Choosing a faith

Sorry, but what the fuck are you talking about?

Really? This kind of bullshit on your part is all that your god demands of you?Well, that tells us everything we could ever need to know about your worthless piece-of-sh*t god we could ever need to know.

Dwise1, I think GDR is talking about the strange characters he copied into some past posts. The ones Percy was asking about. He wasn't saying anything about god.

I have been thinking about this all day. It's just such a strange way to describe the normal processes of physics, chemistry, and biology. I see religious people and creationists use it to describe things often. I always wonder if they put "mindless" in front of the name of every inanimate object when they are talking with themselves in their own mind? Mindless rocks and mindless stars and mindless atoms? This is a really insightful description of what I experience.As I have read what GDR has written in this thread I'm struck over and over at his lack of comprehension of how atheists view religion and gods and my own lack of comprehension about what the heck he's talking about.

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But it is the same for the atheistic position

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It is? You really think that what you call the “atheistic position” is just bald assertions? I think this explains your problem. You can’t tell reasoned discussion from baldly making assertions.The science-based understanding of morality points to an explanation that makes sense, based on observation. You reject that out of hand - but you don’t have an explanation for morality at all.Why should any rational person agree with you?

Edited by PaulK, .

Can you see that this is exactly what you are doing when you say that god did it? It's an argument from ignorance - a fallacy.The ‘primitives' looking at the robot have jumped to a wrong conclusion haven't they? They've failed to properly understand what they're looking at and got the wrong answer. They look pretty foolish on their knees worshipping a man-made robot making 'god'. (Reminds me of the cargo cult tribes worshipping Prince Philip)But they wouldn't stop at the robots would they? They'd then ask what made the robots and when they eventually worked out that it was just better educated people, they have to insert God again; just a bit higher up the ladder. It's an infinite regress until the believer inserts the entirely imaginary full stop of the uncaused cause.The last few hundred years of scientific discovery has shown us that when we don't fully understand something, the very worst thing to do is invent a totally unevidenced answer.

Sorry about those last two. But even now in the cold light of day I still don't understand what you're saying: What program are you talking about? And how would one "resolve a program"?Copying from the web site (EvC Forum, I assume you mean) is how I sometimes get our messages here into my text editor (NoteTab Pro) for editing. Emails? How would emails get involved here, but there again I will copy-and-paste from an email to a text file in my text editor, both to establish some kind of archive for key emails and to write my reply which I then copy-and-paste from my text editor to the email in the email website.What would worry me is the continued use of a word processor instead of a text editor. My main concern is that the word processor will inject erroneous characters that would confuse an application that excepts ASCII; eg, the compiler expecting the ASCII code for double quotes (0x22) and instead getting the word processor's open and close double quotes (I forget those character codes).Word processors are fine for working on documents with formatting, though I wouldn't expect their formatting to port to this forum. Frankly, I do most of my writing in my text editor and then, if I need the formatting capability, I will copy that over from the text editor to Word where I can add the formatting. I rarely use Word, but rather do almost everything in my text editor, NoteTab Pro: emails, web pages, source code, notes, etc. Well, if I'm working in another alphabet (eg, my Russian study notes), then I'm pretty much forced into using Word for that as well as selecting the Russian keyboard.BTW, when I need to use special characters, I'll switch my keyboard over to ENG INTL (US-International) which handles most. Though on this forum I favor using HTML entity codes.

I'm guessing that the spell went from problem to program.

Now i'm really confused. Ive been following this exchange between you two.

That is an explanation of how we see it happening by observation which I have no problem with. It doesn't explain why it happens nor does it negate other inputs. We all agree that a child brought up in a loving home is more likely to be a loving parent from a home where he/she was abused. Maybe, but we have to remember that we live in the 4 dimensional world that we perceive. We have 1 dimension of time even though I have read that in the mathematical world time is symmetrical and can go backwards. Maybe in another dimension time might be different and maybe without entropy. More than a tad esoteric but i's one way of considering it.However I agree that the question is unanswerable.

But that is assuming that the one way to find truth is through the scientific method. It also assumes a materialistic world.I believe that the philosophical method can give us truth as well. For example, and this is hardly original with me, we see a kettle boiling on the stove. Science can tell us how the water came to be boiling but the non-scientific explanation is because Taq put the kettle on the stove to make coffee. Both explanations are true. One explanation is scientific and the other isn't.

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That is an explanation of how we see it happening by observation which I have no problem with. It doesn't explain why it happens nor does it negate other inputs.

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First, it IS an explanation of why. Second, there is no way to “negate” other inputs. Bu it is up to you to sho that these inputs are necessary.

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We all agree that a child brought up in a loving home is more likely to be a loving parent from a home where he/she was abused.

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That has nothing to do with Kim selection.

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Maybe, but we have to remember that we live in the 4 dimensional world that we perceive. We have 1 dimension of time even though I have read that in the mathematical world time is symmetrical and can go backwards. Maybe in another dimension time might be different and maybe without entropy. More than a tad esoteric but i's one way of considering it.

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That seems to be apologetic gobbledygook which doesn’t really help you at all. You are supposed to be making your case, but so far it seems to be nothing more than your failure to understand evolution.

It is the equivalent to the antitheist position of "god of the gaps'. An example would be when a theist inserts the idea of a god being responsible for abiogenesis that would be a god of the gaps. I an antitheist says that there is a scientific explanation that just hasn't been discovered yet then that is science of the gaps. Beats me. I can't think of any. Of course it isn't wrong. Maybe science can come up with a scientific explanation of how abiogenesis occurred but it still wouldn't explain why it happened.Even if science can repeat abiogenesis and get life from raw material it only demonstrates that it took intelligence to make it happen.

Thanks. This goes back as to my motive for starting this and yet I keep getting taken off track arguing stuff we've gone over previously.All of what you has merit. It is reasonable to ask the question of which god from the numerous choices do we choose. I was trying to make the point that it isn't the name of the religion or even the name of the deity that is important, but what matters is the nature of the deity that we worship that matters.If we put the Bible. the Book of Buddha and the Qur'an side by side we can see considerable overlap and then they diverge off into their specific theology.Yes, I am convinced that the loving God that we see embodied by Jesus to represent the nature of God, but I also don't discount the idea that people of other faiths or no particular faith, can come to that same understanding of God's nature. The point then is do our lives reflect that faith.

Maybe. We all put faith in something. A "cosmic intelligence" is a not of our universe intelligence that is responsible for our existence. Quite possibly. To be called a Christian would require believing the basic doctrines of Christianity but the Biblical message is that it is all about condition of the heart. I'd suggest that the ultimate meaning of following Jesus is about following His way of loving the other, and to have faith that best explains how we should conduct our lives. It would say that it doesn't have to, but that it often does. As I continue to study and discuss my faith I continually find that I am believing things now that I would have disagree with previously, and that is because of the theistic position that I started out with.