I absolutely hate these long post lol, I have other forums and when they start going like this I just dread coming back to the page, work and everything barely permits me time for such long debates with so many people but I'll do it as frequently as I can. I enjoy the talk but it's just a lot.
Also, I reallydislike philosophical arguments. It just seems a little silly to me, too open to interpretation and personal emotion. I feel like if you are going to try to convince someone of that validity of your claims and give the likeliness of a diety's existence, there should be something slightly tangible. How many great minds had their philosophies shattered with new discoveries? What insight can one gain through philosophical argumentation that can't be more accurately obtained through cold hard fact in science?
Ah, now that is different from what I was talking about. I didn't say no one could figure out what morals to adopt. I said no one was qualified to establish a comprehensive moral system. And I stand by it. Morality must be objective to be truly valuable. That means no human is qualified to establish it. But it doesn't mean people can't figure out what morality (objective moraltiy) is and can't adopt parts or all of it.
Then who established your moral code? I don't know of any moral system that was truly formed by anyone but humans.
KenV wrote:
If by not strong philosophical systems you mean they are up for interpretation by nearly everybody, perhaps. But there are certain things we can all agree on as morally wrong, like murder, stealing, etc. Merely adopting a set of morals you believe are inspired by God, and are also open for a major level of interpretation, is no more sturdy than what I live by.
Agreement is what is required for something to be moral? See, this is the failing of the system. Murder and rape were acceptable (according to some biologists) to early man. If they became acceptable again, would they be okay? In the end, the only thing a materialist can suggest as moral is something that coincides with evolution, but then again, that removes love, hope, mercy, etc. Those contradict survival of the fittest.
No no, you picked out a piece of my statement and focused in on it way too much. I'm not saying agreement is a pre requisite, I'll watch what I say more carefully. That statement was made to say that it is obvious that certain things are wrong from a biological and universally emotional sense. And love, hope, and mercy are products of evolution. They are products of a more developed mind and human body. They do not contradict survival of the fittest because they gave motivation to survive and to protect. To build and to innovate. They are perfectly compatible emotions with evolution and are perfectly explainable by science.
My philosophical worldview is undergirded by 3000 years of philisophical inquiry. From Plato to Augistine to Chesterton, I find one continuous flow of philosophy that helps me make sense of the world. Postmodernism... is a shell of a system in comparison. It is precisely that it is not open to interpretation that causes it to fail. How can one interpret a system which permits no inquiry of other's beliefs because it values one's ability to create beliefs over the beliefs themselves?
Sorry this confused me too much for me to make an accurate response. Again, philosophy... too flowery for my taste I suppose. What is wrong with presenting facts about something and arguing over those facts? And again, before I could answer, I'd need to know what moral code you have chosen because without that I can't really compare my code to yours. To continue this arm of the conversation I need to know who specifically designed your code, what it entails.
KenV wrote:
Please tell me what evidence there is of the supernatural. I want actual evidence, not philosophical "what's more likely" type "evidence" but cold hard scientific evidence. You'll come up short.
There's a little website called godandscience.com. Its the site attached to this forum. Have you read through the evidence there? Have you read Aquinas' Summa Theologica and other works on apologetics? Have you visited the Reasons to Believe or Reasonable Faith websites? Lots of evidence. Have you looked into it?
Well if you read the very first post I made here I explain that I did read the entire site on that section and that is exactly what got me here. I'll go back to the beginning, there was no scientific evidence. The site author's reasoning for believing in a God is that life is extremely fragile and for it to even exist it takes incredibly precise physics to obtain. His reasoning goes that since it was so small he sees design. However, my problem with that is is the concept of the meta universe (or any number of naturalistic explanations). He doesn't like the meta universe idea because it doesn't have any proof, but then I say neither does supernatural. He also seems to think that testing the meta universe's existence is impossible and always will be impossible, but that is untrue today and I suspect it will proof to be less true in the future. I mean we already can test for extra dimensions. His view on this is very short sighted. And then, since he thinks the meta universe is unfalsifiable that it is more likely that there is a supernatural force. However, to me it seems like he just went with a gut instinct to choose God over the meta universe. I would be just as presumptuous if I chose the meta universe idea over the possibility of God, but I haven't. I still choose to believe that since I do not know what created the universe I can't make a rational decision on which exist. My gut feeling is that supernatural things don't exist because I've never seen them and they seem fanciful, but that is not a decision or a belief.
Circuimstancial evidence is overwhelming for me. If you want a brief summary, there is something rather than nothing (in a universe where all things follow cause-and-effect). I know my own heart, I know my own feelings, and I know I exist. I see the history of it all. I see the profound truth in a religion much older than you give it credit for, and much wiser than you seem to be willing to admit, too. All these things and many more lead me to a place where I have to make an interprative decision.
So you're willing to admit you do not know for certain? This is the key difference between us, my gut feeling is the opposite of yours. I see random chance, I see humans trying to make sense of things at a point in time where they weren't able to make any informed decisions and I see people accepting it for reasons wholly unrelated to a logically thought out reasons. But you don't "have to make an interpretative decision". I didn't, why should you have to? You don't answer math equations when you don't know what the equation is, so why put down an answer without all the relevant data?
You don't define naturalism that way. You allow naturalism to be self-creating and/or eternal. Nothing we've ever seen ever let us think that way. Those are assumptions (which you criticize me for).
Ruling things out that we don't understand is making assumptions. Leaving the answer blank as something you don't understand is being open minded. We don't even know what would qualify as supernatural in a universe we don't live in. We don't know if time exist in the meta universe, we don't know enough of its properties and a lack of information doesn't make it "super natural".
The reason, and this is VERY important, that a theist can feel confident is that we have another source of information: revelation. You exclusively ignore that form of evidence. But we aren't even there yet. Before that debate even makes sense, you have to acknowledge that a First Cause is necessary.
I acknowledge that a "First Cause" is necessary... for our current universe. I will NEVER admit that a first cause is necessary for the meta universe UNTIL we have scientific data on it. Until we understand it better. That's scientifically deaf to make a claim that you have no data for.
KenV wrote:
Really what it boils down to is you think that the first cause has to be God because you lack information on what properties the meta universe has. How do you justify making a decision like that without knowing 1. If a meta universe exist and 2. What propertie that meta universe is capable of? It seems without those 2 pieces of information you are simply answering prematurely with what feels right to you.
We all have the same information. But again, you are giving the 'meta universe' attributes that make it God. If the 'meta universe' can create ex nihilo, can produce intelligent life, can fine tune a universe, can exist from nothing, and is eternal, you have basically renamed the god of deism! And to be honest, at this point I'm only trying to make the case for such a god. To be completely fair, you do disagree on the point of morality (a deist would acknowledge rules set forth by the deistic god that form the basis for morality). However, you do -act- as though such morals exist (you are trying to correct what you see as an error, you believe your worldview is superior to others, etc). Maybe you are a deist.
It is much like God in that sense. But I don't see a problem with that. I don't think attributing some extraordinary abilities to the greater universe, as a possibility, makes it comparable to "God". I don't believe that the meta universe is god because it doesn't make choices. It just acts on its own laws. It created our universe to be "Fined tuned" (and that is a misnomer if I've ever seen one) for life by random chance because it does it trillions of times over. We are a by product of a chain of events, in this scenario, not by decision. That's the key difference. That's why I'm not a deist.
KenV wrote:
The only thing I'm sure of is that I'm not sure of anything. I have not made a decision as to whether God exist or not, I don't see it as likely or unlikely, I see it as an equation that I do not have the necessary information to sufficiently answer. And I disagree that it is arrogant to create your own moral code, there are some fairly easy guidelines everyone is able to agree upon and it doesn't take a genius to understand that the Golden Rule is a good way to live life. What is arrogant is assuming your world view is correct and the moral code you've adopted is actually divinely ordained. I have more faith in myself to make right decisions than I do in mysterious 2000 year old theist (and I suppose later we will have a discussion about the validity of the Bible, I don't know how much I'd even trust the authors of the Bible as they were human beings).
You aren't forming your own moral code, either. You are adopting things from someone else's moral code (Christianity's code, actually). This is what I suggested earlier is the only thing people can really ever do: affirm or deny objective morality.
Where the creators of Christianity not humans? Did they not observe similar morals and laws before Christianity? I know for a fact many Mediterranean cultures followed similar moral codes to my own long before the invention of Christianity.
Also, you keep going back for pot-shots on the origin of Christianity. I wouldn't go there... this isn't the right thread, and this debate is still on the essentials of understanding Epistimology, ethics, and metaphysics (ie, we haven't left worldview yet).
Hard not to talk about Christianity when that is the faith you have adopted and I have to assume the christian moral code is what you are referring.
Well, it is a loaded, self-defeating question. Natural, by definition has to do with things within nature. The universe is nature. If something exist beyond the universe then guess what,....supernatural. Multiveres, etc. are supernatural concepts. Basically a god without conscience or morality. So, be consistent. If the universe began, then whatever began it, is supernatural.
It's supernatural in the sense that it has different laws than our inhabited universe. Yes, it is a lot like God without a conscience. But that's not supernatural. Supernatural would imply that the meta universe has no laws, that it has powers beyond a gigantic mathematical equation. That it can break from that equation when ever it sees fit and intervene in any area it please.