The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: cut to the chase...

Re: cut to the chase...
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Wednesday, November 30 2011, 16:42:21 (UTC)
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Arrow wrote:
> If religion comes from god then prove that first before talking up the details
>
>We can never prove God's existence, even through a priori reasoning.

...I doubt you would put your money in a bank you suspected didn't exist.


Think about it: if God exists then we can prove him only if he chose to be proven. If we proved him without his consent then this would mean that he's not in control, that we are able to outsmart him... and in this case, he wouldn't be God.

...please, I've heard these tricks before...this sleight of hand where you try prove what you disprove, and then tell me "reason and logic" don't work where god is concerned...of course they do. I can't help it if you're trying to drive in a nail with a banana and then deduce that nothing, but god, will drive in a nail. Use the right tool and you'll get along just fine with no need of a god.

Therefore, we are left with faith. In the subsequent chapters (which I haven't read yet) David Berlinski argues that faith pervades our lives. We say we reject faith-based beliefs but almost everything we do, including scientific research, is laden with faith.

...you're again using an incorrect definition of things...this time it's "faith". I have faith that if I work hard and have some luck, I can become a doctor....I have that faith because I know my grades, I know my ability, both of which are not based on faith, but fact. I also know that others have become doctors before me, so I know, I KNOW, it can be done, I know I have the technical skills to do it and I know it happens all the time. My faith is based on FACTS, even though I still need some luck, but I have REASON to have faith....However, if I get down on my knees in my driveway and pray to god and have great "faith" that he will make me a doctor all on his own...or make me a doctor even though I haven't the grades...then that is not a valid definition of what faith means.

...religious people say that having faith is believing in things when there is no REASON to believe...that is ludicrous. That is a delusion, not faith. As Voltaire said..."If you would discuss with me then first you must define your terms".
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>The best attempts to argue (not prove) in favor of God's existence are Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, Thomas Aquinas's First Cause (Summa Theologica) and their Arabic version, “Kalam”. The following is an excerpt from the same book, “The Devil's Delusion” (Pages 63 – 69):

,,,those are not even valid "attempts"...both, and all, start out taking for granted what they claim to be trying to prove, or argue: that there is a god...that there MUST be a god...all that's left is to convince others that he is THEIR god. That's called begging the question. Certainly we can discuss the IDEA of god...what it would mean if there was such a thing....but that isn't really necessary either since what we're really talking about is religion and religion is obviously man-made.
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>***
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>The cosmological argument emerges from a simple question and its answer.
>
>The question:
> What caused the universe?
>
>The answer:
> Something.


....you can't even prove that. Using the word "cause" is also a fallacy. The universe doesn't have to be caused by anything...to tag the universe with the notion of a cause, is a tricky way to start us down the god argument. Just accept the universe..it is here...it is a fact. You can enjoy a banana without knowing its cause....enjoy life the same way, without a god....because when people start with a god, they blow him up and magnify his powers and pretty soon they've got what they really wanted: the excuse by which they can maintain power over the lives of people. I'm not going to be rules by a banana.
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>…
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>Aquinas addresses the cosmological argument in Article 3 of Question 2 of the first part of the Summa. Question 2 is called “The Existence of God,” and Article 3 asks the question whether God exists. Aquinas begins by offering a powerful and lucid defense of atheism.
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>“It is superfluous to suppose,” Aquinas argues, “that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many.” This constraint is now familiar as Occam’s Razor, even though William of Occam lived and wrote after Aquinas’s death.

...all of this is flim-flam...it's meant to impress the gullible....the same people who were afraid of demons and soap and the moon's shadow.
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>“But it seems,” Aquinas at once adds, “that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing that God did not exist.”
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>Other principles?
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>Just so. “All natural things can be reduced to one principle, which is nature, and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle, which is human reason, or will.”
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>It follows, Aquinas concludes provisionally, that “[t]here is no reason to suppose God’s existence.”

...Aquinas is a practitioner of cheap carnival tricks...a circus Barker whose job it is to get people inside the tent.
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>This is a conclusion that Aquinas is prepared to reject with all the force of his faith and genius. The existence of God may be demonstrated; it is subject to proof, and if not proof, then to argument. It follows that not everything in nature can be accounted for by “other principles.”
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>The economies of thought offered by Occam’s Razor are an illusion.


...this is all from the Scholastic movement when churchmen realized people didn't really believe their faith-based crap....so they thought to use "reason" to prove the existence of god...except they got Reason all wrong too...which isn't hard to imagine since their minds were already addled with this Swiss Cheese.

...you can't prove that pigs fly on Mars...any more than you can prove the existence of god, or his non-existence. The whole thing has to be swallowed on faith...and in time the Church realized its mistake and went back to burning and imprisoning people into faith...though they had hardly stopped...they just stopped trying to "prove"...and when did they allow any "argument"? You either accepted it or else.....
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>We understand things in nature, Aquinas observes, by grasping as best we can causes and their effects: the match that lights the fire, the chill that sets one’s teeth to chattering, the water that slakes thirst.

...and the next thing you'll be telling me is about that famous watch that proves there is a watchmaker. It works for the watch, but not for humans, or trees, or anything which we already know is MAN-MADE...we already KNOW that watches are made by watchmakers...so if we find one we already KNOW some watchmaker somewhere must have made it...we find man, so you want us to assume some man-maker somewhere made man...so there is a GOD...bull. That's the whole thing...we already KNOW what makes watches...we do NOT know what makes men!!! That's the whole thing...in a circle!


“In the world of sense,” as Aquinas says, “there is an order of efficient causes.” But just as no man can be his own father, no effect can be its own cause.

...bad analogies..that's all these "arguments" are...but they happen so fast and seem to make sense that people let them slip.

A series of effects preceded by their causes forms a luminous metaphysical trail going backward into the past, because, as Aquinas argues, causes must precede their effects.

...everywhere except where god is concerned...the ultimate question can have no ultimate answer...and god is supposed to be the ultimate answer. Face it...it is a mystery and will always remain a mystery...and, oddly enough, that KEEPS it at a god-level..for as soon as dumb man thinks he's discovered god, you KNOW he hasn't. Actually I'm closer to "god" than Aquinas ever was...he tried to grab GHod, define him and put him into a bottle marked "THE BIG CAUSE"...he strips god of all majesty and mystery by trying to make him intelligible to water and soap-fearing peasants....I keep god where he belongs: among the fantastical...if he even exists...and he doesn;t need to exist....his existence changes or adds nothing TO existence....it just gives tricky men a means by which they can hoodwink and gain power over others.
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>Can a series of this sort be infinitely continued, so that it simply disappears into the loom of time?
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>Aquinas argues that when it comes to causes, “it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all . . . causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause.”

....obviously Aquinas had way too much time on his hands.
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>If a series of causes does not start, it cannot get going, and if it does not get going, then there will be no intermediate causes, and if there are no intermediate causes, then over here, where we have just noticed that a blow has caused a bruise, there is no explanation for what is before our eyes. Either there is a first cause or there is no cause at all, and since there are causes at work in nature, there must be a first. The first cause, Aquinas identified with God, because in at least one respect, a first cause exhibits an important property of the divine: It is uncaused.

.."and if I have no banana than I can't make a banana split and since I can't make a banana split I have to eat paint, but paint exists only in paint stores so how am I to satisfy my craving for a banana split with paint especially since a painting of a banana split hardly satisfies like the real thing, especially if water colors are used because bananas are rich in oil, not water which brings me around to a state of grace and is better for my cholesterol anyway"....see, anyone can be wise.
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>This is a weak but not an absurd argument, and while Aquinas’s conclusion may not be true, objections to his argument are frequently inept. Thus Richard Dawkins writes that Aquinas “makes the entirely unwarranted assumption that God is immune to the regress.” It is a commonly made criticism. Lumbering dutifully in Dawkins’s turbulent wake, Victor Stenger makes it as well. But Aquinas makes no such assumption, and thus none that could be unwarranted. It is the conclusion of his argument that causes in nature cannot form an infinite series.
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>A far better objection has long been common in the philosophical literature: While an infinite series of causes has no first cause, it does not follow (does it?) that any specified effect is without a cause. Never mind the first cause. This blow has caused that bruise. The chain of causes starting with the blow may be chased into the past to any finite extent, but no matter how far back it is chased, effects will always have causes. Why, then, is that first cause so very important?

...we know what causes bruises...we do not know what causes Man. Just because we know blows cause bruises does not follow that some blowhard caused man.
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>But this is a counterargument at which common sense is inclined to scruple. Seeing an endless row of dominoes toppling before our eyes, would we without pause say that no first domino set the other dominoes to toppling?

...ho-hum
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>Really?
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>The give-and-take of these arguments is worthy of respect, but it no longer compels attention.

..these "arguments" are neither worthy of respect, attention nor time. They were somewhat engaging at a time when people thought the earth was flat and knew hardly much of anything and could hardly even think or reason for fear of what the Church would do to them...back THEN they maybe were worth something but only because the Church had scrambled people's minds so that they seemed to make sense...after all, the Virgin Birth "made sense"..so why not this crap?

In the eight hundred years following the publication of the Summa, the philosophers have had their say, but they have been overtaken by events. The argument that Aquinas wished to make on metaphysical grounds has been made in other terms and in other ways, and in particular a form of the cosmological argument has appeared in the very place one might least expect it to appear: contemporary physical cosmology.

...they had their say??? They had to say their say under constant harrassment, under fear of prison and the stake....they had to make the simple complicated just so the Church might not understand and allow it into publication....for centuries people could be murdered by the Church for having their "say"...that was hardly an atmosphere where thinking and progress and clear-speaking could thrive...like I said: after the Churches had their way for 10,000 years and did what they liked with children, we have just begun to get them off their backs...and they come st us again saying what we need is MORE of this crap and if the world is fucked up it's because we didn't listen to them!!! We had NO CHOICE but to listen to them because they would have killed us if we didn't.

...these arguments and proofs are all from that dreary, murderous, past and aren't worth the spit it takes to wipe them out.
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>***
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>(He then proceeds to talk about the Big Bang...)

...I'll bet.



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