Having watched the first 30 seconds again and thought about it, with Craig's ...Premise Two cannot be proven, and that's Craig's argument completely sunk, and it could have been the end of the video too.

I think you're looking at the argument from the wrong perspective. Let's examine the premises:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist:

The basic question here is, in the absence of God, is there is any objective difference between good and evil? That, if there is no God, is the difference between good and evil like the difference between coke and pepsi? An example Craig gives is, is the difference like which side of the road that you drive on, which varies from culture to culture?

So, this is where you would make an argument for valid and binding objective moral values outside of Gods existence. You can invalidate the whole argument right here, but you have to provide a logical foundation. I have yet to see anyone refute premise one.

2. Objective moral values do exist

Now, to say this premise is false is to admit that objective moral values do not exist. IE, you will have to admit that torturing babies for fun isn't actually wrong. I have actually debated people who tried to defend it, but I give them credit for being intellectually honest, because that is the logical conclusion; that if objective moral values do not exist, torturing babies for fun isn't absolutely wrong. However, I think we both know that it is, therefore objective moral values do exist.

So, this is a rather tricky argument for an atheist. Qualia soup gets the whole thing wrong here. The basic trouble for you is, if you want to dispute premise one, you have to come up with a foundation for objective moral values outside of God. If you admit there is no such foundation, then we move to premise 2, and there you have to argue that objective moral values do not exist. If you can not argue it, or if you admit objective moral values do exist, then you are forced to accept premise 3, that therefore God exists.

For example, can we just accept that you and I exist, one independent of the other, neither a figment of the other's imagination? Can we accept that our normal external sensory input can be accepted as correct for the purposes of this conversation, (except in the trivial cases of optical illusions and so forth)? You probably know what I'm saying. I hate it when I get into an argument and think I've made a very strong point, only to have my opponent come back with, "Everything's subjective; you can't prove anything is real," or, "Maybe you imagined the whole thing, I mean, you can't prove you didn't," or, "You can prove anything with facts," or, "Well, you have your beliefs and I have mine," or some crap like that where I'm not talking about subjective facts or my own beliefs.

Yes, I can agree with all of this. I believe that the Universe is tangibly real, and is generally how it appears to be, in that it is not a malicious deception or a meaningless illusion. I believe we are both individuals made in the image of God with an independent existence and a soul. I believe we can come to meaningful conclusions about reality, and that there is a truth which is tangible, accessible to reason, and which does not change based on our interpretation or personal preferences.

Also, in theological arguments, I must insist on a couple things. The first is that words must have meaning. If you say something, you can't later say that it's not to be taken literally, or that that word has a different meaning when applied to God. The second is that everything logically entailed by a statement must stand with the original statement, and any other statement. If there's any inconsistencies, then at least one of the statements must be false.

I am very consistent when it comes to meanings. This is one of the hallmarks of literal interpretation, that the words in the bible, while they can sometimes be applied in a metaphorical sense, always have an intended meaning which is absolutely true in all circumstances.

Also, please don't assert supernatural things like the existence of Satan, or your knowledge of how he works, telling me these things like I'm ignorant of them, rather than fully aware of the stories, but sceptical. Say that it's what you believe or have come to believe or whatever, but don't say it like objective fact. Same goes for Bible verses. I don't accept them as fact any more than you'd accept Skeletor quotes as fact. To me that book is best treated as fiction, though it's possible it conveys some details of events that really happened, but pronouncements of the way the world is I absolutely do not accept as the word of God, especially since I don't believe he exists. I don't care if the Bible predicts atheists/sceptics. All that tells me is that people have been doubting the veracity of the word for 2,000 years, and someone took the precaution of adding a word or two against non-believers into the text so believers down the line would have justification "from God" for dismissing my arguments as guided by Satan, or whatever.

I generally won't propose arguments that would take faith to accept. I understand your natural skepticism because I used to be equally skeptical. I will just submit that when you are deceived, you don't know you are deceived:

2 Corinthians 4:4

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

I admit the possibility that I could be deceived, so I think if we both can admit this, we will have a more fruitful conversation.

know you don't think Qualia's line of reasoning holds, but I don't know what you think of Craig's argument. Is it valid, in your mind? And here, I'm mostly interested in how you think. As I've said, the video was only intended to take apart the argument of one Christian apologist, and not to prove or disprove anything.

I think it is logically airtight. That if you cannot prove there is a foundation for objective moral values outside of God, and you cannot disprove that some actions are objectively wrong, that you must accept the conclusion of the argument.

I'm 99% sure you said in a comment somewhere that you're dubious of science. Could you explain what you mean by that? Science isn't a system of faith or a set of theories. It's a process of testing theories. Are you dubious of the process? What parts of it specifically do you mean?

I am dubious of the philosophy of empiricism upon which science is founded upon. Empiricism assumes that truth can only be discerned through our senses, and that our minds merely processes and categorizes this truth. I reject this view because there are clearly truths that empiricism cannot evaluate, including the validity of empiricism itself. I'll bring in craig again for this one:



I apologize for the title..it's just the best clip I could find.

Is it accurate to say that the sum of your experience of God is subjective, that's to say, is based solely on your own experience in your head, and possibly in things in the objective world that you have interpreted in a subjective way, and is not borne out in any demonstrable way in the measurable material world?

I would say my experience is generally subjective but is objectively confirmed, both by other people, and my daily life. You can say I have interpreted those experiences subjectively, and I am just fooling myself, of course. Personal experience is something hard to prove, as the other person is naturally skeptical of the other persons ability to evaluate what is true. All I can say is that truth is paramount to me and I am incapable of believing something just because I want it to be true. I would rather have nothing and die a meaningless death than live out a comfortable lie.

Please describe God. Where is he? When is he? What is he capable of? What does he feel? Is he immutable? Please add anything you can about why he did things like create the universe and animals and us and disease and suffering and inequality and joy, why he cares for us, why he cares what we do, why he made some things moral and some things evil, and any other informative facts. Is there a God the Father anymore, or just Jesus? Did Jesus have a human form and a godly form, or did he transmute from one to the other? What was Jesus before he was born? Was he born of the virgin Mary?

This is a rather large subject. I'll do my best..

God is perfect. He is holy, loving, and just. He exists outside of time and space in His own realm, which is called Heaven. He is capable of doing anything that can be done. As far as what God feels, that can be hard to quantify. For instance, you can say God feels love, but by definition, God is love. In general, from the bible, it seems God can be pleased, can be jealous, has compassion, is kind, is loving, can be grieved and can be angered. His nature is immutable, in that He is goodness itself. He is light and there is no darkness in Him. That doesn't change. He can however change how He interacts with us.

God created us out of the abundance of His love. It wasn't out of a need, as He already had perfect love within the relationships of the Holy Trinity, but it was an overflowing of that love. He created us to be in relationship to Him, as His children.

There were no diseases, or any inequality before the fall. He created the world perfectly, and He set us in paradise, to learn and grow under His care. However, because robots would be undesirable, He gave us free will to be obedient to Him or not. Unfortunately, we abused that, and broke fellowship with God. Sin and death were brought into the world because of it, and since then this has been a fallen creation. If you have something perfect, and introduce an imperfection, then it is no longer perfect and neither can anything perfect ever come from it. Sin and death ruined that perfection, and they are the cause for all of the disease and inequality today.

Because of this, God brought the law into the world, to give us a minimum standard for moral behavior. The law in itself was not capable of fixing the situation, as everyone fell short of the law, but rather it highlighted our need for a savior. This is the reason Jesus Christ came.

He came to Earth, putting aside His glory and position to live as a man, being the first human being since Adam to be born without sin. He lived a perfect life, though He was tempted in every way that we are, and fulfilled the entire law. Finally, He sacrificed Himself on the cross for the sins of mankind, as a substitutionary atonement for our crimes, and He tasted death for all men. God proved all of this by raising Him from the dead. So, Christ defeated death and sin on the cross, and imputed His righteousness, the righteousness of God, back into mankind. Therefore, anyone who accepts His Lordship will have his sins forgiven and receive eternal life. It is by the imputation of Gods perfect righteousness and substituionary atonement that the effects of the fall have been countered, and we are again reconciled to God and can enjoy perfect relationship to Him as His children.

God is three persons, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus ascended to Heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father, making intercession on our behalf. Jesus was born of a virgin, and was both God and man; He had two natures, which were united for one purpose in submission to the Father. Jesus, before He was born as a human being, existed as God. "Before abraham was, I am."

John 1:1-3

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Hope that answers your questions.



>> ^messenger:

@shinyblurry

@shinyblurry

Having watched the first 30 seconds again and thought about it, with Craig's definition of objective moral values (OMVs) inserted into Premise One, it reads: "If God does not exist, then nothing exists which is good or evil independently of whether anybody believes it to be so." If by this he means, "If God does not exist, then nothing exists which is good or evil no matter who believes or does not believe it to be so", then it's pretty close to a truism, but as Qualia says, it leaves Craig with significant problems. Then, unfortunately, Q goes off apparently on an irrelevant tangent about people assessing other people's moral behaviour, which is the wrong argument to make at this point, as Craig's definition is all about things being moral or evil independent of everyone's judgement. The correct point to make here would be that by Craig's own definition of OMVs, it's now impossible to verify Premise Two because it would require either a human or God to assess that such a moral value or duty existed. This can never happen because Craig's definition of OMVs precludes humans from evaluating things morally, and the argument cannot, obviously, invoke God's opinion, since proof of God's existence is the argument's conclusion. So, by definition, Premise Two cannot be proven, and that's Craig's argument completely sunk, and it could have been the end of the video too.

Except something interesting happens: Craig contradicts his earlier definition of "objective" meaning that it doesn't matter what any human thinks, and presents the fact that 99% of people would say that torturing and caring for a child hold different moral values as evidence that OMVs exist, in other words, now, suddenly the definition of OMVs rests in what 99% of people think. This means he accepts somebody's assessment of moral value, if on a large enough scale. If Craig appeals to the moral opinion of 99% of people to prove objectivity in his own arguments, then obviously anybody arguing against Craig is allowed to do the same, so any points Qualia Soup makes in the video based on the opinions of humans in general stand because they follow Craig's own rules of evaluation.

So, Qualia's point is valid and relevant, that on the whole, we don't make moral judgements based solely on the act itself, but on what the person committing the act believed about their actions: a healthy adult killing a baby is viewed entirely differently than a retarded adult or a very young child killing a baby. This is not irrelevant if Craig's proof for Premise Two relies on the opinion of 99% of people. This shows that OMVs may not exist independent of what people think. It suggests the opposite: that judgements of the moral value of an action may only exist based on what people think.

QS: It goes on, asking "what do we make of a being that's decided that only one species is morally accountable?"

SB: This is simply a red herring. It makes absolutely no difference and is not relevant what we think about God holding humans accountable and not animals. Our standard for moral behavior is not measured by the behavior of animals. The relevant difference is that the standard for our moral behavior is measured by what God chooses as morally correct.

Here, QS is responding to Craig's accusations of atheists being "speciesist" for thinking humans are special, and throws it back in his face by showing by his definition, God is speciesist if he only chose to hold one species morally accountable. Also, your own argument that morality relies on what God decides is morally correct assumes the existence of God, which you cannot assert in the middle of a proof of God's existence.

The section that follows about "unevaluated value" makes the point that if there are moral values that exist but we lack awareness of them, then it's useless for them to exist undetected. And if we're not positing that a God already exists, it makes more sense for the actions to be noticed, and then evaluated as either evil or good at that moment, rather than to have already been evaluated morally by God, and then detected as morally good or evil by that person due to their internal morality detector provided by God. In other words, the capacity for moral judgement is not proof that God gave it to us. It could have evolved.

The argument beginning at 3:47 shows there's no way to determine that a person has detected something that was already evaluated as good by God and understood it as so, rather than has seen something and evaluated it as good himself by his own judgement.

***

And it goes on from there. Anyway, that's my evaluation of your evaluation of Qualia Soup's evaluation of Craig's ontological proof that God exists.

I'd much rather talk about you and me and our relative faiths in God, but before we go on, I have to know what the rules are and what I will be expected to establish.

About us
For example, can we just accept that you and I exist, one independent of the other, neither a figment of the other's imagination? Can we accept that our normal external sensory input can be accepted as correct for the purposes of this conversation, (except in the trivial cases of optical illusions and so forth)? You probably know what I'm saying. I hate it when I get into an argument and think I've made a very strong point, only to have my opponent come back with, "Everything's subjective; you can't prove anything is real," or, "Maybe you imagined the whole thing, I mean, you can't prove you didn't," or, "You can prove anything with facts," or, "Well, you have your beliefs and I have mine," or some crap like that where I'm not talking about subjective facts or my own beliefs.

Also, in theological arguments, I must insist on a couple things. The first is that words must have meaning. If you say something, you can't later say that it's not to be taken literally, or that that word has a different meaning when applied to God. The second is that everything logically entailed by a statement must stand with the original statement, and any other statement. If there's any inconsistencies, then at least one of the statements must be false.

Also, please don't assert supernatural things like the existence of Satan, or your knowledge of how he works, telling me these things like I'm ignorant of them, rather than fully aware of the stories, but sceptical. Say that it's what you believe or have come to believe or whatever, but don't say it like objective fact. Same goes for Bible verses. I don't accept them as fact any more than you'd accept Skeletor quotes as fact. To me that book is best treated as fiction, though it's possible it conveys some details of events that really happened, but pronouncements of the way the world is I absolutely do not accept as the word of God, especially since I don't believe he exists. I don't care if the Bible predicts atheists/sceptics. All that tells me is that people have been doubting the veracity of the word for 2,000 years, and someone took the precaution of adding a word or two against non-believers into the text so believers down the line would have justification "from God" for dismissing my arguments as guided by Satan, or whatever.

I know you don't think Qualia's line of reasoning holds, but I don't know what you think of Craig's argument. Is it valid, in your mind? And here, I'm mostly interested in how you think. As I've said, the video was only intended to take apart the argument of one Christian apologist, and not to prove or disprove anything.

I'm 99% sure you said in a comment somewhere that you're dubious of science. Could you explain what you mean by that? Science isn't a system of faith or a set of theories. It's a process of testing theories. Are you dubious of the process? What parts of it specifically do you mean?

Is it accurate to say that the sum of your experience of God is subjective, that's to say, is based solely on your own experience in your head, and possibly in things in the objective world that you have interpreted in a subjective way, and is not borne out in any demonstrable way in the measurable material world?

About God
Please describe God. Where is he? When is he? What is he capable of? What does he feel? Is he immutable? Please add anything you can about why he did things like create the universe and animals and us and disease and suffering and inequality and joy, why he cares for us, why he cares what we do, why he made some things moral and some things evil, and any other informative facts. Is there a God the Father anymore, or just Jesus? Did Jesus have a human form and a godly form, or did he transmute from one to the other? What was Jesus before he was born? Was he born of the virgin Mary?

I'll answer your most recent post in my next sitting.

In my comments above, I was responding to your question, "Did you miss
me?" until the last part where I think I only addressed your arguments
about the video, and not very well. To be clear, I don't feel like I
was attacking your character rather than your arguments. I was
commenting on the way I perceive your arguments to often be illogical,
inconsistent, unprovable, or even demonstrably false. That's my
opinion of your arguments, not your character. As I said initially, I
like you, and think you're probably a really nice person of good
character, and I'd probably enjoy having a beer with you. If you mean
the bit about your psychotic break, that's because that's what I think
happened to you based on what you've told me about your conversion,
and I think it's affecting your judgement and perception, honestly and
sincerely. Put in my shoes (as you once were), you wouldn't accept
your own story at face value either, so I don't know why you expect
anyone else to.

I'm not offended by what you said, and after having read through this post, I have a much better idea of why you said the things you did. The reason I took issue is because I am frequently mischaracterized on the sift, and this seemed to be more of that. And no, I don't expect you to believe my story at face value. I wouldn't have believed me either, but neither would I totally dismiss it out of hand.

You're conflating at least two groups of people in your "90%", namely
people who claim religious faith (whether sincere or not, and to
whatever degree of devotion), and those who have actually had numinous
experiences.

I realize that not everyone who believes in God has had a spiritual experience, and I can see I failed to make a distinction in my reply.

When I say that you can't come to any other conclusion
because of your mental condition, I'm only referring to you and other
people who have actually had a serious numinous experience like yours,
which is an underwhelming minority of religious people, nothing like
90%.

My entire life is a numinous experience, and no, I wouldn't say the majority of religious people have had an experience like mine. I would say though that a large majority of them have had some kind of spiritual experience and many non-believers too. I have spoken to more than a few who will eventually admit to me that they have seen evidence of the supernatural, but suppress it because they don't like the implications.

This minority, and anybody else who claims to have seen ghosts,
or communicated with daemons, or been abducted by aliens, or been
levitated, or seen other locations in time/space, or communicated with
the dead, I view with equal scepticism. The first reason is that it's
very common among holders of all sorts of mystical beliefs to have
gained the belief following such an experience, and to have attributed
the belief to whichever mystical force is closest at hand, in your
case, Jesus.

In my case, that isn't true. I had no belief in God, nor was I looking for one when I found out that there is a higher power working in this world. Even after I was opened to the spiritual reality, I didn't immediately leap to a belief in God. There just came a point where I could no longer plausibly deny His existence, and that's when I started to believe. Even then I had no religion or belief system. From there, I explored many of the worlds belief systems and philosophies, religions and traditions, for many years, before being led to Christianity. To note, at the time, out of all the religions, I considered Christianity to be one of the least plausible. Again, because it had been uniquely confirmed to me, there was no way to deny it. The evidence was as plain as my reflection in the mirror.

The second is that there's no real reason to choose one
mystical explanation for the experience over another explanation, and
until there is, it's smartest to reserve judgement, and assume for the
moment that they're all wrong, as only one of them, maximum, could
possibly be right, no matter how fervently held they are.

Well you're correct that only one could be the truth, it doesn't mean that no one else is having a genuine experience. The solution to this puzzle is very simple. There are two powers in the supernatural realm. The first and greater power is from God. He is the only source of truth, and anyone in contact with Him has access to that truth. The second and lesser power is that of Satan. He is the source of all lies, and anyone in contact with him is deluded and in bondage. Satan is the ruler of the world system, and in general, the people who are enslaved to him are not aware of it. He can only really enslave someone who is ignorant of the truth. This is the default condition we're all born into, but God has put the truth out there, as a beacon for anyone who hungers for it, for anyone who is not satisified with lies. He is constantly giving people opportunities to accept that truth, but unless they do, they will choose to believe the lie and thus remain in bondage.

Just like 1+1 has an unlimited number of wrong answers, Satan has an unlimited number of lies about the truth. He also has a supernatural power that can reinforce these lies. So, in general, the people who are reporting supernatural experiences from the various religions are largely telling the truth. The only question is, are they from God or from Satan?

That was nearly twenty years ago, and I'm still not yet at the point where I can laugh
at how silly it was, and have just become comfortable enough to talk
openly about it.

Thanks for sharing that with me. I think it's a natural thought to have, that your life might be something like the Truman show, and everyone else is in on the conspiracy. A belief like that puts you in the very center of the Universe, and from there you could weave together any story you could imagine. I had an ex-girlfriend with bi-polar disorder who used to do this. She would start making connections between things which had no plausible connection, and pretty soon she was staring some kind of hideous reality square in the face, and living in absolute terror. To her it was absolutely real and everything that happened, perceived as it was through these filters, served to reinforce them.

So I understand the princple. I have had thoughts like this myself, and I had to stop myself from engaging them. For instance, I once had the idea that a very powerful and very malevolent entity might exist somewhere in the Universe that could potentially pick up on my thoughts, and if I ever drew his attention to me by thinking about him he would kill me (or worse). After living in fear of this for a little while, I decided that my best option was to doubt it was true and stop thinking about it, because that's what was going to get me killed in the first place.

The thing is, what I know now is, that everyone who falls into these traps has a little help. That you don't just fall into the abyss, you get pushed in. Satan fuels these types of experiences supernaturally. He can cause people to give you responses or engage you in dialogues which confirm the lies that he has planted and therefore reap a harvert of delusion. He will even give you these kinds of experience in order to debunk them later with the ultimate goal of getting you to doubt the real thing:

2 Corinthians 4:4

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

The "truth" that I received was unquestionably true, impossible to
consider denying since to me it was so obviously true, and
agonizingly, mindbendingly horrible. Depending on how you look at it,
this could be a good thing or a bad thing. If the "truth" that I saw
had been fulfilling, hopeful and beautiful like yours was, and not
horrible, dark, pessimistic and paranoid as it was, I would have had
far less motivation for questioning it, and may have just gone along
with it forever, especially if holding that view improved my life in
certain ways.

It seems to me that you think I am not very self-critical about what I believe. I suppose you have to believe that since you think Christianity is nonsense, but why not assume for a minute that my standard for the truth is not inferior to yours and let me try to explain:

I am not naturally inclined to believe anything in particular for any particular reason. I don't make choices about what I believe based on how those beliefs make me feel, or what kinds of rewards I might receive. To become convinced that something is true, there must be exquisite evidence which justifies that belief, and it must fit seamlessly into a logical framework with no contradiction. I admit some things I believe may seem counter-intuitive to you, but as you have admitted, our intuitions about what is correct are not always reliable. Quantum physics is a good example of this truth.

What I believe isn't about me. I only care about what is true and what is real; if the truth is that I am nothing more than an insignifcant fly speck that will die forever in a cold and indifferent Universe, then I wouldn't try to hide from it, I would in fact embrace it. It was in fact my original position before all this began, and I was okay with it. Was I happy that I had to die one day? Not as such, but it didn't really bother me. I accepted it as fact and knew it was out of my control. The only reason I changed my mind is because I encountered evidence good enough to convince me otherwise.

Everybody who has a break like this comes to a slightly different
conclusion as to its meaning. Mine was a very, very dark conclusion,
which is vastly different from yours, but similar to many other
people's, though probably not exactly the same as anybody else's, just
like yours probably isn't. Like Double Rainbow Guy was probably
experiencing a similar break right at that moment, and concluded
neither that Jesus was the saviour, nor that the world was evil, nor
that he himself was the new messiah.

It seems to me that you're still very much interpreting reality through your experience. You make the leap that since you were able to fool yourself to such an extent, and that your experience had the character of the supernatural, that everyone who has a supernatural experience is undergoing a similar process. Yet, this is a classic example of confirmation bias. How do you know that you're still not seeing things according to an unconscious paradigm you haven't yet questioned?

So I don't like the word "crazy" because of its negative connotations,
and wouldn't have appreciated it being flung at me during that time
nor now (and if I've ever used it about you, it was probably when I
thought you were a real troll, Poe's Law being what it is, and
definitely before I knew about your numinous experience). That said, I
have no issue pointing out to people that I don't believe they are
applying critical thought to their assertions, and that they don't
seem capable of doing so because of a story in their head that is so
powerful it renders contradictory input trivial. I've been there. I
get it. And if the story in your mind from your experience is the
truth, then so is mine, and so are millions of other people's, but
they can't all be the truth, and probably none are.

I think calling someone crazy is an easy way for skeptics to dismiss testimony that doesn't agree with their preconceived ideas. I also don't reject contradictory input. I investigate it to see if there is any conflict, and if there truly is, I will change my point of view. As far as truth, it is by nature, exclusive. There is no true for me, or true for you. Someone is right and someone is wrong. This world was either created with intention, or it manifested itself out of sheer happenstance. There either is a God or there isn't.

If nothing else, please take from this story that I'm not looking down
on you for having a mental injury. I'm identifying with you, and that
seems more important to me than debating the merits of any argument

Again, this is what you presume. You're not really identifying with me, you are putting me in a box you constructed and telling me you were once in that box and know what it is like to live in there. As I said earlier, you're still interpreting the world through your experience and making the world conform to your conclusions about it. What I think is that you threw the baby out with the bathwater, and missed the whole point. You believe you were just deceiving yourself. What I am telling you is that you had supernatural help, and that you're still in it.

People who cleave to a religion despite never having had any numinous
experiences are just following what everyone else is doing without
questioning it because they were raised to do so from birth. I don't
deride these people for it because it's natural for humans to accept
whatever they see being done all around them as normal. That's how we
socialise and learn. It is not evidence that what they're doing is
"correct" any more than shaking hands is the "correct" way to greet
people, and bowing is "incorrect". Children in Muslim environments
tend to grow up Muslim. Children of the Amazonian Pirahã tribe
believe their fellow villagers sometimes are spirits who are visiting
them with messages from other realms. Children of atheists tend to
grow up atheist. Children raised around racists tend to grow up
racist. Victims of childhood abuse tend to believe they are worthless
pieces of shit, deserving abuse. All this indicates that people tend
to believe what they're brought up to believe, not that what people
believe en masse is true.

I agree to a point, but I think the amount of people who believe without any supernatural evidence is much lower than you think. I have rarely met any Christians who haven't had a supernatural experience, and aren't constantly aware of the prescence of God.

This raises the question of why so many people believe in god/s/mystic
beings/supernatural events in the first place, and why it is such a
universal human trait. It's a good question. One answer is that there
is some kind of non-physical "force" we can't detect (yet) except in
numinous experiences, during which it somehow has an effect on our
physical bodies and causes us to know and wonder about its existence.
That's totally possible, even scientifically, and I'm open to it. The
problem is that there are thousands and thousands of systems of belief
which all claim to be the true one, the one that best or most
authoritatively explains the phenomenon of numinous experience. Worse
is that there's virtually nothing to choose between them in terms of
which one seems the best. They all have lore and deities, explanations
for natural phenomena, numinous experience, extremely fervent
adherents, and internal references and contradictions in number and
greatness in rough proportion to the number and greatness of the
claims they make about the universe.

Again, it's pretty easy to explain. There is one truth, and the rest are lies. Just as 1+1 only has one correct answer and infinite wrong answers. There is one truth because there is a God who created it, and many lies because there is a devil that created them. One a supernatural force of good, the other of evil.

So, please don't call me arrogant for saying that your strain of faith, among a long list of mutually
exclusive strains stretching back through human history is probably
not correct, nor any of the others, probably. There's a 1 in n chance
that any of them is correct, where n is the number of mutually
exclusive faith systems that have ever existed. From the point of view
of someone with no specific belief about any particular faith system,
deciding on one seems a fool's errand. Especially when you consider
the other possible answer.

There are many other ways to evaluate the probabilities here. First, you can rule out all the gods who make no creation claims. Two, you can rule out the creation claims that contradict the basic evidence. Right there, you have ruled out almost all of them. There are many ways to look at it. We both agree if any of the religions are true, only one of them could be. Whichever religion it was, we could expect that if it came from a powerful God, it would be the one that has had the most impact on our history. That's clearly Christianity, hands down. We could also expect Jesus, if He is God, to be the most famous and most influential person who has ever lived. Clearly, He is. We could also expect that religion to be the largest in terms of numbers. Again, that is Christianity. So based on those three factors, Christianity is the logical choice. There are many probabilities to consider.

Another answer to the good question about why so many people believe
in gods, etc. -and my best guess- is that it is part of human nature
to fear and mistrust the unknown, and be endlessly curious about it
too. Anything we don't know presents a threat, so we have to go and
examine it. If we can't examine it, then our imaginations are left to
wander unconstrained. This is quite taxing, and we yearn for answers.
It can also lead to dissent among communities. One very simple way to
solve both problems is to assert a god or a pantheon of gods who
control all things. For example, storm clouds are dark and scary and
change shape of their own will and look heavy, yet are way high up in
the sky, and they can send rain and lightning down and make some of
the loudest noises you've ever heard. Someone without any climatology
knowledge might be very scared by these things, and unable to
investigate or explain them. But if they were told they're controlled
by a god named Zeus who can be appeased by building a white marble
temple and killing goats there (or whatever they did), then it's much
more comforting, so much so, that people feel an incredible sense of
relief from the burden of having to know and understand everything.
From that point on, no matter what mysterious natural phenomenon
presents itself, they have merely to ascribe it to some god, and the
matter is solved. So the short answer is that mental and social peace
is the reason I believe so many people believe in gods. And again,
numbers of people believing similar things is no evidence that some
kind of god is real, just that believing in supernatural beings makes
humans feel good. Whether you believe in anything or not, that last
part is an objective fact that we both agree on, I think.

I agree to some extent about psychological motivations but reject the premise as a whole that people need religion to live in a scary Universe. Most atheists aren't aware of the vast intellectual and philosophical traditions of Christianity, or how self-critical it can be. Even Paul said that if Jesus is not resurrected that we are all fools. We're not just a bunch of ignoramouses who drank the kool-aid and are waiting for the UFO to arrive.

This also does not apply to me. When I first became aware that God existed I was very afraid of Him. According to your analysis I should have rejected this belief immediately and embraced my agnosticism because it was more pleasant. But I couldn't reject it just like I couldn't call the day night. I believed what i did because of evidence, and not personal preferences. I was also a man of science, and wasn't worried about how complex the Universe was. I thought science would eventually explain all of its mechanisms, so it didn't bother me that I didn't understand it. It's funny but science functions in the same way for atheists as you say a god does for theists.

Another part of the attraction to faith, I believe, is that many
people also have a hard time taking responsibility for their own
actions, and would prefer some parental guidance, but from perfect
parents, not their own. Belief that there is a father-like god
watching everything you do and communicating with you and telling you
what to do if you'll only listen is also a great relief from the
burden of being responsible yourself for all the important decisions
you make. Most people, I believe, know what the right thing to do is,
but don't always want to do it because it doesn't always meet what
they consider their best interests or motivations. So instead, they
invoke God (which I think is an impartial metaphysical moral version
of yourself), and know what God would think is the right thing to do,
and they do that, believing that it wasn't their conscious choice, but
God directing them

I won't speak for other religions but this isn't how it works for Christianity. You have more responsibility when you believe in God, not less. You are accountable to God for every idle word that you speak, and morally, you have to watch your thoughts and not just your actions. I'll quote Gilbert K Chesterton:

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried"

You apparently have no idea what it takes to live up to example Christ set for us. If you think it is just a bunch of empty platitudes then you are being pretty disingenuous here..have you ever tried loving your enemy, blessing those who curse you, going 2 miles with someone when they demand one, giving your jacket to someone who steals the shirt off your back? Could you forgive your worst enemy? Could you love the person who wronged you the most? And that is just the easy stuff.

As someone who did believe in God as a child, I can do it any time,
and often do when I have to really think about the right path in a
difficult situation. The difference is I don't believe I'm receiving
wisdom from another being anymore; I believe I'm putting my ego out of
the way and accessing my true "moral" self. This theory accounts for
the different interpretations of faith systems, since different people
even within the exact same strain of faith seem to have different
ideas of moral actions.

Ahh, so you do come to God for help after all, but you give yourself the credit for His help. That's what ego is, my friend. Man as his own god. Yet, there is no explanation for objective moral values without God. Atheists borrow them from Christianity, which is Frank Tureks point. You have to sit in Gods lap to slap His face.

There is also more agreement on basic moral values than disagreement, and this is because we all have a God given conscience which tells us right from wrong. God said He would write His laws on our hearts, which is why we have values which are nigh universal in human civilization.

Why did you abandon your faith in God, if I may ask?

Your arguments, in general
As to your inconsistencies, at least once on the Sift you claimed that
other people have the wrong faith. You appealed to reason and logic to
conclude that Muslims have it wrong by pointing out inconsistencies in
their faith. I can't remember the details, but you probably know what
I'm talking about. You can imagine how a devout Muslim might react to
your logical arguments. Well, you react the same way when presented
with equivalent logical arguments about your own faith. Again, I
haven't searched up any examples, but I will, if you like, or I can
point out some logical contradictions that I come up with. I'd also
appreciate it, as a gesture of good faith (ha ha), if you'd agree to
renounce the theology of your strain of Christianity if I can come up
with even one thing we both agree is a clear, undeniable logical
contradiction from it.

I'm not perfect, I am sure you could find something stupid that I've said and hang me with it. Let's just go from here. As far as other religions, I have explained my views about the deception in this world. This is a good verse:

1 Corinthians 2:14

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

As far as muslims, well I think their religion is just obviously inconsistant. They believe Jesus is a prophet, and that the New Testament is a holy book. As a prophet, Jesus would only speak the direct truth of God. Yet, they believe nothing that He said. I don't know how they deal with that, but I think most muslims just haven't read the New Testament.
So you raised the issue of my ego. I can see why you did, and
hopefully you see from the above why I consider that a
misinterpretation of my position. But while we're here, I openly claim
to know nothing for absolute truth. I hold that the nature of the
universe is probably not knowable, that all I can do is look at what
evidence is before me and decide how it all fits best together, reject
claims that don't make sense, follow ones that seem to bear out, and
plod on as well as my time- and capacity-limited mind and body allow.
I make no absolute metaphysical claims, nor do I think my knowledge is
that much superior or inferior to anybody's. I think you and I are
equal human beings, neither of us more special as humans in any way.

We have similar viewpoints here. I believe we're both equal, and I am no better than you are. I don't deserve my salvation anymore than you would deserve yourself. I don't deserve it at all, that is the point. I do not believe that I am in any way special. I wouldn't know up from down if God didn't let me know. So, whatever gifts I have came from Him and I can't take credit. When I was agnostic, I reasoned much the same way you do. Now that I know the truth is tangible, and can be grasped, I believe the Universe can be knowable, but only through the one who made it possible.

In contrast, if I'm not mistaken, you claim to have direct personal
communication with the single creator and director of the entire
universe; to know his nature, his will, and the "truth"; that he
specially chose you unsolicited to receive this intimate contact
rather than me; and that you will live forever by His side in heaven
in the afterlife. You also believe that if I humble myself to your
god, of whom you are a chosen favourite, he will tell me the "truth",
and if I don't, your god will send me to suffer eternally. Between the
two of us, in terms of faith, it's not me who's puffing himself up.
Seriously, go back and read this paragraph if you don't know what I'm
saying.
What I believe is thus:

That we, as human beings, are born into a fallen world and with a sin nature. That we are sinners by birth, by choice, and by conduct. Because of sin, humanity is spiritually separated from God. But God had a plan:

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God humiliated Himself by taking on a human body, so that He could live a perfect life as one of us and pay off our sin debt. He was tried as a criminal, beaten and tortured, and nailed to a cross for our sake, even though He Himself had done nothing wrong. He took all of our sins upon Himself, past present and future, and nailed them to that cross along with Him. He made a way for humanity to be reconciled back to the Father, and to have eternal life, and the Father proved this by raising Him from the dead. He ascended to the right hand of the Father and to this day mediates for all who call upon His name.

When you make Jesus Lord of your life, you receive a new spirit. You become a new creation, justified before God and adopted into the family of God as a son. All Christians receive the Holy Spirit, and this is the reason I have a personal relationship with God. Gods Spirit dwells within me, and He is always guiding me towards a holy and sanctified life. He is the guaranteer of the promises, and the proof that everything Jesus said is true.

Religious people claim to "know" that they're right, that their God
exists, that their experiences prove it, that believers in any other
faith are wrong, and believers in no faith are also wrong. Believers
in no faith, however, are ready to believe whatever presents itself as
likely to be true, including the existence of gods, or whatever. Just
because claims from your particular faith don't stand up to critical
thinking doesn't make non-believers arrogant or deluded.

This isn't about being right, to me. I am just doing what God told me to do. It's not like I figured all of this out on my own. God led me to the truth, and that's the only reason I know what it is. I have nothing at all to prove to you, nor do I lord it over anyone. I love God, and I am grateful to Him for what He has done for me. I naturally want to share that, and to obey His will, but I don't need to prove anything. I just want to tell you that God loves you, and He is there for you, and if you asked Him for the truth He would show it to you.

Jesus
I'm sure if I sincerely and humbly gave myself up and prayed to my
conception of Jesus, I would feel God moving in me. Sure. But the same
holds for every single religion on Earth. If it didn't, the religions
wouldn't succeed. They all have roughly the same effect. I could
worship Allah, or the Roman Pantheon, or Kim Jong Il, and as long as
it was done sincerely and humbly, it would work. I know this, so I
wouldn't trust the feeling was anything but me deluding myself, no
matter how strong it was.

This is the mistake many people, even believers make. It isn't about a feeling. Trust me, when God is around you would have more chance of ignoring a comet that was plunging into the atmosphere about to destroy the Earth than you would the presence of Almighty God. What you have ruled out is that God would directly reveal Himself to you. What I can tell you is that He is bigger than your imagination of Him, so don't think you have Him figured out, because it is impossible for our finite minds to comprehend His greatness.

This video
I wrote down your comments on a piece of paper so I could refer to
them as I watch the video carefully through. I intend to do so, and
I'm game to talk about all the issues you brought up point by point.
Just not now. This is possibly the longest comment ever written on the
sift, and I'm tired of typing for now. And I'm definitely busy
tomorrow. Tuesday looks good. Hope you're not pissed.

Good deal..I look forward to exploring the issue more in depth. Take your time and I'll watch for your reply.

I won't be offended if you don't answer all of this in one sitting.

I decided not to risk it.

ps, is it just me or is the VS editor messed up?
>> ^messenger:
@shinyblurry
There's some meat on this bone.>I won't be offended if you don't answer all of this in one sitting. <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/wink.gif">

Miss you? I like you and find you interesting as a person, but I find discussions with you about God's nature mostly unfulfilling. The reason is that you start with a conclusion (the Biblical God exists; the New Testament is literally true), and mishear, ignore and twist every other input you receive to match your conclusion.

By and large the people on the sift attack me and not my arguments, as you're doing here. You and the rest have your own preconceived notions about reality which you zealousy defend. And to imply I am ignorant or logically inconsistant is bull. I used to be like you and think like you; I came from the secular world and I reject it as delusional.

The evidence you have given is a psychotic break you once had. Any other evidence is meaningless to you, so there's no sense even talking to you about these issues. By God's lack of definition, he cannot be proven not to exist. But even if he were clearly defined, and it were possible to categorically prove that he doesn't exist, you wouldn't accept this information because you have suffered a mental injury that prevents you from doing so. (Do you still love me? )

Sometimes you make it hard to love you but I still do. Yes, everyone who has had a spiritual experience is crazy, which is a good slice of the world population. Have you ever thought that maybe you're the one who isn't right? I mean you have to believe that you know better than over 90 percent of the planet and most everyone who has ever lived. No wonder your ego is out of control.

But this is the internet, and what I'm doing at the moment leaves significant gaps of time with nothing to attend to, so here we go, again: As before, I think you're filtering out and twisting what you don't want to hear. Qualia isn't saying God doesn't exist (and he never does, except where someone's definition of God presents a logical impossibility). Rather, he's dismantling Craig's ontological argument by showing that the premises on which it rests are false, and therefore the conclusion is not necessarily true. He's not arguing that it's false, just that Craig's premises are. He's not trying to prove anything, only Craig is. Qualia is showing that Craig's proof in this instance is invalid. And in that, he does a good job, and only proves that Craig's argument doesn't hold because he cannot prove the premises.

Are you kidding me? Listen, read my post, and then try to imagine I am a lot more intelligent than you give me credit for, and then read it again. I know exactly what Qualia was doing, and I showed it up for what it is, a bunch of opinion and fallacy masquarading as logical argumentation. He utterly failed to refute Craig, and it amazes me that anyone could fail to see how weak his arguments are. If you think I am wrong then show me why.

I am not out to prove Gods existence, I am here to tell people they can prove it to themselves. If you prayed to Jesus in humility and asked Him for the truth, He would show it to you. You don't need to trust my experience, you can find out for yourself.

>> ^messenger:
Miss you? I like you and find you interesting as a person, but I find discussions with you about God's nature mostly unfulfilling. The reason is that you start with a conclusion (the Biblical God exists; the New Testament is literally true), and mishear, ignore and twist every other input you receive to match your conclusion.
The evidence you have given is a psychotic break you once had. Any other evidence is meaningless to you, so there's no sense even talking to you about these issues. By God's lack of definition, he cannot be proven not to exist. But even if he were clearly defined, and it were possible to categorically prove that he doesn't exist, you wouldn't accept this information because you have suffered a mental injury that prevents you from doing so. (Do you still love me? <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/smile.gif"> )
But this is the internet, and what I'm doing at the moment leaves significant gaps of time with nothing to attend to, so here we go, again: As before, I think you're filtering out and twisting what you don't want to hear. Qualia isn't saying God doesn't exist (and he never does, except where someone's definition of God presents a logical impossibility). Rather, he's dismantling Craig's ontological argument by showing that the premises on which it rests are false, and therefore the conclusion is not necessarily true. He's not arguing that it's false, just that Craig's premises are. He's not trying to prove anything, only Craig is. Qualia is showing that Craig's proof in this instance is invalid. And in that, he does a good job, and only proves that Craig's argument doesn't hold because he cannot prove the premises.

Miss you? I like you and find you interesting as a person, but I find discussions with you about God's nature mostly unfulfilling. The reason is that you start with a conclusion (the Biblical God exists; the New Testament is literally true), and mishear, ignore and twist every other input you receive to match your conclusion.

The evidence you have given is a psychotic break you once had. Any other evidence is meaningless to you, so there's no sense even talking to you about these issues. By God's lack of definition, he cannot be proven not to exist. But even if he were clearly defined, and it were possible to categorically prove that he doesn't exist, you wouldn't accept this information because you have suffered a mental injury that prevents you from doing so. (Do you still love me? )

But this is the internet, and what I'm doing at the moment leaves significant gaps of time with nothing to attend to, so here we go, again: As before, I think you're filtering out and twisting what you don't want to hear. Qualia isn't saying God doesn't exist (and he never does, except where someone's definition of God presents a logical impossibility). Rather, he's dismantling Craig's ontological argument by showing that the premises on which it rests are false, and therefore the conclusion is not necessarily true. He's not arguing that it's false, just that Craig's premises are. He's not trying to prove anything, only Craig is. Qualia is showing that Craig's proof in this instance is invalid. And in that, he does a good job, and only proves that Craig's argument doesn't hold because he cannot prove the premises.

Did you miss me? I do check out the videos from time to time..it's more that I have been involved in other things, but I suppose you're right on some level. I tend not to get involved unless I feel called to do so. I still love you guys and everything, and I am happy to debate these topics, and that's anywhere, anytime.

>> ^messenger:
You're wasting your time, unless you just want to troll hapless Bible literalists. <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/wink.gif"> Haven't seen sb around lately. Maybe it's because we haven't had so much religion/ahteism-based stuff recently.>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:
@shinyblurry

You're wasting your time, unless you just want to troll hapless Bible literalists. Haven't seen sb around lately. Maybe it's because we haven't had so much religion/ahteism-based stuff recently.>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

@shinyblurry

Thanks for the quality!

*quality qualia as usual.

It doesn't jive with how you experience reality? Well sorry, but, too bad -- that's precisely what it is. Your phenomenological experience feeling different to your epistemological experience is irrelevant. At some point you have to stop the infinite regress of intervening variables and just accept that brain=mind, and that ironically, your mind has not evolved to comprehend the vastness of a system like the brain. All the evidence we have suggests brain=mind. You can invoke dualism but it's akin to supernaturalism -- there's no need. Furthermore, the idea that the eye and smell system never "touch" is wrong. Finally, why focus on cross-modal sensory integration when there are more interesting questions that relate to the brain and mind? e.g., qualia, peak shift, synchrony.

Sorry don't mean that to sound rude, just my 2c.

@GeeSussFreeK I'm going to pick and choose from your comment instead of quoting, since it's huge.


There are some major problems with this claim, IMO. I would like to clean up the wording of your second sentence. Something that doesn't interact in anyway with the cosmos, doesn't exist meaningfully. So something that does not, cannot, and will not interact with an object doesn't exist to that object. Indeed, when our own galaxy is racing away from the other galaxies at a speed faster than the speed of light (the space in-between being created at a rate which pushes us away faster than the speed of light) you can say the same thing, that our galaxy is the only object that exists in the universe. Other objects existed, but the no longer do. They might "exist" in some theoretical way, but they don't meaningfully exist. I completely agree with this position. If a being we want to call God doesn't exist here in any way physically, than he doesn't exist.

I'm not sure you can say that something doesn't exist, just because we cannot observe it directly anymore. Galaxies moving away from ours at greater than light speed still have had an effect on things around them and we can see the "traces" of them, which at least suggests that they exist - like black holes, which we cannot see directly either. Futhermore, we can observe on the galaxies moving parallel or at least along side our own, how they move and can thus estimate the position of the big bang and theorize from the given evidence that galaxies moving in the opposite direction should exist even if we cannot see them or in essence EVER interact with them again.

A similar argument can't be made for God.


Which brings us to your first point. How does the universe exist? I assure you we have more question in that than answers. And every answer brings forth new questions. We are no closer today to understand basic ideas than thousands of years ago.

You are being a bit facetious here, I suppose? We are quite a bit, actually a huge leap, closer to the basic ideas than we were thousands of years ago. The problem is that the target keeps moving further back. First cells, then molecules, then atoms, now quantum entanglement (or what its called).

For instance, how to objects move? Force is applied to an object making it move relative to the world. The world moves in the opposite direction, but only relative to the opposite force, which means very, very little.

If space is infinite, how do finite objects transverse infinite space in a finite time?
It isn't and they wouldn't.

What determines gravity attract at the rate it attracts?
I'm not a physicist, so I won't venture too far off ground here. It's understood as far as I know. @Ornthoron could you perhaps confirm for me?

Why are macro objects analog and quantum objects digital?
Macron objects are perceived as analog, because we don't look closely enough and in short enough time spans. Any perceived analog object can be simulated digitally if you use enough data to do it. This is my understanding, anyway.

We can't even show that the sky is blue, only that it exists as a wavelength of light that human preservers sometimes interpret as a mind object of blue, we are no closer to understanding if blue is a real thing or a thing of mind.
This is a distinction between what is and what something is perceived as. Essentially you're touching upon qualia, which some cognitive scientists believe in and others don't. Blue is a real thing in so far as it's a wavelength of light. As for the rest, I don't know. It's a much harder question than you lead on, because a theory of mind is one of the hardest questions there are left.

I think you give to much credence to our understanding for this claim to be sufficient. To my knowledge, we have little understanding of the functional dynamics of the cosmos. We have pretty good predictive models, but that is a far cry for absolute certainty, a necessary for a claim such as this.


There are many metaphysical examples of all powerful beings and absence of their direct physical interactions being detectable as well. One of the more famous is of the "God mind" example. In a dream, you are in control of all the elements. Let's call all the elements of your dream your dream physics. The dreamer is in 100% control of the dream physics. The dream itself is a creation of his dream physics. The dream physics themselves are evidence of the dreamer. In addition, the dream, being wholly created from dream physics is also evidence of the dreamer. Parallel that back to us and you have one of the easiest and elegant explanations of the universe.

I think you are confusing a dream with the idea of a dream. You rarely have any control in dreams and even lucid dreamers don't have 100 % control. How a dream actually is made/dreamed is also a point of discussion in itself. A fundamental problem with this hypothesis is that WE think. Actors in our dreams don't think or do anything that has any effect in the world other than our memory of them. Like our thoughts, dreams don't have wills of their own.

Indeed, it is so comprehensible other views of the metaphysical nature of the cosmos will seem overly complex and lauded with burdensome hyper explanations, making this model satisfy an occam's razor over other possibilities. But complexity is hardly a model for evaluating truth, so I leave that just as an aside.

All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. But all other things aren't really equal here. Some thing are just inherently complex, like gravity or magnets. When you don't think about the details, it's easy to think your hypothesis is correct, but when you dig deeper it falls apart.

Actually, even if you accept the premise, it still means that the dreamer is completely removed from us; he has no control, because not even traces of it has been observed in our reality (the dream). So the complete lack of evidence also points to this hypothesis being false.

When you think it even further, we run into the ever present homunculus argument. Who's dreaming of the dreamer? And so on.

That our reality is actually a real, physical one is a much better explanation, because it neatly explains itself more completely - thereby actually fulfilling Occam's razor better.


Indeed, there are further explanations that would seemingly leave little evidence for God except for things happening just as they "should". One being the Occasionalism model, which interestingly enough, comes from the same mind as the previous example, George Berkeley. There is no proof that causation is the actuality of the universe. Just as if I setup a room full of clocks, and from left to right the clocks would sound off 5 seconds from the previous clock. To the observer, the clocks "caused" the next clock to sound, and on down the line they go. The problem is, there is actually no causal link to bind them, I created it after seeing A then B happen again and again. The fact is, no such link is there, I, the clock creator created it to appear that way, or maybe I didn't and you just jumped to conclusions. It is a classic example that Hume also highlights in his problems on induction.

Correlation does not imply causation. We have much supporting evidence of causation though. Forces are demonstrably interactive. Whether they were secretly set up to seem as if they interact aren't necessarily relevant, because demonstrably they do. There is no evidence to the contrary at all.

In your clock example, it is a physical room, so there are plenty of things to test the hypothesis that the clocks cause each other to ring. Are the clocks identical? Are there cogs inside the clocks? If we break one, will the chain still go on without it? Etc etc.

From observing X number of clocks you cannot strictly speaking extrapolate that to all clocks. That's the essence of the induction problem. Your hypothesis is based on limited data, and on further analysis it falls apart. Causality itself hasn't fallen apart yet. I'd like to see a proper argument against it, for certain.

I will leave it there. I am resolved to say I don't know. I also don't know that can or can't know. I am uber agnostic on all points, I just can't say. And I don't even know if time will tell.

It's a good start to all questions to say "I don't know". I do that too on many, many things. It's a much better starting point than when preachers usually say, "I know".

Your questions are interesting to me, because they deal with a lot of philosophical and physical stuff, I like those.

On a purely pragmatic level though, they are largely not that important. look at it this way, do you live your life as if causality exists? If you do and it works as you expected, then causality probably exist. If you live as if it doesn't exist, then the world is suddenly a very strange place. Do you live as if what you observe as blue is actually blue? Do others see it as blue as well? If they all do, then it's probably just blue. Does it make a difference if some people see it as green? Not really, I'd think.

Do you live your life as if there's a God? Do others? Does it make a difference? That's a very basic test of whether he actually exists. I argue that it doesn't make any difference at all, other than expected behavior of either party - some live as if a God exists and other live as if he doesn't exist. If the only difference in the people themselves, then the God falls out of the equation.

I think I've sufficiently trudged through this now. Sorry for the wall of text, hope it makes sense.

Where in the video does he call Behe a "fraud"? I was listening for it and it never came. Calling Behe "pseudoscientific" is not an ad hominem attack.

Furthermore, the suggestion that QualiaSoup's arguments and logic are insufficient because you don't see journal publications with his name attached to them is a red herring fallacy of its own - Appeal to Accomplishment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_accomplishment).

>> ^bmacs27:
Instead, by writing him off as a "pseudoscientific" fraud, or similar ad hominem attacks, they are guilty of equivalent logical fallacies, and should be given equivalent respect. The guy is actually a scientist, with publications in journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Molecular Biology, and the Journal of Biophysiology, on topics like DNA and protein structure. Frankly, unless there is a CV somewhere I can see for these qualia-soup people, Behe has them trumped on credentials, so they might avoid the ad hominem, and critique the substance of the actual arguments put forth.

Okay, up front: I'm a vision scientist. I've also read Behe's arguments re: the irreducible complexity of vision. It's odd the way the introduction to this video characterizes his argument. Everything it says regarding the evolution of vision is correct. It is so accepted in fact that Behe even lays it out in his paper. He openly admits how easy it is to get from the eyespots on a mollusk to the human eye. He lays out all the steps, and explains how advantages are conferred at each stage, and thus how it is conceivable that such a thing could have evolved.

Behe, as a biochemist, was most concerned with how it is one gets to the simple eyespot in the first place. The biochemical machinery required for phototransduction is extraordinarily complicated. Many of the substances involved are in fact toxic to cells, and special mechanisms are needed to safely quarantine them. The process relies on extremely complicated proteins, for instance opsin barrels precisely tuned in order to create the appropriate energy barriers to 11-cis retinal isomerization. There are a multitude of other chemicals involved, which I won't go into, but frankly most are required for phototransduction as we know it.

Now, I agree, Behe is guilty of other logical problems, for instance poverty of imagination != QED, but he is well aware of the evolution of the gross anatomical aspects of the human eye. His critique of the blind watchmaker centered on the biochemistry of the eye, and it would be better if the video did as well. Instead, by writing him off as a "pseudoscientific" fraud, or similar ad hominem attacks, they are guilty of equivalent logical fallacies, and should be given equivalent respect. The guy is actually a scientist, with publications in journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Molecular Biology, and the Journal of Biophysiology, on topics like DNA and protein structure. Frankly, unless there is a CV somewhere I can see for these qualia-soup people, Behe has them trumped on credentials, so they might avoid the ad hominem, and critique the substance of the actual arguments put forth.

Psychologic:

To initially approach the question of dualism from the perspective that it is essentially a "discussion about physical reality" is to assume your conclusion from the outset. The whole thing hinges on whether or not it is a discussion about physical reality, at least where "physical" is construed in the narrow sense as concerning the phenomena explainable by physics.

When I refer to the "hard" problem(s) of consciousness, I am using the distinction put forward by David Chalmers, between the "hard" problem--the explanation for the sense of internal experience that we have--and the "soft" problems regarding cognition, emotion, etc. It is not at all obvious why the chemical and electrical processes of the brain should give rise to or be associated with particular experiences.

Indeed, Chalmers makes this the bedrock of one of his arguments for dualism. We can, he says, conceive of the existence of what he calls p-zombies. A p-zombie is simply a human physiologically and behaviorally identical to any other--but entirely lacking this internal experience. If we can conceive of the existence of such a being, if we can know what it would be like for such a thing to be--and this is a point of philosophical contention--then it must be the case that our internal experience is not identical to the physical processes associated with it.

Another argument that consciousness cannot be explained by a scientifically reductionist account comes out of the work of Thomas Nagel, notably in famous essay "What is it like to be a bat?", and explored more thoroughly in The View from Nowhere. While Nagel himself is a confirmed physicalist, similar lines of argument have been advanced to defend dualist notions.

And, of course, there are the many other arguments--some good, some bad, none very decisive--regarding the existence of non-physical qualia.

Following on sineral's comment there's an aspect that's always bothered me and that's to say why is the look-up table necessarily not conscious. If the input/output of the Chinese room is functionally identical to having someone that 'understands' Chinese inside the room than how does it immediately follow that the room doesn't understand Chinese.

There's a sort of unexplained axiom that understanding and consciousness go beyond the simple, functional input/output of the system that I don't see as being self explanatory. They go back to the qualitative experience of consciousness (qualia) that can't be refuted but doesn't necessarily have to be taken seriously if it doesn't affect the functionality of a conscious system. I take the same issue with the zombie argument.