Icarus wrote:

TehGhodTrole wrote:

Icarus wrote:

<snip>

The evidence from biology at least, is that there is no
purposeful design.

Well, how did you arrive at that conclusion? You simply state
that
the evidence from biology shows your case, whatever it is,
without
ever pointing to what it was that drew you to say such a
thing. That
isn't going to get you good marks in the Baptism by Fire
Illogical
Nitwit Identification Process.

It goes without saying that living organisms are the result of
evolution rather than design.

Whilst I don't subscribe to mad notions of a 6,000 year old
planet, which implies the beef I buy at the butcher that was
killed 2 days before is probably dinosaur, the act of Creation
is still a valid position. It is still a valid position
because...

Evolution theory explains how one species adapts this way and
how one adapts that way. The theory also explains how one
species may adapt to the point of becoming a different species.

BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY <------

Darwin's theory of evolution is still a theory. So, it does not
go "without saying that living organisms are the result of
evolution rather than design." It is a theory. It is not
proven.
It will only be proven when we can repeatably <-- (scientific
method) observe one species become another.

Failure to observe audiatur et altera pars is not strictly a
logical fallacy, however to state "It goes without saying"
then to go on saying without _first_ uttering one single
assumption or reason why it "goes without saying" is entirely
unacceptable.

I have deducted 1 point from your Baptism by Fire Illogical
Nitwit Identification Process score. You now have 0 out of 10.

You have failed spectacularly to show that any discussion with
you that goes beyond "Yes it is. No it isn't" will be utterly
fruitless. That is based entirely on observing the evidence
before me, which clearly indicates a persistent and consistent
failure on your part to see both sides of an issue.

[snip rest unread on account of error in first sentence]

Goodbye.

Icarus wrote:

It goes without saying that living organisms are the result of
evolution rather than design.

Whilst I don't subscribe to mad notions of a 6,000 year old planet,
which implies the beef I buy at the butcher that was killed 2 days
before is probably dinosaur, the act of Creation is still a valid
position. It is still a valid position because...

Evolution theory explains how one species adapts this way and how
one adapts that way. The theory also explains how one species may
adapt to the point of becoming a different species.

BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY <------

Darwin's theory of evolution is still a theory. So, it does not
go "without saying that living organisms are the result of
evolution rather than design." It is a theory. It is not proven.
It will only be proven when we can repeatably <-- (scientific method)
observe one species become another.

TehGhodTrole wrote:

Navigator wrote:

That's not true. Huxley said in "Agnosticism and Christianity" that
he would never say that anything is unknowable. (Rightly so, since
how would anyone ever know that something is unknowable? That's a
self-contradictory idea.)

DUH! No it is not, you boofheaded nitwit.

Yes sir, it is. If you disagree please explain

That relates to

Sniper wrote:

I should have stated that more clearly. I meant consensus
on what's considered reasonable. For instance a Christian
might think an answer to prayer a reasonable confirmation
of their faith, or that a syncronicity of events in their
life was, where an atheist would call it coincidence.

There's that problem of confirmation again.

It seems to me to be unreasonable that one might need to pray in
order to see God's work around him if one is already a true
believer. The act of praying "for empirical confirmation" implies
that one does not possess the faculties of perception required to
see anything of God at all. Indeed, I know of no everyday Christians
that would do such a thing as pray "for empirical confirmation".

Not need to pray for confirmation, but find confirmation
in their daily walk, which includes prayer. This is what
my Christian friends share with me, anyway.

Well, yes, the confirmation is everywhere, but in the Christian is where God
dwells, so the "confirmation" appears to me to be an inherent component of
the experience, not an external one.

Maybe you need to define what you mean by theist. Maybe you need a
better example.

I think you were right in saying Christian is what I was
eluding to earlier.

I haven't had enough coffee yet so I can't confirm what you mean. I'll have
to assume you mean the reference to my assumption of what you meant :)

I prefer to use this type of
theist as an illustration, because it gets to my point
that I'll be making below.

That's good common ground to work from.

We are all endowed with the capacity to think, so I dispute that the
atheist "doesn't naturally possess these alternatives" unless you
mean to imply that the alt.atheist does not naturally possess a
functioning mind *eg*

No, I mean that _if_ one subscribes to the theology of
election, an atheist would be incapable of coming to a
similar conclusion regarding God than a Christian.

No. Not at all. I must disagree entirely. The seeming paradox in election is
the confusion between God foreknowing these things and the free offer to
eternal life in Christ to all who seek Him. Since all are open to accept
that offer and take part in what it means, at any point in their lives, then
they too become one of the foreknown elect.

To put it differently, the offer in the bible is open to everyone so it
would be totally contradictory to infer that some are unable to ever accept
that offer.

The question in the theology turns on whether or not God preordained the
elect to eternal life, thus leaving some out, or foreknew which of those
would take up His offer by virtue of Him being all knowing. Now, that's
got to be the nut of the problem.

We can explain "unthinking unreasonableness" and take any number of
routes to get there but I think we will end up at the same place
irrespective of the route we take. Clearly it is true that just as
many theists as atheists are equally guilty of the crime of
unthinking. The crime of unthinking is commited when one fails to
ask the question "Why is it so?"

Here's the problem as I see it. True, reasonableness is
reasonableness, but depending upon the "reasonableness"
of the underpinnings philosophical system of the person
we're discussing, what they consider "reasonable" will,
by necessity, vary.

Yes, but the actual reasonableness does not rest on what those who claim to
be reasonable actually assert. I've alluded to that so many times. To
illustrate, and I'm sure I've used this in this thread before, everyone on
the planet could jump up and down asserting that the next RC pope won't be
French and won't be a Jew, but that does not make them right. Reasonableness
is inherent in a sound position. The trick is to see one's own
unreasonablness and deal with it. It's called critical thinking.

In order to be reasonable about something with reasonableness, one must
challenge and question their own views and the foundations that they rest
upon.

Paradoxically, the crime of unthinking is worse for believers when
they fail to ask "Whom does this serve?"

So, the divergence is brought about by unthinking on both sides and
by the failure of both sides to seek common ground from where one
can ask and answer "Why is it so?"

While I agree this is so for the "unthinking" on both
sides of the isle, there is also the factor of again,
the philosophical underpinnings of their world views.

Ah... world views. Now we are getting somewhere. I would say that far too
many people merely accept their own opinions in lieu of critical thinking
about what drives their opinions. That is the nature of the unthinking
masses. Take as an example a racist bigot:

If you ask the bigot why he vilifies certain people because of their race or
colour, he's probably going tell you that it's because they're the stinking
scum of the earth, take jobs that others should have, live in hovels with 20
people to a room, have unnatural sex with various barn animals and so on and
so forth.

But both you and I know that those words are actually the poisoned bigotry
itself speaking. It is quite reasonable to assume that the bigot in the
example has neither analysed his position nor challenged it in any way. He
merely accepts that it is so, and his words will always give lie to that.

I doubt anyone of that ilk to clearly articulate any kind of rational
philosophy about their stance, let alone their world-view.

So, we end up again with reasonableness being inherent in the position and
our task being to identify it. That is why I assert atheism is unreasonable
and that the only viable option for the atheist, which is reasonable, is
agnosticism. Dogmatic alt.atheists are bigots who cannot challenge their own
opinions. The saving grace in opinion for the alt.atheist is that there is
no requirement for an opinion to be founded upon any fact or have any
inherent reasonableness at all.

In summary, if you and I attempt to discern the reasonableness of this
philosophy or that philosophy, we will see it in light of what we know and
what we understand. If we understand differently between us, then that's
where discussion kicks in and one must yield to the arguments of the other
because of inherent reasonableness. To not do that is unreasonable :)

That's the tough part, in more detail, that I see in the act of critical
thinking... admitting that you're not correct.

Furthermore, it is far less painful for the alt.atheist to point the
finger and rabidly accuse theists of unquestioningly accepting
unfounded and irrational beliefs whilst unquestioningly accepting
his own unfounded and irrational beliefs.

I would only point out here that many atheists _are_
agnostic in that they don't neccessarly believe that
a god does not exist, (strong atheism), rather, they
claim a lack of belief in god/s. They neither have a
belief that they exist, or a belief that they don't.

I have shown numerous times that strong atheism is absurd so I'll leave it
there where it belongs, in the realm of the absurd.

On the matter of weak atheism, it too has an inherent absurdity that does
not seem apparent unless one digs the surface a little. The contradiction
hides in a possible misunderstanding of the nauture of belief and is
obscured by odd phraseology. It is something that I want to eventually
turn my attention to.

Suffice it to say, it is beyond me how one can claim to lack a belief.
Beliefs are. They either are or they are not. When they are, they are known
and they relate to some knowledge, notion or idea. Beliefs are positive or
negative, or somewhere in between those two poles.

When something comes out of the unknown and comes into the known, a belief
is formed about the notion or idea and it lies somewhere on the +ve/-ve
scale. Thus, to me, even weak atheism is absurd because it claims
non-existence or non-possession of a belief that must necessarily exist. The
belief must exist because the notion it relates to is a known.

/note/
As I was reviewing this message prior to posting it, I had an inspiration
at this point.

It would appear that someone asserting that they lack the belief in a
metaphysical X is another way of pointing the finger and diverting attention
from the need to deal with an unresolved issue running around in the dark
recessess of their own subconscious. In effect, it might be that "I lack the
belief in X" is actually a sinister avoidance mechanism in full flight.

If I assert that "I lack the belief in X", I am not pointing to my own
belief. That must be so because I deny that it exists at all. In short, I am
avoiding confronting my own belief and actually pointing someone else's and
saying, "I don't have your belief", all the while hoping that nobody notices
the shifty two-step that I just perpetrated.

That idea might prove a fruitful avenue of future pursuit.
/end note/

All of that means a belief cannot be said to not exist if one believes that
the belief does not exist. The act of believing that a belief does not exist
creates the belief. Weak atheism is patently absurd.

On the matter of agnosticism, I take it to refer to any position that is
neither asserted nor denied on the grounds that the answer is unknowable.

Now, to me, when I think about that, agnosticism is the logically valid
conclusion when considering the Unknowable one from a position of not
knowing. The conclusion that agnosticism arrives at about the existence
of God is the quintessential summit of critical thinking. It places the
belief pointer smack-bang in the nombril of the scale of knowing and
not knowing.

I had intened to make my comments about weak atheism as short as
possible, but it doesn't seem to be panning out that way. There is one
more essential point here that I need to expose about the absurdity of
weak atheism.

If we look closely at agnosticism, we may see it as being inherent in the
statement "I have no opinion on the matter". The same cannot always be said
for "I don't care". If we take the statement "I have no opinion on the
matter" at face value, it means that one's mind has not turned to deal with
the notion for one reason or another. Thus the notion is parked for possible
future analysis. It remains in a netherworld of subconscious probability,
neither known nor unknown. So, rightly, one could be said to not hold a
belief in those circumstances. To put it another way, one has no opinion
about it.

But that in itself again presents a dilemma because the subconscious self is
prone to mulling these things over in surreptitious secrecy and then scaring
the living daylights out of the consciousness by forcing the now digested
remains of the idea to explode all over the frontal lobes in the guise of
inspiration.

At this point, we can keep going around and around discussing the dark
alleys of atheism's propensity to patent absurdity. Alternatively I propose
we drop the matter and either agree to agree that it atheism is prima facie
absurd, or agree to disagree that the case has or has not been been made.

Pick one.

It is beyond me to actually understand the depth of my own predicament at
this time. The problem is pointed to by my statement above. Contrary to
what some others might say, I don't class myself as remotely approaching the
generalised idea of what constitutes an idiot or even having a propensity to
being irrational. I have never merely blindly accepted any notion or idea
and have always been an anlaytical thinker, yet here I am, believing in the
existence of, what is apparently absurd to some, the God of the bible. And
freely worshipping Him. Such is this the nature of this odd mystery.

Again, unquestioning acceptance is worse for the theist than it is
for the atheist as it is the route by which evil cults spread their
tentacles. Yet, and quite paradoxically, the true believer doesn't
need to question his beliefs since he is convinced of their truth.

How irritatingly odd.

Which is a point not lost on atheists. The questions
they rightly ask are: "How do you know that your god
is the real thing?" (and) "How do you know that your
understanding of that god is an accurate one?"

They are valid questions, and that cannot be denied. Indeed they are
challenges posed directly by Scripture itself, and it is a two-edged sword.

On the one hand, Scripture says:

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.
[Romans 8:16]

And on the other it says:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see
whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out
into the world. [I John 4:1]

Clearly one needs the wisdom of Solomon here. You should have seen the place
where I stated that the Christian must ask the fatal question, "Whom does
this serve?" The answer may come from one or more of several sources. The
two main ones being the indwelling Spirit and the acts of observation and
thinking, but somehow I think those two are inextricably intertwined in such
a manner that one cannot get a correct answer out of the latter without the
former.

Take, as an example, the odd antics observed on TV during any Benny Hinn
performance. Witness people swaying, shrieking, yelling out, laughing
wildly, bellowing, rolling around on the floor and thrashing about,
writhing as if controlled by some invisible force.

Whom does this serve?

Applying the principles of kaizen, we can create a series of questions to
get to one or more possible answers. I won't go through the whole process
and will take a few shortcuts to the more salient points.

Given that we understand God to be boundless and limitless, why on earth
would He deign to make such displays on TV? Why on earth does God need TV at
all? What is the general reaction (the result) that people (believers and
unbelievers alike) have when they see this? Would these displays invoke the
scorn or ridicule of many non-believers?

Clearly, the answer to that last question would have to be yes, it would be
expected to invoke scorn and ridicule.

Whom does this serve?

Thus the ultimate answer should be obvious. It (the displays of thrashing
about and dropping down as if dead on TV) does not appear to serve the
interests of the God of the bible because its companion is ridicule.

I don't need a speciality, Earl. You have yet to prove that your
god-concept exists anywhere outside your mind created "reality".