Just Started Reading a Book Called "Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became one of America's Leading Atheists"

[betedgeonly]

Really, when he turned around a lot of what I said to things that I did not say? I thought it was pretty despicable.

i guess what i meant was that it was an interesting response as was your's...you shouldn't let his opinion upset you in a way that it might bother you....it was an intersesting objective point of view...

 

[betedgeonly]

What I have wrestled with ever since this experience is this idea. Do human beings possess an innate sense of right and wrong at birth, and if this innate sense of right and wrong was not altered would they feel like these peaceful aboriginals feel about a great many things? Or, is this innate sense of wrong altered when an artificial conscience is imposed by western society (or communist society, or eastern society, or whatever other human society the child lives in).

do you know if the aboriginals have a 'belief' of any kind of a 'higher power' or 'creator' or 'God' ?

 

[DeathEatsaCracker]

Hey DEAC, did you grow up in a Christian home?

My family believed in god, but no one ever went to church, prayed or talked about religion. In fact, when I was a kid I was the only one in my family who went to church.

 

do you know if the aboriginals have a 'belief' of any kind of a 'higher power' or 'creator' or 'God' ?

They all do. They do not have organized religion or religious leaders. Their spirituality is individual and universal. Some aboriginals have a belief system in 'God'/creator that is tens of thousands of years old. Others believe in a First Cause who whites have interpreted as "Great Spirit" in some cases, but they also believe in local spiritual entities. I would not call this polytheism, it is a bit hard to explain.

Almost every aboriginal that I know basically laughs at western religious practices, religious leaders, etc. They do this privately. Aborigines reject organized religion completely and practice spirituality. I have never met an aborigine who would purposely insult another person unless the other person had committed some egregious wrong, but then the person was labeled as not worth knowing and the aborigines refused to talk to the person.

 

[Bjizzle06]

I asked what you could offer as a first cause of the universe, other than one that is all powerful and extremely knowledgeable. You answered :

As I have said, we don't know and I do not think that we can know.

You offer no argument or reason for this assertion. You did not interact with the argument I put forth -- namely, that the very concept of a first cause of the universe must have necessary conditions of being powerful and knowledable enough to cause the universe to exist (i.e. a bachelor has the necessary condition of being unmarried).
If you disagree with that, then I challenge you to name anything that exists that was caused by something with lesser properties than the thing which it caused.

I did not say that the First Cause transformed being from non being, you said that. I said that the First Cause transformed the immaterial into the material. That is different from transforming non being into being.

Your exact words were :

I believe that something caused the universe to transform from an energy form to a material form

This statement implies the non being of a material form. Thus, I see no difference in saying that a cause transformed immaterial into material, and a cause transformed being from non being.

Yes, the First Cause is immaterial

We agree on this.

You quoted my statement, challenging you on the eternality of energy. Then you replied:

I find it interesting that you ask for my opinion and before I can answer you tell me what my answer must look like. So, I will let you to continue to answer for me, I find this pretty insulting.

Would you like some cheese with that wine?

You still haven't dealt with the fact that you posit a first cause of the universe that "transformed an energy form into a material form"; yet you face the problem that on the standard big bang model, among other scientific evidences, energy had an absolute beginning. You have yet to make an attempt to account for this.

After complaining about how I make assumptions about your positions here:

Please stop saying that I said things which I did not say.

You then do the same to me here :

It appears to me that you assume that humanity is the only form of intelligent life. I do not make this assumption.

I do not assume that, nor have I ever said that in this thread or anywhere else. By intelligent life, I'm referring to the basic scientific definition -- accepted all across the board in the academy -- which is properties of organisms to take in food, extract energy from said food, adapt, grow, and reproduce.

Are stars alive? Are stars intelligent? Are there entities that do not need oxygen that live in deep space? Are trees intelligent? I don't know and you don't know either. A

All of these questions are based on the ignorance of not knowing what is meant by the term "intelligent life" in science.

So, instead of making assumptions and disagreeing with what you claim that I meant when you don't understand what I meant, and showing us how brilliant you are with your formulas, perhaps you could just ask what I meant?

You have yet to answer a single question or challenge I've set forth to you in this thread. (see your 4th quote in this post for an example)

With respect to morality being based on individual subjective opinion, you say :

This is preposterous. According to this premise then no behavior can be bad. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, the Crusaders, Mohammed, Genghis Khan, the leaders of the Hebrews who murdered EVERY person of over a dozen tribes, and many others cannot be said to have been evil or to have committed evil acts. I totally reject this nonsense.

Agreed. Moral Relativism is ultimately bankrupt and unlivable. However, if morality is not relative (ex. murder is wrong whether he knows it or not), then it follows logically and inescapably that objective moral values exist. If objective moral values exist, they must be grounded in an unchanging absolute moral goodness (i.e. God).

You are assuming that this ideal way to operate is for the benefit of humans. I don't know that, nor do I assume that.

I make no such assumption, and frankly, I disagree with that statement entirely. Moral goodness, by definition, is what ought to be desired for it's own sake.

Quoting me how some moral goodness is easy to discern, and others aren't, you say :

According to you. Yet, when I express my abhorrence at the genocidal maniacs (the Hebrew nation) in the Old Testament, you claim that I have no basis for being offended. I don't know what you are trying to prove.

You're not getting it. If good and evil are based on an individual's own sense of right and wrong, as you said here :

My disgust of the OT genocide and the quite lengthy list of other abhorrent acts comes from my own sense of right and wrong.

.........Then you CANNOT condemn anyone for making moral decisions based on their own moral sense, if they happens to conflict with yours. If an ancient tribe of Hebrews slaughters a village, who are you to say they're wrong? And what standard are you using to measure the wrongness? (HINT : the questions are rhetorical. I'm not arguing that these acts are not wrong)

I do take acts of genocide and murder to be morally wrong, because the worldview I take as true offers an objective grounding for right and wrong. What you have offered leads to an unlivable world of relativism.

I spent some time living with aboriginals who could not lie and when presented with a lie became, not upset, so disconcerted that they could not communicate for several hours. They could not harm another person. They could not steal. They had no words for these concepts in their language. After watching how they responded to lying, I came to believe that their behavior was not shaped by an external "moral code" but was inbred somehow. As if, they were born with it and they were not exposed to civilization, so that the inbred behavior was not then corrupted.

Your experience simply reinforces my belief that morality is (to a large extent) innate, and is surprisingly parallel to what Paul wrote in Romans :

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.

They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.

I think that humans are all born with an inbred sense of what is right and what is wrong, but that "civilization" beats it out of us and replaces it with a made up sense of 'right' and 'wrong'.

Once again, agreed.

But you want to ground it in an objectivity that cannot be proven. "God".

Depends on what you mean by "proven". In terms of absolute 100% certainty, nothing can be proven. You cannot prove that you're not a body lying in the matrix right now. You can't prove that you weren't born 5 minutes ago with false memories in your brain and false food in your stomach.

However, in terms of adequate certainty, I think a God hypothesis can be argued as more probable than not.

Your observances of goodness in people who have not been tainted by the evils of society are evidence of this.

Quote me where I said I want you to believe that. I have said no such thing.

I never said that the First Cause is omnipotent, and I do not believe that it is.

And you have no explanation for how a First Cause of the universe can be anything other than all powerful, the same way a bachelor cannot be anything order than unmarried.

 

[Bjizzle06]

good post, to say the least...:smoker2:

Thank you sir. Good day to you.