Why Everyone's Bored With Atheists (1 Viewer)

[Quag]

I later modified the assertion to "a concept of morality," and explained why.

OK I may have missed that, this thread is 174 pages long so please explain what "a concept of morality" is and why religion is a requirement

Your paradigm, for instance, is not a real concept of morality;

Hard to debate that since I dont know what you mean by "a real concept of morality"

it's a proposition designed to exclude religion from the articulation of human culture.

No it isnt, I have never tried to exclude religion from human culture

 

[Frank Apisa]

What if the god is not a creator god. I’m talking gods like Zeus and Thor who were not seen particularly in that light. Are Zeus and Thor also possible? And how about Baloob? Since he created gravity, is he also possible. If every single god ever imagined by humans are possible, then why do you keep putting “creator” in front of god? Why not just day “god” without adding the “creator”? Are there any gods at all that have been imagined by humans that are NOT possible? What about gods that most humans have now clearly identified as myths, gods such as Zeus and Thor. If they are clearly myths, but they were seen as gods in the past, then are they also possible? I’m just trying to understand the parameters of your claim.

Watsup...good morning.

I was asked, "What do you mean by the words "god" or "gods." Others have noted that any discussion of these issues requires that the words, "gods" or "god" must be defined.

So I did it.

I defined what I mean by god or gods. And what I said was, "When I use the word "GOD or gods" here, I mean "The entity (or entities) responsible for the creation of what we humans call 'the physical universe'...IF SUCH AN ENTITY OR ENTITIES ACTUALLY EXIST."

Now if you want to think that creates some kind of logical fallacy...okay. Think it. I doubt I will ever be able to convince you that it doesn't.

I think you have enough information there to understand exactly what I mean when I speak to the issue.

 

[Frank Apisa]

Please stop running away and try to defend or support your false claim

Good morning, Quag.

Please see my comment in my post #4326.

I hope that helps.

 

[Quag]

Good morning, Quag.

Please see my comment in my post #4326.

I hope that helps.

Please stop running and try to support or defend your false claim

 

[Frank Apisa]

Please stop running and try to support or defend your false claim

I see why you are so confused, Quag. Please see my post #4354...and that should help you try to unconfuse.

 

[Quag]

I see why you are so confused, Quag. Please see my post #4354...and that should help you try to unconfuse.

No confusion on my part and no attempt to support or defend the false claim on your part

 

[Frank Apisa]

No confusion on my part and no attempt to support or defend the false claim on your part

Really, Quag...I can understand why you are so confused. Yes, my cyber-friend. But if you look at my post #4355...you may be able to part the fog and see the light.

Do give it a try.

 

[Quag]

Really, Quag...I can understand why you are so confused. Yes, my cyber-friend. But if you look at my post #4355...you may be able to part the fog and see the light.

Do give it a try.

See above

 

[Frank Apisa]

See above

Okay, I did...and I can see how confused you are, even if you are so confused you cannot see it yourself. So the only thing I can do as a cyber-friend of yours, is to help you.

Now, just refer back to my post #4358.

Really do it...and follow where that leads. I will eventually get you to a spot where you will clearly lead you out of your confusion. I will be able to tell if you have actually done the read-back, because you are an intelligent person and if you do it...the fog you are in will clear. I promise.

 

[Quag]

Okay, I did...and I can see how confused you are, even if you are so confused you cannot see it yourself. So the only thing I can do as a cyber-friend of yours, is to help you.

Now, just refer back to my post #4358.

Really do it...and follow where that leads. I will eventually get you to a spot where you will clearly lead you out of your confusion. I will be able to tell if you have actually done the read-back, because you are an intelligent person and if you do it...the fog you are in will clear. I promise.

Still no attempt by you to support or defend your false claim
Just more running away as always

 

[Frank Apisa]

Still no attempt by you to support or defend your false claim
Just more running away as always

Okay, I can see that you are embarrassed by your confusion...and just do not want to take my advise on how to see through the fog...indeed, to dissipate the fog altogether.

Best, though, that you follow the advise I gave you in my last post.

Leaving for the golf course right now. Won't be in touch until later this afternoon.

Hope all goes well for you until then.

 

[Quag]

Okay, I can see that you are embarrassed by your confusion...and just do not want to take my advise on how to see through the fog...indeed, to dissipate the fog altogether.

Best, though, that you follow the advise I gave you in my last post.

Leaving for the golf course right now. Won't be in touch until later this afternoon.

Hope all goes well for you until then.

Still no attempt by you to support or defend your false claim
Just more running away as always

 

[gboisjo]

Nonsense. From the moment I used the term "gods"...I explained exactly what I meant.

When I use the word "GOD or gods" here, I mean "The entity (or entities) responsible for the creation of what we humans call 'the physical universe'...IF SUCH AN ENTITY OR ENTITIES ACTUALLY EXIST.

Anyone who has a problem with that...it is their problem. I am not enclosing or encasing my self into a religious realm.

Then use the term entity, god suggest religion. god is akin to deity, lord, father, almighty, jehovah, king, holiness and so on.

When thinking about the origin of the universe I don't think about someone nailed to a cross, do you.

 

[gboisjo]

Watsup...good morning.

I was asked, "What do you mean by the words "god" or "gods." Others have noted that any discussion of these issues requires that the words, "gods" or "god" must be defined.

So I did it.

I defined what I mean by god or gods. And what I said was, "When I use the word "GOD or gods" here, I mean "The entity (or entities) responsible for the creation of what we humans call 'the physical universe'...IF SUCH AN ENTITY OR ENTITIES ACTUALLY EXIST."

Now if you want to think that creates some kind of logical fallacy...okay. Think it. I doubt I will ever be able to convince you that it doesn't.

I think you have enough information there to understand exactly what I mean when I speak to the issue.

Then stop using the word god, it confuses people, it ties you to religion.

 

[Michael Cole]

There are two types of religions: those that we know a lot about, and those we know only a few things, if that, based on the sort of evidence that I can define and you cannot. The ones we don't know much about may have had concepts of a creator god or not, we don't know. We can say, as I believe you have, that the earliest religions didn't have anything but a general animistic concept of the universe.

But we don't know that this concept excluded creator gods.

You keep repeating this, and I keep proving you wrong. Speaking of boring...

One more time. We do know that these concepts exclude high gods of any form, including creators. The default religious 'belief' is animism. You got that right. All hunter-gatherer societies are animistic. Belief in high gods is shared only by 39% of the societies studied, and only 15% believe these gods are active in our lives.

Here's the graph.

Here's the link.

Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion - Human Nature

Recent studies of the evolution of religion have revealed the cognitive underpinnings of belief in supernatural agents, the role of ritual in promoting cooperation, and the contribution of morally punishing high gods to the growth and stabilization of human society. The universality of religion...

link.springer.com

There are creation myths that don't involve gods. One early Egyptian cosmology believed the world emerged from a chaotic sea of water in the form of a mound.

All we can say, based on surviving physical evidence, is that we don't observe evidence of "departmental gods" in the earliest religions; a point that you distorted into the idea that only the later cultures formed "morality based religions." So given that you cannot prove that the earliest religions lacked creator gods, then creator gods might well be the one thing all religions have in common. So it's not in the least exclusive to the Christian religion, any more than it is to the religions about which know a relative lot of stuff.

 

[watsup]

Watsup...good morning.

I was asked, "What do you mean by the words "god" or "gods." Others have noted that any discussion of these issues requires that the words, "gods" or "god" must be defined.

So I did it.

I defined what I mean by god or gods. And what I said was, "When I use the word "GOD or gods" here, I mean "The entity (or entities) responsible for the creation of what we humans call 'the physical universe'...IF SUCH AN ENTITY OR ENTITIES ACTUALLY EXIST."

Now if you want to think that creates some kind of logical fallacy...okay. Think it. I doubt I will ever be able to convince you that it doesn't.

I think you have enough information there to understand exactly what I mean when I speak to the issue.

Yes, I note that you did not answer any of my more specific questions in detail. I that this is what Quag means when he says that you are “running away” from a more in-depth discussion.

 

[watsup]

Copycat. I called you boring first, and you obligingly went on to prove it for 170-plus pages.

Yet more projection. There’s really not that much to these pages except for your repetitions, sort of like the same with Frank and DrewPaul.

 

[watsup]

And you still can't define evidence.

And you still hide behind lame excuses because you know that there is indeed no “evidence” beyond “witnessing”.

 

[watsup]

There are two types of religions: those that we know a lot about, and those we know only a few things, if that, based on the sort of evidence that I can define and you cannot. The ones we don't know much about may have had concepts of a creator god or not, we don't know. We can say, as I believe you have, that the earliest religions didn't have anything but a general animistic concept of the universe. But we don't know that this concept excluded creator gods. All we can say, based on surviving physical evidence, is that we don't observe evidence of "departmental gods" in the earliest religions; a point that you distorted into the idea that only the later cultures formed "morality based religions." So given that you cannot prove that the earliest religions lacked creator gods, then creator gods might well be the one thing all religions have in common. So it's not in the least exclusive to the Christian religion, any more than it is to the religions about which know a relative lot of stuff.

I don’t think that I have mentioned creator gods in this particular discussion. Rather, I was simply pointing out the special pleading of Frank in giving exemptions to them over any other gods in his claims of “possibility”.
In fact, it would be hard to find a religion that did not include a creator god, but what I have said is that it is only relatively recently, within the last 10,000 years or so, that religions began in earnest to overlay the creator gods with also being the font of all morality. This consorts with my previous inputs about the primitive religions being nature-based rather than morality-based while ethics developed on a separate track of members of the tribe consulting with one another to determine the personal actions of members that would best enhance the long-term viability of the society.

 

[Michael Cole]

I don’t think that I have mentioned creator gods in this particular discussion. Rather, I was simply pointing out the special pleading of Frank in giving exemptions to them over any other gods in his claims of “possibility”.
In fact, it would be hard to find a religion that did not include a creator god, but what I have said is that it is only relatively recently, within the last 10,000 years or so, that religions began in earnest to overlay the creator gods with also being the font of all morality.

This consorts with my previous inputs about the primitive religions being nature-based rather than morality-based

This can't be overemphasized.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Native American beliefs. Native American culture was based on living in harmony with nature. Humans were (are) not viewed as dominant over nature (as is the biblical view), but an integral part of it.

This can be seen one step further with the Egyptian belief in balance. Anthropomorphized gods emerged, with eternal struggle not between good and evil, but between chaos and balance. The Egyptian belief was similar to the harmonic theme of Native Americans.

This, of course, is not limited to the Egyptians and Native Americans. The belief in omnipotent gods is historically in its infancy.

Early beliefs saw the world/universe as interconnected. Everything was alive with its own purpose and use. After a buffalo hunt, for example, the buffalo was thanked with prayer, not a high god. Early beliefs viewed humans in a relationship with nature, not as lords over it.

Our animistic thinking most certainly predates the earliest known burial. We don't know where in our evolutionary development we acquired the ability for symbolic thinking, but the use ochre dye has been documented from 400kya. Compared to tool use dating back over 2m years, this is recent, but considering evidence for symbolic thinking predates deliberate burial by 300k years, that leaves an unimaginable amount of time between symbolic thought and belief in life after death.

There is no god gene. There is an animism gene. All religious thought emanates from this, and we began believing in omnipotent gods a microsecond ago on the historical clock.

while ethics developed on a separate track of members of the tribe consulting with one another to determine the personal actions of members that would best enhance the long-term viability of the society.

 

[watsup]

This can't be overemphasized.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Native American beliefs. Native American culture was based on living in harmony with nature. Humans were (are) not viewed as dominant over nature (as is the biblical view), but an integral part of it.

This can be seen one step further with the Egyptian belief in balance. Anthropomorphized gods emerged, with eternal struggle not between good and evil, but between chaos and balance. It's a similar harmonic theme as that of Native Americans.

This, of course, is not limited to the Egyptians and Native Americans. The belief in omnipotent gods is historically in its infancy.

Early beliefs saw the world/universe as interconnected. Everything was alive with its own purpose and use. After a buffalo hunt, for example, the buffalo was thanked with prayer, not a high god. Early beliefs viewed humans in a relationship with nature, not a lord over it.

Our animistic thinking most certainly predates the earliest known burial. We don't know where in our evolutionary development we acquired the ability for symbolic thinking but use ochre die has been documented from 400kya. Compared to tool use dating back over 2m years, this is recent, but considering evidence for symbolic thinking predates deliberate burial by 300k years, that leaves an unimaginable amount of time between symbolic thought and belief in life after death.

There's no god gene. There is an animism gene. All religious thought emanates from this, and the amount of time we've believed in omnipotent gods occurred a microsecond ago on the historical clock.

Excellent analysis.

 

[devildavid]

I didn't say it was your assertion. But because another poster made the assertion and didn't follow up, it's in play. Can atheists prove the existence of anything not strictly material, or are they able only to work backwards, to identify something material and assume that it's the only phenomenon that is real? This seems to be your proposition on your concept of real things but go ahead and specify if I've left something out.

The existence of material things is all that evidence can be presented for. Non material is by definition something for which no evidence can ever be presented. In other words, something imaginary.

 

[devildavid]

Nope, I did not claim that a god exists because anyone says so, just as I don't claim that gods don't exist because anyone says so. I said I don't assume I know what someone else may have experienced, and that's the very definition of agnosticism,

You claimed that gods possibly exist because of claims by those experiencimg them. This is not an agnostic position as it claims knowledge of a possibility, not the inability to know anything at all about gods which includes their possibility.

 

[Mulefoot]

The existence of material things is all that evidence can be presented for. Non material is by definition something for which no evidence can ever be presented. In other words, something imaginary.

Not really. Imaginary generally means something that exists only in the mind.

Definition of IMAGINARY

existing only in imagination : lacking factual reality; formed or characterized imaginatively or arbitrarily; containing or relating to the imaginary unit… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

imaginary

1. Something that is imaginary is created by and exists only in the mind: 2…

dictionary.cambridge.org

Since you don't know if God exists "only in the mind", imaginary isn't the right word, by definition.

 

[Gordy327]

Not really. Imaginary generally means something that exists only in the mind.

Definition of IMAGINARY

existing only in imagination : lacking factual reality; formed or characterized imaginatively or arbitrarily; containing or relating to the imaginary unit… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

imaginary

1. Something that is imaginary is created by and exists only in the mind: 2…

dictionary.cambridge.org

Since you don't know if God exists "only in the mind", imaginary isn't the right word, by definition.

There's no evidence God exists in reality. So imagination is all we have. The problem is, some people tend to confuse imagination with reality.