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 Asherian Command wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Ah I see we have the monthly antireligions thread. I can't beleive I missed out!

Apparently I am one of the few doing all the defending of religion I am usually the opposition in this.

For the record: I was trying to explain, not defend.

 easysauce wrote:
ahh stupid people with too much emotion

"it doesnt make sense to me, it must be wrong"

I wish it was only militant-creationists who do this.

plenty of people do this with other things, including scientific theories as D-usa pointed out.

evolution and intelligent design dont conflict for most Christians so not sure what conclusions people want to draw from this unless they want to judge a whole group by its extremists/idiots

No, Evolution and the idea of a deity which instigated Evolution and makes tweaks occasionally(a fairly harmless if superfluous belief) don't conflict for many(not most, unless we're only counting Northern Europe) Christians. Intelligent Design is a codified ideology which makes specific and demonstrably incorrect claims about facts and which advocates an approach to science that is not consistent with the scientific method. It is a branding exercise undertaken by fundamentalists to try and sneak Biblical Creationism into schools past moderate Christians and clueless parents, and it should be strenuously opposed by anyone who cares remotely about science education or indeed science generally.

cdesign proponentsists!

Fortunately, Judge John E. Jones III called 'em on it in the Kitzmiller case.

Valete,

JohnS

Steelmage99 wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Ah I see we have the monthly antireligions thread. I can't beleive I missed out!

Apparently I am one of the few doing all the defending of religion I am usually the opposition in this.

I want to salute you for that.
You are engaging in the discussion, and I appreciate that very much.

We might not agree, but I appreciate your efforts.

Me too. Asherian Command is one of the posters who I always find agreeable, even when I don't agree with him, which is an admirable quality.

As for the debate, I don't think that a point can be made in a more structured and logical way than a syllogism. I did not limit the argument to four options to be a jerk. I did it because those are the only four options that the universe allows. You can either:

1. agree with the conclusion.
2. disagree with one (or the other) premise, and the conclusion.
3. disagree with both premises, and the conclusion.
4. agree with both premises. but not the conclusion.

Those are all the possibilities. Any theory about god (no matter how clever) is going to fit one of those statements. That doesn't prove that god doesn't exist, but it does prove that people who believe in god have a logical double standard in their reasoning, because they draw conclusions with the same premise that end up contradicting each other.

 dogma wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

 dogma wrote:
qualities associated with personhood.

Such as?

Intention.

You seem to be confusing a difference in characteristics with a difference in origin. "Intention" is not a legitimate explanation of god's origin, or really of any relevance. Unless you believe god was created 'intentionally' by another even greater god? Which just makes god a single 'bump' in the road leading to no answers at all. Any attempt to explain the complexity of god without such a creator, will inevitably explain the complexity of the universe without a creator. 'Intention' does not refute that.

 Smacks wrote:

Steelmage99 wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Ah I see we have the monthly antireligions thread. I can't beleive I missed out!

Apparently I am one of the few doing all the defending of religion I am usually the opposition in this.

I want to salute you for that.
You are engaging in the discussion, and I appreciate that very much.

We might not agree, but I appreciate your efforts.

Me too. Asherian Command is one of the posters who I always find agreeable, even when I don't agree with him, which is an admirable quality.

True. Despite the heated tone he's managed to avoid the all-too-common pitfall of personal attacks or similar slippery roads that tend to devolve a spirited debate into a flame-war. Kudos for that.

Bran Dawri wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

Steelmage99 wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Ah I see we have the monthly antireligions thread. I can't beleive I missed out!

Apparently I am one of the few doing all the defending of religion I am usually the opposition in this.

I want to salute you for that.
You are engaging in the discussion, and I appreciate that very much.

We might not agree, but I appreciate your efforts.

Me too. Asherian Command is one of the posters who I always find agreeable, even when I don't agree with him, which is an admirable quality.

True. Despite the heated tone he's managed to avoid the all-too-common pitfall of personal attacks or similar slippery roads that tend to devolve a spirited debate into a flame-war. Kudos for that.

Experience. Its what happens when you are constantly surrounded by people who hate your religion and try to tear it apart.

Don't get me wrong there is a lot of things wrong with my Christain faith. Mostly that I will never have proof of God. So being told it does exist is more of a comfort than thinking God doesn't exist.

I know a lot about my religion and what it has been done in its name, but most times in its name has only be done to do bad things, the Crusades being one of them. No religion or way of thinking is exempt from some jerk going all out and killing people.

 Asherian Command wrote:
know a lot about my religion and what it has been done in its name, but most times in its name has only be done to do bad things, the Crusades being one of them. No religion or way of thinking is exempt from some jerk going all out and killing people.

I don't read too much into the whole crusades thing. Ancient people were generally violent and barbaric to each other. Trying to link a death toll with religion is an asinine way to argue.

What troubles me more is bad reasoning. I watched the video in the Intellectual man disproves science topic. I know a lot of people just dismissed him as an idiot, but I didn't see it that way. I though he seemed sharp, intelligent, entertaining, even compelling. However, around about eight mins into the video, he actually explains why he is probably wrong about everything. He says: "We agree that God did it, and that is our starting point. From there we try to figure out how he did it.". It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if your start with the conclusion, then you're going to conclude what you started with. That's about as obvious as being hit in the face with an anvil, but when people have a deep rooted emotional investment in something being true, their reasoning skills seem to make way for special pleading. Perhaps it's a sort of oddball example of love being blind.

Religion related 'killings' (and many other kinds of killings) are just another more extreme example of bad reasoning. Someone doesn't have the mental capacity to figure out that there are no 99 virgins waiting for them in the afterlife, that they are being manipulated to achieve political goals, and that killing thousands of people is wrong.

 Smacks wrote:
However, around about eight mins into the video, he actually explains why he is probably wrong about everything. He says: "We agree that God did it, and that is our starting point. From there we try to figure out how he did it.". It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if your start with the conclusion, then you're going to conclude what you started with.

If I were to compare his idea of "God did it" and my idea of "God did it" I think the biggest difference would be that he starts out with an actual idea of how God did it and then he tries to fit the science into that.

Like I've explained before, for me the "God did it" just replaces "coincidence" in areas where science doesn't yet explain things. It doesn't try to explain how it was done, it's just a philosophical addendum to the scientific knowledge.

For guys like him, when they say "God did it and we need to figure out how he did it" they really mean "God did it in 6 days without evolution 6000 years ago and we need to figure out how to make science fit that idea".

That's just my take on it.

I recently read the argument against geocentricism from the Answers in Genesis website.
It was amazing to see the intellectual disconnect happening in "slow motion", so to speak.
The arguments presented for geocentricism was almost point-for-point identical to the arguments put forth in defence of gods.
The author was completely coherent and rational using logic and reason to demonstrate how the evidence for geocentricism was flawed and how the arguments were unconvincing.


For those of you that don't know, Answers in Genesis it is a "hardline" Christian website of the YEC, literal 6-day creation biblical in-errancy variety headed by Ken Ham.

The person writing the article is actually really smart and well-versed in the scientific method, its value and how to evaluate evidence dispassionately. It apparently just doesn't occur to him to apply those very same tools to his religious belief.

I'll go get a link.
Here we go,

https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/arguments-to-avoid/geocentrism-and-creation/

Geocentrism worked intellectually and empirically up to the point the point that observations disproved it.

So did sacrificing people so the sun came up

 SilverMK2 wrote:
So did sacrificing people so the sun came up

You mean I can stop sacrificing Virgins to the great Sun-father every morning so that we may bask in his love? My whole life is a lie!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Geocentrism worked intellectually and empirically up to the point the point that observations disproved it.

Well, it can still work now if you decide to pick the reference frame of a stationary Earth (hooray for relativity!).

The maths is just ridiculously complicated compared to just putting the sun in the middle. So there's no point in trying to do it with the Earth at the centre.

An example where geocentric systems are still used can be seen in astronomical systems for defining the positions of objects. You just set the earth at the centre of a sphere of infinite radius (the celestial sphere) and then use the rotation of the celestial sphere about the earths axis from a fixed point on that sphere (first point of aries) and the angle from the equator of the celestial sphere to the object you're looking at.