God

Damn, this should have been in quotes:

Double post...

I think you'll see that I have addressed all of your concerns before you raised them. See bold.


Also, WIki.... srsly... talk about a source that reflects popular usage over actually meaning. Also, popular usage eventually leads to actual meaning. In either case its a minor discrepancy at best and doesn't factor into my arguments validity.

No, you definitely did not address my concerns. You made assertions before and then I raised my objections. You are welcome to respond to them now.

First of all, you said that logic was flawed because it was subjective. I objected that it is objective and logical truths are not dependent on the human mind. You have offered no valid reasons for believing that flaws in the human mind are sufficient to invalidate either the credibility of everyday human thought or formal logic.

Second, you said that logic and reason should not be used in regards to religion. I challenged you to defend the reliability of any alternate strategy of resolving claims about religion. I also noted that logic and reason are the most reliable faculties we have, so the burden of proof falls on you to give valid grounds for believing that logic is ill-suited for handling religious claims. I don't see a single principled reason why religion is some special topic that would have its own rules and be exempt from logical inquiry. Historically, defenders of religion have pointed to faith as having jurisdiction over religion, but there is no reason why this should be the case. We don't use faith to investigate anything else or evaluate truth claims anywhere else in our lives.

Third, you claimed that logic and reason are useful for survival but not suited for explaining the universe. I pointed out that you are ignoring our demonstratively excellent understanding of the universe. Why can't we make massive generalizations about the universe? Scientists do so everyday and then test them. Their generalizations, when discovered to be true, provide great insight into the operations of the physical universe. Why exactly are logic, reason, and our senses ill suited as tools for inquiry on big questions?

So far, you have reasserted claims, not supported those claims in light of objections. If you would like to reread my previous post and address my concerns, you may, but you haven't done so yet.

I cited Oxford's English Dictionary online. I included the wikis as well as additional evidence to suggest that dictionary.com was the anomaly in the bunch. All that aside, despite the public nature of wiki, those articles are quite thorough.

Agreed.

I have not happened on a formal definition of my belief structure.

All I'll say here is that if there is a God, it's not on our side.

Firstly logic is a construct of the human mind, a methodology devised for the way that we should think. Its not as though there is some perfect way in which a human should think. Logic is subject to a sort of "evolution" just as science is. I'd say that this is evidence enough for my argument in a flawed mind and a flawed logic. If either of these things were perfect tools for inferring about the world around us then they wouldn't need to change.

Secondly I never said that "everyday" thought or logic were invalid. As both of these are necessary for human survival and have been adapted as such. Logic and reasoning in the fields of technology and medicine have given us higher survival rates then we've ever had as a species. We live longer, more enjoyably lives than we ever have.
However, I have attempted to invalidate the usage of logic on subjects that I feel are incomprehensible to the human mind. There is no special rule for examining religions. You can denounce up and down the miracles of Jesus or the prophecies of whoever. That shit is highly improbable and we have plenty of physical evidence to show us that the Bible is a big book of contradictory bullshit created by a bunch of old dudes with beards. Yet the concept of "god" or the universe are outside of the comprehension of your, mine or anyone else's brainthoughts. Anything capable of either creating or encompassing all of existence is incomprehensible to our puny monkey brains.

I find your statement about our "demonstratively excellent understanding of the universe" to be hilarious. We can't even agree about whether or not global warming is real and yet you expect me to believe that we understand the universe. We only recently discovered quantum physics, which contradicts everything we have come to understand about the way the physical world works. We understand the basic nature of physical laws such as gravity (acceleration due to gravity and how it affects bodies in space, etc) yet we have no understanding of how or why gravity works. Not to mention that only 4% of the universe is "visible" to us. The other 96% is made up of dark matter and dark energy, named as such simply because we know almost nothing about them. A minute understanding of 4% of the universe does not sound demonstratively excellent to me.


Also I would like to say that despite my harsh tone, I have been enjoying this debate. I enjoy having someone with a great deal of knowledge and a differing viewpoint square off against my ideas.

HAHAHAHAHAHA, seeing that was the first time I have laughed, genuinely, in ages

Sorry about the delay, I had to sleep and go to class. I only enjoy great amounts of free time on the weekends...

Logic is not a perfect tool for the understanding the world, but it doesn't need to be perfect to serve our purposes. It only needs to be accurate enough to provide us with reliable information. Yes, logic is a method prescribing how we should think, but our reasons for prescribing much of it is because they map so closely onto the world. Analytic truths, such as the those provided by mathematics, for instance, are not dependent upon the human mind. Addition, for instance, represents logic deductions based on the structural relationship between points on the number line. Regardless of how humans think (or even if there were humans or not), those facts would remain the same.

The strength and objectivity of logic here comes from the fact that we modeled our logic after mathematics (or directly utilized mathematics) in these cases. Inductive logic is closer to what you are describing. Still, we use deductive logic in cases of mathematics and scientific formula, which means that our logic is most reliable in instances of trying to understand and explain underlying structural features of the universe. In other words, I would argue that logic is perhaps best suited for application to issues such as the existence of God or the nature of the universe.

Perhaps more importantly, if the human mind is so fundamentally flawed that inquiry into the universe and the sphere of religion is a doomed project, then we should be even more pessimistic about the hopes of inquiry through any possible means of inquiry. Relatively speaking, we could agree that we might not be able to know much about the nature/existence of God, but "obsession" with logic and our senses is not arrogant or misled. In fact, we should still cling to it as the best possible method of inquiry.

In other words, we can go round and round over how good logic is, but until we can identify a better method of inquiry, we are not misled in using our best tool. What would be misled would be to adopt a tool weaker than our best one. See what I am getting at here?

I don't agree that the concept of God or the universe is outside the capacity of our brains. In fact, we contemplate and discuss them all of the time. Were there a God, we might not be able to understand everything about it, but the concept is quite simple. I quite often hear people offer the argument that we cannot understand God, but I have never seen any compelling argument why this might be the case. We have concepts of infinite or limitless, which we seem to derive from abstraction of the natural universe. The concept of "God" seems to be that plus some anthropomorphic concepts. You seem to be underestimating the capacity of abstract thought.

If we can't conceive of "God," then what are we debating? Since we are discussing the concept of God, we seem to be demonstrating that we can conceive of the notion. The burden of proof is on you to prove otherwise.

First of all, you are correct that the whole universe is 96% dark matter or dark energy. That figure, though, is taking into account all of what we call "space," though. We have a great deal more knowledge about the Earth, its contents, and the rules that govern its physical reality (which is what my original assertion was about). Moreover, we actually have a lot of knowledge about the operation of dark matter and energy. We understand the effects it has (in terms of gravitational pull, rotational curves, light:mass, etc.) and we have tons of testable implications. To say that we can't perceive it directly is not the same as saying that we know little or nothing about it. Due to logic and science, we can know much more than our senses directly allow us to perceive.

Also, even if 96% of the universe is dark matter and dark energy, that's still physical stuff that is subject to the same rules (gravitational, for instance) as the stuff we do perceive. If 4% of the universe were perceivable matter, 36% were dark matter and dark energy, and 60% were "magic Quetzacoatl stuff" then I would have reason for concern over our inability to directly perceive it.

This question aside, we should ask if our inability to perceive dark matter or energy has bearing on the question of God's existence. Is God an actual physical entity that we would be able to identify if our senses were more acute? Do we have testable implications for God's existence, as we do for the dark matter? Does "God matter" create impact on rotational curves of anything? Do we have any principled reasons for believing that our current limitations regarding perception of dark matter would translate into an inability to perceive a deity?

I guess another way of phrasing this is to point out that the limitations on our senses are not in any way instructive regarding religion. The religious sphere does not parallel well the topic of dark matter/energy

Regarding my assertion that we have an overwhelmingly positive understanding of the physical universe (i.e. the stuff that's really there), I mean that we are capable of understanding physics, mathematics, building high-rises, identifying genetic structures, developing advanced electronic devices that let us interact on the internet, etc. If our understanding of the world was disjointed with reality, we shouldn't be able to develop in these directions. That level of success implies good understanding. Imagine that your only spoken language was Turkish and I was trying to speak Turkish to you. The way that we could know how well I spoke Turkish was the degree to which I made comments that you could understand. If my statements to you were meaningful, then we could conclude that my knowledge of Turkish was reasonably good. If what I was trying to say was complete gibberish, then our inability to communicate would suggest that my language skills were weak. Likewise, if we were completely off the mark with our understanding of the universe, then we wouldn't have such a high success rate with our interactions with the physical world.

If someone can demonstrate (in a principled manner) knowledge of a religious sphere and offer an alternate tool for understanding it that has anywhere near our explanatory, predictive, and instrumental power over the physical universe, then I will gladly concede that they have a leg on which to stand when claiming that logic should not be applied to religion. In the absence of such a demonstration, I will have to conclude that logic, science, and our senses give us the best method while faith-based approaches fall far short of even the ambitious skepticism that you have promoted.

Yeah, I'll try reigning in my tone as well.

Sorry to interrupt but I'm amused.
Wow not a single mention of Husserl or Derrida; yet Schroedingers cat is hinted at. If a cat is hinted at, does the cat really exist ?

Also: insulting a woman for being a woman; there is no place for that, here or otherwise.

Carry on.

Ick, if we're doing to start discussing Derrida, I am going to run screaming. I kind of like Husserl though.

SuperCrunch,

Are we getting anywhere with this debate? I ask because I don't think we are going to find common ground at any point. I would personally prefer to spend my time on the CE boards. I'll continue to debate points if this is rewarding to you in any way. Likewise, I can read any last thoughts you may have on the matter if you have more to add, but I'd just as soon move on and let this thread die. Thoughts?

A lot of Derrida is critique dramatic misinterpretation of Husserl. I've never liked Derrida all that much either.
Husserl however, much, much better. The problem is, if we're to use phenomenology in this "debate" you're both right!

Well I never actually thought I had done so... however she seemed it was "super-sexist" of me to say that she had sand in her vagina, because she insulted me on the basis of my age and offered no real insight into why any of my opinions were misinformed.

Had RedBstrd done the same, rather than challenge me point for point in a manner that encouraged debate instead of insults, then I would have made a crack about having a small dick. Which is just as "sexist" as a sandy vag.


In any case it has nothing to do with discussions on god...

I would have to agree that despite the interesting nature of this debate, we've essentially be rehashing and refining the same points.

However, before burying this thread, I would like to say one thing. As much as we have learned as human beings, surely we can agree that there is far more to be discovered than we have. Far more uncharted than charted territory in all fields. There still lies plenty of mystery in the universe, on our planet, in genetics and even in understanding our own mind.

If we survive long enough as a species, then at some point we will have to stand in awe of something that we cannot and will never be able to understand.

God/man made beer, and for that we should be thankful/drink a 12-pack together.

I'm really sad I missed this conversation.

There is still time to jump in, Tiwaz/Deywos/Deus/Dievas/Deva.

I'm not about to read 20 pages about God, and really it seems to have died down (it's fun getting in the middle of them when they're in full bloom.) If it picks up and anyone wants to make broad generalized claims I'd be happy to challenge them. I certainly used to have a penchant for pseudo-intellectual nonsense (i.e. I used to smoke pot).

That's a good note on which to bury the thread.