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glubrani wrote:
"I would call myself a truth seeker. That there is a Creator is apparent to all, whether they will admit it or not."

I would call you quite something else and the invisible purple rhinoceros thinks you full of horse feathers.

It isn't a question of admitting or not. It is a question of making decisions and reaching conclusions based on rational and critical thought processes.

You have not a single shred of information upon which to support the derivation of your conclusion. This is less information than my cat has when deciding I have access to an infinite source of cat food.

Well said MrBiGG.

glubrani wrote:
"For the truth about God is known to them instinctively."

Sure it is. That explains why it is that for millenniums those who "instinctively" believe in god have been murdering, torturing, and raping each other to demonstrate that they are the true believers.

This is scienceagogo ... not hardofthinkingreligionprosletyzersagogo. Get on topic. Last time I checked the help-wanted advertisements we hadn't listed a position for replacement troll.


DA Morgan
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You guys will make no headway here. glubrani 'knows' he's right. End of story.

- At least it would be, except that he wants to tell you he's right, and get you into a pointless dispute.


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You are likely correct but I think he should be given a fair chance to either get on-topic, use a synapse or two, or find his way to the door.

If he can not then I think we should put "Project Troll" into effect yet again.

Lets give him a day or two to see whether he can use the brain he thinks his lord and master gave him.

Fair warning glubrani ... use it or lose it.


DA Morgan
Ellis #18790 03/09/07 11:46 PM
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Originally Posted By: Ellis
DA wrote:
To ask an atheist to do something horrible requires you to convince that person to override their personal moral compass. To ask a religious person to do so only requires that you convince them that what you are asking is god's will. And it isn't possible for them to ask that god if the interpretation is correct.


Well said. There is also the point suggested by that argument that the old excuse---"The devil made me do it " has to be personally valid if that person believes in the personification of evil in supernatural form, or indeed if they believe in Evil as a force in the world. This allows someone to distance themselves from the consequences of their actions in a way not possible to those who feel that deeds and actions are our own responsibilities.


Dan,

It is exactly the same things. Atheists have always been convinced that horrible things need to be done for one reason or another. Hitler would never have got anywhere without people who were convinced they were doing horrible things for the right reasons.

If you were making a point then your distinction is invalid and meaningless.

Ellis,

'The Devil made me do it' is an incredibly clumsy over-simplification. I have never heard any Christian make such a claim (except in jest) and in fact Christianity clearly teaches us that we are solely responsible for our deeds, and able to rise above our more base actions. I think it's important to understand in more depth that which you want to comment upon. Also, we would not state that evil is in any sense a 'force', but is simply a departure from that which is good.

Blacknad.

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Originally Posted By: Ellis
Unfortunately Blacknad there are some who do not regard such a totally repugnant act as evil, so the answer to your question is no. Obviously this is an act which we can try to legislate against, but to the perpetrator it may not be not evil.


Ellis, are you saying we would define something as evil only if no one dissents? On the same basis, could we only say that the Nazi pogroms against the Jews were wrong only if all agreed? I met many people in Lebanon who thought it was a good act. Clearly it makes no sense to decide what is evil by a system of unanimous acceptance.

Originally Posted By: Ellis
Good and Evil are not absolutes. They cannot exist without someone's opinion. As I asked Rev when he asked me if I ever joined a group to do good works, my reply was-good for whom? What one sees as good another may abhor, and similarly with evil.


The problem with this argument is that in human experience we must therefore say that many things do not exist: beauty, justice, truth, good, mercy, love? the list goes on. They are all someone?s opinion and again, as per your first point we can not define something as beautiful if anyone dissents. Now I know I am using Argumentum ad Consequentium, but unless you are willing to say that all of the above qualities are non-existent or meaningless then why is evil different? Maybe you are (like Sarte) willing to go that far ? in which case your thinking is consistent, but I would disagree with you.
It also begs the question, ?If those things are entirely non-existent, why are they so useful or even essential for human understanding or discourse?? Because try your best, but you will never dispense with them.

Originally Posted By: Ellis
In fact, if the human race were to vanish from the planet tomorrow there would be no good- or evil either because the concept of good/evil is a human construct.


The concept of good/evil as a human construct is based upon your prior materialistic assumptions and is therefore open to debate.

Blacknad.

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Originally Posted By: DA Morgan

But is it evil? I would have to say no. My personal opinion, and again it is only personal opinion, is that some two-legged semi-sentient entities on this planet are damaged goods.
Civilization has a right to protect itself from child rapists, bombers, some politicians, and other bad actors. But we should be intellectually honest and acknowledge that this is someone that is (don't care why or how) damaged.

Dan, this appears to be a somewhat self serving distinction. You are in effect saying (along with Dawkins) that when an action crosses over into the repugnant you can simply attribute it to a damaged mind and do not see a continuum of human behaviour along a scale of ever increasing departure from what we would consider acceptable. Where is the point where we suddenly stop being bad (and responsible) and suddenly become damaged (and not responsible)? Or would you go as far as Dawkins and say we are never responsible for our actions but we are simply broken and need fixing?

We are having a conversation about evil but I don?t know if anyone has previously defined what we mean by evil.

Some definitions from Wiki:

?morally objectionable aspects of the behaviour and reasoning of human beings?

?those which are deliberately void of conscience, and show a wanton penchant for destruction?

?the absence of a good which could and should be present?

?unprovoked hatred against and coupled with an aggressive impulse to cause harm to another person or group?

I am sure you would have no difficulty with some of those definitions of evil, but how would you define it for the purposes of this conversation?

Originally Posted By: DA Morgan

And let me now throw back your way a question equally intended to emphasize the extreme.

My country has a President, and yours a PM, who I believe have done far more damage to far more innocent children than all of the child rapists in your country combined. Why is it that we can all agree that child rape is a crime ... and blowing the arms and legs off a child, killing its parents, and burning its home and family to the ground, a matter where intelligent men might differ and not a single person has been put behind bars? Nor will any be.

So to return to your original question ... I would disagree with your assumption that child rapists, or my President, are of sound mind. Their actions, in and of themselves, indicate otherwise.

For Blair, whether I could define his actions as evil would depend on the definition of evil we are happy with. If it was ?unprovoked hatred against and coupled with an aggressive impulse to cause harm to another person or group? then I would not classify his actions as evil. It may appear that it sums his actions up very well, but I would not be convinced that he has an aggressive impulse to harm the Iraqi people. He is under the impression he is doing the right thing ? ?The Greater Good? and all that. I disagree with him and would be happy to see him in The Hague.

As for Bush ? He?s simply a breathtakingly ignorant buffoon and it should be the voters who are guilty for giving a chimp such power ? twice ? ?nuff said.

But you make a very interesting point about our cognitive dissonance. Raping = Evil / Blanket Bombing = Expedient.

Blacknad

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Blacknad wrote:
"It is exactly the same things. Atheists have always been convinced that horrible things need to be done for one reason or another. Hitler would never have got anywhere without people who were convinced they were doing horrible things for the right reasons."

You are absolutely correct. If you reread my post you will find that I repeated juxtapose "religion" and "nationalism" in these discussions. My doing so is not a coincidence.

Blacknad wrote:
"'The Devil made me do it' is an incredibly clumsy over-simplification. I have never heard any Christian make such a claim (except in jest)"

Stay in the UK then. I have heard it ... not in the exact words of comedian Eddie Murphy ... but in essence ... yes it is said.

If you subscribe the belief system that there evil is a noun ... then you are not totally responsible for your actions. If you subscribe to the belief that you were born with original sin then you are not totally responsible for your actions.

You can't have it both ways. You can't tell a young child that they are sinners who need to beg for forgiveness, even though they've truly done nothing wrong, and then expect them to accept responsibility for their own actions. Heck they were already guilty.


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Originally Posted By: terrytnewzealand
Blacknad asked:

"Is it evil to be in sound mind and rape a two year old child? Always?"

I think most of us would agree (and DA certainly seems to) it is impossible that anyone who would rape a two year old child could be in sound mind. They would have to have had a very strange upbringing. I used to know a person who was charged with molesting his child. I spoke to him shortly before his case came up and was absolutely stunned as he came up with all sorts of justifications for it. Turns out his family had always done it. I suppose we could say the family was evil but it's more likely they were just very strange.

Terry, I have kind of addressed this above.

Originally Posted By: terrytnewzealand
By the way, good to hear from you again Blacky.


Terry, in just ten small words you have made me smile and feel good.

Synapses in your brain fired and made you decide what you wanted to say ? more synapses fired and electrical impulses travelled down your arm and contracted and relaxed muscles to enable you to type ? again electrical signals moved from keyboard to processor and now become binary ? eventually converted into electrical signal again and travel along copper wire to the exchange ? eventually converted into radio waves and bounced off satellite to my mobile provider ? back to electrical impulses ? then radio waves again ? sent to mast ? picked up by my mobile phone and back to electrical signals ? then binary ? then electrical signals to screen ? then converted to photons ? converted back to electrical signals by my eye ? along optic nerve to visual cortex ? then distributed to various parts of brain to produce endorphins (and warm glow) etc. ? electrical signals again to facial muscles to contract into smile ? also laid down as memory ? also more synapses firing to enable me to think ?that Terry?s a nice friendly guy? and so on?

I?ve probably just displayed my ignorance of everything from brain structure/chemistry/biology to telecommunications/physics, but how clever the illusion that I am a discreet entity when it would appear that I am really just a bundle of disparate chemical reactions. I have a problem with materialistic reductionism.

And also I am not back ? I never went ? I just now prefer to read and learn the science instead of wading in all the time with my own opinion. Also the ?Not quite science? has become tedious with all this baseless new age nonsense about G?D.

Blacknad.

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Originally Posted By: DA Morgan
Blacknad wrote:
"'The Devil made me do it' is an incredibly clumsy over-simplification. I have never heard any Christian make such a claim (except in jest)"

Stay in the UK then. I have heard it ... not in the exact words of comedian Eddie Murphy ... but in essence ... yes it is said.


My apologies to Ellis then. Always good to be set straight by you Dan. I need to always figure in the asinine qualities of what seems to be a large portion of US Christians.

Blacknad.

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Blacknad writes:
"You are in effect saying (along with Dawkins) that when an action crosses over into the repugnant you can simply attribute it to a damaged mind and do not see a continuum of human behaviour along a scale of ever increasing departure from what we would consider acceptable."

I would beg to differ.

Blacknad writes:
"Where is the point where we suddenly stop being bad (and responsible) and suddenly become damaged (and not responsible)? Or would you go as far as Dawkins and say we are never responsible for our actions but we are simply broken and need fixing?"

That is for society to decide. From my standpoint it would be where the actions are such that a jury of their peers conclude that the intent was to damage another entity.

You can't pull the wings off a butterfly and say you didn't know you were hurting it. You can't steal someone's wallet and say you were just trying to help them across the street by lightening their load. You can't strap a bomb to yourself and walk into a crowded shopping center and claim your intent was to aid and comfort the homeless. It really isn't all that ambiguous.

I would define evil as a label people attach to things when they want others to react emotionally rather than rationally. Evil is a word intimately entangled with religious and theological teachings. Great white sharks are not evil. A human that does the same thing is. To the victim it doesn't matter.

Blacknad wrote:
"For Blair, whether I could define his actions as evil would depend on the definition of evil we are happy with."

I don't think Blair is evil. I am absolutely sure that Blair has no problem waking up in the morning and looking at himself in the mirror. And no doubt is confused as to why there are so many misguided souls that would like to put him in the dock. He's not evil. He'd never pull the trigger himself. But I doubt he's ever once lost a nights sleep because of a 500 pound bomb dropped on a mud hut either.

I think you absolutely correct when you state: "He is under the impression he is doing the right thing ? ?The Greater Good? and all that."

Exactly. Nationalism and patriotism and god. How easy to justify bad acts when it is for the greater good and the glory.

Blacknad wrote:
"As for Bush ? He?s simply a breathtakingly ignorant buffoon"

Not simply. While he is definitely a world-class moron he is also damaged goods.


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DA wrote:
You can't have it both ways. You can't tell a young child that they are sinners who need to beg for forgiveness, even though they've truly done nothing wrong, and then expect them to accept responsibility for their own actions. Heck they were already guilty.


A child brought up to believe that they were born in sin and made to confess to imagined sin, will easily adapt to the concept of evil hovering around them always. Such a person will need constant reassurance that they will reach Heaven/ Paradise for it really is hell for them on Earth. They may even feel that this gives them permission to kill, burn and wage war on the 'enemy' in the name of their god, because s/he is good, whilst their foes, and their god, are evil.

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DA wrote:
You can't have it both ways. You can't tell a young child that they are sinners who need to beg for forgiveness, even though they've truly done nothing wrong, and then expect them to accept responsibility for their own actions. Heck they were already guilty.


A child brought up to believe that they were born in sin and made to confess to imagined sin, will easily adapt to the concept of evil hovering around them always. Such a person will need constant reassurance that they will reach Heaven/ Paradise for it really is hell for them on Earth. They may even feel that this gives them permission to kill, burn and wage war on the 'enemy' in the name of their god, because s/he is good, whilst their foes, and their god, are evil.

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Originally Posted By: Blacknad
but how clever the illusion that I am a discreet entity when it would appear that I am really just a bundle of disparate chemical reactions. I have a problem with materialistic reductionism.

Inasmuch as the chemical reactions cannot be truly 'disparate' - all things being interconnected - there can be said to be only one discrete entity, i.e. the cosmos, with all it's dimensions, multiverses, energies and consciousness, subjective experiences and whatever. To wax artistic, it may turn out that music is being played on your (M)Strings as part of the one symphony of all existence.

OK. I built it. You demolish it.


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Redewenur wrote:

"Inasmuch as the chemical reactions cannot be truly 'disparate' - all things being interconnected - there can be said to be only one discrete entity, i.e. the cosmos, with all it's dimensions, multiverses, energies and consciousness, subjective experiences and whatever."

That sounds like you are a Giordanista, a supporter of Giordano Bruno. He believed the universe is of infinite size, consists of many suns and many planets, it's all interconnected, there is just one universal soul and that space and time can only be conceived of in relation to fixed points. Of course he was tortured for many years and finally burned at the stake in 1600 AD.

And some contributers to this thread wonder why others of us mistrust religion so much.

Blacknad, I'm sure your version of religion is not as dangerous to the rest of the world as is that of the fundys. I also personally know many people who have become what I would consider to be much more reasonable human beings once converted to some religion. If that's what it takes for some people I'm all in favour actually. But any belief surely must take into account what science tells us about our origin. To me this seems inconsistent with any idea we are a special creation.

After 30 pages of contributions to this thread the best evidence for God anyone has come up with is to merely point out that we are here. They consider this proves there is a God. This is not sufficient evidence to convince me.

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Originally Posted By: terrytnewzealand
That sounds like you are a Giordanista, a supporter of Giordano Bruno.

Well, 'Giordanista' does have a nice ring to it. Actually, I have to confess ignorance - I'd never heard of the wonderful, courageous fellow. My assumption about 'all things being interconnected? is based solely on my scientifically primitive evaluation of all that I can make head or tail of. For me, it's a view not inconsistent with our current knowledge, and I happen find it extraordinarily beautiful. It has nothing to do with 'Evidence for God', but then I'm not among those who seek it.


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terrytnewzealand wrote:

"After 30 pages of contributions to this thread the best evidence for God anyone has come up with is to merely point out that we are here. They consider this proves there is a God. This is not sufficient evidence to convince me. "

Why would you need convincing? Do you feel a need to beleive in something supernatural?

I think this tendancy for humans to be pulled towards religion is purely a psychological one. We, as humans, tend to seek for reasoning in any situation. Even more in situations where science can't explain the situation. Religion is the result of a lack of scientific knowledge. Ages ago, there was no knowledge of gravitational forces so people made up Gods has an hypotisis to explain how stars and other celestial bodies hold in the sky. One hypotisis spreads out from one person to others, people start holding this hypotisis as truth.

It is a know fact that unanswered questions can cause an increase in stress on the mind. The more the stress lelvel is high the more readily someone will accept any answer as the truth. Stress, anxiety and depression, which are all somewhat related, is known by psychologists to make people more vulnerable to suggestions. This is even the basis of some religion or not most relegion. Scientology is probably the best example of a relegion using this to their advantage.

The process is quite simple... bombard someone with a ton of questions that can't be answered easily putting some level of doubt in his mind. This also increases the mind stress level trying to answer these questions. With proper questioning of a subject the stress can lead to anxiety and depression. When the subject is in such a state, fill him with answers and he will gladly accept these answers as the truth.

Relativism can also be viewed as a religion. Einstein made an hypotisis, or theory if you prefer, and people hold that theory as the one and only truth. Beilieving somthing to be true doesn't make it true and infallible.

On another hand, I have personnaly had an experience that could be described as religious and I did believe at one point that it was of religious nature. But that beliefs, just like any other beliefs was not backed by any empirical knowledge. It was only later when I started reading on brain functions and psychology that I found out about drug induced religious experience and the fact that naturaly produced drugs in the brain can cause such experiences. The artificial drug DMT and also the natural drug melantonin produced by the pineal gland are known to cause halucinations closely resembling a near death experience and this is due to misfiring neurons or a power surge in the brain if you prefer.

Here is a couple interesting reads:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_religion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_gland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine



//What was, still is, and always will be
//that is the truth of the eternal now


What was, still is, and always will be such is the truth of the eternal now.
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Originally Posted By: redewenur
Inasmuch as the chemical reactions cannot be truly 'disparate' - all things being interconnected - there can be said to be only one discrete entity...


Hi Redwener,

I am really talking about the traditional understanding that a person has a seat of consciousness - an 'I' that somehow looks out from behind your eyes. Neuroscience has clearly scotched that myth. Thought processes, perceptions, feelings etc. occur in different parts of the brain and do not, it appears, feed into one central 'processing unit' that then responds and ponders upon what actions it will take. The super-connectedness that we feel about ourselves is simply an illusion. There are just separate parts of the brain, (operating in concert only where needed) that simply manage to do what is needed to help us survive.

Blacknad.

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Consciousness is a wonderful enigma. I maintain that we still don't know what it is. Certainly, we can say that activity in a particular brain area corresponds to a particular mental phenomenon; however, that doesn't really answer the question to my satisfaction.

OK, we're off topic, but you have to admit that it's interesting.
_______

MrBiGG, you said:

"Relativism can also be viewed as a religion. Einstein made an hypotisis, or theory if you prefer, and people hold that theory as the one and only truth."

I disagree. If you think about it, you might change your mind. A relativist or scientist worthy of the title would hold GR as only a limited 'truth' - the kind of pragmatic truth that may one day be modified, as was Newton's. In science there can be no absolute truth.


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Ellis your bring up an excellent point when you write:
"They may even feel that this gives them permission to kill, burn and wage war on the 'enemy' in the name of their god, because s/he is good, whilst their foes, and their god, are evil."

I don't mean for this example to be prejudicial with respect to Moslems as at a different time and place it would apply equally to all. But the reason many become suicide bombers is to go to heaven.

If they thought they were already going there ... could they be persuaded to blow themselves and innocents up in their quest for personal glory? I doubt it.

I think a prerequisite is that you get someone who believes that their only path to heaven is the horrific act they are being asked to commit. One chance to get there ... don't blow it.


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This thread has morphed from a troll post with zero intellectual content into one of the most mentally stimulating we have had here at SAGG in a very long time. Congratulations all. Thank you blacknad, redewenur, ellis, MrBigg78, TNZ.

Well done!
=================================================================

Moving on ...

To prove that there is a god ... one would need to show how things would be different if no such entity existed. Would Pi equal 3.00000000? The Planck length be shorter? Cubes have 7 sides? Male mammals no longer have nipples?

I recently saw a mathematical calculation based on the number of species Noah would have had to put into his ark and the number he would have been required to save: two of each. Working 24 hours a day with forklifts he and his family could have loaded it in about 30 years.


DA Morgan
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