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maadmax

How can anyone say "God doesn't exist" ?

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GeorgiaDon

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BTW, your analysis and description makes a good argument for intelligent design, IMO.

If there was a designer with any intelligence, I'm pretty sure they would not have chosen to cobble together a bunch of neurological pathways that also includes a large role for vasopressin in the male, given that vasopressin also controls behaviors such as territoriality and aggression. The overlap between love and territoriality has caused a tremendous amount of grief for women over the millennia.

On the other hand, such an overlap is entirely what would be expected of evolution. There is a strong selective advantage in mate guarding, as that helps ensure the paternity of the females offspring. In humans there is an additional advantage to linking mate guarding to factors that foster long-term mate bonding, as long term male participation greatly increases the odds that the offspring will survive to reach reproductive age, ensuring propagation of genes into future generations.

In the end, biology always comes down to optimizing transmission of genetic information from generation to generation. An intelligent designer would not be so limited, so we should expect to see things that are designed to function well without regard to how they affect transmission of genes. No examples of such biological processes have ever been discovered. There is no objective reason to prefer the "intelligent designer" model over biological evolution.

Don



That is very interesting. The question for me is, how can you be certain of the motivation of the designer? You assume the design to be flawed.

Well, that is not accurate. You do not assume a designer. You assume that if there was a designer the design would be perfect and efficient.

I think God designed us with built in conflict and aggression. Thus, He created a void, a need for Him. Only the true believers are rewarded eternity with Him.

In other words, we have to want to know God to know Him. That relationship can only be attained through Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Anything else is rational intellectualization.
Look for the shiny things of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. They only last for an instant but it is a Holy Instant. Let your soul absorb them.

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Love is not an emotion except in its crudest sense.



It is an emotion in every sense.

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There is no biological component for that.



There is a biological component for everything we feel. Our brains are made of meat, after all.

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You have confused love with infatuation.



Again, since I wasn't talking about biology, your rote response has nothing to do with my post. Have you still not bothered to read it yet, or do you still not understand it? Honestly, I thought I was pretty clear.
Do you want to have an ideagasm?

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Your answer is an excellent example of why "intelligent design" should not ever be confused with science, nor should it ever be taught in science class as an alternative to evolution. Any possible outcome of any conceivable experiment is dependent only on the "will of the designer". As a hypothesis, intelligent design is absolutely untestable because it is totally unfalsifiable. Anything and everything can be explained away as the "will of the designer", part of a plan we are, of course, totally incapable of understanding.

Don
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Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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Croc

Please show evidence that I prefer magic to science.

In your own words:
"Love is not an emotion except in its crudest sense. Love would be that thing, for example, that keeps a man alive and strong in spirit after enduring seven years of being a POW in North Vietnam. In this case it might be the love of his family.

There is no biological component for that."

You reject out of hand any possibility that love could have anything to do with biology. No role for neurons, the brain, neurotransmitters, etc. Nothing is left except for magic. You prefer magic.

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You have confused love with infatuation.

You also resort to the old sophist trick of redefining words when you are losing the argument. Lame.

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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My apologies; in fact I did not mean to say that your personal experience of love was infatuation. I meant that in the context of this thread infatuation is not what is meant here. And, yes, I should have referenced "emotion" instead of biology, which you did not mention.

We will have to agree to disagree whether love is an emotion or not. And the brain is to meat as a great poem is to ink and paper.
"Here's a good specimen of my own wisdom. Something is so, except when it isn't so."

Charles Fort, commenting on the many contradictions of astronomy

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Li Po feels great love and writes a poem. Centuries later Ezra Pound translates it into English. Fifty years later Croc reads it and feels great love.

You are correct; this can be entirely explained by biology. Some biology causes Li Po to write and it gets onto the paper which then gets into Ezra Pound and then gets onto the paper he writes which then gets into Croc when he reads it.

Did I get it right?
"Here's a good specimen of my own wisdom. Something is so, except when it isn't so."

Charles Fort, commenting on the many contradictions of astronomy

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I meant that in the context of this thread infatuation is not what is meant here.



And how is that relevant in any way to my post?

I can only assume that you're avoiding answering what I actually wrote because you have no answer.

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And the brain is to meat as a great poem is to ink and paper.



You fail the English SAT. The word that fits is mind, not brain.
Do you want to have an ideagasm?

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I'm not sure what question you are referring to. You said that you experienced love and yet love does not exist as an entity. How else can anything exist except as an entity? How can you experience something that does not exist?

The analogy is correct. An organ that can support consciousness is not meat in the same way that a great poem is not the paper that it is printed on.

If you asked the woman who cleans your house if love existed she would laugh out loud. She knows that love exists because she can feel it. You are over thinking it. You feel it too, and therefore you know it exists. Why would you deny this simple fact?
"Here's a good specimen of my own wisdom. Something is so, except when it isn't so."

Charles Fort, commenting on the many contradictions of astronomy

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GeorgiaDon

Your answer is an excellent example of why "intelligent design" should not ever be confused with science, nor should it ever be taught in science class as an alternative to evolution. Any possible outcome of any conceivable experiment is dependent only on the "will of the designer". As a hypothesis, intelligent design is absolutely untestable because it is totally unfalsifiable. Anything and everything can be explained away as the "will of the designer", part of a plan we are, of course, totally incapable of understanding.

Don



By jove, you've got it.

So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. ~Romans 10:17

I have very little interest in science. I have a lot of interest in understanding God's will, His word and the power that brings.
Look for the shiny things of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. They only last for an instant but it is a Holy Instant. Let your soul absorb them.

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You said that you experienced love and yet love does not exist as an entity. How else can anything exist except as an entity? How can you experience something that does not exist?



Because a concept and an independent entity are not the same.

Love is a shared human experience. So is walking into a room, forgetting why you were there, and remembering again the moment you leave. Does that mean that it is proof that there exists a nebulous, sentient cloud of forgetting-why-you-were-there energy that reaches out, touches us and influences our minds?

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The analogy is correct. An organ that can support consciousness is not the same as a rump roast in the same way that a great poem is not the paper that it was printed on.



Like I said, you fail english.

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Why would you deny this simple fact?



Disclaimer: Not a fact.
Do you want to have an ideagasm?

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Bolas

So to clarify.

You choose to believe in something there's no evidence of, believe others that choose to believe in anything different that there's no evidence of are wrong, but also anyone who belongs to a group of people who believe in something there's no evidence of, even if it's the same something you believe in are weak minded.



c'mon - there's 3 types of deniers

1 - don't believe it exists
2 - think it might, but not man-made (or man accelerated)
3 - think maybe it is, but might be beneficial

$top denying what thi$ can bring to an exclu$ive group of leader$

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

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You are correct; this can be entirely explained by biology. Some biology causes Li Po to write and it gets onto the paper which then gets into Ezra Pound and then gets onto the paper he writes which then gets into Croc when he reads it.

Did I get it right?

Really, you do insist on being silly, don't you.

Li Po's poem, or Ezra Pound's translation thereof, can stimulate emotion in Croc only because Croc's brain can process the visual input, reference the visual pattern to recognize written language, and connect that language to memories of experiences that stimulate activation of specific neurons and release of neurohormones, which Croc perceives as emotion. The process can be derailed in any number of ways. If Croc does not recognize the language, no feeling of love is elicited. If "love" exists separately from "meat" (a properly functioning brain) why is Ezra Pound's translation needed? Surely the love Li Po invested in his poem would get onto the paper and be felt by Croc even if he could not read Li Po's words? Similarly, any number of physical injuries to the brain could prevent Croc from recognizing the words on the page, even if he could see them perfectly, or prevent him from connecting those words to memories. Other injuries, or even certain drugs, could prevent Croc's neurons from releasing octopamine, or serotonin, or other neurotransmitters and no emotion would be felt, even if Croc was able to read and understand the words perfectly. That would not be true if love was an "entity" with an existence independent of the wiring of the brain.

Love, and all other emotions, exist in the brain and nowhere else.

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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It seems like this discussion has become very complex, stemming out into tangents and even semantics. Not that these discussions ever amount to anything but two equally smug and polarized sides losing steam or creativity in diversifying a discussion that has nowhere to go in the first place.

I'm a Sagan agnostic, meaning I understand that there is no evidence for a creator, nor is there any reason to suspect there could be evidence. In the nature of science, there is 'no data either way', and with a lack of testable evidence, the denial of god is not a scientific one. That is where the agnostic part comes from.


If there is a place for science in a god argument, it is a psychological and cultural anomaly, a mass delusion on a global scale. Of course, the evidence for this theory is abundant. Convergent evolution of compensation from curiosity, creativity, and fear.

In college a girl I knew and I spent a lot of time with called herself christian in her Facebook profile. This caused a slight hesitation in a call back, but curiosity along with a few other emotions brought me around. I found that she didn't go to church, or really behave in any way whatsoever that one would think even a slightly god fearing person would. Only after long philosophical pillow discussions did I learn that she had been battling anorexia for years, and the Facebook options for 'religion' only had so many choices. Some of her support groups had been religious in nature, but even that wasn't the reason she picked that instead of atheist or agnostic in the profile settings. 'Do you believe in a god'? I asked her. 'No' was the slightly hesitant response. She told me that her parents had been religious before she came along but had never really taught her about it or ever brought her to church. She told me that god was in the love for each other, family, life, the world. God was a way to describe the appreciation and motivation for interpersonal relationships to have meaning and was the best word to describe the parts of love and friendship that we can't understand. It was a beautiful discussion, and I think about it a lot to this day. 'Still', I told her. 'You should change your Facebook setting'.

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