quote:

ORIGINAL: hammurabi

So I agree the statement is impossible. It's an impossibility of having a cognitive statement predicating existence to a thing which is God in a wholly meaningful way. But the atheist movement has other grounds for saying that God does not exist, most of which have to do with a logic of induction and inference, not deduction (i.e., from absolutely true axioms).

quote:

I will not immediately reject eyewitness testimony. It is one of the less preferable forms of evidence, but still a valid one. It becomes a problem for me to believe something someone says from an eye-witness point of view when they're tying their observation directly to an attempt to persuade people of something. If someone says to me "This is what I have seen..." I am more likely believe them than if they say "This is what I have seen, and if you don't believe me you face eternity in a flaming pit." (Yes, I know that's a poor approximation of the NT, but it's fair as far as hyperbolic statements go.) This is because it's not simply a record of events, it's an active interpretation at the same time. It's the (prepare for a horrid analogy) difference between, "Dave was wearing glasses." and "Dave was wearing ugly glasses, you shouldn't hang out with someone with such bad fashion taste."
I know that the books of the Bible differ in their approach, and I really should attempt to mentally separate them, but it's been a bit ingrained via culture and church into me to treat it as a synthetic whole.

quote:

If I were to always follow my own rules, this would be true. However, I do not. I am a naturally trusting person. Hammurabi touched on this when he was talking about accepting unique events. I don't question when someone relates a commonplace event. I will also not generally challenge someone when they purport a unique event. However, when someone purports a unique event as an attempt to persuade me of something, I require quite a bit of substantiation of this claim before I'll accept the persuasion.

quote:

True, religion was pretty much omni-prevalent at the time. In this case I would consider "secular" to be things not written by a Christian. A note on the eclipse by someone who worshiped the Roman pantheon, and was claiming it was the work of Zeus, doing battle with Apollo, or something of that nature. A claim that Pluto had let the dead wander into Jerusalem. Etc...

quote:

Not the whole truth, not necessarily always an objective truth. By truth, I mean the most accurate approximation of reality that I have yet come across. If I believe that I had come across a more accurate description of reality, the old belief would be discarded in favor of the new one.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud

You didn’t really answer the question. The truths that you believe you have, what is the basis of such truth?

quote:

Jhud: Well, there is quite a difference between attributing an eclipse, which has regularly been witnessed for the last 2000 years, to a particular god or gods, and the resurrection of Christ, which seems rather obviously miraculous and unique, whomever one attributes it to. Witnessing such an event would be unlikely to leave one indifferent.

quote:

MusicianDad: Dude, all this agreement is making me question my own beliefs.

Seriously though, I can see how they'd feel the need for other grounds. Unfortunately for them, the cornerstone of their whole belief system is, as you said, an impossibility. When atheists argue about some fine point of their faith, they remind me of a home builder showing off the fancy custom cabinetry in a house with no foundation, build directly on the dirt. I could care less about the hand rubbed cherry, the whole thing is going to fall down with the first big rain!

quote:

ORIGINAL: hammurabi

[Don't worry. You're just taking the same postmodern-deconstructionist approach as I am.

quote:

ORIGINAL; hammurabi
I kid (kind of). Maybe the danger of this approach, thought, is, as Zizek once remarked, that you're forced into saying: "If one could say that this object is a water glass, and if in fact this water glass could be said to exist, and if in fact - then - we ignored all the problems of attributing merely the world "water" and "glass" to this object clearly not only a "water glass," then we could provisionally say that this "water glass" is on the table."

quote:

In a small way, yes. In the more meaningful sense of the word, no. I believe that the sun will 'rise' because it has done so in the past. I believe that the past is an accurate indicator of the future because it has proven to be. I believe that it will continue to be an accurate indicator for the relevant (my lifetime) future because there is nothing that I know that contradicts this belief. The sun could very well, due to some unknown cause, pop out of existence tomorrow. I do not believe this will happen because it has never happened before, and there is no indication that it will happen. My belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is founded in reality.

The comparison of my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow and my belief in god is a misleading one. I do not believe the sun exists, I know it does. There is no sane, truthful person that will disagree with me. I do not believe that the earth follows a predictable pattern around the sun, I know it does. There is no sane, truthful person with relevant knowledge of the solar system that will disagree with me. The only things that would cause the sun to not rise tomorrow would be new things introduced into that predictable system.
However, I have not seen god, heard god, felt god, etc... I do not believe in god because I have never seen anything to indicate he exists. I believe that the earth follows a pattern because I have seen and heard things to indicate that it exists. I can not prove, absolutely, that the sun will rise tomorrow, but I can give some pretty good reasons to believe that it will.

quote:

ORIGINAL: cognitivemagic

...nor do I think "science" is as rational as the scientists claim....

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud

It’s not just a matter of eyewitness testimony; I listed a number of different evidences there. Apart from empirical evidence, which would be fairly impossible for unique, isolated, historical events, every necessary evidence to make a reliable conclusion seems to be provided.

quote:

ORIGINAL: hellohellohi

Hello, Hello, Solitude! I have an honest and earnest question for you, but not in the sense of a challenge, I have an inquiry! Let's say I'm an atheist (and I may be, you never know!!) what do I do with myself? GRANTED, you don't know me, and I'm not all that interested in giving you my dry biography... except for this information, I often am at a loss with what to do with my life! NOW, I know the Christian posters would love to respond! But please let Real_Solitude if s/he is interested.

Okay, so maybe it IS a challenge! (Maybe it even sounds mean-spirited.?) (But actually I love atheists!) What should I do with my life?? How do I decide? Perhaps you can help me. I'm being earnest in that I would appreciate your advice. What does an ambivalent person do? Flip a coin? I would give you information on which to decide, but, as I said I am ambivalent! You may point out your own values and criteria that would lead you do X in my situation. But how do *I* decide? Thanks!!

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud
It’s not just a matter of eyewitness testimony; I listed a number of different evidences there. Apart from empirical evidence, which would be fairly impossible for unique, isolated, historical events, every necessary evidence to make a reliable conclusion seems to be provided.

quote:

True, religion was pretty much omni-prevalent at the time. In this case I would consider "secular" to be things not written by a Christian. A note on the eclipse by someone who worshiped the Roman pantheon, and was claiming it was the work of Zeus, doing battle with Apollo, or something of that nature. A claim that Pluto had let the dead wander into Jerusalem. Etc...

quote:

Not the whole truth, not necessarily always an objective truth. By truth, I mean the most accurate approximation of reality that I have yet come across. If I believe that I had come across a more accurate description of reality, the old belief would be discarded in favor of the new one.

quote:

ORIGINAL: cognitivemagic
But a point can be drawn from an "inference to the best explanation" type of argument in this way:

We do not and cannot predicate what the exact conditions of the early earth were like, or the even earlier beginning of the universe, by an appeal to direct or indirect observation. Of course, no sane person would argue that we could "directly" observe such conditions because we weren't there.

Furthermore, we cannot make an appeal to indirect observation of such conditions either, since such "conditions" would have to be identical with the present. But this contradicts the "evolutionary" notion of change and progress. Because the evolutionist sees change/progress in an ascending ladder of minimal complexity towards upwardly sophisticated complexity (perhaps maximally so). Therefore, the primitive earth and the primitive universe must have had a somewhat different configuration than it did now; otherwise, what's the use of even speaking of evolution, progress and change.p

quote:

Now here is what we have as a datum that we can observe directly and indirectly: human beings.

Human beings, besides being in possession of a mere physical body, are also in possession of qualities like love, logic/rationality, intentionality (being able to think of things or think about things; even non-existent things), ability to create, ability to act, ability to perceive beauty, ability to communicate, act as moral agents, etc. And these very qualities mark humankind apart from all other types of things within the material universe.

With this in view, let us ask whether theism or atheism can offer some sort of explanation for this creature called man. Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that neither theism nor atheism can dogmatically affirm what the conditions of the early earth and universe were like. Of course, the atheist will want to say that the universe, whatever it's primitive conditions, had no beginning. The theist will disagree. So let's set that debate aside and deal with evidence that is daily before us.

quote:

I propose dealing with "human beings" as a datum that, like other phenomena that we observe, we want/need to subsume under some explanatory umbrella (i.e. like the behavior of material objects subsumed under the umbrella of "gravity").

Human beings can think, will and act; indeed they are "personal" and "animate" vs. "impersonal" and "animate"/"impersonal" and "inanimate".

Question: which theory/hypothesis is better able to account for these unique features of humankind that I had mentioned above?
[...]
Therefore, the atheist would have us believe in alchemy, as well as the notion that water truly can rise above it's source....which is really the bottom line regarding "epiphenomenalism" and "supervenience" views of the mind!!!

quote:

I suppose you can argue that it just did, in fact, happen that way. Again, I already pointed out that we have no way of "knowing" what the universe/earth was like (even just 100 million years ago). How could we? Scientific instruments that "measure" the early earth/universe? They can only measure the present.

Besides, that argument would be a red herring to my point; which is that humans are categorically different then any kind of physical/material event or object in the known universe.

quote:

So you can take your pick:

The non-personal/non-rational/non-intentional (i.e. the universe) can produce the personal/rational/intentional (i.e. man qua volitional/intellectual/moral/creative).

Or

The personal/rational/intentional (i.e. God) can produce the personal/rational/intentional (i.e. man).

Finally, the question of the "existence or non-existence of God" is a philosophical question. To dismiss philosophical arguments altogether is itself a philosophical vs. scientific argument. But for the record, I don't buy into Gould's "NOMA" doctrine; nor do I think "science" is as rational as the scientists claim....but that would be steering us into a philosophical debate parenthetical to my argument above.

quote:

ORIGINAL: hellohellohi

Hello, Hello, Solitude! I have an honest and earnest question for you, but not in the sense of a challenge, I have an inquiry! Let's say I'm an atheist (and I may be, you never know!!) what do I do with myself? GRANTED, you don't know me, and I'm not all that interested in giving you my dry biography... except for this information, I often am at a loss with what to do with my life! NOW, I know the Christian posters would love to respond! But please let Real_Solitude if s/he is interested.

Okay, so maybe it IS a challenge! (Maybe it even sounds mean-spirited.?) (But actually I love atheists!) What should I do with my life?? How do I decide? Perhaps you can help me. I'm being earnest in that I would appreciate your advice. What does an ambivalent person do? Flip a coin? I would give you information on which to decide, but, as I said I am ambivalent! You may point out your own values and criteria that would lead you do X in my situation. But how do *I* decide? Thanks!!

quote:

ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

I find it hard to believe that any gods would be cruel enough to suggest that their adherents go to Pauly Shore or Rob Schneider movies, yet they continue to be made and make money at the box office.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real_Solitude


The 'atheist' would have you believe nothing. Being an atheist holds to nothing except a non-belief in a deity.