Battle Royale VII Specific discussion thread

[ZroKewl]

heusden: there is obviously a communication gap in your conversation. you need to define these terms:

- universe
- world
- matter

in regards to how you are using them. please be specific and refrain from standard dictionary definitions if possible.

thanks,
--zk

UPDATE: PS - you might want to take this to another thread and just post the link here or something...

 

[heusdens]

I have started a discussion thread in the Religion & Philosophy section which is the thread "The Fundamental Question."
We can not discuss this here, so can you post there please?

 

[August]

Zakath wrote:
<

The Moral Knowledge Argument for Atheism:

1. If Pastor Enyart's God exists, then he is a being who is powerful, loving, and just.

2. If Pastor Enyart's God exists, it would be in his interest (loving and just) and within
his capacity (powerful) for all human beings to know his absolute standards perfectly.

3. All humans do not know God's ethics perfectly, as is demonstrated by his followers
disagreeing about many moral values.

Therefore: Pastor Enyart's God does not exist.>

This has the appearance of syllogistic logic, but it isn't. In order to prove something to your audience by means of a syllogism, it must agree to the hypotheses. Then if you proceed logically from the hypotheses to the conclusion, the audience has to accept the conclusion. It is possible that many will agree to hypotheses 1 & 2. But between 2 & 3, other hypotheses are implied but not stated. They are: "God's primary interest in His relationship with man is to establish a set of laws for man to live by". "God would choose to use His power to impose these rules on minds that would fight against accepting them."
For some of us, it has been no problem to find God's ethics, summarized by (1) Love God with all your heart; (2) Love your neighbor as yourself.
Now, if those really were God's desires, then Zakath's argument seems to be that He would force us to accept them. He would, at least, reach into our minds and state them. But unwelcome understanding apparently is not God's way, and required love is not love at all. Jesus never attempted to ram his teachings down anyone's throat.
Zakath's statement 3 doesn't seem to make much sense. It attempts to transfer the failings of theists onto God Himself. The first part of the statement demonstrates that Zakath doesn't understand the fundamentals of logic. He clearly means " Not all humans know God's ethics perfectly". The statement as written makes a declaration about every person on earth, something that Zakath could never know. (Sketch the Venn diagrams.)
BTW, does it strike anyone else that it is illogical for an atheist to criticize fundamentalists for being closed-minded? An agnostic could make that charge, or a Christian with an open mind. But an atheist declares, "there is no God". What could be more closed-minded?

 

[Flake]

Originally posted by August
The statement as written makes a declaration about every person on earth, something that Zakath could never know

That is misleading. Zakath knows that ALL humans on this earth "dont know God's ethics perfectly" because he is a "human on this earth" and he "doesnt know God's ethics perfectly". Zakath would have to agree that he "doesnt know God's ethics perfectly" because for him there is no god, hence no "ethics of god" to know perfectly.

 

[Asriel]

Good battle, while Pastor Enyart is eloquent the case he is arguing is weak.

Firstly, he is unable to produce any direct empirically verified evidence for God’s existence.

Secondly his “God of the Gaps” argument taken with out his obvious skill with word amounts to the assertion that because science at this moment can not provide a coherent naturalistic explanation for the origins of life and the origins of the universe God must have done it. This is very weak and leaves hostages to fortune if tomorrow somebody metaphorically pours a living organism out of a test tube that previously contained only non living material. This problem seems to arise for theists because some of them, maybe Pastor Enyart is one, have a fascination with absolute answers, they do not grasp that science is a work in progress its conclusions always tentative and subject to revision. As an atheist I am happy with this, a working hypothesis capable of falsification which suggests future directions for research is to me the essential goal of the game of science.

As a supplement to this it is one of the rules of the game to push methodological naturalism to its limits and some theist find it hard to believe those limits have not been reached yet. (In my experience this arise from frustration, see my first point above) In the end science may not be able to provide a complete naturalistic answer to the origin question this says nothing about the true answers to the origins questions themselves, maybe there is a naturalistic answer but humans are not intelligent enough to reach it or maybe there is a supernatural element required for the solution. That would not be confirmation of Christianity however; humans having climbed the conceptual mountain may find another trinity Brahma Vishnu and Shiva at the summit. Or maybe we will all have to get our prayer mats out and turn them to Mecca.

As a side note I should like to point out to all atheists that even if science was to provide a complete naturalistic description of the origins of life and the universe that would not stop theists arguing that God choose purely natural means to bring about his creation.

Thirdly, Pastor Enyart has yet to demonstrate his supra-human standard of morality

posted by Pastor Enyart

I follow God, and He is the standard you ask for. Of course I had indicated this in my first post, and repeated it later, that the absolute standard is “God’s nature,” which is “His own righteous standard,” and I stated in 4b that our “conscience… reflects God’s ‘own righteous standard.’” So, if Zakath wastes another forty paragraphs asking twenty more times, “show us the absolute moral standard,” I will answer, the absolute moral standard is God’s righteous nature. Of course, Zakath could reject this by saying that God does not exist, and therefore my standard does not exist. But his pretending ad nauseam that I haven’t identified the standard is getting old. Perhaps Zakath is chanting this refrain in hopes that the audience will forget what they have already read.

Well no Pastor this member of the audience has not forgotten what they have read they just find your response unrevealing. I’m sure in some context your opinions and assertions on God’s nature, His own righteous standard and the contents of people’s conscience are interesting just not in the context of this debate. Where is the absolute objective moral standard?

I am sure that Pastor Enyart will continue to fight his corner with his usual skill and wit but if this is the best he has to offer it will be scant defence against Zaketh’s Argument from Non belief.

 

[heusdens]

August:

"BTW, does it strike anyone else that it is illogical for an atheist to criticize fundamentalists for being closed-minded? An agnostic could make that charge, or a Christian with an open mind. But an atheist declares, "there is no God". What could be more closed-minded?"

Atheism is defined just as any thought system that does not have God as its first principle, and therefore does not define the concept itself. If such a thought system builts up from fundamental concepts that do not require God's existence, and are entirely conformant to reality, can explain everything, etc, then a statement as "there is no God" is not even a valid statement in that thought system. What is known are things like human concepts, culture and traditions that must be explained at the basis of social-economic conditions of mankind in the early days of man's society, and which formed and shaped religion and concepts as God.

 

[Zakath]

Originally posted by August
... But between 2 & 3, other hypotheses are implied but not stated. They are: "God's primary interest in His relationship with man is to establish a set of laws for man to live by".

I did demonstrate that your scriptures indicate that the Christian God appears to be vitally interested in such things. Did you read that far?

"God would choose to use His power to impose these rules on minds that would fight against accepting them."

Some Christians, even on this board, believe in predestination. Isn't that a de facto use of the deity's power to impose his will on human life?

If you do not believe in predestination, then consider the example of Pharaoh in Exodus when YHWH manipulated him by "hardening his heart" so that he engaged in actions that would be, not only contrary to his own national security, but against common sense.

For some of us, it has been no problem to find God's ethics, summarized by (1) Love God with all your heart; (2) Love your neighbor as yourself.
Now, if those really were God's desires, then Zakath's argument seems to be that He would force us to accept them.

There are some Christians who believe he does...

He would, at least, reach into our minds and state them.

That would be reasonable. Of course, no one ever accused your deity of being reasonable...

But unwelcome understanding apparently is not God's way, and required love is not love at all. Jesus never attempted to ram his teachings down anyone's throat.

I read the end of the book... In Revelation there is quite a bit of "ramming" things down people's throats.

Zakath's statement 3 doesn't seem to make much sense.

Sure it does. I have been told many times by Christians that, not only don't I know their God's ethics and truth, but I CANNOT DO SO, because I'm unsaved.

Therefore, if one human does not know, my statement stands.

BTW, does it strike anyone else that it is illogical for an atheist to criticize fundamentalists for being closed-minded? An agnostic could make that charge, or a Christian with an open mind. But an atheist declares, "there is no God". What could be more closed-minded?

Theistically, the only difference between a fundy Christian or fundy Muslim and an atheist is the atheist believes in one less god...

 

[.Ant]

Originally posted by Flake
That is misleading. Zakath knows that ALL humans on this earth "dont know God's ethics perfectly" because he is a "human on this earth" and he "doesnt know God's ethics perfectly". Zakath would have to agree that he "doesnt know God's ethics perfectly" because for him there is no god, hence no "ethics of god" to know perfectly.

I'd agree with you in disagreeing with August's statement.

However, the point that no human on earth knows God's ethics perfectly is moot. No human on earth is perfect either. Neither shows the non-existence of those unmet standards.

Originally posted by Asriel
Well no Pastor this member of the audience has not forgotten what they have read they just find your response unrevealing. I’m sure in some context your opinions and assertions on God’s nature, His own righteous standard and the contents of people’s conscience are interesting just not in the context of this debate. Where is the absolute objective moral standard?

God. As Pastor Enyart said.

If you mean, "how has God revealed this absolute objective moral standard to man?" the answer is "nature, our conscience, and the Bible" - Bob will get into this later.

Originally posted by Zakath
Some Christians, even on this board, believe in predestination. Isn't that a de facto use of the deity's power to impose his will on human life?

Yah, along with the existence of a world where you cannot start flying if you feel like it.

 

[Flipper]

August:

This has the appearance of syllogistic logic, but it isn't. In order to prove something to your audience by means of a syllogism, it must agree to the hypotheses.

Nuh uh. What the audience thinks or doesn't think about the premises is utterly immaterial. The premises,as that nice Prof. Lewis Carroll demonstrated in his own inimitable way, can be utterly nonsensical while being valid, providing sufficient information to derive the correct conclusion.

Premises are only fallacious if they lead you to no conclusion at all, in which case the syllogism is invalid.

 

[Flipper]

One of the reasons, incidentally, why I find it vaguely amusing when theists like to wave around arguments with portentous-sounding names like the "Kalabash Theory of Empirical Non-Existence" and proceed to use Aristotelian logic as if logic by default has an absolute correspondence with reality.

Logic is a tool and like all tools can be either be very useful or quite useless depending on what you want to do with it and how it is used. When you use logic to deepen your understanding of the natural world, much then depends on the usefulness of the premises on which it is founded. Wherein lies the rub.

If you choose to draw your conclusions about the nature of reality without any resort to physical evidence and you use purely deductive reason as a foundation, then you're trying to build castles out of clouds.

 

[ZroKewl]

Originally posted by Flipper
If you choose to draw your conclusions about the nature of reality without any resort to physical evidence and you use purely deductive reason as a foundation, then you're trying to build castles out of clouds.

Do you ever question your life
Do you ever wonder why
Do you ever see in your dreams
All the castles in the sky

Oh tell me why
Do we build castles in the sky
Oh tell me why
All the castles way up high
Please tell me why
Do we build castles in the sky
Oh tell me why
All the castles way up high

-- Ian Van Dahl - Castles In The Sky

 

[novice]

Is Zakath on crack?

Zakath said in his 6th post:

If you guessed once, you'd be wrong. The answer is not at all. Pastor Enyart has manufactured the alleged quotation from thin air (or since this is the Internet, perhaps we should say "thin ether"). Why? Only Pastor Enyart knows why he would do such a thing.

Zakath was referring to when Bob quoted himself...."… I have previously answered that the absolute moral standard is God’s righteous nature, which is “God’s own righteous standard, "

So Zakath claims Bob never said that! Yet Bob DID in fact say just that and just where Bob said he said it in his 4th post. Don't believe me? Look for yourself in Bob's 4th post in the paragraph titled "Old Business".

I guess, when your failing as bad as Zakath is, all you can do is come up with false assertions.

 

[shima]

Bob post 4:
Here?s the correction: I pointed out in post 1 the common theistic belief that ?a conscience? reflects [God?s] own righteous standard.? In post 2, I wrote that ?absolute right and wrong would require a standard that transcends every man and every society.? In post 3: ?Absolute morality can only exist if a moral authority above mankind exists. ?and the collective conscience of mankind, though damaged, still provides strong evidence of these absolutes.?

He did not specify that the moral standard is Gods own righteous standard. Bob merely asserts that the conscience reflects Gods righteous standard. Since the link between conscience and absolute standard is an indirect one, he did not specify that the absolute standard is Gods righteous standard.

 

[ddevonb]

Are you a picker of nits? Saying that the conscience reflects God's righteous standard IS clearly saying that God has a righteous standard.
The link between conscience and God's righteous standard is a direct link, not an indirect one.

 

[ddevonb]

Zakath arrogance

Zakath arrogance

How does Zakath (who rejects the existance of God and truth) have any standing to say what a just and loving God would do?

Zakath is basically saying "Unless God jumps through my hoops and behaves like I think he should behave...then he can't exist".

Is God required to pass any bizarre arbitrary test that a human can devise?

Zakath chooses to ignore all of the evidence being presented, choosing instead to believe in no God simply because he believes in no God. As if believing it makes it so. Such faith that demands no evidence is amazing indeed!

 

[Asriel]

Re Zakath’s sixth post

Enyartian Argument of Absolute Moral Standards as a Proof of God's Existence

Ouch, I bet that hurt.

I’m glad I’m not Pastor Enyart, I’d hate to be on the receiving end of Zakath’s irony.
I’ll be interested to see if the Pastor can come back from that.
:think:

 

[ddevonb]

Originally posted by Zakath
Some Christians, even on this board, believe in predestination. Isn't that a de facto use of the deity's power to impose his will on human life?

If you do not believe in predestination, then consider the example of Pharaoh in Exodus when YHWH manipulated him by "hardening his heart" so that he engaged in actions that would be, not only contrary to his own national security, but against common sense.

There are some Christians who believe he does...

That would be reasonable. Of course, no one ever accused your deity of being reasonable...

Obviously since many millions of people accuse God of being very reasonable... you didn't mean that statement literally. It was a figure of speech, right?
Figures of speech are common in virtually every language ever devised.
When the Bible says that "all of Judea came to see Jesus", it means a lot of people came...not every man, woman and child in the entire nation.
The account of Pharoah also says at one point that Pharoah hardened his own heart. So how was God involved in the hardening process?
He did miracles in such an "in your face" manner the Pharoah was forced to choose to ackowledge God or reject him. It was Pharoah's choice to reject God, which resulted in his heart getting hardened. God provided th opportunity, but Pharoah ultimately hardened his own heart.

 

[shima]

ddevonb: Are you a picker of nits? Saying that the conscience reflects God's righteous standard IS clearly saying that God has a righteous standard. The link between conscience and God's righteous standard is a direct link, not an indirect one.

I was talking about the link between "conscience" and "absolute standard". Bob stated that the conscience reflects Gods righteous standard. Bob didn't say that the conscience is the absolute standard Bob asserted exists. Therefore, I link conscience to God but not to absolute standard.

 

[Asriel]

Originally posted by .ANT

God. As Pastor Enyart said.

If you mean, "how has God revealed this absolute objective moral standard to man?" the answer is "nature, our conscience, and the Bible" - Bob will get into this later.

I’m very interested to know how Pastor Enyart is going to get something objective and absolute out of the three cited above. People who take Scripture as the foundation of their faith still can not agree on many aspects of morality, nature appears to me to be amoral and conscience is essentially private.

To me objectivity looks something like the measurement process. If I measure the current flowing in an electrical circuit of 1 ohm resistance with a voltage of 1 volt across the value will be 1 amp, and assuming the physical conditions remain the same temperature of the resistance for example, anybody who performs the same measurement, Catholic, Protestant, Reformed, Christadelphian, Jehovah’s Witness, Unitarian, Trinitarian, Mormon, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist will get (within the limits of experimental error) the same result. So an objective morality will be the same for everybody.

Originally posted by ddevon

How does Zakath (who rejects the existence of God and truth) have any standing to say what a just and loving God would do?

Zakath is basically saying "Unless God jumps through my hoops and behaves like I think he should behave...then he can't exist".

Because he can read the Bible and listen the various conflicting claims various groups of people who take Scripture as a vital element of their faith make about the nature of God and the morality suposed to be derived from him.

Its not his fault if they cannot construct a common coherent world view.

Also Zakath does not reject the existence of truth he accepts Pastor Enyart’s definition.

 

[August]

Flipper wrote:
<Nuh uh. What the audience thinks or doesn't think about the premises is utterly immaterial.
The premises,as that nice Prof. Lewis Carroll demonstrated in his own inimitable way, can be
utterly nonsensical while being valid, providing sufficient information to derive the correct
conclusion. >

You're fighting the wrong battle. I was careful not to assert that the conclusion has to be correct. But if the audience agrees to the hypotheses, and the logical procedure is correct, then the audience must accept the conclusion. If the agreed-on hypotheses are wrong, the conclusion may be right or wrong. The only thing that we can state certainly is that if the hypotheses are correct, and the logic is valid, the conclusion is correct.
Now, in this kind of debate, it is almost inconceivable that we can be certain about the validity of the hypotheses. However, Zakath & Enyart have agreed on at least one - that the physical world is real. However, it seems so unlikely that many of the followers of this debate will agree to all of Zakath's hypotheses that it seems inappropriate to pretend that he is actually proving anything. The best that anyone can do in this kind of debate is present evidence and reasoned arguments, which Zakath has done very well.
I have read and heard many discussions on this subject, and the only thing that has made much sense to me was Carl Jung's statement that he understood that, by the nature of logic it is impossible to prove the existence of God to another person, but it is so easy to prove it to one's self, that it is surprising that there is any discussion on the subject.