Evidence of the Non-Physical

[TagliatelliMonster]

How absurd, where would one even buy food for a unicorn?

At the undetectable store where they sell magical mana food for supernatural entities, obviously.
You can only get there through teleportation. And to teleport, you need to pray for a ride.

If you can't manage to teleport then that just means that you're not praying correctly.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Maybe you don't understand the arguments?

It seems a lot more likely that instead you simply don't understand how logical fallacies work.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

What's so hard to understand or accept about either the teleological or cosmological arguments?

We understand the arguments.
We also understand how they are infested with logical fallacies.

They're based on elementary reasoning, which science substantiates.

No, they aren't.

Please feel free to create a new thread about your favorite argument and explain how "science substantiates" it. We'll be happy to tear it a new one and show how that in fact, off course, isn't true and how they are infested with fallacies instead.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Both evil and good exists, and all actions have been defined as such, therefore man has a spirit.

Questionable premise.
Conclusion doesn't follow regardless.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Something did not come from nothing. What more is there to discuss?

bare assertion
red herring / moving goalpost

 

[Sheldon]

You need to start reading your Bible.

I can see your clumsy attempts to misdirect, are a sign you don't even understand the arguments you had parroted. Why am I not surprised.

 

[Sheldon]

Don't shoot me I'm just the piano player, is an album by Elton John. So, you don't need to tell me about figures of speech, idioms, or clichés. Or ,even the taxonomy of musical genres, for I know very well that typically Elton John's music is classified as pop or easy listening. Now, do you think that that's how Elton would categorize his music?

So project Steve, ever hear about it? I'm betting not.

 

[Sheldon]

Well, most of your assertions seem to come from nothing?

So having made a claim you can't remotely evidence it, quelle surprise.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The universe is designed, even a child recognizes that

Yeah. Juvenile reasoning rooted in ignorance obviously leads to juvenile ignorant conclusions.
In the same way, even a child "recognizes" that the sun goes around the earth instead of the earth around the sun.

But, you and your cohorts prefer to use esoteric arguments in order to dispel any logical and empirically proven evidence.

Just admit it, all creatures follow countless patterns of existence, birth, growth, death

Yes, it's called "life".

Multiple creatures of such a disparity in their genus and species, share a contingency upon each other - each needs another for survival, and yet, some still don't.

Yes, it's called evolution.

The planets, their satellites, the constellations, the orbits, revolutions and rotations, all working in an integrated and symbiotic manner.

Except when they smash into each other, killing millions or billions and causing mass extinction.

Life propagates life - the miracle of birth.

There's nothing "miraculous" about natural biology.

But, of course, all this is nothing but haphazard chance, no design, no purpose, no formula or structure, just an explosion....

No, evolution isn't random.

 

[Sheldon]

Yeas, as along as you take methodological naturalism for granted.

Nonsense, observing that the evidence doesn't demonstrate or need any deity or anything supernatural, doesn't mean one need make unevidenced claims denying those ideas. A lack of belief can be just that, and nothing more.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

well, there you have it then, you came from the apes.

Humans are apes.
And mammals.
And tetrapods.
And vertebrates.
And eukaryotes.

But hey, don't let basic biological taxonomy get in your way of superstitious bare assertion...

 

[Sheldon]

You're not comprehending either the cosmological, teleological, or moral arguments for the existence of God. All are based on empirical evidence. No one invented anything.

So are you ever going to post a version of any of those arguments you think are compelling, and have accused others of not understanding? Or were you just parroting the titles for effect, in the hope we hadn't encountered them before, and seen them thoroughly debunked?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You need to start reading your Bible.

You need to start reading 1st grade science textbooks.
And then those of 2nd grade. Then 3rd grade. And so on.

But be sure not to progress to those of the 2nd grade until you mastered those of the 1st grade.

 

[muhammad_isa]

There's nothing "miraculous" about natural biology.

Not very romantic, are you..
I know, you will claim that the sexual union of a man and woman evolved so as to give them the best chance of survival.
The pleasure that you derive from it has "evolved".

Oh dear .. everything can apparently be explained by ToE.
It makes you wonder why scientists bother to look for reasons
other than "the ToE did it"

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Oh, I have. It's a disjointed, incoherent mess, riddled with contradictions, that provides no clear message at all. If it's a communication from some god, then it's some crazy, mixed up deity.

If it isn't of human origin, then most likely it's a space troll having a laugh at the expense of those primitive earthlings.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Not very romantic, are you..

Very romantic, actually.
Just not superstitious.

I know, you will claim that the sexual union of a man and woman evolved so as to give them the best chance of survival.

Obviously it did.

The pleasure that you derive from it has "evolved".

Yep. Every aspect of biology did. Some directly as a result of selection pressures, other aspects "tagged along" as some sort of piggy-backing on aspects that had selective advantage.

Oh dear .. everything can apparently be explained by ToE.

Everything concerning biological makeup of species.
Evolution, like all theories in science, has a scope. It only explains things within that scope.

It makes you wonder why scientists bother to look for reasons other than "the ToE did it"

Science looks for the how and requires supporting those explanations with evidence and testable prediction.
That's how explanatory power arises.

You should try it sometime with your religious claims.

 

[joelr]

Fail!

Yes, you have failed to provide evidence for a soul.
Please, provide some evidence for a ghost inside your body that does everything the brain can do. Except when the brain is damaged then the personality will change.
Do all animals have souls? Just Hominids? So when apes leave trees and walk they get a soul?
Or all living things. Viruses have souls?
Or is it metaphysical mumbo-jumbo that the Greeks and Persians popularized and was adopted by CHristianity during the occupations?





"During the period of the Second Temple (c. 515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire. Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them. Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is derived from Persian cosmology. By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers. The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there. The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC). Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead."


Oh, gradually, as in Yahweh didn't tell them, they borrowed the idea!
Fail.

 

[Sheldon]

Not very romantic, are you..
I know, you will claim that the sexual union of a man and woman evolved so as to give them the best chance of survival.
The pleasure that you derive from it has "evolved".

Oh dear .. everything can apparently be explained by ToE.
It makes you wonder why scientists bother to look for reasons
other than "the ToE did it"

The idea that scientists don't scrutinise every aspect of the natural world and species evolution is preposterous. Given the fact that species evolution contradicts the creation myths in contemporary monotheistic religions, it is probably scrutinised more than any other scientific theory, both objectively and by duplicitous creationists with their constant sophistry and propaganda.

It's still an accepted scientific theory precisely because that relentless scrutiny over the last 162 years has demonstrated only evidence that supports species evolution. We are as likely to wake up tomorrow and find the earth is flat after all, as we are to find any substantive change to species evolution. Though of course the scientific method, unlike religions, insists all facts and ideas remain tentative and potentially open to revision in the light of new evidence, it's one of the methods greatest strengths, and why it isn't left embarrassingly clinging to ideas that have been conclusively falsified, just as young earth creationists do of course.

If anyone thinks evolution is "just a theory" they should go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and tell the residents that atomic theory is just a theory.

 

[joelr]

The universe is designed, even a child recognizes that. But, you and your cohorts prefer to use esoteric arguments in order to dispel any logical and empirically proven evidence. Just admit it, all creatures follow countless patterns of existence, birth, growth, death. The seasons have cycles, medicine is predictable, the food chain has a static hierarchy. Multiple creatures of such a disparity in their genus and species, share a contingency upon each other - each needs another for survival, and yet, some still don't. The planets, their satellites, the constellations, the orbits, revolutions and rotations, all working in an integrated and symbiotic manner. Life propagates life - the miracle of birth.

But, of course, all this is nothing but haphazard chance, no design, no purpose, no formula or structure, just an explosion....

If we were not in an ordered universe we would not be here to discuss it. But we are. Everything you mention has obvious reasons. It isn't magic? Seasons? We orbit a star? Someday we won't. Things on the planet are symbiotic because they are part of the same chain of life on the same planet? Birth is not a miracle? It started as a way for simple self replicating chemicals to make copies of themselves.
The universe has basic laws of physics that allows for some complexity. These laws are highly mathematical. They favor probability and chance. Nothing there suggests a magic being. We do not know what is beyond the universe or how this set of laws came into being.
There could be endless universes, most in disorder with an occasional ordered universe.
What it doesn't suggest is that any of the creation stories are true. The 2 creation stories in Genesis mirror both Mesopotamian tales. They were not told to people by a God. There are fiction copied from older fiction.
The Israelites continued to use the Mesopotamian 7 heavens model. This is mythology.

"Comparative mythology provides historical and cross-cultural perspectives for Jewish mythology. Both sources behind the Genesis creation narrative borrowed themes from Mesopotamian mythology"
"Genesis 1–11 as a whole is imbued with Mesopotamian myths.["
"Genesis 2 has close parallels with a second Mesopotamian myth, the Atra-Hasis epic – parallels that in fact extend throughout Genesis 2–11, from the Creation to the Flood and its aftermath. The two share numerous plot-details (e.g. the divine garden and the role of the first man in the garden, the creation of the man from a mixture of earth and divine substance, the chance of immortality, etc.), and have a similar overall theme: the gradual clarification of man's relationship with God(s) and animals.[25]"
Genesis creation narrative - Wikipedia

Yahweh is no different than any other national Gods of the time. During the 2nd Temple period when religions were adapting Hellenism all of the national Gods became "supreme God". Yes, Yahweh also became supreme after they were Hellenized as well.

An ordered universe does not suggest El and the Canaanite myths are real and it's the same for the Israelite myths.

Hellenistic religion

Yahweh upgrades when Israel adopts Hellenism:

"Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of transcendent, supreme deities whose power and ontological status (relating to being or existence) far surpassed the other gods,"

And Jesus - "Each persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for its becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements (centring on a deliverer figure) s"
"This led to a change from concern for a religion of national prosperity to one for individual salvation, from focus on a particular ethnic group to concern for every human. The prophet or saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure."

 

[muhammad_isa]

Given the fact that species evolution contradicts the creation myths in contemporary monotheistic religions, it is probably scrutinised more than any other scientific theory, both objectively and by duplicitous creationists with their constant sophistry and propaganda.

Leave me out of it..
I don't subscribe to half-truths and misunderstandings that both sides of this debate are guilty of.

The ToE is a theory whose tenets change regularly. Only the core remains static.
As for creation myths, only G-d knows how mankind was created.
Neither "hey presto and we have Adam" or "Adam evolved from Luca, and thats all there is to it" are likely to be correct, imo.