It's such a delight to read something written by someone who can still think, Curtis. Thanks.
The very IDEA that someone could consider Robin Carlsen or Jim Flanegin or John R rational astounds me. ________________________________ From: "curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 4:56 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <punditster@...> wrote : On 10/20/2014 11:43 PM, jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: >>Xeno, >> >> >>I'm flabbergasted at the statements you just said. In the physical existence of human beings here on earth, everyone has to have a mother and a father. Were you not created by your father's sperm that impregnated your mother's egg? Didn't she carry you in her womb for 9 months before you were born here on earth? >> >> >>I'll give you my thoughts about Barker's ideas. But I'm taking the KCA argument one at a time which starts with statement 1. Your statements are so astonishing that we need more clarification about your thoughts and logic. >> >> >>Everyone in the forum is invited to participate in this discussion to ask Xeno about his revelations regarding his physical existence. > >Everyone on this forum seems to believe in causation - that for every event there is a cause. The question is if everything that happens has a cause, is there a first cause? This is probably one of the first essay assignments in any Philosophy 101 class at a community college. > >Everyone knows that Aristotle defines change and motion by first concluding that everything that has a beginning and an end would have to have a first cause or principle. His argument for before and after must have an antecedent state following Parmenides statement: "nothing comes from nothing." > >Aristotle concluded that if the cosmos had a beginning it would require a first cause, an unmoved mover, in order to support change. > >Where is Robin when we need him? > >M: Robin didn't understand the problems with unfounded assertions either, he >was fond of making them himself. If he did he would have seen through Aquinas' >stated presumptions instead of being so enamored with them. In our daily life >we conflate "that's logical" with "that's true" because the former requires >another outside verification for its veracity. Garbage in, garbage out in >logical syllogisms. In our daily life we rarely take the trouble to be so >careful. > >The classical philosophers have two things working against them. They were >blind to their own presumptive statements that had not been proven, and then >were overfond of the logical conclusions they derived from them. The whole >history of philosophy was spent cleaning up many of their confusions. > >The second problem they had in such discussions is their lack of exposure to >the non intuitive wold physics and astro-geo-physics has revealed far beyond >the range of our senses. A world where the rules for macro objects are >sometimes ignored and that we are very poorly prepared to speculate about. It >takes physicists years of deep study and advanced math to meaningfully deal >with concepts so far from our natural experience. > >Now that we know about this level of matter, universal claims like "Everything >that comes to exist has a cause." are ridiculous as an unchallenged first >principle. Turns out quantum events don't follow this rule that seems so >obvious to our natural senses. But even without knowing about quantum events >we have learned that such universals are unwise. The Greeks were much more >confident about how their world was. We have been humbled by getting our >intellectual asses kicked by the growth of scientific knowledge beyond the >range of our senses. > >Resorting to religious arguments using syllogisms are disingenuous for modern >people. They trot these out to make their beliefs seem more carefully thought >out. If they are probed from the perspective of their epistemology, these >arguments are not really why they believe in their idea of God. They believe >it for other reasons that they believe they can shield with the pretense of >rationality. They want their real reasons for belief to be beyond scrutiny. I >guarantee you that this argument is not even on he belief web John has built >for himself so he can believe in God. It isn't even a branch on that tree.He >thought it would be a useful stick to poke at non believers and it failed >because he doesn't understand it himself, it just sounded authoritative. > >I think all the God beliefs base on scripture are idiotic because it requires >someone to assume that God had a hand in writing an obviously human produced >work of literature. That people entertain this notion today is beyond me, but >it causes many problems in this world. I consider it a very dangerous wrong >belief that someone has a book from God with details about our lives. (Like >kill the infidels, or God gave us this land.) > >I am most sympathetic to the mystical experience claims for the existence for >God having had enough experiences of my own to understand how compelling they >are. I no longer believe that the actual existence of a God is the best >explanation for these experiences, but I could certainly be wrong and might be >proven wrong some day. > >But not today. > > >
