Not the act the people who commit the act.

My question was, how can you tell you had a personal experience with god. Is your answer "by having a personal experience with god"?



No, but it's disrespectful for you to tell me what my worldview is, which is what you did.



Then please do.


What about secular humanism requires more faith than a theistic religion?

Never said it wasn't a system of beliefs. It's just not a religious one, because it doesn't require faith in anything supernatural.

There is one very big difference. "Love" is, by definition, a label we put on something we observe and experience in reality. We may not be fully able to explain the mechanics of it to every last detail, but we never posit that it has a supernatural component. Whereas theists do one of three things:

- They never point to something in reality and say "that is god". They posit that a supernatural god exists, and point to things in the world as supposed evidence that the god exists. But the logic never tracks, and the fact that those things exist never ends up being a good reason to belive that the proposed god, which remains undemonstrated, actually exists.

- They point to something in reality and say "that is god, and it has supernatural powers". Then when we put this assertion to the test, we never find a reason to conclude that the thing they point to does have those powers.

- They point to something in reality and say "that is god, but it doesn't have supernatural powers, I just call it god". This is a completely pointless exercise and doesn't tell you anything about reality that you didn't already know.





And again I ask, what is the relevance of this?

Many of those same people also had syphilis. So what?

Good thing I never claimed that then. I'm beginning to see a pattern of you, how did you put it? Arguing against someone that is not in the room?


It depends entirely on what the claim is. If my best friend makes an outlandish claim, I would not believe him just because he's my friend, even if he never told me a lie before.

But credibility must be weighed against the particular claim being made. Just because someone made a thousand mundane true statements doesn't give them a pass to make one outlandish claim and expect to be believed.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and credibility does not count as extraordinary evidence. That is why the scientific process, our most reliable tool for determining truth, includes independent verification as one of its cornerstones.

And so it doesn't matter how many cities and kings and other historical details a text mentions, when it starts talking about supernatural entities, I'm just as justified to call bull**** on that as a future historian would be justified to stand in the middle of the ruins of NYC and call bull**** on the existence of Spiderman. It's a different kind of claim, one with zero confirmed historical examples of its kind.


Honest people can still be wrong. I'm perfectly prepared to believe that ancient peoples genuinely believed that a god existed. That doesn't mean I should accept that assertion as true without any evidence just because it's next to other, mundane claims which we have verified.

lol

Actually, that was not your question. Your question was:

Which I answered very accurately.

I see that you have asked me an entirely new question, and then followed that up by asking me if my answer to your previous question would be the same as this new question.

My answer to your new yes or no question [Is your answer "by having a personal experience with god"?] is "no, I would not use the answer that I used for your previous question as the same answer to your new question."

Ok, so if it is disrespectful to state what someone's worldview is... Does that mean it was equally disrespectful when you stated that I believed in God? Does that also mean that you are being disrespectful when you refer to people as "Christians" or "Muslims" or "Theists"?

If I was in fact, incorrect that you are an Atheist/Agnostic that believes that God does not exist, please let me know. I will gladly apologize with sincerity and begin referring to you as a Theist, Muslim, Christian, Deist or whatever you prefer.

No offense, but you come across as someone that is fishing for disrespect in attempt to level the playing field.

I have no intention of ever disrespecting you and would gladly apologize if I have done so.

Sure. I will use your exact formatting.

I can tell God exists, because I experience it directly, AND there is physical evidence of it, AND because I can observe others acting in a way that is consistent with my experience.

1) "Nothing" exploding into "something". (The Big Bang)
2) The fine tuning of the universe happened by chance

Supernatural - "attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature."

"Nothingness" exploding into an unfathomably fascinating complex universe full of unique and complex structures is obviously a supernatural event.

From everything we know within science, "nothing" cannot create "something". Therefore the Big Bang is supernatural.

Therefore every secular humanist (not saying you are one to avoid disrespecting) believing in the big bang believes in a supernatural event.

There are many supernatural beliefs that secular humanists have. They are just keenly unaware of them because they do not self analyze themselves and realize that they are no different than people of any other worldview. They have been conditioned to believe that their worldview is the "absence of beliefs" when it is quite the opposite. It is just as loaded with beliefs, if not more so than the other worldviews. It makes a long list of wild assertions that simply can't be proven by evidence, scientific theory, or observation. They accept these assertions as truths despite not being able to prove any of them, and simultaneously ridicule other worldviews for doing the exact same thing.

I see your point, however this argument can be used equally to dismiss the accomplishments of anyone from any worldview.

It kind of reduces the discussion to silliness.

Ahhh, it seems I have misread and misunderstood the above quote, which was not my intention. My apologies for my human error. :(

Sure you would.

If your best friend came running into your home right now with an authentic panicked look and said "Your car outside is on fire!"

More than likely you would believe that his/her outlandish claim would have high level credibility and go running outside, possibly with a fire extinguisher in hand.

The power of credible personal testimony is indeed a force to be reckoned with.

It is why we use it in courts of law.

If my best friend told me with an authentic look and voice tone that he saw an alien, I would be very likely to believe that he was sharing truth with me. I would likely believe he was hallucinating, but I would more than likely believe that he saw what he saw.

If you would not believe your friend that has never lied to you, that's fine, but to claim that anyone believing a highly trusted source is doing so without "good reason" seems wrong to me.

No, they really don't.

Not sure who told you this, but it is wrong.

"Your car is on fire" is an extraordinary claim.

You would have fire extinguisher in hand.

A: "Your car is one fire!"
B: "Please provide evidence!"
A: "No dude, it's seriously burning down right now. Go put out the fire."
B: "I'm sorry, but that is an extraordinary claim. I require extraordinary evidence!"
*car burns down*

Yeah, it's not going to go that way. ^

Your own actions would clearly show that you do not believe that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

And as an adult you are well within your right to make an informed intelligent decision.

I encourage everyone to do their research and draw their own conclusions.

I respect your decision and understand why you feel the way you do.

I feel you have good reason to think the way that you do.

Where I think you are wrong is that you claim that others "do not have one single good reason" to believe in their worldview. I feel that is a very close-minded uninformed statement.


Anyone expecting you to believe something without any evidence is an idiot.

One of the main points I'm trying to make is that you more than likely believe that Theists are people that do not look at the evidence when it is quite the contrary.

All of the scientific evidence that the universe presents to us overwhelmingly points to the existence of an intelligent designer.

That is why Antony Flew, the great Atheist gave up his stance and began believing in God, much to the disappointment of all secular humanists that held him on a pedestal.

Another point I am making is that testimony serves as evidence in many cases, such as a court of law.

I'm not suggesting that you should go on testimony alone at all, which is what you may assume.

I'm assuming that you look at all the evidence and make up your own mind, which you have.

At this point, your brain has fully solidified on its conclusions and has hardened into a complete state, which was easily identified from your first post. You are beyond swaying or influencing in any other direction. Nobody will ever convince you to prescribe to any other worldview. Hence why this discussion is mostly a waste of time.

More than likely you have dismissed every single point that I have ever made.

More than likely you will walk away saying "Wow, that guy didn't even give me one good reason that he believes in God".

"He is just a blind idiot that refuses to look at the obvious evidence. Why are people so dumb?"

Did I get it right?

As I said, waste of time...

Ritualistic belief in higher power hasn't just survived for a few thousand years. It seems to have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, across all cultures. That's hardly something to be dismissed, especially by anyone interested in Darwinian evolution. How the hell is it that major religions can have billions of followers to this day? It goes deeper than intellect and physical reason. There is something there which draws and holds these people. They all share the experience, and thus its real.

Slavery hasn't gone away entirely, and where it did go away it had a lot to do with economic advancement. There was a viable economic path for the abolition of slavery to take place, and so it did. Care to guess what percentage of the US population was Christian in the early and mid 1800s? It's not as if slavery was abolished by some new atheist movement or something. It's also perfectly reasonable to expect a peoples' understanding of their religious teachings to advance with the times. Lots of factors. You are not a blank slate. You as an individual are not in control of your moral compass.

The Old Testament is a good reflection of the thousand years across which it was written too. The vengeful God was necessary for the individual and group survival in highly tribal times. You had to take care of your own, but you also had to embrace violence to defend your kingdom from outsiders.

I asked you for a good reason to be a theist. You said "having a direct experience with god". I said that "having a direct experience with god" doesn't qualify as a god reason until you can explain how it can be achieved. So, how can one achieve a direct experience with god?


I asked you several times to tell us what you believe and why. You never did, so I'm forced to assume. Am I wrong?

No, because I'm not telling any particular person what their religion is. You'll also note that I haven't referred to anyone as "christians" or "muslims". Different room etc etc.

I am both an agnostic and an atheist, but I do not believe that "God does not exist". I'm just not convinced of the existence of any of the gods I've been presented with thus far. Always keen to hear more though.



What is your physical evidence of god's existence?

Neither of these are intrinsic to secular humanism. What you posted are questions of cosmology, which is completely divorced from secular humanism.

That said:

1) Here's Lawrence Krauss, a leading cosmologist of our time, talking about how a universe might come about from "nothing":

- 4 minute summary: A Universe from Nothing - YouTube
- 1 hour lecture: 'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 - YouTube
- full 7 hour audiobook: A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss - Audiobook - YouTube

The fact is, according to the most accurate scientific findings in history to date, a universe coming about from "nothing" is not only unsurprising, it is in fact inevitable.

2) The problem with this one is what's called the anthropic principle. In a universe that wasn't "fine tuned" for human life, there would not be any humans to ponder the apparent fine-tunedness of the universe. A billion random universes could have come and gone, each of them "fine tuned" for a different form of life. In each of them, those lifeforms could be looking at their own universe and thinking that theirs is special and created just for them by some benevolent deity, and each of them would be wrong.

Another classic example is from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy:

It's not that the universe is fine-tuned for us. We're fine tuned for this universe.





See above. You're wrong, basically.

Sure, everyone makes some assumptions by necessity. Hard solipsism is the classic example. We all assume we're actually living in a shared reality, when in fact we could be in the Matrix or I could just be dreaming all this. No way to know.

But that doesn't give us license to just make up stuff and believe it willy-nilly. Because if we do in fact live in a shared reality where the laws of the universe work independently of what we believe, then our false beliefs inherently carry the risk of harming us or those around us. So if you care about the well-being of your peers, then you have an onus to also care about truth and not make unnecessary assumptions.



Exactly. It's silly to attribute the accomplishments of anyone to anything but the fact that they were good at what they were doing. That means it's silly to try to legitimize religion by saying that the top scientists in history were religious.


As a matter of fact I don't have a car, so I would definitely not believe him in this case. :) But I'll run with the example for the sake of argument.

Their claim that my car is on fire is not extraordinary in the sense that it is well within the realm of possibility as I understand it. I know I have a car, I know that cars can catch fire, and so it is entirely plausible that my friend is telling the truth.

But nothing about my experience with the universe gives me reason to believe that deities exist, and so someone's word alone is not going to be good enough to make me believe it.

You'll also note that spectral evidence has not been allowed in court for a long time. The courts will not take supernatural claims at face value either.

If he was hallucinating, then he did not in fact see an alien. Yes, I might believe that he thought he saw something, but whether or not that thing was really there would again depend on what he claims he saw. If he said he saw a raccoon, I'd believe him, because I know racoons exist and that they sometimes get close to humans. If he said he saw an alien, I would not believe him on his word alone, because I have no other reason to believe that aliens are visiting earth.

Again, depends on what the claim is. You would not be wrong to believe someone when they have a history of making similar, accurate claims. But that does not mean you should believe any other claim they make, especially wildly outlandish ones that challenge all you know about reality.



It was Carl Sagan.

Sagan standard - Wikipedia

And he's not wrong. I'll hazard a guess that you believe mundane things every day without evidence, but every now and then someone will tell you something extraordinary that prompts you to investigate. Again, it depends on the claim: you're inclined to believe things that line up with your current understanding of reality, because the universe tends to remain largely the same from one day to the next. But as soon someone says something that goes contrary to how you think things are, you want to hear more before you believe it.



I didn't say that though. I said that the reason for religious debates being a waste of time is because people who have no good reason to hold their beliefs won't admit to it. I have heard conversations where someone realized they have no good reason to hold their beliefs, and consequently dropped them: those conversations weren't a waste of time.




Well then you're wrong. I fully know that theists will look for evidence for their deity. It's just that as far as I've seen, (and I've seen a lot), nothing they come up with actually qualifies as good enough evidence to justify their religious beliefs.

If that were true, then the field of cosmology would include intelligent design. Which it doesn't. So you're wrong.

Antony Flew was a philosopher, not a physicist, and stories like his are very much the exception, not the rule. Also, refer to my earlier point about different types of claims. I don't care how brilliant someone is when it comes to topics other than gods. If they make claims of a god's existence, those claims will have to stand on their own.

You absolutely got it wrong.

I'm always open to new reasons, new evidence, etc. But if you're wrong, you're wrong, and me refusing to be swayed by bad evidence is not an indictment of my open-mindedness, but an indictment of the quality of your evidence.

Just as if you keep asking the hut-dwelling tribes to bring you evidence of their spirits that cause illness, and they keep bringing you albino children and shaved monkeys or whatever the **** else, you'd be entirely correct to stay unconvinced. Lots of bad evidence does not add up to good evidence.

There's a good book Snow Crash, which is a pretty funny satire but it also has a very interesting untertone about the power of religion to control the masses over time. A lot of links between Deuteronomy and how religious doctrine was used to basically hack social consciousness to do beneficial things.

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and that, children, is how science stopped being an academic discipline and became a religion

~bedtime stories from 2120~

You asked the wrong question. You're supposed to ask if he'll condemn pedophiles.

Small things come together in miraculous ways
Would it be so amazing that there is something larger than us that remembers everything
be one of us

he will never do that.

You tell me:

"What do you think a direct experience with God would be like?"

I'm curious what you think.

Nope. It was fine. I do not find such things to be disrespectful as you claim them to be.

The fine tuning of the universe.

How did our universe come into existence?

How do you think the fine tuning of the universe came to be so precise to the point of near mathematical impossibility?

What formed the physical laws that govern our universe?

What prevents these physical laws from changing?

That is correct. And yet, most secular humanists believe in the big bang by a significant margin.

I never said the universe was fine tuned "for us", I said it was fine tuned, which it is. I wasn't wrong about that.

Furthermore no, we are at the mercy of the universe, not the other way around. If you tweaked gravity slightly, we'd be toast. One asteroid and POOF, we gone. We are a leaf in the wind.

We are not fine tuned for this universe at all. Read about the near extinction events humans encountered that Hitchens talked about in formal debates. We aren't even finely tuned for this planet, let alone the universe, that is infinitely more terrifying.

Claiming that we are finely tuned for this universe is just wrong.

If 99% of Atheists were all the best dancers I've ever seen, there would be nothing "silly" about attributing Atheism with good dancing.

You can attribute a connection to anything if it is practical, makes sense, and holds up under scrutiny.

I would place much stronger value on the testimony of trusted friends than you would.

It seems that you have never encountered something in your life that challenged all you know about reality and found it to end up being true.

Maybe someday a new experience will come along. Perhaps not...

I have never read about Sagan, so I thank you for sharing that.

However, I believe Carl Sagan was found to be wrong.

The basic vibe of what you are saying about investigating is practical and total common sense.

However, extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence, as I illustrated clearly in my previous example.

This has been debunked a long time ago. It is a flamboyant statement that seems intelligent on the surface, but when used in the formal debate, the person uttering it always regrets it when it gets picked apart. It's a weak and flawed argument.

I caution you against adhering to this, but many people will not know how to deal with it, so it's great to use against people if you simply desire to assert dominance. Just know that you are teaching them misinformation.

In gaming terms it is a pub-smashing tool. Most likely you have already got plenty of mileage out of it, so you will not be keen on putting it down.

Anyone can do the same exact thing to anyone else.

I can simply say that you have no good reason not to believe in God.

Then when you present all your evidence I can simply say "See, that's not a good reason" regardless of what you say.

Then I can claim "100% of Atheists I speak with have no good reason, but won't admit to it."

Here you go, "I have never met a single Atheist that had any good reason to believe the things that they do."

Done. Did I win the game?

This form of communication is non-productive. As it seems to be the centerpiece to your approach on the topic, I find your approach to be non-productive.

I can just as easily say "Atheists have no good reason to not believe in God, as all the hard evidence points to God's existence."

Rinse and repeat over and over and over again.

When you articulate yourself like this over and over again, you are not really saying anything. Nor are you reaching the opposing party, nor are you learning anything from them.

I caution you against this form of communication.

When everyone in the world agreed that the world is flat, were they right?

You are arguing that mass opinion equals truth, which will get you into all kinds of trouble.

Don't make that argument, it's a very bad one. Possibly one of the worst.

I never said he was a physicist?

I'm sure you really feel that way. I can appreciate that.

Generally curious minds don't open with "GG thanks for your ultimate surrender".

Such rhetoric is a clear indication of a "victory mentality", aka someone that is simply interested in establishing perceived dominance, which is the opposite of someone that is interested in learning the opposing party's point of view. Such an individual will only take on enough information to use as ammunition to throw back at the opposing party. None of the information will actually be absorbed as having any sense of truth or reason.

The fact that you have not even heard one single good reason to believe in a different worldview is another very clear indication that you are not open-minded to the worldviews of others.

You don't seem to see why others draw the conclusions that they do, and chalk it up to negative qualities, such as being stupid, unlearned, etc.

In contrast I do not think Atheists are stupid at all. I believe them to be highly intelligent.

The unfortunate truth of intelligence is that it is a double edged sword. It can be used to build a high powered rocket engine that plunges the boat you are in to the bottom of the sea.

You see "productivity" as "winning," which is why you go for the GG.

Neither of us have been swayed even one inch in the direction towards the other in this discussion, hence it was not very productive, other than giving me some great down-time, fun discussion, and getting my mind off of work, which I greatly appreciate.

I heard amadeus likes little kids t/f

True

But it's okay, he won't act on his impulses. That's why pedophilia is ok.

f

f
but he does get into the pilpul ****
some 'cultures'
it's wrong A it's just plain wrong as society grows and gives women more choices,,,, after they've grown half a brain
it's wrong to condone it in any form

i notice amadeus has a lot of words

but none for this for some reason

also none for condemnation of child molesters.......only child molestation definition (thus implied laws he wishes to change)

it's like the feelz = realz

but only sometimes

or when he likes what you feel and therefore justifies it

:shrug:

i just want to boil this entire argument down into cliffs

basically.......we shouldn't have imaginary friends

or believe in things that aren't real or we can't scientifically measure

even if those things make us feel good.......bring us happiness.....bring us individual joy

because that individual belief might somehow hurt larger society and others

SAYETH the person who also believes in kids being put on puberty blockers and admits to being sexually attracted to children younger than 12

YEP........great discussion we got going on here

God created 200 billion galaxies, each with about 200 billion stars in the visible universe, and he's mad at you for masturbating.

* Did not read all the mental masturbating going on in this thread.

I'm more curious why people choose their particular god. It is largely where they were born and what their parents believe. Dawkins is pretty good on that point.

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