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I find your lack of faith disturbing

patrick wrote:

The problem with absloutist atheism is that it leaves no room for human imagination whatsover.

I can see you've never read any Adams, Vonnegut or Twain.

Or Asimov, or Pullman, or...

Markus, oh, I could've gone on a lot about "Contact". There's so much there, it's a movie that leaves you pondering.

One striking thing, separate from the main theme, was how the terrorist disaster of the Sphere was portrayed as being broadcast live on CNN, -those anchor-people were actual CNN tv personalities then. I can't help but think of how the disaster in the movie, mediated by television, reminds me of 9/11 in retrospect- disaster unfolding before our eyes by human agency, large and spectacular. Back in the 60's Susan Sontag wrote an essay about science fiction called "The Imagination of Disaster", perhaps you'd be interested. But yeah, I could write ten other things about "Contact" that I found fascinating, but I do go on.

"The moonflight was amazing yes, but in the bigger picture just a circus trick to entertain people..."

I must disagree with you there, Markus. The moon landing was a triumph of the human will and imagination, and pointedly it was not done for US glory but sincerely, "for all mankind". It was the triumph of the international spirit after the War (though beating the Soviets was part of it.) One can say it was a circus for entertainment- but why would anyone expend such energy and technology and sacrifice for such a thing?! The moon landing was a feat I admire because of its idealism - there was no practical benefit to going to the moon- as such, it's almost a work of performance art. We went there because we realized we could- and by "we' I do mean, "all mankind". I still find it daring and inspiring, considering the social tumult of that year, 1969. Perfect that "2001: A Space Odyssey" came out the same year, a psychedelic vision of the future.

We're very cynical today, but it's important to try and see how people saw things 40 years ago, or any reading of history. The past is a different place. And the moon landing really was meant as a noble example of human aspiration and a modern, internationalist broader vision for humanity, after the devastation of the War and its aftermath. I'm nostalgic for that 60's international optimism, it was way before my time , and seems long gone today.

glennjridge wrote:


I find your lack of faith disturbing

Shall I spell out the irony here?

It's all right; you've made it quite clear in the past you view your god as a Darth Vader figure.

Deschanel wrote:Markus, oh, I could've gone on a lot about "Contact". There's so much there, it's a movie that leaves you pondering.

One striking thing, separate from the main theme, was how the terrorist disaster of the Sphere was portrayed as being broadcast live on CNN, -those anchor-people were actual CNN tv personalities then. I can't help but think of how the disaster in the movie, mediated by television, reminds me of 9/11 in retrospect- disaster unfolding before our eyes by human agency, large and spectacular. Back in the 60's Susan Sontag wrote an essay about science fiction called "The Imagination of Disaster", perhaps you'd be interested. But yeah, I could write ten other things about "Contact" that I found fascinating, but I do go on.

"The moonflight was amazing yes, but in the bigger picture just a circus trick to entertain people..."

I must disagree with you there, Markus. The moon landing was a triumph of the human will and imagination, and pointedly it was not done for US glory but sincerely, "for all mankind". It was the triumph of the international spirit after the War (though beating the Soviets was part of it.) One can say it was a circus for entertainment- but why would anyone expend such energy and technology and sacrifice for such a thing?! The moon landing was a feat I admire because of its idealism - there was no practical benefit to going to the moon- as such, it's almost a work of performance art. We went there because we realized we could- and by "we' I do mean, "all mankind". I still find it daring and inspiring, considering the social tumult of that year, 1969. Perfect that "2001: A Space Odyssey" came out the same year, a psychedelic vision of the future.

We're very cynical today, but it's important to try and see how people saw things 40 years ago, or any reading of history. The past is a different place. And the moon landing really was meant as a noble example of human aspiration and a modern, internationalist broader vision for humanity, after the devastation of the War and its aftermath. I'm nostalgic for that 60's international optimism, it was way before my time , and seems long gone today.

I understand...my mother explained to me, what a great thing that was...

Your Funny Uncle wrote:

patrick wrote:

The problem with absloutist atheism is that it leaves no room for human imagination whatsover.

I can see you've never read any Adams, Vonnegut or Twain.

Or Asimov, or Pullman, or...

There is no clash between rational thinking and existence of God. Rational thinking supports the existence of something beyond nature.
There is however a BIG logical problem between being atheist and strict materialist and rationalism and rational thinking.

This is obvious from the quote of pioneer geneticist and evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane: "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true ... hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."

You should all watch the entire Neon Genesis Evangelion anime (including the last two movies), and learn the truth about existance.

D.J. wrote:There is no clash between rational thinking and existence of God.

Correct. However there is an insurmountable clash between rational thinking and belief in God without evidence. This is precisely why rational people do not believe in the existence of leprechauns, fairies, the Easter Bunny and every single god not part of their own culturally indoctrinated mythology (and why the brighter and more independent manage to free themselves from the shackles of social conditioning and lose belief in the local sky wizard; it is not by coincidence that religiosity tracks inversely to intelligence and education nor that those most au fait with the scientific method believe in the local mythology least of all).

If you have evidence, I welcome you to share it here.

Rational thinking supports the existence of something beyond nature.

If only this were so. Unfortunately, rational thinking prompts the recognition that anything "beyond nature" is in fact of nature. This leads to the obvious second question all atheists have re: the existence of divinity, which is "So what?"

This is obvious from the quote of pioneer geneticist and evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane: "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true ... hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."

An exemplary reason why geneticists are not necessarily philosophers. I'm sure even our own Glen could point out the glaring logical fallacy at the heart of this quote.

There's actually some intresting footage on Youtube of leprechaun sightings, and other mysterious creatures. Haven't found any of easter bunny yet though...

patrick wrote:http://mwcnews.net/content/view/31030/

Comes as no surprise, even a supposedly peaceful phenomena like buddhism has had its share of bloodspill in revolutions et.c...

patrick wrote:

D.J. wrote:There is no clash between rational thinking and existence of God.

Correct. However there is an insurmountable clash between rational thinking and belief in God without evidence. This is precisely why rational people do not believe in the existence of leprechauns, fairies, the Easter Bunny and every single god not part of their own culturally indoctrinated mythology (and why the brighter and more independent manage to free themselves from the shackles of social conditioning and lose belief in the local sky wizard; it is not by coincidence that religiosity tracks inversely to intelligence and education nor that those most au fait with the scientific method believe in the local mythology least of all).

If you have evidence, I welcome you to share it here.

Patrick you well know that existence of God cannot be scientifically proved or disproved. As a person who seems to love science it’s interesting that you are an atheist and not an agnostic since atheism requires you to make a belief not supported by data, in this case belief that there is no God. Regarding your statement that intelligence is inversely proportional to belief in God: I’m not sure if you have some statistical data to support that, but even in the case you do, please don’t underestimate the intelligence of people who believe in God. I have at least 10 God-fearing scientist friends. Science is what I’ve been doing for living for the past 12 years.

Rational thinking supports the existence of something beyond nature.

If only this were so. Unfortunately, rational thinking prompts the recognition that anything "beyond nature" is in fact of nature. This leads to the obvious second question all atheists have re: the existence of divinity, which is "So what?"

I'll get into this in detail in next post. It will be long though.

This is obvious from the quote of pioneer geneticist and evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane: "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true ... hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."

An exemplary reason why geneticists are not necessarily philosophers. I'm sure even our own Glen could point out the glaring logical fallacy at the heart of this quote.

Since I'm not a philosopher let me explain this through the words of someone who was one, my good "friend" C.S. Lewis
"No account in universe can be true unless the account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed it’s own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound-a proof that there are no such things as proofs-which is nonsense.”

Let’s look into emergence of reason and rational thinking. Sorry about the long post, but it has to be. It's a quotation. My paraphrasing wouldn't do it any justice.

“If there is nothing but Nature, reason must have come into existence by a historical process. And of course, for Naturalist, this process was not designed to produce a mental behaviour that can find truth. There was no Designer; and indeed, until there were thinkers, there was no truth or falsehood. The type of mental behaviour we now call rational thinking or inference must have been ‘evolved’ by natural selection, by the gradual weeding out of types less fitted to survive.

Once, then, our thoughts were not rational. That is, all our thoughts once were, as many of our thoughts still are, merely subjective events, not apprehensions of objective truth. Those which had a cause external to ourselves at all were (like our pains) responses to stimuli. Now natural selection could operate only by eliminating responses that were biologically hurtful and multiplying those which tended to survival. But it is not conceivable that any improvement or responses could ever turn them into insight, or even remotely tend to do so. The relation between response and stimulus is utterly different from that between knowledge and truth known. Our physical vision is a far more useful response to light than that of the cruder organisms which have only a photo-sensitive spot. But neither this improvement nor any possible improvements we can suppose could bring it an inch nearer to being knowledge of light. It is admittedly something without which we could not have knowledge. But the knowledge is achieved by experiments and inferences from them, not by refinement of the response. It is not men with specially good eyes who know about the light, but men who have studied the relevant sciences. In the same way our physiological responses to our environment—our curiosities, aversions, delights, expectations—could be indefinitely improved (from the biological point of view) without becoming anything more than responses. Such perfection of non-rational responses, far from amounting to their conversion into valid inferences, might be conceived as different method of achieving survival—an alternative reason. A conditioning which secured that we never felt delight except in the useful nor aversion save from the dangerous, and that the degrees of both were exquisitely proportional to the degree of real utility or danger in the object, might serve us as well as reason or in some circumstances better.

Besides natural selection there is, however, experience—experience originally individual but handed on by tradition and instruction. It might be held that this, in the course of millennia, could conjure the mental behaviour we call reason—in other words, the practice of inference—out of mental behaviour which was originally not rational. Repeted experiences of finding fire (or the remains of fire) where had been smoke would condition a man to expect fire whenever he saw smoke. This expectation, expressed in the form ‘If smoke, then fire’ becomes what we call inference. Have all our inferences originated in that way?

But if they did they are all invalid inferences. Such a process will no doubt produce expectation. It will train men to expect fire when they see smoke in just the same way as it trained them to expect that all the swans would be white (until they saw a black one) or that water would always boil at 212 (until someone tried picnic on a mountain). Such expectations are not inferences and need not be true. The assumption that things which have been conjoined in the past will always be conjoined in the future is the guiding principle not of rational but of animal behaviour. Reason comes precisely when you make inference ’Since always conjoined, therefore probably connected’ and go on to attempt the discovery of the connection. When you have discovered what smoke is you may then be able to replace the mere expectation of fire by a genuine inference. Till this is done reason recognizes the expectation as a mere expectation. Where this does not need be done—that is where the inference depends on axiom—we do not appeal to past experience at all. My belief that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another is not based at all on the fact that I have never caught them behaving otherwise. I see that it ‘must’ be so.” (taken from Miracles, The Complete C.S.Lewis Signature Classics, p220-221).