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What is your justification for believing in the supernatural?

 
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 07:29 am
@reasoning logic,
Quote:
How can you know what is possible, are you a god or something?


I KNOW that it is possible for anything to exist. I suspect you do, too.

If you want to say that it is not possible for me to lift the Empire State Building without mechanical aid by myself…then I guess I will have to acknowledge that is not possible. If you want to create a definitionally contradictory statement "can you make an irresistible object move an unmovable object"...then I guess I will have to acknowledge that it is not possible.

But I thought we were having an intelligent conversation about whether gods or “supernatural beings” exist…when I said that it is possible for anything to exist.

My bad!

Quote:
Are you certain that anything is possible?


I notice you changed the wording of what I said here.
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 07:30 am
@igm,
Quote:
Your reply can be summed up with the same word I used in an earlier post... .................. sophistry.


If that makes you happy, igm, I am happy.

Are there gods, igm?
0 Replies
 
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 07:32 am
@igm,
You do have a point. It seems to me that many of Frank's statements rely only on the words themselves, and if you keep to them it is possible to argue anything regardless of whether or not you have knowledge of it.

But I wouldn't go so far as calling Frank's posts sophistry, though he is perhaps closer to it than many others. On the other hand, many people get lost in their own musings, forgetting what words really mean in favor of how they interpret them to support their claims.
I think Frank's posts are a welcome counterweight here an a2k.
igm
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 07:42 am
@Cyracuz,
Fair point. Can you expand on how exactly Frank acts as a counterweight and also, what is the strongest part of his argument?

To me he failed when he said he was agnostic about everything. But then again how can an agnostic be selective?
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 07:49 am
@igm,
I haven't followed the discussion between you guys very closely. Mostly just skimmed through it. But from what I know of Frank's postings, he likes to stick to what can be logically derived from definitions of words. An example is when he said, in another thread, "whatever reality is, that is what it is". I think he is a good counterweight to those who make assumptions and present beliefs as fact. I often disagree with him, perhaps more often than I agree, but his approach makes for some interesting quarrels.
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 07:57 am
@Cyracuz,
Thank you, Cyracuz.

We've disagreed often, but I feel the disagreements have been handled reasonably and without the nonsense that accompanies so many disagreements in A2K.
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 08:01 am
@Frank Apisa,
I agree. It is refreshing to argue with someone who understands the difference between disagreement and enmity.
0 Replies
 
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 08:21 am
@Frank Apisa,
Quote:
I have lots of atheistic friends...and they seemed obsessed by them, so I do not want to insult them by guessing they do not exist.


How do you know you have any friends at all? What is your evidence? Obviously the more "friends" you have the more diluted the concept becomes. And, if only 10% of Americans are atheists, you are bound to have 9 times as many "friends" who are religious in some way, unless you make atheism a condition of your "friendship".

Are you merely making a crude allusion to what a really, really popular guy you are?

"Friend" is a relative concept. Unless it is tested to the limit it can be applied to members of the Society of Friends which is a national and international organisation from Alaska to Zanzibar.

A little thing like being caught in flagrante delicto in bed with a couple of naked doxies has caused many a friendship to wither clean away. Even borrowing a lawnmower has destroyed many a happy friendship in grass makeover territory.

You have to admit that lawns present to the viewer a sight of the most deformed and tortured grass in the whole evolutionary canon of the monocotyledonous graminoid genera. A fiendish idea really in that a lawn serves no useful purpose unless it is merely to keep house prices up. And it never can because house prices are kept up by other interventions such as proximity to active volcanoes and deals about the route the new freeway should take. Two very simple examples I know but there might be an A2ker intelligent and brave enough to run them through the noggin for a while.

The Marquis de Sade, that great sublime martyr in the atheist cause, said that the propensity to manicure the environment betrayed a sadistic character. It explains why he was conducting research on the unmanicured. Not that he could find it of course which is why he resorted to the administration of certain chemical substances his valet had introduced into a box of chocolates which were to be presented to a likely looking slapper who had agreed to come to his rooms. For which offence he, and his valet, were sentenced to death in absentia and were burned in effigy to slake the frustrated rage of the provincial aspiring classes. Being a moderate man he failed to appreciate how fast the lady could consume an expensive box of chocolates.

Or are you referring to your Christmas card list. Is the golfer whose ball you put in your pocket, to ensure it was actually lost, a friend.

As a matter of interest, how can anyone define a golfball as being "lost"? Except technically and tautologically. That's getting to the core of the religious belief in the sanctity of private property. Are you agnostic about the sanctity of private property? There's something a bit supernatural about that don't you think? Bearing in mind just the evolution of the human species never mind the rest of it.
edgarblythe
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 08:24 am
"I cannot dispute that flying spaghetti monsters exist" is not logic. It is mere acceptance that one cannot disprove the negative. That the negative was conceived without evidence is tossed away as non logic. Wandering in the wilderness.
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 08:26 am
@spendius,
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
I have lots of atheistic friends...and they seemed obsessed by them, so I do not want to insult them by guessing they do not exist.


How do you know you have any friends at all? What is your evidence? Obviously the more "friends" you have the more diluted the concept becomes. And, if only 10% of Americans are atheists, you are bound to have 9 times as many "friends" who are religious in some way, unless you make atheism a condition of your "friendship".

Are you merely making a crude allusion to what a really, really popular guy you are?

"Friend" is a relative concept. Unless it is tested to the limit it can be applied to members of the Society of Friends which is a national and international organisation from Alaska to Zanzibar.

A little thing like being caught in flagrante delicto in bed with a couple of naked doxies has caused many a friendship to wither clean away. Even borrowing a lawnmower has destroyed many a happy friendship in grass makeover territory.

You have to admit that lawns present to the viewer a sight of the most deformed and tortured grass in the whole evolutionary canon of the monocotyledonous graminoid genera. A fiendish idea really in that a lawn serves no useful purpose unless it is merely to keep house prices up. And it never can because house prices are kept up by other interventions such as proximity to active volcanoes and deals about the route the new freeway should take. Two very simple examples I know but there might be an A2ker intelligent and brave enough to run them through the noggin for a while.

The Marquis de Sade, that great sublime martyr in the atheist cause, said that the propensity to manicure the environment betrayed a sadistic character. It explains why he was conducting research on the unmanicured. Not that he could find it of course which is why he resorted to the administration of certain chemical substances his valet had introduced into a box of chocolates which were to be presented to a likely looking slapper who had agreed to come to his rooms. For which offence he, and his valet, were sentenced to death in absentia and were burned in effigy to slake the frustrated rage of the provincial aspiring classes. Being a moderate man he failed to appreciate how fast the lady could consume an expensive box of chocolates.

Or are you referring to your Christmas card list. Is the golfer whose ball you put in your pocket, to ensure it was actually lost, a friend.

As a matter of interest, how can anyone define a golfball as being "lost"? Except technically and tautologically. That's getting to the core of the religious belief in the sanctity of private property. Are you agnostic about the sanctity of private property? There's something a bit supernatural about that don't you think? Bearing in mind just the evolution of the human species never mind the rest of it.


Perhaps.
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 08:28 am
@edgarblythe,
Quote:
"I cannot dispute that flying spaghetti monsters exist" is not logic. It is mere acceptance that one cannot disprove the negative. That the negative was conceived without evidence is tossed away as non logic. Wandering in the wilderness.


Did you really mean "disprove?"
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 08:29 am
@edgarblythe,
Oh, and Edgar.

Are there any gods?
Cyracuz
 
  2  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 08:52 am
@Frank Apisa,
There are many. There's Allah, Jehova, Shiva, Vishnu and Krishna, just to name a few. Each of these gods are known to human beings, though their ontological status is unknown. Personally I think that it is unlikely that there are beings in the universe that conform to human imagination so precisely that they can be identified as one of the above mentioned.
When it comes to Krishna and the Hindu gods, these are understood to be metaphors for forces that are of such a nature that they are beyond our ability to comprehend, which is why metaphors are used. A point in favor of Hinduism and Krishna consciousness if you ask me. They are less concerned with "actual reality" and more concerned with "the human experience.
failures art
 
  2  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 08:54 am
Are there any gods? The question is indeterminate. Without any defining criteria, you'd given nothing in which too evaluate. Being able to compose the question, does not make the question compelling. Further, in inability to answer a question (especially when it's form is flawed) does not mean we are faced with a dilemma.

That said, I'm not pained to say that, in the absence of any compelling reason to consider their existence, no gods exist.

You on the other hand, can't grant yourself permission here to admit you'd cross a field under the threat of an invisible unicorn. Frank, I have bad new for you, your house is now surrounded by invisible unicorns. Tomorrow, they're staging an ambush. They've got supplies for a full week. If you leave your home next week, they're going to kill you. I hope you have enough supplies to agnosticly survive the week.

It's a war of atrophy. What runs out first, your food, or your pride?

A
R
T
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 09:02 am
@Frank Apisa,
Of course there are gods. In the materialist theory of mind, which can only be refuted by arguments from the supernatural, the idea is a material object within the body. So if people have the idea of a god then it exists as a material object.

To say that there is no god requires that the idea, the material object, of god exists for it to be said that it isn't there. Which is ridiculous. It's in their own head. Where else could it be?

To not know whether it exists or not is equally ridiculous although it often serves, with stupid or overly polite audiences, to enable one to express one's general tolerance, open-mindedness and general for he's a jolly good fellow type of shite whilst claiming the intellectual high ground.

It is necessary to bring what would be a large number of these variable material objects in the mind into some sort of congruence so that a degree of social cohesion may lead to progress or even just to survival. Thus education and a theology which seeks to perfect it for cultural purposes.

What is the theology of the agnostic by which I presume you are encouraging us to live by?
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 09:19 am
@Cyracuz,
Quote:
There are many. There's Allah, Jehova, Shiva, Vishnu and Krishna, just to name a few. Each of these gods are known to human beings, though their ontological status is unknown. Personally I think that it is unlikely that there are beings in the universe that conform to human imagination so precisely that they can be identified as one of the above mentioned.
When it comes to Krishna and the Hindu gods, these are understood to be metaphors for forces that are of such a nature that they are beyond our ability to comprehend, which is why metaphors are used. A point in favor of Hinduism and Krishna consciousness if you ask me. They are less concerned with "actual reality" and more concerned with "the human experience.


Thank you, Cyracuz.

When you said, “their ontological status is unknown”…are you actually saying, “their ontological status is unknown to Cyracuz”…and if so, are you saying that you do not know if gods exist.

I am trying to trap anyone with this question. I mean that sincerely. It just appears to me that arbitrarily including or excluding the possibility of a force sufficiently different from what we consider “forces of nature” is illogical. It seems more logical to me to suggest at least the possibility of the existence of forces or “beings” that can be considered gods…perhaps even “creator” gods.

I MAY BE WRONG…but it is my opinion that simply saying, “I do not know” makes more sense; is more logical; and is more ethical than “yes, gods exist” or “no, gods do not exist.”

I repeat…I MAY BE WRONG.

That, of course, is the reason I discuss the issue at every opportunity.

Any thoughts you have on it are appreciated.
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 09:28 am
@failures art,
Quote:
Are there any gods? The question is indeterminate. Without any defining criteria, you'd given nothing in which too evaluate. Being able to compose the question, does not make the question compelling. Further, in inability to answer a question (especially when it's form is flawed) does not mean we are faced with a dilemma.


Does that mean you do not know? And what was that word igm used earlier? Was it sophistry?

Quote:
That said, I'm not pained to say that, in the absence of any compelling reason to consider their existence, no gods exist.


Do you not consider “existence” itself a compelling reason to at least consider the possibility? Wow...that is amazing. I cannot help but wonder why not, but I doubt I will get a reasonable response if I were to ask about it.

Quote:
You on the other hand, can't grant yourself permission here to admit you'd cross a field under the threat of an invisible unicorn.


I answered that I would not cross a field with a warning on it….even if the owner of the land used boogyman instead of unicorn. And I would not. If you want to assume I would...that is your right. But you would be wrong.

What is the fascination of atheists with creatures like unicorns, leprechauns, tooth fairies, and Easter bunnies?

Quote:
Frank, I have bad new for you, your house is now surrounded by invisible unicorns. Tomorrow, they're staging an ambush. They've got supplies for a full week. If you leave your home next week, they're going to kill you. I hope you have enough supplies to agnosticly survive the week.


Really! And you have shown yourself to be such a reasonable supplier of information that I am supposed to take this warning seriously?

You flatter yourself, Art. I am actually laughing both at the supposed threat…and the thought that you actually considered this a reasonable effort at discussing this point.

You can do better than this, Art...and should set your mind to doing so.


Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 09:31 am
@spendius,
Quote:
Of course there are gods. In the materialist theory of mind, which can only be refuted by arguments from the supernatural, the idea is a material object within the body. So if people have the idea of a god then it exists as a material object.

To say that there is no god requires that the idea, the material object, of god exists for it to be said that it isn't there. Which is ridiculous. It's in their own head. Where else could it be?

To not know whether it exists or not is equally ridiculous although it often serves, with stupid or overly polite audiences, to enable one to express one's general tolerance, open-mindedness and general for he's a jolly good fellow type of shite whilst claiming the intellectual high ground.

It is necessary to bring what would be a large number of these variable material objects in the mind into some sort of congruence so that a degree of social cohesion may lead to progress or even just to survival. Thus education and a theology which seeks to perfect it for cultural purposes.

What is the theology of the agnostic by which I presume you are encouraging us to live by?


Αυτή είναι η ελληνική μου.
0 Replies
 
Cyracuz
 
  2  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 09:50 am
@Frank Apisa,
Quote:
When you said, “their ontological status is unknown”…are you actually saying, “their ontological status is unknown to Cyracuz”…and if so, are you saying that you do not know if gods exist.


Yes. That is so, and it's mostly because I do not know what a god is. I can understand and appreciate religious metaphors, but they leave something to be desired when it comes to a clear definition of the term.

Quote:
It just appears to me that arbitrarily including or excluding the possibility of a force sufficiently different from what we consider “forces of nature” is illogical. It seems more logical to me to suggest at least the possibility of the existence of forces or “beings” that can be considered gods…perhaps even “creator” gods.


Agreed. But would such creatures agree? Would believers in gods agree? I have the feeling that if beings from outer space came to us in spaceships and showed us conclusive evidence that they are responsible for the life on our planet, which would make them our gods, religious people all over the world would not accept them as their God or Allah.

Quote:
I MAY BE WRONG…but it is my opinion that simply saying, “I do not know” makes more sense; is more logical; and is more ethical than “yes, gods exist” or “no, gods do not exist.”


Perhaps. But it doesn't make for very good conversation, and good conversation is why we keep coming to a2k after all. I do not mind saying that I do not know if gods exist or not, but for the sake of discussion I try to offer up some of my reasoning behind my conclusions and opinions.
Besides, there are many levels of existence to account for. Rocks and trees, for instance, do not exist in the same way thoughts or emotions do. Love exists, I have no doubt about that. And yet I cannot point to anything in the universe and say "that is love" in the way I can point to a rock and say "that is a rock".
0 Replies
 
igm
 
  2  
Reply Sat 5 May, 2012 09:53 am
@Frank Apisa,
Frank Apisa wrote:

I am trying to trap anyone with this question... It seems more logical to me to suggest at least the possibility of the existence of forces or “beings” that can be considered gods…perhaps even “creator” gods.

I MAY BE WRONG…but it is my opinion that simply saying, “I do not know” makes more sense; is more logical; and is more ethical than “yes, gods exist” or “no, gods do not exist.”

Here is something to consider: If an atheist says he believes there are no gods he is not the only type of atheist. There is another type who say that they are without gods i.e. the concept of gods has simply been let go of. They live there life free from that concept.

In order to bolster your argument you focus on the atheists who say there is no god or gods but this means that you are ignoring those atheists who have thought through what it means to be an atheist and have realized that it is better to say that they are without gods, philosophically it is protected from your arguments.

Many believe agnostics hold the superior 'middle ground' but I believe atheists who are 'without gods' do. There are theists who say there is a god and agnostics who say 'you can't say there isn't a god' and there is a branch of atheists who say there is no god. But free from all those extremes are the atheists who are 'without god'. They are the ones who hold the middle ground between all of the other extremes.

It suits you to ignore these atheists but every atheist has the chance to become this type of atheist... an atheist 'without god'. Your arguments don't work against them... so you aim your argument at the easier target the 'there are no gods' atheists.

If an atheist is without god he has relinquished one concept i.e. the concept of gods. An agnostic has to have additional concepts; those concepts that maintain nobody can know there aren't any gods and then because of that it necessarily follows nobody can know that any supernatural event or being could not exist. The atheists who are without god are philosophically relaxed when they examine the other extreme views including agnosticism.
 

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