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Post by Sarge on Jun 14, 2022 3:56:24 GMT
I though the big bang was supposed to be scientific. 1) How did it know to make humans different than animals? 2) How did it know to give people different languages, colors, 10 fingers and toes for a norm, the ability to think, to envision, to create things that weren't there? 3) How and why did it give humans a conscience, a sense of right and wrong and not just raw animal instincts like most other life forms?
1) Humans are animals. 2) Give? Evolution doesn't give. Human ancestors had unique challenges; we were arboreal apes that moved to the savannah so we had to evolve or die. Millions of species were forced to make similar transitions but failed. Humans are adaptable, our ancestors were adaptable, that's a major strength in the long game. Even still humans almost went extinct several times. 3) Conscience isn't well defined but my dog knows when she breaks the rules and acts ashamed. Right and wrong is a trait of social species, in humans it's part culture and part evolution. We have no more of a sense of right and wrong than other animals. If you don't believe me, visit a chicken farm or work for a corporation.
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Post by novastar6 on Jun 14, 2022 4:04:05 GMT
I though the big bang was supposed to be scientific. 1) How did it know to make humans different than animals? 2) How did it know to give people different languages, colors, 10 fingers and toes for a norm, the ability to think, to envision, to create things that weren't there? 3) How and why did it give humans a conscience, a sense of right and wrong and not just raw animal instincts like most other life forms?
3) Conscience isn't well defined but my dog knows when she breaks the rules and acts ashamed. Right and wrong is a trait of social species, in humans it's part culture and part evolution. We have no more of a sense of right and wrong than other animals. If you don't believe me, visit a chicken farm or work for a corporation.
Yeah we do, if you heard a mother killed and ate her baby, everybody in just about the entire planet would be horrified. Why is that? Because it's wrong, on so many levels, levels that do not apply to animals who routinely eat their young. Likewise the vast majority of the populace still knows adults having sex with kids is wrong and the only people who argue otherwise are the pedophiles themselves.
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Post by Sarge on Jun 14, 2022 4:12:49 GMT
3) Conscience isn't well defined but my dog knows when she breaks the rules and acts ashamed. Right and wrong is a trait of social species, in humans it's part culture and part evolution. We have no more of a sense of right and wrong than other animals. If you don't believe me, visit a chicken farm or work for a corporation.
Yeah we do, if you heard a mother killed and ate her baby, everybody in just about the entire planet would be horrified. Why is that? Because it's wrong, on so many levels, levels that do not apply to animals who routinely eat their young. Likewise the vast majority of the populace still knows adults having sex with kids is wrong and the only people who argue otherwise are the pedophiles themselves.
It's true that some animals eat their babies either to weed out the weak or because of starvation, humans have done the same. For a long time it was normal to leave deformed babies to nature, basically let them die. And if a family is starving I wouldn't put it past them to eat their own. It's all civility and manners until SHTF.
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Post by novastar6 on Jun 14, 2022 4:19:05 GMT
Yeah we do, if you heard a mother killed and ate her baby, everybody in just about the entire planet would be horrified. Why is that? Because it's wrong, on so many levels, levels that do not apply to animals who routinely eat their young. Likewise the vast majority of the populace still knows adults having sex with kids is wrong and the only people who argue otherwise are the pedophiles themselves.
It's true that some animals eat their babies either to weed out the weak or because of starvation, humans have done the same. For a long time it was normal to leave deformed babies to nature, basically let them die. And if a family is starving I wouldn't put it past them to eat their own. It's all civility and manners until SHTF.
That was the norm because back then people didn't have the understanding or the means of doing otherwise. Pouring as much time and resources and sacrifices in the last 100+ years to accommodate the deformed, handicapped, mentally retarded, etc., doesn't really mesh with 'survival of the fittest', and it's also not an ability becoming of any animal life form, nor having the brain power to invent anything. Man has invented millions of things great and small, from bread twists, to the toilet, to power plants, and in between things like blood banks, airplanes, traffic lights, computers, indoor plumbing, etc., what's one thing a dog or a chicken ever invented?
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Post by Sarge on Jun 14, 2022 4:25:43 GMT
It's true that some animals eat their babies either to weed out the weak or because of starvation, humans have done the same. For a long time it was normal to leave deformed babies to nature, basically let them die. And if a family is starving I wouldn't put it past them to eat their own. It's all civility and manners until SHTF.
That was the norm because back then people didn't have the understanding ...
Not my fault you didn't think through your comment before posting. Suck it up buttercup and don't move the goal post. Dogs made an alliance. What we call dogs didn't evolve from what we know as wolves, they evolved from an ancestor to wolves and made an alliance with humans. I'd say that's pretty smart. Chickens are food. Did you know that humans aren't the only animals that farm and keep livestock?
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Post by rizdek on Jun 14, 2022 12:34:30 GMT
And that is what most notable apologists claim they are doing with some of their arguments. They claim they are offering evidence in the form of arguments that take a given observation or set of observations and claiming it/those are better explained if theism is true.
What is your response to the argument from fine tuning as described here? link
And when they say 'possible development of life' they're not just saying that the earth is life friendly. They're claiming that if those constants were a bit different, no atoms would form and therefore no stars or planets would form and the universe, if it existed at all, would "look" entirely different and no kind of physical life would be possible at all because there would be nothing from which life could arise.
plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine-tuning/
I wasn't previously familiar with Fine Tuning but it seems an ass first explanation... that if your asshole wasn't round then round turds would be constrained. There could be an infinite number of universes where life is impossible, or universes that failed completely because the physics were unstable. Ours is the story of a universe where everything worked. There are uncountable planets in our universe where life failed, or never evolved beyond single cells. We are the story where life evolved like the universe evolved in the very early days before atomic particles. My take on fine tuning is similar to the multi-verse explanation. At least that's what I think you're referring to...ie that almost an infinite number of universes have formed and passed each with slightly different conditions and most...the vast majority? came and went without any life forming, but then, once in a quadrillion or more, all the constants aligned just so such that atoms could form, thus stars, planets and other things made of atoms. Then every once in a while one of those actually produces life and maybe once in a while intelligent life, and...here we are wondering why our universe is so special. IOW, regardless of how improbable these conditions are, it would be inevitable that they'd turn up sometime.
The other idea is that maybe the way in which universes can form determine that the values for all these constants are constrained in a way physicists haven't figured out yet IOW, they're no more random than the behavior of a rock if you drop it. Gravity keeps the movement of the rock from being random and causes the rock to always fall toward the gravitational center.
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Post by rizdek on Jun 14, 2022 13:25:02 GMT
3) Conscience isn't well defined but my dog knows when she breaks the rules and acts ashamed. Right and wrong is a trait of social species, in humans it's part culture and part evolution. We have no more of a sense of right and wrong than other animals. If you don't believe me, visit a chicken farm or work for a corporation.
Yeah we do, if you heard a mother killed and ate her baby, everybody in just about the entire planet would be horrified. Why is that? Because it's wrong, on so many levels, levels that do not apply to animals who routinely eat their young. Likewise the vast majority of the populace still knows adults having sex with kids is wrong and the only people who argue otherwise are the pedophiles themselves.
I think the point is that other animals also have a sense of right and wrong...it may not always the same things as humans, but they have that innate sense, nonetheless.
EG, generally most animals do not regularly eat their own babies. A lioness MUST have some innate sense that eating her own babies is somehow just plain wrong because she doesn't do it. Why not? It's because the lion gene pool produces individuals who intuitively, generally don't eat their own babies. It has to...even first time mother lions tend to nurture, nurse, protect and do NOT EAT their babies. If the gene pool didn't, lions would immediately eat that free food that just came out of them and the lion gene pool would end in a generation or two. And perhaps early on, some populations of predatory types DID eat their young or ate their young too often. Those are the gene pools that likely just died out...because no species can survive if they don't produce enough young which live to reproductive age. So without any way for lions to 'learn' what is right and wrong, genes had to do the job for them....had to produce individuals who had some sort of innate aversion to eating their own. Look at alligators and crocodiles....as primitive as they are, the mother usually protects her own and does not eat them despite them being there, easily available, free food. Even first time mother alligators don't tend to eat their own young. They have an innate sense which would amount to the 'feeling like' it is wrong to eat their own babies. Of course, primitive as they are, apparently alligators may eat their own when food is scarce, so their aversion might not be as strong as human's aversion, but generally they have to have the aversion...the feeling that eating her own babies is wrong..
The same thing would apply to, say, having sex with kids. If some relatively small limited gene pool produced males that just as quickly wasted their precious reproductive resources on individual too young to reproduce, the species would die out in hard times when resources were scarce. Therefore the gene pool only survived if it produced individual males who tended to have an aversion to having sex with underage 'not in reproductive mode' females because they'd be there and easily available. There probably were some populations of early sexually reproducing species where that did not happen, where the males did NOT have an aversion to trying to mate with babies/toddlers. Those populations likely died out when too few of the adult females became impregnated because the males were screwing babies. Of course in today's human society, there are plenty of resources such that individual males could easily waste all their reproductive resources having sex with children and humans would survive. But we evolved from a time when there had to be a built-in, intuitive aversion to that and that's what the rest of us are feeling when we hear about men raping kids. AND, now there are other reasons to be averse to that kind of behavior that aren't literally survival related. Based on other needs, humans also evolved the tendency to look out for the weaker among us and children and that intuition kicks in for most of us when we hear of a child being abused. A population of animals that routinely abused/beat up/killed their own young as opposed to generally protecting and nurturing them would die out as their young would be less capable of surviving and reproducing while populations that DID nurture and protect the young would have better survival chances.
It is pretty clear that 'moral' thoughts are evolved intuitions that were, at least at one time, survival related. The gene pool had to produce individuals who really believed, intuitively, that some things were wrong...things that if done regularly would jeopardize the survival of the species. And now that we have the ability to reason, we can see real reasons why most of those intuitions are right, are based on good reasoning. IOW, where at one time those aversions were intuitive, now we can justify them with rational thought. And it is the reasoning that make something right or wrong, not some mandate from on high.
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Post by Isapop on Jun 14, 2022 14:40:40 GMT
My take on fine tuning is similar to the multi-verse explanation. At least that's what I think you're referring to...ie that almost an infinite number of universes have formed and passed each with slightly different conditions and most...the vast majority? came and went without any life forming, but then, once in a quadrillion or more, all the constants aligned just so such that atoms could form, thus stars, planets and other things made of atoms. Then every once in a while one of those actually produces life and maybe once in a while intelligent life, and...here we are wondering why our universe is so special. IOW, regardless of how improbable these conditions are, it would be inevitable that they'd turn up sometime.
The other idea is that maybe the way in which universes can form determine that the values for all these constants are constrained in a way physicists haven't figured out yet IOW, they're no more random than the behavior of a rock if you drop it. Gravity keeps the movement of the rock from being random and causes the rock to always fall toward the gravitational center.
But isn't the idea of multiple universes just as speculative as the fine-tuning argument for God is? It seems that way to me (again, it's really beyond my scientific grasp). That's why I'd prefer not to resort to it when disputing fine-tuning.
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Post by rizdek on Jun 14, 2022 17:22:44 GMT
My take on fine tuning is similar to the multi-verse explanation. At least that's what I think you're referring to...ie that almost an infinite number of universes have formed and passed each with slightly different conditions and most...the vast majority? came and went without any life forming, but then, once in a quadrillion or more, all the constants aligned just so such that atoms could form, thus stars, planets and other things made of atoms. Then every once in a while one of those actually produces life and maybe once in a while intelligent life, and...here we are wondering why our universe is so special. IOW, regardless of how improbable these conditions are, it would be inevitable that they'd turn up sometime.
The other idea is that maybe the way in which universes can form determine that the values for all these constants are constrained in a way physicists haven't figured out yet IOW, they're no more random than the behavior of a rock if you drop it. Gravity keeps the movement of the rock from being random and causes the rock to always fall toward the gravitational center.
But isn't the idea of multiple universes just as speculative as the fine-tuning argument for God is? It seems that way to me (again, it's really beyond my scientific grasp). That's why I'd prefer not to resort to it when disputing fine-tuning. I think it is speculative. IOW, I agree with you in part. I'm not sure it is just as speculative. One advantage I see in assuming the origin of the universe we see around us is natural is it doesn't invoke a new kind of existence (the supernatural, the divine, gods, etc) that, IMHO would require just as much explanation as or perhaps more explanation than the natural world if one is into 'explaining' things. So no one still knows if such a world CAN exist and CAN be the 'explanation' other than by definition. And doing so pretty much puts it out of reach for any more scientific investigation/study, almost by definition. Is that really how one goes about seeking further explanation, by putting the solution completely out of reach of...explanation?
I assume (have faith) the natural world really does exist and I think there are few who would seriously argue against that. I assume there is a lot we don't know about the natural world. Again, I doubt there are many who would argue that. That leaves the question of whether that which is unknown might be the explanation. Some might say it is impossible for the natural world to be its own explanation...but I don't see why not if you push past the fact that they are merely asserting the existence of God. So I see it as prudent to just assume the natural is more than we know about and in some way 'can' be the explanation.
But yes, someone can just not resort to any kind of explanation...and for the most part, I don't go about my daily life wondering seriously how everything got started and why it is the way it is. I just 'go about my daily life' happy to be alive and living with those I like to be with. But in my more pensive moments, I think on these things.
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Post by Sarge on Jun 14, 2022 19:46:43 GMT
I wasn't previously familiar with Fine Tuning but it seems an ass first explanation... that if your asshole wasn't round then round turds would be constrained. There could be an infinite number of universes where life is impossible, or universes that failed completely because the physics were unstable. Ours is the story of a universe where everything worked. There are uncountable planets in our universe where life failed, or never evolved beyond single cells. We are the story where life evolved like the universe evolved in the very early days before atomic particles. My take on fine tuning is similar to the multi-verse explanation. At least that's what I think you're referring to...ie that almost an infinite number of universes have formed and passed each with slightly different conditions and most...the vast majority? came and went without any life forming, but then, once in a quadrillion or more, all the constants aligned just so such that atoms could form, thus stars, planets and other things made of atoms. Then every once in a while one of those actually produces life and maybe once in a while intelligent life, and...here we are wondering why our universe is so special. IOW, regardless of how improbable these conditions are, it would be inevitable that they'd turn up sometime.
The other idea is that maybe the way in which universes can form determine that the values for all these constants are constrained in a way physicists haven't figured out yet IOW, they're no more random than the behavior of a rock if you drop it. Gravity keeps the movement of the rock from being random and causes the rock to always fall toward the gravitational center.
There is an idea in physics that measurement determines reality but I don't take it very seriously. Anything that can happen, does, in a multiverse. I wouldn't take that to mean anything we can imagine happens, for example I doubt there is a universe where everyone is Aquaman and reproduces by budding, but maybe now there is because I imagined it. Physics is bizarre.
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Post by Sarge on Jun 14, 2022 19:59:43 GMT
My take on fine tuning is similar to the multi-verse explanation. At least that's what I think you're referring to...ie that almost an infinite number of universes have formed and passed each with slightly different conditions and most...the vast majority? came and went without any life forming, but then, once in a quadrillion or more, all the constants aligned just so such that atoms could form, thus stars, planets and other things made of atoms. Then every once in a while one of those actually produces life and maybe once in a while intelligent life, and...here we are wondering why our universe is so special. IOW, regardless of how improbable these conditions are, it would be inevitable that they'd turn up sometime.
The other idea is that maybe the way in which universes can form determine that the values for all these constants are constrained in a way physicists haven't figured out yet IOW, they're no more random than the behavior of a rock if you drop it. Gravity keeps the movement of the rock from being random and causes the rock to always fall toward the gravitational center.
But isn't the idea of multiple universes just as speculative as the fine-tuning argument for God is? It seems that way to me (again, it's really beyond my scientific grasp). That's why I'd prefer not to resort to it when disputing fine-tuning. I would have agreed with you a few years ago but I spent a lot of time during the pandemic watching physics videos, enough to get a gist of the ideas and they have merit. The cutting edge of physics is bizarre and defies intuition, but the ideas don't spring from the imagination like dime novels, they are built on measurement, observation, and logic. Doesn't mean they are all correct, but they lead to understanding. The arguments for God don't teach us anything new about the universe.
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Post by rizdek on Jun 14, 2022 21:31:50 GMT
My take on fine tuning is similar to the multi-verse explanation. At least that's what I think you're referring to...ie that almost an infinite number of universes have formed and passed each with slightly different conditions and most...the vast majority? came and went without any life forming, but then, once in a quadrillion or more, all the constants aligned just so such that atoms could form, thus stars, planets and other things made of atoms. Then every once in a while one of those actually produces life and maybe once in a while intelligent life, and...here we are wondering why our universe is so special. IOW, regardless of how improbable these conditions are, it would be inevitable that they'd turn up sometime.
The other idea is that maybe the way in which universes can form determine that the values for all these constants are constrained in a way physicists haven't figured out yet IOW, they're no more random than the behavior of a rock if you drop it. Gravity keeps the movement of the rock from being random and causes the rock to always fall toward the gravitational center.
There is an idea in physics that measurement determines reality but I don't take it very seriously. Anything that can happen, does, in a multiverse. I wouldn't take that to mean anything we can imagine happens, for example I doubt there is a universe where everyone is Aquaman and reproduces by budding, but maybe now there is because I imagined it. Physics is bizarre. I read somewhere that no matter how spooky and weird you think quantum mechanic is...it's even weirder. www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-physics-may-be-even-spookier-than-you-think/ talks about the light slit experiment where, when you shine light through slits, it creates a wave pattern on the background where the photons hit. That happens even if they shoot a single photon at a time...it still acts like it's going through both slits and creates the wave pattern. They call it superposition. And it happens UNLESS YOU MEASURE IT. Then, the wave pattern is destroyed.
That is why several years ago stopped thinking we 'knew' all or even close to all there as to the natural world. I am inclined to think we've hardly scratched the surface. We've picked the low hanging fruit.
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Post by Sarge on Jun 15, 2022 1:42:07 GMT
There is an idea in physics that measurement determines reality but I don't take it very seriously. Anything that can happen, does, in a multiverse. I wouldn't take that to mean anything we can imagine happens, for example I doubt there is a universe where everyone is Aquaman and reproduces by budding, but maybe now there is because I imagined it. Physics is bizarre. I read somewhere that no matter how spooky and weird you think quantum mechanic is...it's even weirder. www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-physics-may-be-even-spookier-than-you-think/ talks about the light slit experiment where, when you shine light through slits, it creates a wave pattern on the background where the photons hit. That happens even if they shoot a single photon at a time...it still acts like it's going through both slits and creates the wave pattern. They call it superposition. And it happens UNLESS YOU MEASURE IT. Then, the wave pattern is destroyed.
That is why several years ago stopped thinking we 'knew' all or even close to all there as to the natural world. I am inclined to think we've hardly scratched the surface. We've picked the low hanging fruit.
One consideration is all our technology is based on physics so our technology can't be fundamentally different than the universe. Computers, lasers, holograms, video games, radio and television are toy versions of the universe.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 15, 2022 10:21:31 GMT
How does one know whether God is actually good given the assumption by many that he defines what is good and provides the basis for moral thinking. Based on that, there is no point in saying God is good because we can't know. Furthermore, we can't even know if what we think is good is actually good or not, IF God is the only source of moral thinking. It's worse even than having subjective morals. At least with subjective morals we try to come up with reasons. No such reasons are meaningful if God is the only source of moral thinking....he apparently can't even have reasons for what he thinks is right or wrong, because if he did, then those reason would be the basis for moral thinking and why things are right and wrong, not God himself. Not sure this is correct. Even if God is the source of morality, that doesn't mean we can't (theoretically at least) logically work out what morality is without God telling us. You look at what we mean when we question whether an action is moral and it follows that we mean the action accords to a duty above doing simply what we want to do. We also acknowledge that such a duty is universal (no-one thinks it's wrong for Person X to murder but not for Person Y under the exact same circumstances). While one could argue that things such as duty and universality are subjective things to attach to morality (and indeed some have argued just that), I think if you strip them away you're not really talking about morality anymore - they follow from the definition of morality. From these bases and applying the law of non-contradiction, you can in theory gradually build an idea of what objective morality might be if such a thing exists. If then God accords with the independently constructed objective morality then we can consider God good. Whether then God is good because he follows some independent objective morality or goodness is simply his very nature doesn't really matter though the latter is simpler which is probably why theists tend to prefer it But then those reasons themselves must be subjective or else we're not talking about subjective morals any more.
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Post by rizdek on Jun 15, 2022 19:40:59 GMT
How does one know whether God is actually good given the assumption by many that he defines what is good and provides the basis for moral thinking. Based on that, there is no point in saying God is good because we can't know. Furthermore, we can't even know if what we think is good is actually good or not, IF God is the only source of moral thinking. It's worse even than having subjective morals. At least with subjective morals we try to come up with reasons. No such reasons are meaningful if God is the only source of moral thinking....he apparently can't even have reasons for what he thinks is right or wrong, because if he did, then those reason would be the basis for moral thinking and why things are right and wrong, not God himself. Not sure this is correct. Even if God is the source of morality, that doesn't mean we can't (theoretically at least) logically work out what morality is without God telling us. You look at what we mean when we question whether an action is moral and it follows that we mean the action accords to a duty above doing simply what we want to do. We also acknowledge that such a duty is universal (no-one thinks it's wrong for Person X to murder but not for Person Y under the exact same circumstances). While one could argue that things such as duty and universality are subjective things to attach to morality (and indeed some have argued just that), I think if you strip them away you're not really talking about morality anymore - they follow from the definition of morality. From these bases and applying the law of non-contradiction, you can in theory gradually build an idea of what objective morality might be if such a thing exists. If then God accords with the independently constructed objective morality then we can consider God good. Whether then God is good because he follows some independent objective morality or goodness is simply his very nature doesn't really matter though the latter is simpler which is probably why theists tend to prefer it But then those reasons themselves must be subjective or else we're not talking about subjective morals any more. I assume you meant,' ...or else we're not talking about objective morals...'
I really have a problem wrapping my mind around the whole 'objective moral' concept and why it's important. Theists make a big deal about whether there are moral facts or not. They claim without God there can be no objective morality. But...the first thing I could ask is so what? As far as I'm concerned we are animals and evolved to be what we are through natural selection. The human gene pool produces individuals who feel strongly about how we ought to deal with others and more importantly how we think others ought to deal with us. Those intuitions make us feel really strongly that there are definitely right and wrong ways to do things including how to treat others and how we want others to treat us. So what if those feelings are purely natural? If they work....they work. Those intuitions are how society came up with laws. They encoded many of these feelings we all have in laws that say how we can legally treat others. And...it seems they are nominally successful with some hiccups and disagreements. And all of these problems and hiccups are with most people imagining there is a god who is the foundation for moral thinking. So if there is a problem it is with God existing and NOT as I envision it...assuming naturalism.
The second question is how would the existence of God help in the matter from a practical standpoint? We all still have to figure out what God's moral mandates are. How do we know? In the end, we have to use our own reasoning to figure out if the thing that crosses our mind or what some other person said or wrote in some 'holy' scripture really IS of God or is it just someone's imagination. So deciding on what God's mandates are become just as subjective as if there wasn't a God at all. So at best, the 'idea' that morality is ontologically founded in God becomes psychologically beneficial since we can 'feel' like what we're thinking is realTM vs just our or someone else's opinion. And at worst, it can make someone feel like THEIR particular ideas of what ought to be done are much more important than they should be and they end up launching inquisitions and pogroms against those who would disagree, where, if they realize it was just their own reasoning, maybe they wouldn't be so dogmatic.
The third question is how does God's existence matters at all with regard to morality? So what if God has some ideas of what is right and wrong and those ideas are founded on some aspect of his being...his character? How is what he thinks objectively important to us from an objective POV? Other than his ability to punish us for ignoring those mandates...so what? And just because he can punish us, that doesn't make his ideas objective or even right. This site talks extensively about that. In the end, it comes down to someone's assertion (faith) that it's just impossible for God not to be moral, to be different or to 'not' exist. So you can see that the basis they are using to say God is a the foundation for morality and that we can just 'rely' on God to be thinking right is pure assertion...blind faith. They must take on faith not ONLY that a god CAN even exist and that he does exist, and then that he thinks morally and if he 'thinks' morally that his morals are reliable. Keep in mind, if they're right...IF God is the foundation of moral thinking we have no way to decide if what God is mandating IS actually right or just seems right because that's how he made us to think. That is why I think my approach actually requires less faith... I only have to have faith that the natural world somehow provides adequate foundation for our moral thinking, such as it is.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 15, 2022 21:34:53 GMT
I assume you meant,' ...or else we're not talking about objective morals...' No. If your subjective morals appeal to some objective reason then they aren't actually subjective. So under subjective morality, if two people are having a moral argument about whether, say, slavery is moral, the anti-slaver can only convince the pro-slaver if they can show that support for slavery contradicts a deeper moral belief the pro-slaver holds. If no such deeper moral exists, the pro-slaver's view just has to be considered moral from their point of view and that's an end to it. However someone with an objective point of view would not accept the pro-slaver's view as valid because for them it contradicts a fundamental fact of how the world is. In practice though I don't think there is much difference between the two stances. A subjectivist anti-slaver might think from a purely academic stance that slavery is indeed moral from the pro-slaver's point of view but they're no more going to let them have slaves than the objectivist. Nor ought they unless one proposes an objective requirement to tolerate others' morals. As for the rest of your post, I don't really have a problem with it. I was merely pointing out that supposing morality is objective, it might be theoretically possible to work out what is moral based on a priori logic alone without needing to just go along with God's commands because they come from God. In fact, if anything one shouldn't rely on God's opinion:
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Post by captainbryce on Jun 15, 2022 23:54:14 GMT
Are evidence and proof viewed the same, colloquially? This site suggests many (most?) people see a difference. So evidence suggests many see a difference. Be that as it may, when you say you want evidence of God's existence, you mean proof? Ok....What would be proof of God's existence? What could you see/experience that could leave absolutely NO doubt in your mind....no other explanation than a god had to exist for it to have happened? I, personally can think of nothing that would PROVE to me a god existed/exists....ie could absolutely NOT be explained any other way. But more interestingly, what your response to the argument from fine tuning? I’m less concerned with what “many people” say on a “site”, and more interested in what most people I converse with in reality say. I don’t know about you, but to me that’s a more meaningful metric to use when judging the use of language. When I look up the word proof in the dictionary, I get: “evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement”. This seems consistent with how most people use it (off site). Colloquially speaking when people are asking for “proof” they’re asking for evidence. We don’t need to quibble about “what words mean” in order to have a meaningful conversation. We know what people mean when they say proof! As far as what evidence would convince me that a god exists, I have two approaches to that question. Let’s replace the word “god” with literally anything else and ask the same question. What would it take to convince me that aliens are abducting people from Earth? The answer is an alien encounter! Specifically one that is a shared experience (not just me having the experience, but other people to witness it and validate my experience). The other approach is to simply say this. Not all claims are equal! The evidence sufficient to convince should be proportional to the claim. Mundane claims require very little evidence to warrant belief, but extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. If you tell me that you just got a pet dog, I’m probably going to believe you at face value because that’s mundane claim. People get dogs as pets all the time. I’ve had dogs as pets before. And why would someone make that up? If you tell me that you just got a pet grizzly bear, I’m probably going to be very skeptical because that doesn’t seem likely. Grizzly bears are not legal to own as pets, they extremely dangerous, wild animals, and it is not logistically feasible for a person to have one. So I’d need to actually see some evidence of this bear in your possession before I believed it. If you tell me that you just got a pet fire-breathing dragon…I don’t believe you! Even if I think that YOU believe that you have pet fire-breathing dragon, I personally won’t believe that you have one. As far as I know, there is no such thing as a fire breathing dragon (it’s a purely mythical creature). Is it possible that there is such a thing? Maybe. But I would not be exercising reason if I just took your word on that. If you tell me that you have a pet fire-breathing dragon that’s invisible, intangible, silent, and only communicates with you telepathically, then that’s an unfalsifiable claim which can neither be proved nor disproved. So I would not believe that claim on the count that I have not experienced this so called pet, and you have no way of showing that it exists. God (at least most definitions of it) seems to fall in the last category. It’s an unfalsifiable claim and there seems to be no objective methodology by which anyone can demonstrate the existence of any god. To make things worse, God is only ever described with negative attributes: ex “timeless”, “spaceless”, “immaterial”, etc. Well what does it mean to say something that has no material and is outside of time and space “exists”? In what manner is it existing? Something that is composed of no matter, and occupies no space, at no time is functionally no different than a non-existent thing. In other words, you’ve literally described something that doesn’t exist. So God doesn’t seem to manifest in any detectable way in reality. I don’t know what kind of evidence it would take to convince me that something that doesn’t manifest in reality “exists”. But if a god exists AND it’s all power, and all knowing - then God would know what kind of evidence would convince me, and he hasn’t convinced me. The only logical conclusion I could draw from this is that either: 1) A god exists, but it either not all-powerful OR not all-knowing (or neither) 2) God exists and is omnipotent and omniscient, BUT doesn’t want me to know it exists 3) God exists and is omnipotent and omniscient, BUT doesn’t care if I know if it exists 4) This god doesn’t really exist at all So given the fact that I'm not convinced that any god exists, which of these do you think is the most likely?
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gw
Junior Member
@gw
Posts: 1,519
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Post by gw on Jun 16, 2022 2:04:20 GMT
Are evidence and proof viewed the same, colloquially? This site suggests many (most?) people see a difference. So evidence suggests many see a difference. Be that as it may, when you say you want evidence of God's existence, you mean proof? Ok....What would be proof of God's existence? What could you see/experience that could leave absolutely NO doubt in your mind....no other explanation than a god had to exist for it to have happened? I, personally can think of nothing that would PROVE to me a god existed/exists....ie could absolutely NOT be explained any other way. But more interestingly, what your response to the argument from fine tuning? The other approach is to simply say this. Not all claims are equal! The evidence sufficient to convince should be proportional to the claim. Mundane claims require very little evidence to warrant belief, but extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. If you tell me that you just got a pet dog, I’m probably going to believe you at face value because that’s mundane claim. People get dogs as pets all the time. I’ve had dogs as pets before. And why would someone make that up? I see how that was meant to work, but it is a recipe for getting conned by the little things. I could say that I have a little black dog but that I'm on vacation and didn't bring it with me. Or a calico cat. Or a pet lizard. As long as I have a suitcase I can make up just about anything about a pet that I want as long as I keep the details vague. It's important to check the small things relatively regularly as well.
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Post by captainbryce on Jun 16, 2022 4:32:00 GMT
The other approach is to simply say this. Not all claims are equal! The evidence sufficient to convince should be proportional to the claim. Mundane claims require very little evidence to warrant belief, but extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. If you tell me that you just got a pet dog, I’m probably going to believe you at face value because that’s mundane claim. People get dogs as pets all the time. I’ve had dogs as pets before. And why would someone make that up? I see how that was meant to work, but it is a recipe for getting conned by the little things. I could say that I have a little black dog but that I'm on vacation and didn't bring it with me. Or a calico cat. Or a pet lizard. As long as I have a suitcase I can make up just about anything about a pet that I want as long as I keep the details vague. It's important to check the small things relatively regularly as well. The difference is, there is no impact to me whether you actually have a dog or not. It doesn’t affect me if you’re lying and it isn’t worldview changing either way. The existence of a god (or anything supernatural) would be worldview altering. Even the existence of fire-breathing dragons would be.
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Post by Isapop on Jun 16, 2022 16:02:55 GMT
I see how that was meant to work, but it is a recipe for getting conned by the little things. I could say that I have a little black dog but that I'm on vacation and didn't bring it with me. Or a calico cat. Or a pet lizard. As long as I have a suitcase I can make up just about anything about a pet that I want as long as I keep the details vague. It's important to check the small things relatively regularly as well. The difference is, there is no impact to me whether you actually have a dog or not. It doesn’t affect me if you’re lying and it isn’t worldview changing either way. The existence of a god (or anything supernatural) would be worldview altering. Even the existence of fire-breathing dragons would be. Hello cap, howya been?
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