The most amazing feats of the human brain are the mental gymnastics and logical convolutions that fundamentalists perform in order to justify why a loving god allows children to suffer the myriad torments the world provides, from birth defects to natural disasters to famine. If it is not god, but satan, who is responsible, then either god allows it or is powerless to stop it, and the question remains the same. Only an uncaring or incompetent or cruel god, or no god at all, can explain it. Of course, the god of the OT avoids this problem by not being loving at all. He is openly and admittedly capricious and cruel. It's no surprise that the ancient Hebrews admonished each other to "fear god." The deists (including most of America's founding fathers) solved the problem by positing a god who created the world but who takes no further interest in it. This, however, was as close to atheism as one could get in those days without being lynched.
While I think the OPs method of making his point is pretty crude and counter productive I certainly agree w/ Daniel here. Probably one of the main things that got me questioning the existance of the Christian God I was brought up to believe in was the mental gymnastics it takes to explain the cruelty of God, of Christians, and that exists in our world for whatever reasons. Thoe other thing was the inability of anyone to explain to me how/why the Christian God and religion is any more valid than the Hindu god (?gods?), Buddhism, the Muslim God, etc. The closest anyone ever got to explaining that was to explain that b/c I grew up on the US that's who I should believe in...sorry, that just wasn't quite enough for me. So, without a better explaination of the above two points and for lack of any devine intervention to show me the incorrectness of my thinking I was left only with the conclusion that I'm either agnostic or atheist. I claimed the agnostism for a long time b/c it wasn't quite as shocking to people and left me a 'back door' to be mistaken. I no longer claim that. There's no reason for me to believe in any God, no reason to cling to an escapist attitude like agnostism. Life is what it is. Bad things happen b/c there was no god to create things to be perfect and to prevent pointless pain and suffering and b/c the randomness of science explains all the things we observe.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Mar 7 2007, 11:06 AM) [snapback]401721[/snapback]</div> Yes, crude. I think the anti-abortionists are just as crude and inappropriate. When one can't make his/her point in an intelligent civil way one refers to crude methods to shock the target audience rather than to inform them.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Mar 7 2007, 11:10 AM) [snapback]401726[/snapback]</div> Then stay your hand from stooping to their level of behavior. If you are truely better than them then display that by behaving in a better manner. The best way to damage your own cause is to stoop to the level of your opponent.
It is the old question "Why does bad things happen to good people"? I found this and decided to pass it along. Christian Metorology: (1) tornado hits elsewhere: God punishing sinners. (2) tornado hits here, doesn't kill the Christian: God protects me. (3) tornado hits here, kills the Christian family: (a) they've gone to a better place. (B) God has a plan for me. © God works in mysterious ways. (4) tornado hits here, kills me (the Christian): realization that it was simply a natural weather phenomenon after all. For remaining Christian family members, repeat step 3 above.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Mar 7 2007, 12:13 PM) [snapback]401728[/snapback]</div> Well said... thanks.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Mar 7 2007, 12:13 PM) [snapback]401728[/snapback]</div> He can't :lol: :lol: Very well said.
After years of following PC. I must say efusco is one one the most level headed, intelligent , yet courteous posters that I've run accross on the internet. I enjoyed your agonstic/athiest post and can relate to it very well. Though I must say, I still have the "escape POV" to some extent, as I have found no answer to the question of why the universe exists at all.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Darwood @ Mar 7 2007, 12:15 PM) [snapback]401772[/snapback]</div> Thank you...though those who know me well would rarely associate the phrase "level headed" with me! I haven't an answer to the "why the universe exists" question either. But I refuse to fill that gap with "God" simply to put an answer in that line. I attended a lecture for engineering students conducted by engineers while I was in college....they presented a bunch of statistics for the likelyhood of life existing on earth...it was some extraordinary number showing how incredibly unlikely it is. Thus, they concluded, God must exists b/c for life to exist on earth was statistically too improbable. Rest assured I stopped listening at that point.
Newsflash: Earth is not Heaven. Bad things happen on Earth and not in Heaven. Newsflash: Religious people misinterpret things i.e. that tornado stuff above If you understood how and why the universe existed chances are you would be God. Freewill explains alot of stuff. Please let's all toast to tolerence.
However, It's not proven that free will exists. All our decisions have biological underpinnings. IE: They can explained through chemisty and biology. A collection of millions of neurons collcectively vote on the decision, and hence could in theory be predicted. (If we had the technology to simultaneously monitor the status of said neurons). efusco, That argument about the chances of life existing have always been a crock. That infantesimle chance seems less so each year as we learn more. Amino acid chains can be shown to spontaneously assemble given the proper environment (primordial souplike). As to the question of the universe's existance: Well, I don't want to fill that gap with god either, but it is an effective role to relegate the concept of god to. It provides people an "out" in their beliefs. The path from a belief in Santa Claus to athiesm is a long step by step process.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Darwood @ Mar 7 2007, 02:33 PM) [snapback]401837[/snapback]</div> OK, whatever, call me when you get a multi-neuron monitor. In the meantime I will confidently go on thinking I actually make decisions.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Mar 7 2007, 10:38 AM) [snapback]401797[/snapback]</div> The mistake the engineers made was this: Yes, life is incredibly unlikely. But the number of available planets in the universe is incredible raised to an incredible power. If there are a billion billion planets in the universe capable of sustaining life, and the chances of life arising on any one of them is a billion to one against, there will be a billion planets with life. Natural selection assures that once something arises which is capable of imperfect replication, it will evolve to more and more complex states, and the appearance of intelligence is relatively likely, given enough time.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Darwood @ Mar 7 2007, 12:33 PM) [snapback]401837[/snapback]</div> Well, neurons do exhibit quatum mechanical properties so it seems reasonable to assume that their function isn't deterministic. If that assumption is valid then your statement isn't correct. In fact the idea that one could know everything if there were simply enough computing power died about 80 years ago. <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Mar 7 2007, 02:09 PM) [snapback]401853[/snapback]</div> It's more than that, though. The self organizing nature of matter makes the probability of life much, much greater.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Darwood @ Mar 7 2007, 11:33 AM) [snapback]401837[/snapback]</div> That is the classical view, popular after Newton, though more often expressed with regard to the physical world: "If we knew the precise position and velocity of every particle, and its properties, we could extrapolate into the past and the future from the beginning to the end, if we had sufficient computational power." However, this idea was put to rest by a confluence of two ideas: The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which forbids us from knowing both the precise position and velocity of any particle simultaneously; and chaos theory, which builds on it to show that in repulsive interactions, uncertainty increases exponentially, until very soon the state of the system becomes utterly unknowable. The laws of physics dictate that even with the most accurate observation devices theoretically possible, and unlimited computing power, we could not solve the equations of what the neurons will do in the future.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tripp @ Mar 7 2007, 05:17 PM) [snapback]401856[/snapback]</div> Yes, I agree with this. I didn't say we can predict everything. But we can analyze one neuron and predict how it will behave given it's state and the inputs we receive. We can do the same for a small collection of neurons too. However, there is so much randomness in the inputs to any given brain, that you cannot predict the ultimate decision making in a precise way. I only questioned free will in response to the statement that "free will explains a lot of stuff". My point being that free will is not a well defined term and has as many questions itself. You cannot use "free will" as an trump card answer. That's like saying "because god says so".
