INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[Agnostic75]

I will try [to make some posts in the thread on homosexuality], but it is low on the priority list. I have not answered half the theological claims I need to and I am out of time and have to leave. If you search for my posts I have had to cut short many more important issues lately. I cannot even find time to proof read anything today. I need a nap.

I understand, but I do not expect you to reply to my post #652 in another thread at http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...e-have-relationship-other-66.html#post3239455 since you know that I made some good arguments. You are way out of your expertise and abilities in that thread, and I have the vast majority of experts on my side.

Regarding creationism, I am not arguing for or against God. All that I am arguing is that the vast majority of biologists accept macro evolution, including the majority of Christian biologists.

 

[PolyHedral]

I have never understood the idea that anything that is claimed to be must have a test for falsification. Things are true or not regardless of that requirement.

It does not mean anything for statements that cannot be falsified to be "true."

In fact abiogenesis has been falsified in every attempt yet it is a given fact to evolutionists. There are double standards afoot.

Abiogenesis could be falsified very easily - show that God did it, for instance.

 

[MysticSang'ha]

Is supernatural a code word for not allowed? The existence of the entire universe is an effect that has no natural explanation.

No widely accepted explanation from observable evidence, but I think Hawking's explanations and the hypothesis for a cyclic "Big Crunch" have more credibility. These things are still being debated within the community of cosmologists, but they're much more accepted than "God did it."

Mine in the context of my comments.

Your god. Got it.

I submit the same questions of the scientific principles I gave. In fact abiogenesis has been falsified in every attempt yet it is given as fact.

Ah, I can see the problem of the usage of terminology. The science of abiogenesis has several hypothesis regarding the possible mechanisms of it's occurance. Abiogenesis has not been "proven" to be a "fact", but it in and of itself as an entire field of study has not been falsified.

Naturally occuring catalysts - such as lightning and/or chemicals binding together within varying environments chemicals into simple polymers - are much more plausible AND the various hypothesis put forth are all falsifiable and testable. You can't test "POOF! Bacteria! Yay, 1robin's God!"

The Hebrews also believed waste, sickness, and death etc.. (germ theory) must be cleansed away before contact with others. Until 1860 science did not agree and killed tens of thousands in their ignorance. There is progress and regress all through history. We no longer have the quaint idea that all human life is sanctified and therefore kill millions of babies a year as a form of birth control. Are you sure we are going in the right direction? Yep, we got cell phones and extremely high suicide rates.

Sorry, I won't play that game. It wasn't the Hebrews that developed what came to be as modern germ theory, since there were still many diseases that were not considered contagions. The idea of contagions has been around for thousands of years, but dogma still considered menstruating women to be "unclean" too.

And that is plain, flat-out, wrong.

I get the feeling that the homosexuality argument is going to pop up again, given the misogynist patriarchal tripe being pulled out with the anti-legal-abortion argument and the utilization of words like "killing millions of babies."

You not only have cell phones. You have the internet, access to clean water, access to modern medicine and emergency surgery, and even organ transplants as a result of scientific and technological advances.

The exact same thing is true for the scientific concepts I gave plus countless more. What about the concept of exorcism and the many documented cases where supernatural causes are about the only explanation possible? BTW my theology does not support many of the claims you made.

Where are the peer-reviewed studies done on exorcism?

And supernatural causes being "about the only explanation possible" is succumbing to the argument of incredulity. I've had plenty of personal experiences of ghost encounters, OBE's, and sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, but I still could not argue that any of my experiences could be replicated nor any of my hypothesis testable. Simply, they don't fall under the realm of science. They're just really interesting stories - well, interesting if someone is into that sort of thing.

Agreed, but the same is true in science yet one is adopted and the other dismissed.

It is adopted because the exact same observable evidence can be tested repeatedly according to the hypothesis offered, and then decided if the hypothesis is statistically probable or if is safely falsified, and then presented to outside review panels who give consideration to the study and the evidence as well.

One simply cannot, no matter how much they really really really want to, test "1robin's God exists" repeatedly and present it to an outside peer review panel. You CAN test the materials and conditions presented in the Miller-Urey experiment, however, and present to outside review panels....AND present it to the public for people like you to look at and consider it's viability.

Saying your God exists, and saying that it's evidence, I have only to go by your word. There isn't anything else to consider outside of anecdote, a written narrative in a centuries-old book compilation, and a community of people who generally say the same thing as you about how the musings have given them emotional solace.

 

[1robin]

I understand, but I do not expect you to reply to my post #652 in another thread at http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/religious-debates/142807-why-cant-we-have-relationship-other-66.html#post3239455 since you know that I made some good arguments. You are way out of your expertise and abilities in that thread, and I have the vast majority of experts on my side.

You may have made a good argument somewhere but most of them were not simply impotent but just plain weird. I would not call what I do here as expertise but I will admit that that thread is not my normal arena. I however have not really attempted to resolve the issue with you. I have learned to determine very quickly if I am debating facts of emotions. I think in your case it is emotion or preference so I have not really supplied the amount of facts as I normally would. I think it would be time wasted, regardless when I get the chance I will really get into it with you.

Regarding creationism, I am not arguing for or against God. All that I am arguing is that the vast majority of biologists accept macro evolution, including the majority of Christian biologists.

I normally do not do this but this is a authority fallacy. It does not matter because I have made no firm claim that macroevolution is not true, just that it has vast problems. Claiming a bunch of evolutionists believe in macro-evolution has little impact. If I said that the majority NT scholars agree on three things:
1. Jesus arrived on the scene with a sense of unprecedented divine authority.
2. That he was crucified.
3. That the tomb was found empty.
Would you find that convincing?
Evolutionists who believe in evolution is not convincing, and the fact that people believe in something that has never been observed once is not either.
As I said let us get a universe to have any evolution in to start with.
The universe did not exist, then it did with all its rationality.
What produced it?
I would not be interested in the finer points of evolution if they are not related to the concept of God. That is what is on the table. I do not care much about the vagaries of evolution alone.

 

[1robin]

It does not mean anything for statements that cannot be falsified to be "true."

I think I figured what this is all about. It has nothing to do with whether X is true of false, it has to do with the value of the statement "X is true" if X can't be falsified. I agree with that to a certain extent but find it less than meaningful. This might be important to some kind of hyper literal scientific deduction; it is not really effectual in matters of faith. God either exist or he does not, whether he can be falsified is irrelevant to the fact.

Abiogenesis could be falsified very easily - show that God did it, for instance.

What?

1. Life only comes from life or a supernatural source (God). There is no known natural process to create life. All efforts have failed. Not one case of it being observed exists.
2. Life at one point did not exist.
3. Life exists.
4. Therefore a supernatural source exists that could be falsified.

That is about a hundred trillion falsifications or so that were not falsified but confirmations.

You have however conveniently saddled me with your burden of proof. My claim is that God exists and that can be believed in as a matter of evidenced based faith. I only need to show that belief in God is intellectually valid, not a fact. You claim that life arose on its own is a fact (I believe). You have the burden of proof.

 

[Looncall]

I think I figured what this is all about. It has nothing to do with whether X is true of false, it has to do with the value of the statement "X is true" if X can't be falsified. I agree with that to a certain extent but find it less than meaningful. This might be important to some kind of hyper literal scientific deduction; it is not really effectual in matters of faith. God either exist or he does not, whether he can be falsified is irrelevant to the fact.
What?

1. Life only comes from life or a supernatural source (God). There is no known natural process to create life. All efforts have failed. Not one case of it being observed exists.
2. Life at one point did not exist.
3. Life exists.
4. Therefore a supernatural source exists that could be falsified.

That is about a hundred trillion falsifications or so that were not falsified but confirmations.

You have however conveniently saddled me with your burden of proof. My claim is that God exists and that can be believed in as a matter of evidenced based faith. I only need to show that belief in God is intellectually valid, not a fact. You claim that life arose on its own is a fact (I believe). You have the burden of proof.

You persist in leaving out that very important word: "yet". There have been some self-replicating and evolutionarily-capable molecules made. It just remains to be shown how such could arise in a natural setting.

You may one day find yourself obliged to shed your determined ignorance.

 

[1robin]

No widely accepted explanation from observable evidence, but I think Hawking's explanations and the hypothesis for a cyclic "Big Crunch" have more credibility. These things are still being debated within the community of cosmologists, but they're much more accepted than "God did it."

I work for a PhD that studied under one of Hawking's M-theory collaborators and both suggest Hawking’s deals in fantasy more than science. In fact his former partner Penrose suggested M-theory is an excuse for not having a good theory. Even if he was right which most modern cosmology disproves that would only kick the can down the road a bit. The finite universe is the current consensus. Steady state is dead and an oscillating or multiverse is currently mortally ill and has not a single shred of evidence even possible. I do not think this line of reasoning will help your position. There is nothing less acceptable about God did it. He either did or didn't. The convenience or satisfaction of that concept has nothing to do with its reality. Before the universe existed there is in fact no other candidate available.

Your god. Got it.

That would be the orthodox protestant Biblical God.

Ah, I can see the problem of the usage of terminology. The science of abiogenesis has several hypothesis regarding the possible mechanisms of its occurrence. Abiogenesis has not been "proven" to be a "fact", but it in and of itself as an entire field of study has not been falsified.

Correct, there is no known example of life arising from natural law. Yes there are theories and God is one of them and is by far the most comprehensive and explanatory. What makes a law a law is the absence of any known exceptions. A hypothesis is non-causal, words did not create life. Science has the burden of proof. Where is it? It is not even theoretically probable but you need more than theory.

Naturally occurring catalysts - such as lightning and/or chemicals binding together within varying environments chemicals into simple polymers - are much more plausible AND the various hypothesis put forth are all falsifiable and testable. You can't test "POOF! Bacteria! Yay, 1robin's God!"

No they are not. If you start with getting a universe at all, then a life permitting universe of any kind, peptide issues, left/right handed protein issues, a planet that has the absurdly improbable factors for life, chemical evolution, delicate production of carbon in stars and about a million other needs for life without God you are instantly in the hyper absurd probability range. The contingent probabilities for life without God are trillions and trillions of times higher than the point at which physics officially terms the probability zero and moves on.

Sorry, I won't play that game. It wasn't the Hebrews that developed what came to be as modern germ theory, since there were still many diseases that were not considered contagions. The idea of contagions has been around for thousands of years, but dogma still considered menstruating women to be "unclean" too.

I did not mean to say they invented it. I meant they knew it. Yet science didn't for thousands of years or at least didn't practice it.

And that is plain, flat-out, wrong.

I said like ten well known things. Which have you omnipotently made into a non-fact?

I get the feeling that the homosexuality argument is going to pop up again, given the misogynist patriarchal tripe being pulled out with the anti-legal-abortion argument and the utilization of words like "killing millions of babies."

We literally are killing millions of babies. Is the ability to do so now become so desirable that simple facts like this are no longer acknowledged. Homosexuality increase suffering greatly in society with no justifying benefit. It even kills those who do not practice it. I do not need God to make that argument. It is truly remarkable what strange and bizarre things are necessary to justify a morality which has the governing dynamic that we should be allowed to do anything we want no matter how many have to die. I just do not get it. The only thing that explains it is a spiritual blindness or something. Suddenly up is down, morals are absurd, and wrong is right.

You not only have cell phones. You have the internet, access to clean water, access to modern medicine and emergency surgery, and even organ transplants as a result of scientific and technological advances.

A well as AIDS and other sexual diseases that I won't describe, atheistic dictators killing millions, ice caps melting, and poison rain. This will not get anywhere but I have the trump card. For the very first time in our glorious history of wonderful advance we can wipe out every form of life on Earth many times over and almost have a few times. Thanks science. I actually agree that science has given many great things but it is a double edged sword.

Where are the peer-reviewed studies done on exorcism?

I will see if I can find a few if you will explain why peer review is the arbiter of all truth instead of cronyism and conformism these days.

And supernatural causes being "about the only explanation possible" is succumbing to the argument of incredulity. I've had plenty of personal experiences of ghost encounters, OBE's, and sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, but I still could not argue that any of my experiences could be replicated nor any of my hypothesis testable. Simply, they don't fall under the realm of science. They're just really interesting stories - well, interesting if someone is into that sort of thing.

You are making the mistake of thinking (in fact your side does this rabidly) that my claims of faith are bound by the rules of science. I do not have the burden of proof a scientist has. In fact science does not even meet its own criteria most of the time. Dark matter, multiverses, and string theory etc.. are justified theoretical concepts yet none of them is as evidenced as God. Why these absurd and epidemic double standards?

It is adopted because the exact same observable evidence can be tested repeatedly according to the hypothesis offered, and then decided if the hypothesis is statistically probable or if is safely falsified, and then presented to outside review panels who give consideration to the study and the evidence as well.

The exact same thing is true of God's effects. The universe that this stuff is happening in is also one of the effects.

One simply cannot, no matter how much they really really really want to, test "1robin's God exists" repeatedly and present it to an outside peer review panel. You CAN test the materials and conditions presented in the Miller-Urey experiment, however, and present to outside review panels....AND present it to the public for people like you to look at and consider its viability.

I can do exactly the same types of tests that string theory or a thousands other things are subjected to. Take the facts of reality and see if they are consistent with the proposed source or entity. In fact there is no evidence of any kind for string theory, or multiverses, or eternal universes, abiogenesis, or crunches or about a thousand other scientific fantasies.

Saying your God exists, and saying that it's evidence, I have only to go by your word. There isn't anything else to consider outside of anecdote, a written narrative in a centuries-old book compilation, and a community of people who generally say the same thing as you about how the musings have given them emotional solace.

There is not a single quantifiable fact of reality that is not evidence consistent with God. The entire universe that contains all known things is consistent with God. In fact God is almost necessary.

 

[1robin]

You persist in leaving out that very important word: "yet".

Yeah, the same way you leave out that the apocalypse and the final judgment has not taken place "yet". The fact is that even if life by natural law is theoretically possible the probability of it happening is so insanely absurd as to not warrant discussion.

There have been some self-replicating and evolutionarily-capable molecules made.

It has been long known that self-replicating things exist. If you are claiming that they were created then that proves intelligence is required to make them. "Yet" no life has ever been observed to arise on its own. The entire food industry is proof.

It just remains to be shown how such could arise in a natural setting.

That is like saying everything is true and one day will be proven as such. Is this an argument? Only in science where facts are supposed to reign is no evidence indicates that something will be proven one day. This argumentation is terrible.

You may one day find yourself obliged to shed your determined ignorance.

How can ignorance of something not existant be determined? How can ignorance it's self be determined? I have to be aware of what is to be dismissed to be determined and that precludes ignorance (the not knowing of a thing). This is one of the worst argued posts I have ever seen. I remember you as much more capable than this.

 

[Agnostic75]

Edit: Deletion of unnecessary post.

 

[Looncall]

Yeah, the same way you leave out that the apocalypse and the final judgment has not taken place "yet". The fact is that even if life by natural law is theoretically possible the probability of it happening is so insanely absurd as to not warrant discussion.

i do not agree. Please show your math.

It has been long known that self-replicating things exist. If you are claiming that they were created then that proves intelligence is required to make them.

Not at all. It shows that they are chemically possible.

"Yet" no life has ever been observed to arise on its own. The entire food industry is proof.

That is like saying everything is true and one day will be proven as such. Is this an argument? Only in science where facts are supposed to reign is no evidence indicates that something will be proven one day. This argumentation is terrible.

That was not my point. My point was that the fact that something has not been done so far does not show that it will never be done, unless there are specific reasons why it cannot be done. What it shows is that we do not know if it will ever be done.

If chemists have not so far created living things (what are your criteria for "living", by the way?), that does not warrant your declaring "goddidit" unless you can provide specific evidence.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Whether God is an all-knowing being, or a thoughtless being non-existent anymore, something had to start the first thing, the first science, and science cannot and will not ever explain the start of science, just as something cannot create itself. Before anything, there was nothing. Something transcendent, existent before anything, had to create the first something. That, we call God.

You call it god. So if something cannot create itself, and everything has to have a cause, who created your god?

Oh and what does "science cannot ... explain the start of science" mean??

 

[SkepticThinker]

Also, the reason "God" is "God" is because it/he doesn't have a creator. That's what makes him above all laws of the universe, thus being this transcendent being.

I've heard so many people say "So what created god?" That's the whole point of God! He didn't have a creator and that's what makes him matter. And that's why there's so many different interpretations of God. He doesn't have a creator, so doesn't obey any natural laws, so could be anything. We just don't know and will never know. We can only rationally conclude that he exists.

According to you god doesn't have to have a creator, except that doesn't follow logically from your line of reasoning that everything must have a first cause, that something can't come from nothing and that everything must be created.

I think it's a pretty bad move to predict that we can never know certain things. How many people throughout history do you think have said that only to be proven wrong?

 

[SkepticThinker]

But we know that causes and effects exist, everything in our universe that we know of happens because of a cause and effect, or if it doesnt then that just mindf***s this whole debate but thats a whole nother debate. The reason the first cause didnt need a reason is because it is God. God, is the name for the exception. The universe was created by a chain of outbranching causes and effects, and there must be an exception to this chain of causes and effects. We know all the dominos arent slanted, but one must have been (or pushed over etc) to start the chain, thus God.

Maybe the first domino had an uneven surface and fell over by itself.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I think I figured what this is all about. It has nothing to do with whether X is true of false, it has to do with the value of the statement "X is true" if X can't be falsified. I agree with that to a certain extent but find it less than meaningful. This might be important to some kind of hyper literal scientific deduction; it is not really effectual in matters of faith. God either exist or he does not, whether he can be falsified is irrelevant to the fact.
What?

1. Life only comes from life or a supernatural source (God). There is no known natural process to create life. All efforts have failed. Not one case of it being observed exists.
2. Life at one point did not exist.
3. Life exists.
4. Therefore a supernatural source exists that could be falsified.

That is about a hundred trillion falsifications or so that were not falsified but confirmations.

You have however conveniently saddled me with your burden of proof. My claim is that God exists and that can be believed in as a matter of evidenced based faith. I only need to show that belief in God is intellectually valid, not a fact. You claim that life arose on its own is a fact (I believe). You have the burden of proof.

Sorry to butt in here, but this caught my attention.

To your first point:
First of all, we don't know that life only comes from life, and there have been several experiments showing that life could actually come from non-life; these are ongoing. See: The Miller-Urey Experiment and Sidney Fox's work to begin with.

And as to your claim that life can only can from a supernatural source, you've got two problems with that assertion: The first one being that there is no evidence for the supernatural and secondly that we don't know that life could only come from a supernatural source (assuming the supernatural even exists at all).

And to your fourth point:

How would someone go about falsifying something that isn't measurable, demonstrable or observable to begin with?

 

[1robin]

Sorry to butt in here, but this caught my attention.

To your first point:
First of all, we don't know that life only comes from life, and there have been several experiments showing that life could actually come from non-life; these are ongoing. See: The Miller-Urey Experiment and Sidney Fox's work to begin with.

Your not butting in and welcome. There is no example of life being created in any lab but even if there were that would prove that it took intelligence. Abiogenesis has no exception known to man. I have repeatedly checked into these experiments people site and every one of them is the same. They failed to actually generate life of any kind. It is such a holy grail that it is big time news. They always give some kind of headline like "scientists unlock key to life on earth" you go read them and it is always only theories or infinitely less that life they have actually generated. If anyone did this it would instant Nobel and probably the biggest news ever so, no it has never been done. The closest I know of was amino acids. Which is like saying we generated an ounce of copper therefore we know how computers could arise on their own. Computers are more likely to arise on their own than life however.

And as to your claim that life can only can from a supernatural source, you've got two problems with that assertion: The first one being that there is no evidence for the supernatural and secondly that we don't know that life could only come from a supernatural source (assuming the supernatural even exists at all).

That was a deductive argument not a proof. We have the natural and anything outside of the natural (super natural). The natural can't produce anything from nothing therefore the supernatural is all that is left. No it is not proof but a well evidenced theory.

How would someone go about falsifying something that isn't measurable, demonstrable or observable to begin with?

If only a supernatural force could create life and if no life exists then that would be proof that a supernatural force did not produce life. However falsifiability is not necessary for faith claims. It is not even required by the scientists who demand it for God, for their own claims either. They demand things of God they can not provide for much of their own claims and have no justification for either.

 

[1robin]

Maybe the first domino had an uneven surface and fell over by itself.

Where did you get this domino? C.S Lewis said that natural law explains how 1 + 1 = 2 but first we have to get two actual somethings to add. Natural law does not create from nothing. The universe was created from nothing.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Is there going to be some point here where the attempt at a rational proof begins, and the logical fallacies, circular arguments, and ridiculously blatant confirmation bias ends?

Just curious.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I work for a PhD that studied under one of Hawking's M-theory collaborators and both suggest Hawking’s deals in fantasy more than science. In fact his former partner Penrose suggested M-theory is an excuse for not having a good theory. Even if he was right which most modern cosmology disproves that would only kick the can down the road a bit. The finite universe is the current consensus. Steady state is dead and an oscillating or multiverse is currently mortally ill and has not a single shred of evidence even possible. I do not think this line of reasoning will help your position. There is nothing less acceptable about God did it. He either did or didn't. The convenience or satisfaction of that concept has nothing to do with its reality. Before the universe existed there is in fact no other candidate available.
That would be the orthodox protestant Biblical God.
Correct, there is no known example of life arising from natural law. Yes there are theories and God is one of them and is by far the most comprehensive and explanatory. What makes a law a law is the absence of any known exceptions. A hypothesis is non-causal, words did not create life. Science has the burden of proof. Where is it? It is not even theoretically probable but you need more than theory.
No they are not. If you start with getting a universe at all, then a life permitting universe of any kind, peptide issues, left/right handed protein issues, a planet that has the absurdly improbable factors for life, chemical evolution, delicate production of carbon in stars and about a million other needs for life without God you are instantly in the hyper absurd probability range. The contingent probabilities for life without God are trillions and trillions of times higher than the point at which physics officially terms the probability zero and moves on.
I did not mean to say they invented it. I meant they knew it. Yet science didn't for thousands of years or at least didn't practice it.
I said like ten well known things. Which have you omnipotently made into a non-fact?
We literally are killing millions of babies. Is the ability to do so now become so desirable that simple facts like this are no longer acknowledged. Homosexuality increase suffering greatly in society with no justifying benefit. It even kills those who do not practice it. I do not need God to make that argument. It is truly remarkable what strange and bizarre things are necessary to justify a morality which has the governing dynamic that we should be allowed to do anything we want no matter how many have to die. I just do not get it. The only thing that explains it is a spiritual blindness or something. Suddenly up is down, morals are absurd, and wrong is right.
A well as AIDS and other sexual diseases that I won't describe, atheistic dictators killing millions, ice caps melting, and poison rain. This will not get anywhere but I have the trump card. For the very first time in our glorious history of wonderful advance we can wipe out every form of life on Earth many times over and almost have a few times. Thanks science. I actually agree that science has given many great things but it is a double edged sword.
I will see if I can find a few if you will explain why peer review is the arbiter of all truth instead of cronyism and conformism these days.
You are making the mistake of thinking (in fact your side does this rabidly) that my claims of faith are bound by the rules of science. I do not have the burden of proof a scientist has. In fact science does not even meet its own criteria most of the time. Dark matter, multiverses, and string theory etc.. are justified theoretical concepts yet none of them is as evidenced as God. Why these absurd and epidemic double standards?
The exact same thing is true of God's effects. The universe that this stuff is happening in is also one of the effects.
I can do exactly the same types of tests that string theory or a thousands other things are subjected to. Take the facts of reality and see if they are consistent with the proposed source or entity. In fact there is no evidence of any kind for string theory, or multiverses, or eternal universes, abiogenesis, or crunches or about a thousand other scientific fantasies.
There is not a single quantifiable fact of reality that is not evidence consistent with God. The entire universe that contains all known things is consistent with God. In fact God is almost necessary.

Yes, I'm butting in again. Sorry, but the bolded statements you made are outrageous.

First of all, how on earth do you justify your statement that, "Homosexuality increase suffering greatly in society with no justifying benefit?" How so? Because the way I see it, what does harm is the judgmental people who marginalize and dehumanize gay people (usually based on a few words in some ancient text) for being who they are. For loving a person of the opposite sex. They are not hurting anyone. They just want love and companionship like everyone else. Leave them alone. They're not hurting you or anyone else. They are humans and should be treated as such.

Now onto your next assertion .... What on earth is, "It even kills those who do not practice it" supposed to mean? You may not need god to make this argument but you need something to back it up. Bald-faced assertions don't count.

Next ... " It is truly remarkable what strange and bizarre things are necessary to justify a morality which has the governing dynamic that we should be allowed to do anything we want no matter how many have to die. I just do not get it.The only thing that explains it is a spiritual blindness or something. Suddenly up is down, morals are absurd, and wrong is right."

Maybe you don't get it because most people don't make such arguments, your assertion is more of a straw man fallacy than anything else.

Morality comes from social beings interacting with other social beings. You don't need spirituality or gods to understand and express empathy; to understand that you probably want to treat others as you want to be treated because your treatment of others will be returned in kind; to understand that if you want to live in a society with other people we have to recognize that everyone has the same rights as everyone else, and that your rights end where someone else's begin and that if you usurp someone else's rights, you may end up being an observer of society (from a jail cell perhaps) rather than a member of it. I've never actually met another human being who believed that just anything goes or that we should kill or harm indiscriminately because it makes us feel good or something. Have you?

Furthermore, I would argue that Christian teachings don't say much about morals, but more about obedience to some authority figure who hands down arbitrary commands from on high that are to be followed without question, lest you want to spend eternity in torment. I don't know ... that doesn't seem very moral to me.

Whether anyone wants to admit to it or not, we all use our own moral compass when making moral decisions. Religious people do it to whether they realize it or not (especially when they pick and choose from their holy texts which parts to follow and which to ignore). If you disagree with this, please tell me the last time you killed one of your children for being disobedient.

 

[1robin]

Yes, I'm butting in again. Sorry, but the bolded statements you made are outrageous.

First of all, how on earth do you justify your statement that, "Homosexuality increase suffering greatly in society with no justifying benefit?" How so? Because the way I see it, what does harm is the judgmental people who marginalize and dehumanize gay people (usually based on a few words in some ancient text) for being who they are. For loving a person of the opposite sex. They are not hurting anyone. They just want love and companionship like everyone else. Leave them alone. They're not hurting you or anyone else. They are humans and should be treated as such.

Now onto your next assertion .... What on earth is, "It even kills those who do not practice it" supposed to mean? You may not need god to make this argument but you need something to back it up. Bald-faced assertions don't count.

Next ... " It is truly remarkable what strange and bizarre things are necessary to justify a morality which has the governing dynamic that we should be allowed to do anything we want no matter how many have to die. I just do not get it.The only thing that explains it is a spiritual blindness or something. Suddenly up is down, morals are absurd, and wrong is right."

Maybe you don't get it because most people don't make such arguments, your assertion is more of a straw man fallacy than anything else.

Morality comes from social beings interacting with other social beings. You don't need spirituality or gods to understand and express empathy; to understand that you probably want to treat others as you want to be treated because your treatment of others will be returned in kind; to understand that if you want to live in a society with other people we have to recognize that everyone has the same rights as everyone else, and that your rights end where someone else's begin and that if you usurp someone else's rights, you may end up being an observer of society (from a jail cell perhaps) rather than a member of it. I've never actually met another human being who believed that just anything goes or that we should kill or harm indiscriminately because it makes us feel good or something. Have you?

Furthermore, I would argue that Christian teachings don't say much about morals, but more about obedience to some authority figure who hands down arbitrary commands from on high that are to be followed without question, lest you want to spend eternity in torment. I don't know ... that doesn't seem very moral to me.

Whether anyone wants to admit to it or not, we all use our own moral compass when making moral decisions. Religious people do it to whether they realize it or not (especially when they pick and choose from their holy texts which parts to follow and which to ignore). If you disagree with this, please tell me the last time you killed one of your children for being disobedient.

You are not butting in, but I am out of time. I have no idea why you think those simple factual statements are invalid but I have no time to show this. Also if you want to discuss homosexuality specifically can you move it to this thread where it is already going on. http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...2807-why-cant-we-have-relationship-other.html

Have a good weakend and I will try and answer when I have time.

 

[Alceste]

Is there going to be some point here where the attempt at a rational proof begins, and the logical fallacies, circular arguments, and ridiculously blatant confirmation bias ends?

Just curious.

I have my doubts.