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Author Topic:   Broken Thinking Skills & Pointless Discussion
dwise1
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Posts: 6077
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


(1)
Message 11 of 75 (881597)
08-26-2020 1:42 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by Phat
08-25-2020 3:53 PM


Re: Creation vs Evolution has been settled for over a century
Why cant it be Creation and evolution?
I think we have a winner!
If a Creator did indeed create the universe, then He would have created all the natural processes operating within it. If one believes in such a Creator (which I interpret your "Cosmological Creationist" as saying), then whatever results from those natural processes, including the origin of life, only affirms the Work of the Creator. I often refer to this view as "actual creationism".
Actual creationism accepts the Creation as it is. An actual creationist would consider the physical universe to be part of the Creation -- you might call the physical universe a proper subset of the Creation. Science studies the physical universe, mainly how it works. Under actual creationism, there is nothing that science could discover that would or could disprove the Creator: not only does science not attempt to venture into the supernatural (because there's no way to deal with the supernatural in science nor to be able to make any possible use of supernaturalistic explanations) but the physical universe is as it is and that's what science deals with.
Evolution properly defined (ie, as defined in science) is part of science and describes how life works in the physical universe. I even offer a simple definition of evolution as being all the consequences of life doing what life does. Evolution is confined to the physical universe and has nothing to do with anything supernatural.
Therefore, there is no inherent conflict between Creation and evolution. The only way that any conflict could arise is if you misdefine evolution as being something that it is not or if you make contrary-to-fact demands about the physical universe. Actual creationists have no reason to do either thing. Rather, both are done routinely by the other kind of "creationist", which is the only source of all the conflict in their artificially created "controversy".
The entire "creation/evolution controversy" problem lies in a narrowly sectarian viewpoint having usurped the name, "creationist", from all other creationists including the actual ones. These creationists -- who include YECs, "creation science", ID, and many OEDs -- dictate to the Creator exactly how He had created, or at the very least forbid Him for using natural processes. To them, any evidence of something, such as the origin of life, having resulted from natural processes serves to disprove God.
These creationists reject the Creation with their demands that it must be different from what it actually is. Furthermore, they promote a theology which effectively teaches that if the physical universe is as it actually is, then that disproves God; eg, John Morris (now President of the ICR) saying, "If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning." The earth is indeed more than 10,000 years old, so Scripture has no meaning. And if Scripture has no meaning, then you must throw your Bible in the trash and became a self-destructive hedonistic atheist and serial ax murderer, etc. An entire set of extremely stupid teachings which create all kinds of booby traps to destroy their followers' faith and lives all to be triggered by the realization that their false claims are indeed false. What a stupid waste!
And of course they misdefine and misrepresent evolution in too many bizarre ways to keep track of. Basically, they make a multitude of false claims about evolution, most of which are twisted to say that become the false claim that if evolution is true then God does not exist.
Destruction of faith because of a false theology.
 
So, I'm an atheist and agnostic. The agnostic part realizes that there is no way for us to actually know anything about the supernatural, not even whether it even exists, but rather we are left with assuming things about the supernatural, including whether it even exists. The atheist part merely says that I do not believe in those supernatural entities which would be the gods, more specifically that I cannot accept what other people claim to "know" about the gods (because, being agnostic, I know full well that they cannot actually know that). On top of that, I accept that the physical universe is as it is and that science is how we learn about the physical universe and that science is incapable of determining anything about the supernatural, including whether it even exists (hence agnosticism).
You believe in the supernatural and in a specific god/gods. I do not know where you stand on agnosticism (yes, theistic agnosticism is a thing); ie, do you realize that you cannot know with objective certainty so you choose to believe in a specific theology based solely on faith and not on certainty. Or not. Either way, I trust that you accept the physical universe as it actually is and that science is the study of the physical universe and cannot speak about the supernatural.
So when it comes to reality (ie, the physical universe) we are or should be in agreement. There is no conflict between Creation and evolution.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Phat, posted 08-25-2020 3:53 PM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 12 by Phat, posted 08-26-2020 2:47 AM dwise1 has not replied
 Message 13 by Phat, posted 08-26-2020 2:49 AM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 6077
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


Message 14 of 75 (881602)
08-26-2020 2:56 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by Phat
08-26-2020 2:49 AM


Re: Creation vs Evolution has been settled for over a century
SAome prefer to use the definition unexplained rather than supernatural.
I think that those are two different ideas. When something is unexplained, that only means that we have not found the explanation yet. Many things in the natural universe are unexplained, but they can be explained eventually because we are able to observe and study them.
If something is supernatural, then it is outside the natural universe and hence outside of our ability to study it. We can never explain them because we are not able to observe and study them.
That's a big difference.

This message is a reply to:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 6077
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


(3)
Message 20 of 75 (881655)
08-26-2020 10:37 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by Hyroglyphx
08-26-2020 1:58 PM


Re: Creation vs Evolution has been settled for over a century
The main point is that we extremely rarely reason ourselves into believing, but rather there are many emotional, psychological, and social factors, along with other kinds of basic needs going into each individual's mental state that would lead to conversion. One size does not fit all.
After the conversion happens for whatever reason, there can be a stage in which the individuals then turn to reason in order to rationalize their decision to convert. Some such individuals may come up with all kinds of rational arguments for converting, but those will have very limited success because they ignore the real reason why people convert, that they offer to people who strongly need something with the very thing that they need. Whether you actually have it to offer or not.
Now, if you find what you so dearly need, then good for you. If that then leads you to do evil, then not so good. What do people like to say nowadays? It's complicated.
 
Now for the other slope: deconversion.
Reason can work well enough for rationalizing religious belief, but it also has a nasty habit to lead to thinking (almost as nasty as the habit of a Linux PC becoming an unauthorized router). Dan Barker's testimonial in his book, Godless shows that his own deconversion resulted from him asking questions that he was not supposed to ask.
Once you start to ask questions, all those other religious structures start to fall apart. Down to the most basic level, once you have stopped believing, then what?
There is a scene in an early X-Men movie where a parent learns that her son is a mutant: "Have you considered deciding to not be a mutant?" That is not something that you can decide. You either are one or you are not.
I have read so many deconversion stories. One abiding theme for so many is that they did not want to deconvert. Rather, reason had led them inexorably to the point of realizing that their faith did not work. They wanted so desperately for their faith to still work, but they realized that their faith could not work. It was so painful for most of them, but once you have seen the light, you cannot return to the darkness.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by Hyroglyphx, posted 08-26-2020 1:58 PM Hyroglyphx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 21 by Hyroglyphx, posted 08-26-2020 11:11 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 6077
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


Message 25 of 75 (882053)
09-09-2020 6:28 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by Phat
08-29-2020 5:44 AM


Re: Creation vs Evolution has been settled for over a century
How exactly is/was faith supposed to work?
I'll try to address that within the context here, which is that in my Message 20 I was assessing Hyroglyphx' Message 19 conversion story (ie, he presented his conversion story from 18 years prior and was asking questions about it). My assessment is that conversion is rarely rational, but rather is part of a personal response to whatever one is going through on a level of emotional or other needs (which are not rational).
Within that context, faith is also non-rational in that it's functioning in the absence of rational reasons or of objective information. But that would be oversimplifying somewhat. Faith is also rationalizing your beliefs, so it can take on the trappings of rationality. A further development of that would be theology which tries to create a rational basis for faith through the use of over very rigorous logic, yet roots that logic in unfounded and often irrational premises *.
As a result, faith can end up propping up beliefs that are in conflict with reality. That most often results in selective blindness or selective stupidity in order to not see nor understand the conflict, which in turn can escalate to self-delusion, and which can eventually result in deconversion.
What Hyroglyphx quoted from my Message 20 was from my discussion of how faith can start to unravel in the face of rational thought and questions, leading to deconversion even when that person does not want it to happen:
DWise1 writes:
I have read so many deconversion stories. One abiding theme for so many is that they did not want to deconvert. Rather, reason had led them inexorably to the point of realizing that their faith did not work. They wanted so desperately for their faith to still work, but they realized that their faith could not work. It was so painful for most of them, but once you have seen the light, you cannot return to the darkness.
My impression is that that is what you were asking about. So what is your exact question?
I would add here that deconversion need not be a complete rejection of religion, which does happen so often mainly because of one's own religious teachings (eg, "If we find even one error in the Bible, then we must through it on the trash heap and become atheists!" or ICR's John Morris' "If the earth is more than 10,000 years old, then Scripture has no meaning."). It can also manifest as changing to a new and different religious position while rejecting the false teachings of one's old religious position; ie, growing up into a more mature religious understanding.
 

FOOTNOTE *:
Immediately after three years of the original airing of the original Star Trek, I graduated from high school and started college, where one of my first classes was formal logic -- I had previously learned about the informal fallacies in my senior English class. Formal logic is not quite what most people think it is.
Formal logic is all about structure (from λεγω meaning to lay in order, to speak rationally). We worked mainly with syllogisms which are logical arguments in which two premises result in a conclusion. The premises are particular types of statements usually derived from the Square of Opposition. A syllogism can either be valid or invalid, which is determined strictly from the form of the syllogism. The conclusion from a syllogism can then be used as a premise of another syllogism, such that you can construct a network of syllogisms, a network whose ultimate validity depends on each and every component being valid. And even if that logic network is valid, that still does not mean that it is true.
All that logic can determine is whether an argument (eg, syllogistic network) is valid. Now, if you have a valid argument and you feed it true premises, then you will get a true conclusion. However, if you instead feed it false premises, then you have no idea what you are getting.
That is what most people do not understand: just because something is logical that does not mean that it is true.
And that is the ultimate problem for theology. No matter how rigorously valid theologians may make their intricate logic, if the premises are not true then the conclusions cannot be accepted as being true. Even worse, if the the premises are not proven to be true, then the conclusions cannot be considered to be proven to be true.
There is an actual practice, sophistry, which uses logic to deceive. Basically, if you can get your victim to accept your premises, then you can prove anything such as day being night and black being white. Many creationists and apologists (which Christian bookstores group together) attempt to use such sophistry to deceive us. The most recent practitioner here was Richard L. Wang, who tried his darndest to get us to accept his false premises before he would even begin to present his case.
One of the most famous modern examples of sophistic arguments was from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which something that should prove the existence of God actually disproves God:
quote:
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful [as the Babel fish] could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and vanishes in a puff of logic. "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing [a British crosswalk].
 
BTW, George Boole (1815 — 1864) developed a symbolic logic called Boolean Algebra which is based on values of true or false and operators of AND, OR, and NOT. Going into the 1930's, Bell Labs used Boolean algebra to design the relay networks for automated telephone switching, from which it grew to be used in designing computer circuits. As a computer system technician (pre-PC) I was taught and used Boolean algebra to describe a combinatory network and then in CS/EE class how to use it to design a digital logic network. Very powerful stuff. The point is that those networks use the outputs of AND, OR, and NOT (AKA inverter and state indicators) gates as the inputs of the next gates in the network. The same kind of intricate and complex logic networks generated by theology, and by astrology, and by any other complex system that depends on logic.


This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by Phat, posted 08-29-2020 5:44 AM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 26 by Phat, posted 09-09-2020 7:13 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 6077
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


(1)
Message 43 of 75 (882197)
09-15-2020 9:52 AM
Reply to: Message 42 by Trump won
09-15-2020 9:37 AM


Re: wRe: Creation vs Evolution has been settled for over a century
Really? You are spamming this forum?
Message 2680
Are you really that kind of piece of shit?
Fuck off already!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 42 by Trump won, posted 09-15-2020 9:37 AM Trump won has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 45 by ringo, posted 09-15-2020 12:55 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 6077
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


Message 46 of 75 (882225)
09-15-2020 4:46 PM
Reply to: Message 45 by ringo
09-15-2020 12:55 PM


Re: wRe: Creation vs Evolution has been settled for over a century
That show is on RetroTV on Saturdays just before the original Dragnet (ie, from the early 50's -- I've also been catching the Dragnet radio show on Sirius XM where they keep referring to Joe Friday going to his mother's for dinner). Maybe I need to be watching The Beverly Hillbillies too.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 45 by ringo, posted 09-15-2020 12:55 PM ringo has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 6077
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


(1)
Message 66 of 75 (920494)
10-12-2024 6:57 PM
Reply to: Message 64 by Phat
10-04-2020 3:17 PM


Re: Regarding Deconstruction
There is fear that if I deconstruct God as I understand Him I will be left in the dark.
Try watching this YouTube video, The LOGICAL reasons people deconstruct | 5 strategies Evangelicals use to NOT deconstruct by Deconstruct & Level Up:
In the comment section she's addressed as "JC" apparently for "J.C. Lamont". She appears to be a Christian, possibly evangelical, who is trying to guide Christians suffering from cognitive dissonance caused by conflicts between things they've been taught to believe and hence entering into deconstruction, but they fear that that will lead to atheism (which it can do, especially if they are stupid in their deconstruction or just plain fall into the booby traps set by their religion). She's preparing a course which I seem to recall is called "Door #3" -- she presents examples of the problem as a list of three options with the third one being what she would recommend.
Basically, her approach is similar to what I've tried to do with creationists. Their theology teaches them that if creationism's lies turn out to be false (which they are) then that would disprove God and they should become hedonistic atheist axe murderers (that may seem a bit hyperbolic, but there's actually what some creationists have told me).
Rather, the point I try to make to creationists is that their theology is Man-made and hence fallible, so when their theology turns out to be wrong about something then it's the theology that's at fault, not "God", and that having something disprove a part of their theology only affects that theology and not "God". Instead, creationism presents its theology as infallible and teaches that disproving that theology is the same as disproving "God".
My attitude towards theology is the same as my attitude towards science: if a theory is wrong about something then correct the theory, so likewise if a theology is wrong about something then correct the theology.
However, JC points out that evangelicals would view that situation as part of a slippery slope that will slide them down into atheism and hence would one or more of the five strategies she describes for avoiding deconstruction. I see that fear reflected in your " ... I will be left in the dark."
Consider this quote from Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430 CE) is also known as "Saint Augustine," arguably the inventor of a lot of Christian doctrine:
Augustine of Hippo:
"God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. For if you understand, you have failed."
Therefore do not place too much stock in your own misunderstanding of "God", since it is most definitely lacking. One's understanding must grow, not become petrified. That requires thinking and questioning.
I've recommended this book before, though my only exposure has been to a newspaper article reviewing it: Childhood Image of God Prevails Among Adults, Authors Say. Basically, we have childish ways of thinking about "God" because that's what we were taught (and learned -- what kids end up learning is not usually what we try to teach them) as children and then when we grew up out of childhood we never went back to develop a more mature understanding.
Here is how that article starts:
quote:
When asked his identity, God answered cryptically in Scripture, “I Am Who I Am.” Religious thinkers say God is beyond human definitions or comprehension, but that many people tend to shrink him down to handy, manageable size.
Such notions generally are carried over from Sunday school images from childhood, never subjected to mature examination, says Rabbi Jack Bemporad, a leader in Jewish-Christian dialogue.
“In many ways, we have grown smarter, but when it comes to God, many of us haven’t grown at all,” Bemporad and advertising executive Michael Shevack write, saying that many haven’t developed views matching adult knowledge.
“We still have stupid ways of thinking about God,” they say. “The ideas we were spoon-fed as children we now gag on as adults,” undermining and destroying belief in many cases.
In an often humorous but perceptive book, “Stupid Ways, Smart Ways, to Think about God,” published by Triumph Books, the authors describe both the frequently silly but also sensible views of God.
To a large extent, atheists seldom reject a credible God but usually “reject some stupid way of thinking about God,” the authors say, calling some ideas about God “so ridiculous they are not worth believing.”
Although God can’t be reduced to human analysis, the authors say there are “smart ways to think of God” that expand and change with time and that “also expand and change us.”
Oh what the heck! Here's the rest which is a description of stupid and smart ways of thinking about God:
quote:
Among the “stupid” views of God listed in their 117-page book:
* God as your personal “cosmic bellhop,” ratifying “your every desire,” always “ready to serve you” to control others, making in essence “yourself god.”
* God as “little Mary Sunshine,” so don’t worry, “little Mary Sunshine will take care of everything for you.”
* The “proverbial God of wrath, ready to show how much he cares by punishing you, the Marquis de God,” despising sinners so much he exterminates them. Adherents of this view blame God’s vindictiveness, rather than “our own moral lapses.”
* “God the general,” a “nationalistic god” whose “holy mission is to serve his country. Protect its honor.” He’s not just defender, but a “self-righteous and meddlesome god. . . . He is the commander of crusades. The leader of jihads.”
* “God the master of ceremonies,” who leads weddings, bar mitzvahs, confirmations, christenings, circumcisions, funerals, to be hired by anyone.
Among the smart ways to think of God, the book says:
* Consider God “the beginning of the beginning” of everything, before the big bang, before the time-space continuum, before energy and matter, before any universe. * Recognize “God is living” in the present. This doesn’t mean he breathes air and digests foods but that God’s infinity “permeates everything,” a “strange quality called consciousness.”
* As “the creator,” God must have “one heck of an IQ”--the “ultimate prodigy.” You can see this supreme intelligence at work “if we look at creation.”
* He gave humanity “truly godlike” qualities, his free will to share in shaping creation, the source both of humanity’s suffering and dignity, to make choices. God “can’t just swoop down and make our lives perfect. That would be an insult against our humanity, our nature. It would violate the very free spirit he gave us. . . . He must allow man rope, even if he hangs himself.”
* “God is personal” and he has “real consequences for your life” and “must become the standard by which you evaluate your decisions.”
* God is forever, confronting the “power of death.” God lifts the “executioner’s mask” and “says we are immortal” because we were created in his immortal spirit. That is our true nature. “God says our consciousness lives on.”

To question is the answer! (UU buzzword)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 64 by Phat, posted 10-04-2020 3:17 PM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 67 by Phat, posted 10-24-2024 10:38 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
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