Five Reasons to Believe in God

[Flower]

I don't see any reasons to believe in any deities.

 

[PolyHedral]

In other words, these things are inevitable.

No, they can be fixed "trivially." Simply remove mental illness and the inherent scarcity of resources.

 

[Sum1sGruj]

No, they can be fixed "trivially." Simply remove mental illness and the inherent scarcity of resources.

Like I said, it simply cannot be understood unless you get to another plateau of reason. There is a supreme balance that seems to be at play when you dive into the real depths of the Bible. If people are trivially saved from any form of destruction all the time, there are many, many things that would end up happening.
-People become lazy and less appreciative
-People start growing dependent on what they will either see as luck or even their unintentional doing rather than the workings of God
-People will become more militant in general
-Life becomes vain, and nobody learns to master good and evil- the ultimate knowledge that mere humans can only realize through a lifelong experience.

Among a million other things.
It's all in preparation for the afterlife, but it is also in truth to the human condition in general. If He is 'trivial', these things happen.
If He just comes out the woodwork, man will just be stubborn and the only thing that will come of it is hysteria and a slew of other things like pillaging, war, and death. And then the account will become a myth as people will label it just like they do with the Bible.

And that's just scratching the surface. However, I'm not even going to attempt to get into the depths of it at a whim. It's something that I may start a thread on. I've gathered a lot from study and the Bible and have found constants, patterns, and general balance within it's concepts on morality.

 

[Looncall]

What faculty are you using when you look at the evidence and provisionally conclude this is it, even as you remain open to new evidence?

What do you mean by faculty here?

In any case, one can only use whatever means one has to hand to evaluate evidence. There is no choice.

 

[Luminous]

Like I said, it simply cannot be understood unless you get to another plateau of reason. There is a supreme balance that seems to be at play when you dive into the real depths of the Bible.

So what you are saying is that your position is right. it just isn't understandable or even comprehensable; but that is merely because your reasoning is so much superior to those who disagree. Interesting thought, but not very convincing.

 

[839311]

There are many good reasons why God let's these things happen.

To understand it, you have to go to a higher ground of reason.
Part of that is taking the whole world into account.

No matter how much God intervenes, evil just looms anyway. In other words, these things are inevitable. So instead of tending to a situation directly, He provides a way for good to get through. Because of that act, people are wary of these things. The daughter went through hell, but is also blessed in that she opened the eyes of the public to the dark corners of society. To put it another way, she indirectly became someone else miracle.

In the scheme of things, saving these people would only result in an equal or greater torment. That is another thing that I'm sure you can marinate on if it these things bother you as such.

Miracles do happen, by the way.

Its this kind of hideous, insane rationalization which I find especially disturbing about people with faith. You, sir, need to take a serious look at who you are and what you believe. Its time for a change.

 

[Yerda]

Like I said, it simply cannot be understood unless you get to another plateau of reason.

How might you have come by this knowledge?

 

[lunamoth]

There's no leap, and there's no going from irrational to rational. When certain physical, chemical, electrical things happen in our brains, it produces certain sensations. That's all there is to the circus.

Nature is irrational, what we call our reason arose from nature by natural processes. There is no leap from irrational to rational. So there is no such thing as rational. The validity of our reason is in question. What faculty can we use to test whether our reason is valid - gives us true information?

If nature is irrational, then wouldn't reason/what is rational be supernatural?

Let's go back to a Turing machine. In your view, can it do what you call "rational?"

I don't know what the difference is between a Turing machine and a computer, and I don't know much about computers or artificial life, so I don't know if the computer can have an inner life, self-contemplation, or reason. For the sake of discussion let's say that computers are capable of everything we would call artificial intelligence, indistinguishable from our own reason. Even in this case, the computer originally got its reason from pre-existing reason - ours.

 

[lunamoth]

*sob* I'm on the teacher requested weeklong TV break. Don't tell me who went home. [Was it Stefano? ]

I won't tell. TiVo is the best way to watch that show - skip right over all of the commercials.

I heard that too. Decisions, decisions.

I still like my Kindle. I go through book light batteries like crazy, though.

 

[Sum1sGruj]

Its this kind of hideous, insane rationalization which I find especially disturbing about people with faith. You, sir, need to take a serious look at who you are and what you believe. Its time for a change.

You know what? I think it's time I make a thread on this 'hideous' rationale just so I can put yours in the dirt.

I've constructed an entire philosophy on the matter of morality in the Bible.

 

[PolyHedral]

Like I said, it simply cannot be understood unless you get to another plateau of reason. There is a supreme balance that seems to be at play when you dive into the real depths of the Bible. If people are trivially saved from any form of destruction all the time, there are many, many things that would end up happening.
-People become lazy and less appreciative
-People start growing dependent on what they will either see as luck or even their unintentional doing rather than the workings of God
-People will become more militant in general
-Life becomes vain, and nobody learns to master good and evil- the ultimate knowledge that mere humans can only realize through a lifelong experience.

Among a million other things.
It's all in preparation for the afterlife, but it is also in truth to the human condition in general. If He is 'trivial', these things happen.
If He just comes out the woodwork, man will just be stubborn and the only thing that will come of it is hysteria and a slew of other things like pillaging, war, and death. And then the account will become a myth as people will label it just like they do with the Bible.

And that's just scratching the surface. However, I'm not even going to attempt to get into the depths of it at a whim. It's something that I may start a thread on. I've gathered a lot from study and the Bible and have found constants, patterns, and general balance within it's concepts on morality.

Are you claiming this is the best of all possible worlds?

 

[Autodidact]

Nature is irrational,

Stop there. I don't know what you mean.

what we call our reason arose from nature by natural processes.

O.K.

There is no leap from irrational to rational.

Why not?

So there is no such thing as rational

There appears to be something rather rational

. The validity of our reason is in question.

As it should be.

What faculty can we use to test whether our reason is valid - gives us true information?

I think the only failsafe is to make predictions and see how they pan out.

If nature is irrational, then wouldn't reason/what is rational be supernatural?

I don't know what you mean by nature being irrational.

I don't know what the difference is between a Turing machine and a computer, and I don't know much about computers or artificial life, so I don't know if the computer can have an inner life, self-contemplation, or reason. For the sake of discussion let's say that computers are capable of everything we would call artificial intelligence, indistinguishable from our own reason. Even in this case, the computer originally got its reason from pre-existing reason - ours.

A Turing machine is a hypothetical super-duper-indistinguishable from a person computer. What enables a computer to make decisions and manipulate data is its physical components. There is no mysterious invisible bit.

 

[lunamoth]

Stop there. I don't know what you mean.

Non-rational; not having reason. Stumps, sponges, plants, whatever earliest ancestors you might think of before we became reasoning animals. (I am not saying we are the only animals to show reason, or intelligence. Just that what we now call reason came out of non-reason.)

Why not?

From what you said in post # 153: There's no leap, and there's no going from irrational to rational. When certain physical, chemical, electrical things happen in our brains, it produces certain sensations. That's all there is to the circus.

So, was it never non-rational, or is it still non-rational?

I think the only failsafe is to make predictions and see how they pan out.

I agree that is the most powerful approach we have to answering questions about our how our material universe works.

I don't know what you mean by nature being irrational.

Not having reason. The theory of evolution by natural selection, as I understand it, is based on the idea that reason is not needed for evolution to result in the diversity of species we observe today and in the fossil record. Intelligent design is bunk.

A Turing machine is a hypothetical super-duper-indistinguishable from a person computer. What enables a computer to make decisions and manipulate data is its physical components. There is no mysterious invisible bit.

OK, thanks for the explanation. But, in that case reason (human reason) was needed to create the machine and endow it with reason (if in fact reason is real, and not an illusion. By illusion I mean the outcome of so many complex, blind, and unguided/chosen events that we simply can't see that reason is just very sophisticated non-reason cause and effect).

 

[FlyingTeaPot]

Well, I did not call it non-material, but that's OK. I'm just saying that considering how surprising the material world is as we know it, it is unlikely that we can possibly know all that exists. It seems likely that there is much more to reality than we have access to through our senses and reason. We arose from nature via evolution, right? Along the way, presumably, we had ancestors that were much more like sponges than we are today. A sponge, while it can sense, respond to, and interact with its environment has no awareness of that such a thing as 'humans' exist. This statement is mostly acknowledgment of our limitations.

I see what you mean. You mean we are sponges compared to god. But then sponges have very limited senses. We have developed quite sophisticated sense over the course of evolution. Also, sponges cannot think. We can. Okay, I'll grant you that. Perhaps there is a sixth sense which will allow us to sense more than what we currently can. As we have mapped out all the elements existing in the known universe, your claim seems a bit far fetched, but okay, i'll go along with that.

I agree

 

[Autodidact]

Non-rational; not having reason. Stumps, sponges, plants, whatever earliest ancestors you might think of before we became reasoning animals. (I am not saying we are the only animals to show reason, or intelligence. Just that what we now call reason came out of non-reason.)

Oh, I see. I thought you meant something else. I guess I don't see "reason" as an abstract substance or object. Many organisms have functioning brains, and we have the highest functioning, in most ways. I see it as more of a spectrum.

From what you said in post # 153: There's no leap, and there's no going from irrational to rational. When certain physical, chemical, electrical things happen in our brains, it produces certain sensations. That's all there is to the circus.

So, was it never non-rational, or is it still non-rational?

If you have a functioning brain, it is able to process ideas and have abstract thoughts. Once it didn't exist. Then it gradually became bigger, more complex, and better able to reason.

I agree that is the most powerful approach we have to answering questions about our how our material universe works.

Not having reason. The theory of evolution by natural selection, as I understand it, is based on the idea that reason is not needed for evolution to result in the diversity of species we observe today and in the fossil record. Intelligent design is bunk.

OK, thanks for the explanation. But, in that case reason (human reason) was needed to create the machine and endow it with reason (if in fact reason is real, and not an illusion. By illusion I mean the outcome of so many complex, blind, and unguided/chosen events that we simply can't see that reason is just very sophisticated non-reason cause and effect).

I would say evolution built our brains (cellular computers) and we built the computers. They have...whatever the heck computers have inside them, and we have neurons and stuff, and they work in a somewhat analogous way.

 

[Yerda]

A Turing machine is a hypothetical super-duper-indistinguishable from a person computer.

Eh? I've read about Turing machines on a few of occasions and that sounds nothing like it. The universal Turing machines are most often described as the simplest computational devices capable of running any possible program.

 

[Mister Emu]

A Turing machine is a hypothetical super-duper-indistinguishable from a person computer.

I think you are confusing a Turing machine with an A.I. that passes the Turing test.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I think you are confusing a Turing machine with an A.I. that passes the Turing test.

I fail the turing test every time I take it. Then again, I'm built on a bunch of goto statements. Hello, would you like to play a game?

Y
N
C:\

 

[JustWondering]

No matter how much God intervenes, evil just looms anyway. In other words, these things are inevitable. So instead of tending to a situation directly, He provides a way for good to get through.

If god is helpless against his own creation why should we bother calling him god? He should just get out of the way and let us do our thing. If he is unable or unwilling to help us out, he is useless. Why bother praying or listening to such a pathetic and useless being?

 

[Penumbra]

Five Reasons to Believe in God

1. It is highly unlikely that the material world we have access to through our senses is all that there is.

2. There is something, rather than nothing.

3. Higher reasoning, abstract thinking (including logic), and philosphy are not rational without an objective basis outside of our sensory world.

4. Ethics (responsibility to others) are an illusion without an objective basis of right and wrong.

5. Values/virtues (personal integrity) are an illusion without an objective basis for good.

Discuss. :seesaw:

1. This one doesn't have any factual basis. It's just an opinion rather than a statistical statement.

2. Without a god, until science tells us more, one can either assume that the universe always existed in some way, or that the universe came from nothing. With a god, one can either assume that god always existed, and created things, or that god came from nothing and created things. God doesn't really add any explanation to the something-rather-than-nothing point at all.

3, 4, and 5. They're useful for our survival, hence we adapted to have them.