Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Log in or create an account to join the discussions on the Atheist Republic forums.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
FREE E-BOOKS
Get the book "Why There Is No God" and one more book for FREE!
Sign up below for the Atheist Republic Newsletter to get the books.
Record Your Message!
Record your voice here for it to be aired on the Atheist Republic Voicemails Podcast.
Send us your views and opinions, your personal stories, messages of support, comments on recent news, or any comments you would like to share about your part of the world.
Note : By clicking record you are allowing us to broadcast your message on any of our platforms.
Affiliate Disclaimer
Links to atheist related books, shirts and movies and other atheism related products are affiliate links.
All proceeds will go to keeping the Atheist Republic website up and running; providing resources, advocacy, community tools and encouragement to atheists all over the world.
@Old man shouts...
If you are going for ALL then I guess you could get an indication from the Sheldon responses. I don't suppose there are many theists here. Maybe a few, passing through, having a chuckle...
@ Someoine
As you have such a liking for reposting ad nauseum...here is one I posted earlier, my opinion still stands...
@ Someone
I have no need to directly participate. I have watched and read every single one of these posts and marvelled at Sheldon's patience with you.
Your arguments are bunkum. Your assumption of the intellectual high ground as laughable as it is false. Your arguments have been dissected, paraphrased, returned in bite size pieces so that even a febrile understanding (like yours) should be able to assimilate the concepts.
The only thing I see clinging to a flagpole, as the dreadnought of your assumptions slide below the waves of reason, is a tiny scrap of unassailable ego, waving frantically to get the grown up's attention.
You are now boring, you have no argument, you have only repetition and ad hominems left in your pitifully inadequate quiver of nonsense. Sheldon did you the favour of at least politely shredding your dung heap of arguments and fallacies.
You lost, you were shredded, spat out and dismissed as a purveyor of quackery as, in truth, you are. . Now do fuck off with your tedious repetitive nonsense.
@Old man shouts...
Have I ever asked you to paraphrase the arguments and offer a flaw in them? I know I have because I have asked every atheist here to.
That you fail to state any flaw in any argument states something about you. Personally if an atheist gave me some argument for atheism then I would have been all over them. That you post as someone that does not paraphrase the arguments and does not point out any flaws with them states quite a bit. Do you not realise that I am challenging the whole atheist forum (and you are an atheist member right? ) to point out a flaw? So just do so.
So paraphrase the arguments and point out the flaws. If you can't, then shut up.
And I am in agreement with Old Man in his post.
And Sheldon has had a monstrous amount of patience dealing with rampant copy and pasting of the same old bullshit over and over and over and over... ***horrible sound of regurgitative heavings***
OI! Someone stop the merry go round. My old head injury won't let me handle it.
Hell, I bailed after about the fourth copy and pasting you did to me.
I just cannot see how Sheldon has managed. As I said in one reply, he definitely deserves this:
https://i.imgur.com/7bFN0wO.jpg
rmfr
@Arakish
So paraphrase the arguments and point out one argument that you think Sheldon has ever made...
@Someone
I'll do you better than just the one argument.
Look at every last response Sheldon has given to your copy and pastes.
rmfr
I hve been reading this thread over and over. I'm still not sure what Someone is getting at.
I return to the point where if I dont accept the fine tuning argument in the first place how does that give weight to the speculations of theist physicists?
Perhaps an independant theist could respond and give their interpretation to clear things up. If they are giggling at my failure they must undertstand what you've been stating here?
@ Grinseed
How do you deny the fine tuning argument in the first argument? If you could that would be massive!!!!
BTW is that a real bird, and if so what is it? I would guess at a bald eagle
And even if you don't accept the fine tuning in the first argument, there is still the compatibility of the physicaliist theories with the evidence of the second.
What did you think you had for atheism btw? (holding hands doesn't count obviously :)
Your fine tuning argument has been torn to absolute shreds a hundred times over. You just keep ignoring that and plodding along under the completely ridiculous notion that we haven't answered it.
George HW Bush may not have been a good president, but he had a good quote that applies very well to you in this whole thread.
"I answered your question, you might not like the answer, but I answered it"
Yes I deny the whole fine tuning argument but it isn't massive, its rather mundane and ordinary, like denying that the dead can be resurrected, that natural laws can not be suspended for miracles, that the entire universe was created in seven days, that prayers are answered, virgins get pregnant, men walk on water etc etc..but enough about me..let us turn to your profound utterances.
"With physicalist theories there is no reason to have favoured the expectation of any particular physical activity to have correlated with experience over any other physical activity, or to have favoured what the experience that correlated with physical activity would be like."
The methodology of science requires nothing to be expected, including the experience of the experience.
"Whereas theist theorists can explain why the experience that correlates to certain physical activity is like it is rather than being a flash of light every time a neuron fires for example."
This is not science. This is just your opinion.
"The latter wouldn't have been fit for purpose (making moral judgements based on it)."
I dont understand this sentence at all, but in any case science is not concerned with making moral judgements.
"So it is a fine tuning argument, but the fine tuning of the experience.."
I see no argument, just theistic opinion.
"A theist theorist can explain it without it being explicitly observed..."
How? Divine revelation?
"...(quantum randomness, and fluctuations of kinetic energy, and a being (God for example) which knows the fine adjustments that can be made (explainable by chaos theory) and the means to make them)."
Which God?
You have skipped the part that proves there is a god in the first place. Chaos theory explains God? How? If so why isnt the Chaos theory part of any catechism?
"Whereas with physicalist theories there is not."
Not what? No theist explanation because there is no divine revelation?
"there is nothing that knows how the brain is configured"
I am willing to bet there are neurologists who would beg to differ. I am sure they have a better idea than any theist theorist with the benefit of revelations
"The theist theorists can therefore explain how it is that my form (what form are you talking about?!) can express that the person experiencing having it (experiencing what?), is infallible"
prove how anyone is infallible, ever, even if its just the Pope
"when it comes to the statement that "reality is not one in which none experience", for example."
Well if theist theroists can explain all of that and more, I repeat my call for one of these theorists to join this thread and just explain that last sentence, which strictly speaking is not a sentence.
I have family members who aim this sort of turgid mind boggling theist/quasi/scientific/faux/philosophy stuff at me all the time, but when I ask for simple clarification they just get angry and claim I am being deliberately obstinate. The truth is none of you make sense. I am sure you are most genuine in your beliefs but you lack any gifts for clear precise explanations.
I reccommend a formal writing course. It will do wonders for your ability to express yourself correctly and succinctly.
As for the bird in my avatar, ask one of your theist theorists, they might tell you without looking at it. Its not an eagle of any sort.
I take it your referrence to atheism and 'holding hands' was some sort of insult, insinuating I am unable to hold my own opinions. I do not agree with my fellow Atheist republicans about many many things, but I am starting to find common ground with most of them concerning you. I dont know why you felt you needed to make that comment, but it has shifted my assessment of you from "earnest if lacking competent self expression" to just "creepy".
Dont bother trying to re-explain the experience of experiencing your experience explaining what is so significantly obvious to you, you dont have the ability and its due to more than just your lack of communication skills.
If this doesn't prompt a swift dismissal and a link to an earlier claim from Someone, along with a repetition of his core claims and a condescending ad hominem that you're not bright enough to grasp what he's saying / asking, I'll be frankly stunned. It'll certainly be a nice change of pace if someone offers anything new or substantive.
And Sheldon is also correct. It would be refreshing to see something else besides a copy and paste. The outright dismissal is going to happen anyway.
@Someone
I know what the bird is in his avatar. But I ain't telling. Nya nya nanny nanny boo boo.
@everyone,
Sorry y'all. Just felt like being a little kid again...
rmfr
@Someone why do you believe that "god" is fine-tuned?
No no, the evidence for design is the experience, and all the experience is the evidence that we are all experiencing and therefore evidencing by experiencing that experience, which evidences his experience that he has evidence of experience and this if course is infallible evidence, so why don't you understand this simple concept???
What more other than the experience of the evidence being experienced is needed for you to know that Someone is evidencing his experience of the evidence by experiencing that experience of the evidence?
And there it is voila....design is evidenced.
Someone phone the Pope. No not someone, Someone ffs. Who's going to let the major news networks know? I would but I am still smarting at the ingenious way his esoteric intellectual verbiage completely unseated me, "apparently"?
Well, that'll learn me...
@Sheldon Re: "No no, the evidence for design is the experience,....." (And the rest of it.)
Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you! Finally, everything contained in the last several pages of this thread neatly summed up in such a way that even I can understand. You have patience beyond measure, good man. I wholeheartedly agree you are truly a worthy candidate for the AR Medal of Valor. I salute you! Bravo! Bravo!...*clap clap clap clap*
@Someone
I am not copying and pasting the entirety of the original post's text, read it here (R-Clk, open new tab).
Finally you did it. Missed this post somehow. Guess because I saw it as nothing but a copy and paste response; thus, I skipped it. But now I see you have actually misworded your original argument:
Now REALLY look at this rewording of that same argument:
Can you NOT see how your orginal argument SHOULD HAVE BEEN worded thusly:
And if you disagree, then your analogy is incorrect. Reword argument so it can be answered.
rmfr
Edit: corrected a misspelling
We only have one reality to experience, and we know personal experience of that reality is fallible, thus we need a method to objectively determine which experiences are true or valid. human's recognising these facts have created three obvious methods that all have varying degrees of success. The first is philosophy, and though it still is a useful method it has helped us create two others, logic, and of course modern empirical science. The successes of these methods are an objective fact in advancing our knowledge of the physical universe.
Someone's claims and arguments disregard all three at least in part,, Science he has discarded entirely by claiming objective evidence doesn't exist, and the physical universe doesn't exist. Logic he has violated like a drag queen at a tractor pull, and philosophical epistemology is equally disregarded in his verbiage.
His basic premise is that design is evidenced by human experience because only a designer deity explains human consciousness, which he insists is fine tuned for it's environment, but never actually evidences this claim, but rather keeps insisting the claim itself is evidence that "can't be denied". . He seems unaware that other animals are conscious, but that is not the worst of it, by making a claim and demanding someone makes a 'better one' or his is proved he is of course using argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. Even if no explanation exists for the origins of human consciousness this wouldn't validate any claim about it's origins.
A typical phrase apologists use when they invoke this fallacy for things like miracles and the efficacy of prayer which is of course the same thing, is that "there is no **natural explanation". Note how this assumes there are any other kind of explanations, we know for an objective fact that natural phenomena exist and can be explained, unless like Someone we deny science entire.
The real irony is he went on to try and use science in his verbiage by citing things like cause and effect, as if he can cherry pick bits of science as valid whilst denying all the rest. Remind you of anyone by the way? Then make grandiloquent claims about his own intellectual rigour and reasoning, again he seems to be a doppelganger for another theist posting here, I shall leave others decide for themselves who that might be..
The following are objective facts, the physical universe exists. organic life exists in that universe, natural phenomena exist in that universe. Since Someone is the one adding a superstitious belief that the presence of organic consciousness in that universe can only be explained through (ironically unexplained) magic by a designer deity, it is entirely incumbent on him to properly evidence this claim. yet all he did and keeps doing is asserting it is evidenced by the presence of human consciousness. and insisting people offer an alternative explanation that doesn't involve a deity, a reversal of the burden of proof using, that's right, argumentum ad ignorantiam.
He's made arguments for a deity where he assumes things about that deity in the argument, namely that " a designer deity is evidenced by (his unevidenced claim) that only a deity could properly understand what is needed to fine tune the experience" etc., this is of course a begging the question fallacy, as an argument cannot make assumptions about the very thing it is arguing for and remain logically consistent. When this was pointed out he wasted a great deal of time with his pointless red herring that it was not a logical proof, as if this meant it was not bound by the strict principles of validation logic demands, for someone who relentlessly and tediously boasts his arguments are logical, and insults those who disagree, that is very revealing. Any claim or assertion can be irrational, and common logical fallacies are so called precisely because they apply to informal logic.
There's a deal more of course, but this is the bare bones of it, an appeal to ignorance fallacy is at it's core and evident in his OP. The rest of his verbiage is mere posturing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaxVwD-HvNU
And this reply was made after just the second paragraph. Now to finish reading...
rmfr
Edit to add: Where is that dad gum 10-K Agree button? That was priceless dude. Thanks. (rmfr)
This thread proves we live in the worst of all possible worlds, which is surely evidence of design?
Voltaire's satire Candide might provide an ironic comparison of that idea. Perhaps people can be categorised as cynics and optimists depending on which view they take, but I wonder how we'd know? Do we have an objective point of reference, with only one world to examine? I mean who's to say what "kind of world" it is? Anselm's ontological argument seem to me to imply we can *imagine things into existence, though I am extremely dubious, but it seems axiomatic we can imagine what we perceive to be a world "better" than the one we see, and not purely in subjective terms of course. Though as with morality we can't avoid basing our initial view on a subjective idea. A world without suffering, or at least where we did our utmost to avoid suffering seems to me to be a better world than one with indiscriminate ubiquitous suffering. I also think this is a sound basis for morality and ethics, a starting point if you will.
If it's designed of course I need not trouble myself with suffering, or morality come to that, just focus on obeying divine diktat, but then given no two theists, let alone religions, can agree on what a deity wants from us religious views of morality are at least as subjective as any other.
I found this and thought it would provide some broad information on the what me mean when use terms like objective and subjective, as it will help our understanding when using phrases like objective evidence or objective facts.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/objectiv/
It claims to be a peer reviewed source.
"The terms “objectivity” and “subjectivity,” in their modern usage, generally relate to a perceiving subject (normally a person) and a perceived or unperceived object. The object is something that presumably exists independent of the subject’s perception of it. In other words, the object would be there, as it is, even if no subject perceived it. Hence, objectivity is typically associated with ideas such as reality, truth and reliability."
It goes on, and here hits precisely at the idea I was trying to convey about our "experience" of reality being fallible...
"The perceiving subject can either perceive accurately or seem to perceive features of the object that are not in the object. For example, a perceiving subject suffering from jaundice could seem to perceive an object as yellow when the object is not actually yellow. Hence, the term “subjective” typically indicates the possibility of error."
"The potential for discrepancies between features of the subject’s perceptual impressions and the real qualities of the perceived object generates philosophical questions. "
"There are also philosophical questions regarding the nature of objective reality and the nature of our so-called subjective reality. Consequently, we have various uses of the terms “objective” and “subjective” and their cognates to express possible differences between objective reality and subjective impressions. Philosophers refer to perceptual impressions themselves as being subjective or objective. **Consequent judgements are objective or subjective to varying degrees,** and **we divide reality into objective reality and subjective reality.** Thus, it is important to distinguish the various uses of the terms “objective” and “subjective.”"
Note the section in asterisks in the last paragraph. The second set of asterisks express an epistemological concept I singularly failed to make any impression on Someone with, but that seems inevitable when Someone admits to denying objective reality entirely in favour of an assumption (his own word) that physical reality does not exist, but only as a (delusion - my word) which is according to Someone's assumption merely an idea in the mind of a deity. I say delusion because the claim seems unfalsifiable to me, and since he already claims objective evidence doesn't exist or is useless, it's hard to see what he's using as a yardstick when he uses the word evidence. His claims for "evidence" certainly don't seem to be based on any objective reality or evidence, and as well as being logically fallacious are epistemologically unsound since they don't reflect commonly understood principle of validation, and worst of all of course since they deny the existence of a physical material universe, negate science in it's entirety, and this despite his dishonest attempts to cite scientific ideas such as for example cause and effect, and in light of all this the risible idea he submits his ideas to intellectual, logical, scientific and philosophical rigour.
Anyway I thought the site might be of interest. Interesting chapter on objective reality here...
"2. Epistemological Issues
a. Can We Know Objective Reality?
The subjective is characterised primarily by perceiving mind. The objective is characterised primarily by physical extension in space and time."
Follow the index from the start of the link, as I shan't post it all, but the first sentence illustrates Someone's problem when you start by denying physical reality exists, as that first sentence shows. So whether you adopt an extreme skeptical viewpoint of the question or not, it is impossible to envisage any kind of objective reality if you deny the existence of the physical universe. Once all chance of objective reality is denied as Someone has done then, all claims are meaningless in epistemological terms, and one may believe literally anything, as no there are no standards or principles of validity to subject claims to.
Pages