Nooo. Is it a Science book? Nooo. Is it a History book? Nooo. Is it a book on Anthropology? Nooo. Is it a book on Sociology? Nooo. Is it a Physics book? Noo. Is it a book on Biology? Nooo. Well what book then?
The BIBLE.
If you are going to use a bible at least use this version: http://atheistsbiblecompanion.com/
or this version: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
Tu quoque is not a response.
No inconsistency in my argument, therefore no tu quoque. The only fallacy here is that of imagined morality being exclusively the domain of theism, and if one has no interest in theism then the atheist's worldview can only be nihilist. And we know that such a proposition is silly talk. To claim that one's morality comes from theism and then in the same breath to make the distinction that that doesn't involve god or the bible is a ridiculous proposition. Christian theism without a god and the bible front and centre is a stretch too far to be taken seriously.
My comments have not been an appeal to hypocrisy. They are simply a parodying, a soft lampooning of the nonsense about the origin of morality. Science is providing us a very different narrative that continues to make inroads into the nonsense propounded by theism.
It seems once again, christian theism is painting itself into a corner on yet another matter, its exclusive claim to morality, a claim that is now significantly diverging from the narrative which is emerging from scientific investigation.
One thing I can say for Papalinton he would be great to help someone punch up a book. My style is dry and somewhat boring, you would be great for spicing up things a little bit, making it more fun to read.
Email me papalinton if you are interested in getting a chapter from my ms on consciousness....
thomson
at
neuro...dot...
duke, dot, with the standard university suffix in the us.
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