Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
No, it would be impossible to speak of God if you don't have an open door to the reality of God since you don't accept God as a word or subject of reality.

This is a false equivalence. I don't have to believe in a thing - or a possibility of a thing - to discuss it. Anything which can be conceptualized can be discussed. You, however, refuse to allow any form of conceptualization (i.e. a definition within which we can work) and ergo, a discussion is pointless.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Your statement
Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek
Doesn't exist = no words
If you want to have a discussion about God then you would have to accept words as something other than absolute in meaning and or definition.

I never once claimed the definition was absolute - nor that an absolute definition was required. Rather, I asked you for your definition, so that we could discuss 'god' in your terms.

You refused to do so, giving some gobblygoop about words not having definitions as your excuse. I simply pointed out that your claim was meaningless - without a shared acception of what a word means, no conversation is possible.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek


Because personal experience is only one path to knowledge - and, as history has shown us - one of the least useful, most prejudicial, and most prone to error routes to knowledge.

I don't agree. Having an authority dictate what is useful to understanding within any experience is ridiculous.

What authority? I never evoked an authority. The relative value of personal experience as a way of knowing has been a topic of thousands of years of writings, and more recently, of scientific enquiry. And the conclusion of all of that - i.e. the facts as we have been able to reveal them - shows us that personal experience is a poor way to learn.

It would be a lot of reading on your part, but the neurobiology & psycology of how our brains process "reality" would probably be of great interest to you. Sadly, what we see/hear/feel/experience is not an accurate representation of the world around us. Our brains - for survival reasons - pre-processes everything and presents it to us in a way which is far from accurate.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Not only do you want to indicate free will as fantasy

I never did so, and I would request that you stop assigning claims to me I have never made. It is a most egregiousness form of dishonesty on your part.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
You want to establish the church of science.

Far from it - what I want is for people to use rational thought in place of irrational belief & supposition. Blind faith in anything - even science - is the exact opposite of what I owuld like to establish.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle

Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek
without a usable definition it is impossible to even discuss if something exists.

If a usable definition is not universally accepted as a reality, discussions become relevant to beliefs and not experience OR knowledge.

Which is exactly what I have been trying to get out of you - your definition of 'god', so we can discuss the term in relationship to your beliefs. Your refusal to make even the slightest attempt at describing it is what makes discussion - and understanding - of your position impossible. Frankly, I don't care how you define god, so long as its defined in a way we can discuss.

Otherwise, we're just wasting out time.


Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek

The word god exists. Look, here it is ----> god <-----. But it describes a supernatural phenomena which does not exist. Just like the term tooth fairy describes something which does not exist.
Your authoritative definition does not apply to my experience or knowledge regarding anything supernatural or within the realm of Tooth fairies. So now what?

PROVIDE YOUR BLOODY DEFINITION OF THE WORD.

This isn't rocket science. Whining that my definition doesn't work for you gets us no closer to any meaningful discussion.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: ImagingGeek

There are no 'personal realities' - there is only one, the universe in which we live. I can wish as much as I want for reality to conform to my personal desires; it never will - it'll conform to the physical principals which drive the universe.
If that were so you wouldn't be hiding from the opposition you described as anti-science.

Sorry, but this is just nonsense. A singular universe in no way implies a lack of free will or a state of absolute determinism.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
You would simply acknowledge the fact that within the one universe you have made yourself available to threats made by those who are genetically inclined to speak to their own version of the one universe in which they see you as a threat.

No, I'd have to be completely ignorant of genetics and biology to say anything that stupid.

Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
In other words you knew the job was dangerous when you took it and by your own choice exposed your family to this threat.

The opposite is true. When I started this, none of that stuff existed. The current anti-vax movement was decades away (and completely unpredicted - it was formulated after all on a case of scientific fraud), and the animal rights movement was peaceful. The s**t hit the proverbial fan in the 1990's, peaked in the early 2000's, and thankfully has been on the decline ever since.

Bryan

Last edited by ImagingGeek; 02/26/13 06:59 PM.
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