A statement of my disbeliefs

I'm not sure why a naturalist should be particularly neurotic.A neurotic is someone who has irrational fears. If you are suggesting that a naturalist has a fear, perhaps unconscious, of God, I'm not sure that's irrational, if we mean the Christian God.

The horrible thing about it is that any purpose HAS to be arbitrary, assuming no Absolute.Helping babies is just as arbitrary a purpose as making the world blue.The fact that we recoil against this conclusion is what gives me pause.Suppose I was an underwater person and never went out of the water and did not know there was anything but water. In that case, I would not have a concept of "wetness" or "dryness."We seem to be these underwater people who DO have concepts of wetness and dryness.Sometimes I think along these lines.

Hi Robinrohan,
The fact that there is no absolute does not mean that one purpose is just as good as another. Remember as humans have evolved to the point where WE have decided to attach significance to what is "better" and what is not. Be it for good or bad.The universe may be arbitrary and existance itself may be no more significant than non existance. But the fact that there is something rather than nothing is cause enough to celebrate life and know that for all our ignorance of why or how we still have the knowlege of being .
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It does if we are talking about an objective purpose. We can't come up with a reason for one purpose being better than another without begging the question.As follows:"We ought to help babies."
"Why?"
"Well, you were a baby once, and somebody helped you."
"So? I'm not a baby anymore. Let them look after themselves."
"They can't look after themselves."
"So, who cares? Let them die."
"But it's not right for you not to care."
"Why not?"
"We should help each other."
"Why?"And on and on. Eventually we get to the point where we have to just utter a tautology: "We ought to help babies because it's right, and it's good to do what is right."We haven't advanced our argument at all. We might as well have just stuck with the initial statement: "We ought to help babies." I understand what you are saying, and I would agree that it is impossible to live nihilistically.But why is the fact that there is something rather than nothing cause enough to celebrate life?There is no answer to this question.

I agree with you, evil is a very real thing. I was playing the devil's advocate.Sincerely, Philip

Generally, neurosis means poor ability to adapt to ones environment, an inability to change one’s life patterns, and the inability to develop a richer, more complex, more satisfying personality."Obsessive compulsive" is one specific neurosis going on here, at least in my own naturalistic cursed state....Obsessively and compulsively studying tiny nuances of the ToE that are non-productive, essentially....Obsessively and compulsively writing into the wind, like someone is REALLY going to benefit from believing in my mega-ToE scheme, especially regarding your (1) conscience and (2) consciousness....Or neurotically depressed: "Everything is pointless", "No Redemptive Events Exist", etc....We naturalists are neurotically insane, damned, and stumbling-blocks to educational truth, thus.

Okay.Go ahead and explain consciousness and conscience to me.Let's start with consciousness:I want to know the following:How much does it weigh, on average?What color is it?Is it at rest or in motion? If in motion, what is its velocity?What is it made out of?

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How haven't i answered your question?

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if you can provide us with a peer-reviewedpaper to back this statementThere are a number of threads on each of the books you mention, the most recent Strobel one seems to be http://EvC Forum: A Case for a creator -->EvC Forum: A Case for a creator(but I see you've found it).You may also want to check:http://www.caseagainstfaith.com/articles/strobel_cfac.htmThis message has been edited by Charles Knight, 25-May-2005 07:05 PM

At this site: http://www.artistexpo.com/pointilist.htmlThere are paintings, for example "Canal Towpath"If you look closely there is no canal, there are not trees, there is nothing but coloured points.So where is the picture?It is an emergent property of a number of simpler things. Conscience is most likely a similar phenomenon. It is a pattern not a "thing".In fact, you are not a thing either. A very large fraction of all the atoms that make you up will be gone in a few months. Therefore if you weigh "you" right now then all of "you" will be gone. All the atoms that make up "your" weight will be gone therefore "you" will weigh nothing.But you persist? Why? What are "you"?The atoms are replaced, they are not "you". "You" are a pattern of atoms. That "you" has no weight.This feature of conglomerations of simple things that allow a more complex pattern to emerge is not uncommon.

Good to talk to you again, Ned.My point is about materialism--i.e., there is nothing but the physical.If there is nothing but the physical, then all phenomena have physical characteristics. As you suggest, they pass away, but at any given moment in time they are material.
So that means consciousness is material in nature.What are its material characteristics?Here we have a mystery.Can it be described in terms of the physical--height, weight, color, movement, location?

A pattern is manifest in material things. It does not have the properties on it own.Your consciouness weighs about 3 lbs. It is about half the size of a basketball. It is sitting a top of your spine.If you think that is a silly thing to say then it is just as silly to say that the physical "you" (your body) weights 160 lbs. You are not those atoms that add up to 160 lbs.

Then what is this "you"?Are you saying it does not exist?Apparently you are. This thing I call me is my brain, a hunk of meat?This is puzzling. How can a hunk of meat discuss ethics and such?Explain that, please.

Robin,Why not go for the evolutionary explanation? If our ancestors didn't have child caring behaviours encoded in their genes then we wouldn't be here. And we take care of children because those are behaviours that have evolved us.A woman who has chickens was just this morning telling me about her hen hatching out chicks and how careful the hen was and caring for her offspring. That's how and why chickens and us continue. We have a purpose because if that weren't encoded in us we wouldn't be here.lfen

Ifen, this is not a "reason."There's no reason why we should be here at all.It happened, that's all.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 05-25-2005 10:24 PM

Oh, Yeah, right, And I'm fine with that!I just am wishing my immune system would stop taking some harmless pollen as being a dire threat and would stop with the sore swollen throat already! What kind of purpose is that anyway????lfen