JackC

hint

I believe the exact same thing. I think that annoys people though. It seems when someone expresses their religious beliefs, there are the bunch who for some reason have to debunk them...rather than just politely respect them. If I believed that all people with X characteristic should be shot at birth, people wouldn't respect that. I'd be called a biggot. If I believed that the voices were telling me to kidnap people and keep them in a hole in my basement, people wouldn't respect that. I'd be called crazy (amongst other things) Yet somehow, believing in invisible gods and demons who influence lives and exist on some etherial plane is supposed to be respected? Because it's a religion? Can anyone explain to me why?

Easy. The whole story, all the inconsistencies, all the redefining words, all the different interpretations, all the problems with literal and metaphorical readings, all the logical falacies, all the infinities, the problem of evil, the whole shebang, all of it makes complete, logical sense if you include this one tiny thing: god is a fictional character. If you could prove it was indeed direct from god, then yes.

The headline in this mornings Independent read "Et tu brute". Genius. What a beautiful day it is.

If a "thing" cannot be seen, touched, felt, sniffed, prodded, poked, shot at, eaten, heard, interacted with or otherwise measured in any way shape or form, that "thing" is indistinguishable from its own non-existance. In that case, it is not a "thing", it's "nothing". It's not faith, it's just the definition of a real existant "thing".

Here's an interesting read. But I'll admit, on the basis of that article the payoff is not zero for some people. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them. To me, abandoning logic, reason and rational thought is an impossibly fucking huge leap. YMMV.

Honestly, is that supposed to be funny? Basically, what you've just said is "if you have faith in god, it's a lot easier to have faith in god". And that, ladies and gentlemen is the number one, top banana, absolutely the most prime reason why I'm an atheist. Any philosophy that can drive someone to come out with such utter gibberish and not even realise, cannot be a good thing.

Well there's the thing. SOME evidence puts you fairly in the belief category, faith is no longer necessary. In romantic relationships, you usually get something for your investment. But with god all you get is they guy who ignores you when you pray to him. Loving a woman who is real and in front of you, who responds to you is a hell of a lot easier (and much more fun) than an unresponsive entity that is indistinguishable from it's non-existence. That would be a bit like pushing boulders uphill. It really does take faith to believe in god and when the payoff is essentially zero, I can't see the point. You obviously disagree and I'm gald you do, the debate is good for the old grey matter. Have a good one.

To know requires proof, to believe requires evidence, to have faith requires neither. If I have proof or evidence then my belief is justified. If I have neither, then belief is not justified and you'd need faith. I'll trust nothing to faith because it's a gamble and the odds suck. At a fundamental level, all of the things you mentioned will have either proof or evidence attached to them on some level. God on the other hand has no such evidence. Religious faith and the other things you mention are very different animals.

Like what?

I disagree, if you believe something as being true you should have a (good) reason for it. Especially if you plan on using the object of your belief as some kind of life or moral compass. If this object can't stand up to a fair amount of scrutiny then it has no business being held up as true. If you have no reason for belief and yet you still do, then you have faith and that is dangerous ground to be on IMHO. On that, we agree. Generally, I don't see faith as a positive attribute.

That depends on the observations. Science is just a tool. If your pet theory says that if you apply force X to object Y then it will behave in manner Z, and when you do all that object Y doesn't behave in manner Z, then I don't care if your name is Albert Einstein, L. Ron Hubbard or Jesus of Nazareth, the theory is wrong. That's all.

It can be used as part of an effective bullshit filter to avoid gullibility. The question should be: why aren't people applying scientific methods to matters of faith?

Blah blah fucking blah

Sounds reasonable. Is all of your evidence medical-literature based? By evidence, do you mean "reproducible observations"? Try a simple experiment with a bottle of Tequila and a cross word puzzle. Not scientifically reproducable they're not. If you can prove otherwise there is $1,000,000 waiting for you here. I thought this New Scientist article was an interesting read. Did you mean to say dependent? Yes. The mass density of the universe is not uniform and neither is the energy density. This being the case, wouldn't you expect the interaction between brain and your free will "stuff" to vary acording to how much "stuff" is in the immediate area of the brain? But then again maybe brain-universe interactions don't follow an inverse square law. Oh my, what a load of crap I just wrote I don't think the two can be reconciled since the idea of a god is unfalsifiable, not to mention unphysical, illogical, incoherent, blah blah blah... Although I'm still puzzled as to what free will has to do with dU=dQ+dW and how you conjugate the verb "to god" in the future perfect tense. Edit: found it! http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.asp?T1=god&D1=20&H1=120

It's not often you read something as impressive as that, anywhere and certainly not in here. I've got to tip my hat to you, that was quite inspirational.

OK, since you seem quite keen on some feedback, here's my $0.02 worth. All the evidence I'm aware of does indeed suggest that brain function is chemically based. Nor does it mean that any such "resevoirs" do exist. Basically, all you've done here is to postulate something for which you have no evidence, in spite of lots of evidence to the contrary. And now you're asserting that this unknown resevior interacts with your brain somehow and the net result is free will? Even though you don't know if this resevior even exists? I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight. - Danny, Withnail and I. Sounds a bit like Aristotle's luminiferous Ether which was shot down in the 19th century by Michelson and Morley. So shouldn't free will should be dependent on where you are in the universe and the amount of stuff there is around you? Why just free will interactions? What happens if I involuntarily get hit by a bus? Powerful how? Or maybe science hasn't been successful in proving your point because there's no evidence of a brain/luminiferous Ether interaction? Bottom line: I see lots of assertions and if's without any supporting evidence and the whole thing doesn't seem to fit with what is known about brain functions and the fabric of the universe. It needs work I think.

For an omnipotent author, it's a bit piss poor to expect your readership to be expert tranlators of several ancient and long dead languages and be experts in bronze age history, geography, sociology and politics to understand what the fuck it means. No wonder people can't get the story straight, even after 2000 years of trying. God's PR department must really suck.

Do you mean energy in the way a physicist would understand it, or energy in the way a tree hugging, crystal wearing hippy would understand it? Basically, I think you're saying that there might be some untapped form of "energy" somewhere in the universe and we might, on some level, be able to "connect" with that "energy" and that percieved connection would be us "observing" god. I'm worried that sooner or later you're going to flip between the physicists "energy" and the hippy's "energy" or the "observation" "attributation" distinction and go "voila... I have proved it". I don't find those type of arguments particularly convincing.

I think you need to clarify what you mean by "god observations". To me the word "observe" means to unabiguously see, hear or otherwise measure some property of, or effect caused by, the "thing" you are observing. In the case of god, this has never happened. By God observation you seem to mean an event happens and some people attribute that event to some kind of god. This happens frequently but attribution of an event to some entity does not necessarily mean that the entiry was the cause of that event. Attributation and observation are very different animals.

Wow, you cite a reference who's primary quoted belief is: The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is inspired throughout, all its assertions are historically and scientifically true in the original autographs. That is one staggeringly unnbiased site you've got there. You really should get your science from genuine science sources. That way you could criticise the science for what is actually is. Perhaps you'd like to read some of these: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/73501648/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 http://www.springerlink.com/content/t1n325268n01217k/ http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/

So you're basically saying that people can observe god, except for people who are scientists? Why are scientists exempt? What is the english word for the observation of god? Godstronomy? Huh? 1) god hasn't been observed. 2) it's not reproducable 3) a word for something doesn't make it observable or real. cf dragons, vampires, leprechauns etc

Where did you hear this? As far as I know, abiogenesis is still very much a possible and plausible theory.

Well yes but as I understand it, in the '70's and '80's Khomeni was in charge or everything, he had his finger on all the buttons. In more recent years, the Ayatollah's have left the day to day political stuff to a President and just concentrated on the god angle. But if Ahmaninejad pisses off the Ayatollah's too much, they might just go back to their religious dictatorship past and they have a reputation for being stubborn as mules.

Maybe, but Ahmadinejad's replacement might not be any better. Especially if he's another Ayatollah Khomeini (late 70's Iranian leader) or a similar hardliner. I don't know enough about the region and it's politics to say. Either way, Iran must be one of the top players in the region now and given the current regime, their penchant for nuclear technology and historical volatility, should we be worried?