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No he was not, again you have to be careful when you pick up in the middle of something. We have already discussed what the issue was and he agreed he probably misunderstood what I had said. I rarely get into anyone else's debate unless the post comes in it's own context alone apart from any previous posting because it has embarrassed me so many times.
Yeah, I saw that earlier. Sorry about that. Now I am confused as to why he was put off by your "hostility." Didn't seem like a "hostile" comment to me.
You aren't going to let this go are you? I have already answered this. I am going to go back and copy my posts to prove it. I indirectly referred to you in one case but not in the case where you accused me of distorting your view. Here is my post:
You see I have already answered what your asking for the third time here. I referred to you indirectly for one point and not at all for the other. I can even go back and copy what you said and show that what I indirectly referred to you about was said by you and what I did not refer to you about was not.
Here is my explanation (I already gave you) of the thing you did not say and I did not indirectly refer to you. It was just something that I thought of that I see many times.
I mention that we need to move on to step number two instead of shot gunning it with anything that pops into your mind, so you don't even mention step number two and blast a random shot at me, AGAIN.
No, you didn't say it so it is irrelevant. I am not coming through years of debates to post something this trivial. If you search my posts you will find at least a dozen instances. being I have over 10,000 I am not doing it. Or if you want you can type in "Christianity was invented for convenience" to Google and get over 94 million hits.
Ok, appreciate the honesty, lets let this subject have a dignified death and end it here. I am telling you that getting at the heart of whether or what parts of the bible can be relied upon is going to take a lot of our time. I suggest we limit the number of side issues we discuss as I am limited on time and am working plus debating about half a dozen people at the same time.
Goto it and agreed. Sorry if I came off as hostile myself. I just love discussing this stuff with people that disagree with me (or when I get to play the Devils advocate ... like with you most of the time). It forces me to constantly rethink the assumptions I make all the time.
I see the disagreeing but I don't see so much the re-thinking, but that is a healthy attitude.
I do think some capacities are greater than the sum of their natural parts but that was not my main point. My primary claim is that the chances that random/random physical, chemical, electrical forces, etc..... (i.e. determinism) will produce a coherent thought or desire are very low, the chances they will then also then actualize that desire next are next to nothing, and the chances they would do so billions of times a day are preposterous. I do believe in the point you mentioned but that was a very secondary issue.
What do you mean by you not seeing the re-thinking? Arguing logically against the things I have faith in enables me to strengthen that faith. Faith left unchecked can limit knowledge and understanding.
First and most important, my original point that shows determinism is not true concerns generating of desires (this is not the problematic part), but then billions of cases where those desires are actualized in short order (That is the problem). That is the real issue, and about the only one not being discussed. So when I reply to the rest of what you said it is not because it was the original issue, it is simply because the original issue does not seem to be grasped and this is all I am left with. Yes we are confusing topics, and we are not even discussing the original evidence against determinism.
As an engineering question I simply find this non-intuitive but I have granted this for the sake of the discussion. I am not questioning whether determinism can produce a desire, I am questioning whether intimal conditions would then cause that desire to be actualized. It is not enough to say initial conditions produced a brain and then brain conditions produce desire and can actualize the desire. That is merely to describe naturalistic freewill.
No, all I need to show is an example of something determinism is a terrible explanation of. There are literally billion that occur everyday.
I don't know why but for most of our debate history you could track what I was saying pretty easily until one day her recently and now you seem to rarely be able to even get what I meant. I have not started or stopped taking drugs and my arguments are not new so I don't get it. Dualism was some tiny off shoot of our discussion and had nothing to do with my reasons for claiming determinism was wrong. I have explained the simplistic and very small example of why determinism is wrong exhaustively but I can't even get you to comment on it. Let's pretend like we had not discussed anything in between and go back to the start and try again. I will give my argument again.
I meant I see the arguing part, I have not seen you change you mind on the slightest detail yet, you simply argue with every detail of every core doctrinal claim I make. But it does not matter. We are left at the next step. The reliability of the original derived from approx. the mid 300's manuscripts. You ready?
Sure. But first understand that I don't always argue for what I believe. Often I find faults with the arguments or assumptions of others who share my beliefs, and I find it enlightening for myself to explore their logic. I do that by arguing. No hard feelings ever. I think it the duty of every Christian to continue the evolution of Church teachings. They have and should continue tor improve, as that is the nature of life itself.
Of course there are no hard feelings, and you can argue any position you like but if you only argue the same side of every position anyone is going to conclude that your world view is producing the consistency. Christianity it's self has exhaustively scrutinized it's self and everything about it's self since it existed. We always come to the same conclusion it seems, the apostles got it right. It is like Chesterton says he thought he has discovered a new country, invented a new heresy, and resolved Christianity into a science only to discover others had done the same 2000 years ago and it was called Orthodoxy. Or like the NASA scientists said, when the last scientists finally scales the last peak of knowledge and reaches the summit of how things came to be he will find a group of theologians who have been sitting there the whole time. Challenge anything you want, countless people have, and the bible almost always comes out the winner.
By Church teachings, I did not mean the Bible. I mean interpretations of what is written in the Bible. We are tasked to "read between the lines" to get the real message. Some examples are:
. Therefore, singling out desires and intentions from other characteristics of phenotypes (including the machine they have in their head) is wishful computing, question begging and not logically warranted.
And, just to be clear, you always argue from one side, so there is no reason why you would have seen me argue from that side. That wouldn't be much of an argument.
