nino_savatte
No pasaran!
phildwyer said:
Bizarre....have I entered a parallel universe?
The Rational Proof of God's Existence
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Bizarre....have I entered a parallel universe?
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Member Since: 1985 Post Count: 3
Im intrested to see where phildwyer is going to go with this. I bet it's like intelligent design where they make some stupid leap of bollocks at the end.Alex B said:
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
ATOMIC SUPLEX said:
he's going nowhere dude, he's got nothing. if god could rationally be proved to exist i think someone else might have done it by now.
kyser_soze said:
No, sainthood began when Roman civilization assimilated Christianity--as Nino has astoundingly but correctly pointed out. If you'll look at the syncretic pagan/Christian religions of Latin America and the Caribbean (santaria, voudoun), you will see that many of their deities are Christian saints on sabbatical, as it were. Anyway, now I can't decide whether to do angels or saints first...
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Catholicsm = Roman Empire Xtianity. The nasty, patriachal, structured and oppressive thing called 'The Church'. So one would presume that in order to sell Xtianity to a post-animist, polytheist pagan society (Rome) the idea of human transcendence to a higher level of post-life experience via Sainthood is one that is a great sales tool.
Whlie I know that my (over)use of the branding-centric view of history isn't always appropriate (and that you disagree with the idea of the meme yet say that ideas exist in reality), religion is a competitive arena and always has been. When confronted with a sceptical mass of people it's going to be easier to sell your faith if:
1. You assume as many elements of the pre-existing faith as possible (hence Christmas happening on Saturnalia/Winter Solstice instead of March/April when it should happen).
2. You give your possible converts as many good reasons as possible to join (also known as 'selling benefits')
Sainthood - especially when connected to martydom - is a great incentive to possible converts (who are likely to be zealots as well) to believe and to spread the word.
Whlie I know that my (over)use of the branding-centric view of history isn't always appropriate (and that you disagree with the idea of the meme yet say that ideas exist in reality), religion is a competitive arena and always has been. When confronted with a sceptical mass of people it's going to be easier to sell your faith if:
1. You assume as many elements of the pre-existing faith as possible (hence Christmas happening on Saturnalia/Winter Solstice instead of March/April when it should happen).
2. You give your possible converts as many good reasons as possible to join (also known as 'selling benefits')
Sainthood - especially when connected to martydom - is a great incentive to possible converts (who are likely to be zealots as well) to believe and to spread the word.
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Member Since: 1985 Post Count: 3
Alex B said:
But I can have an idea for a story, that doesn't mean it's a true story. I can see the ideas thing falling over quite quickly.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
kyser_soze said:
Hammer-nail-head.
I would also add that Xtianity wholly embraced the Roman style of patriarchy. We see this reflected in the patriarchical nature of the Catholic and Orthodox faiths.
No-one will get any argument from me on the contention that Christianity sold itself by assimilating many pagan elements--indeed the virgin birth and the incarnation are themselves pagan concepts, not monotheistic ones. Nor will I dispute for a moment that all Christian churches have always been patriarchal. But just agreeing with everyone is a bit boring, perhaps I'd better get back to the angels...
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Member Since: 1985 Post Count: 3
I can have an idea for a story that gets turned into a film and gets people to emote. It's still not real.phildwyer said:
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Member Since: 1985 Post Count: 3
phildwyer said:
No, I said I have an imagination. I can imagine things, those are my ideas.
Books exist but that does not mean the stories in them are 'true' but the stories are real.
Are you saying if I have an idea about superman fucking spiderman up the bum on the moon then it is real?
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Member Since: 1985 Post Count: 3
phildwyer said:
Ok then no, ideas are not real or reality.
Why don't you just spit it out?
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Well they're real in the sense that when someone has an idea the brain's electrical activity and chemical balance look like X and when you aren't having an idea they look like Y - the process of thinking produces a physical reaction in the brain, but it's a feedback system - the brain interprets say, the singing of a lark which in turn leads to a reaction in the mind, that leads to say, the Pastoral Symphony. So the physical world helps us create ideas in our minds and those ideas can become 'real' in the sense that they have a permanent manifestation in the world as a picture/book/artwork (interestingly, is music different? Is it real when it's scored on the page or when it's performed? Can someone who can sight read music and hear the instruments in their head make the music real for themselves only? Or does this mean that because the potential for some humans to hear the music without it being played mean that the music is 'real' while still 'only' a score?)
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Member Since: 1985 Post Count: 3
phildwyer said:
You are talking about two things at once. There is a thought process which is real but ideas themselves are not reality.
Why don't you just get to the point.
ATOMIC SUPLEX said:
Socratic method innit. We have to proceed step-by-step, not moving on until we are agreed on each of the steps individually. Otherwise my case will not be proven.
ATOMIC SUPLEX said:
So the "thought process" is real, but the ideas are not? In that case, what is the difference between "thought process" and "ideas?" Surely the former is composed of the latter?
'Having' ideas is just a turn of phrase. There is nothing 'in' my brain that is separate from my brain itself. The activity in my brain is structured in such a way as to represent an object, or an abstraction, just like paint on a canvas is structured to represent a portrait of King Henry VIII. There is not a 'picture' of Henry separate from the canvas and paint.
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Member Since: 1985 Post Count: 3
No we don't because we won't get anywhere because we don't aggree from the off. I want to see where you are riding this bullshit train.phildwyer said:
No, if you can't grasp that we are a bit stuck arn't we.phildwyer said:
If I think 'hummm I will make a cup out of wood', the cup is not made of thoughts and wood, it is made of wood.
ATOMIC SUPLEX said:
But I believe that I can bring you to agreement with each of my assertions, provided that we take them one by one. Shall we proceed?
ATOMIC SUPLEX said:
So you deny that your thought-process is composed of ideas. Of what is it composed then?
ATOMIC SUPLEX said:
Does the idea of the cup exist before the cup itself? That is to say: is it something *different* from the cup?
Dear Phildwyer,
Your thread title grabbed me so I read your introduction post. You started with such confidence that I found myself reading through, trying to follow the steps that you have politely translated into plain English for those not as fortunate/well read etc as yourself.
Forgive me if I have totally missed the point but you have failed to establish any logical proof or steps towards a proof for the existence of God.
I will now provide a short summary of what I think you have put forward in the discussion so far:
1 - Human beings perceive value in things.
2 - This value is not real; it’s a representation of human activity.
3 - This collective perception of value by Human society leads to some unsavoury results and is therefore bad and represents the Devil.
4 - If the Devil exists then so must God.
If you are looking for proof of God via the use of metaphysical notions then I would say your route to "proof" is incredibly narrow, especially for someone who started out with such confidence in this becoming a grand "show stopper" of a thread.
I think one of the main reasons which motivated me to read some of the content was the fact that you failed to convince a single person on your journey, I did not read the whole thing (I expect you are the only person on Earth who has) but at no stage did I find a single post where you were supported by someone else or where anybody hinted that your thread had provided the "enlightenment" promissed at the outset.
On reflection Phildwyer are you happy with the outcome of your thread?
Your thread title grabbed me so I read your introduction post. You started with such confidence that I found myself reading through, trying to follow the steps that you have politely translated into plain English for those not as fortunate/well read etc as yourself.
Forgive me if I have totally missed the point but you have failed to establish any logical proof or steps towards a proof for the existence of God.
I will now provide a short summary of what I think you have put forward in the discussion so far:
1 - Human beings perceive value in things.
2 - This value is not real; it’s a representation of human activity.
3 - This collective perception of value by Human society leads to some unsavoury results and is therefore bad and represents the Devil.
4 - If the Devil exists then so must God.
If you are looking for proof of God via the use of metaphysical notions then I would say your route to "proof" is incredibly narrow, especially for someone who started out with such confidence in this becoming a grand "show stopper" of a thread.
I think one of the main reasons which motivated me to read some of the content was the fact that you failed to convince a single person on your journey, I did not read the whole thing (I expect you are the only person on Earth who has) but at no stage did I find a single post where you were supported by someone else or where anybody hinted that your thread had provided the "enlightenment" promissed at the outset.
On reflection Phildwyer are you happy with the outcome of your thread?
nino_savatte said:
Don't really know what to say to this. I didn't read the gun thread, at all, though all the same, I think he's got a point, though not one that needs proselytisation.
It seems to me more like phil willingly sets himself up as a pompous academic type who's easy to take the piss out of. His actual name -phildwyer- is fairly unpretentious. I always thought the idea of a logical proof of the existence of God was kind of barking,* but as it turned out, I found the argument he put forward kind of interesting, and not stupid at all. And I think he was far more bullied than bully, on this thread. And I think that the person who starts a thread should be considered to have ownership of it, which was why I thought your accusations that he was trolling were fairly ludicrous on his own thread.
I was reading earlier Diem K, who naturally didn't bother to read the whole thread, who would? Saying - no-one ever seemed to be convinced. If people like you hadn't made such an effort to make phil look like an idiot from the start, then, in fact his thread might have been quite readable, and the quite interesting ideas he puts forward would be quite a lot more accessible.
Maybe it's a worthwhile role being a debunker of idiots. But, to be honest, although I don't know, after reading quite a lot of your arguments with other people including ones when I thoroughly agreed with you, I concluded that probably you're full of shit, and just kind of enjoy being a putdown artist, playing to the gallery, in much the same way that you accuse phil of, even though he's much more of a minority here than you are.
Ideas are real, but not in the sense that their content is true. I.e. their content, while being real, are not real in the sense that they can carry with them - of corresponding to an reality external to thought (a reflection of the world). So your conflating realtiy external and internal to thought.
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