On 24-4-2011 7:09, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 23:45:04 +0200, andrel wrote:
>
>>> I think there's a fundamental difference, if you're like most of the
>>> atheists I know - you're willing to be convinced given sufficient
>>> evidence.
>>
>> No, I am not, that is the point. There being a God is to such an extend
>> contradictory to being me, that I will never accept any evidence(, hence
>> my reference to that book of my father). I think you will find that true
>> for other atheists as well.
>
> That is different - so you're saying that if someone presented rational
> evidence for a God, you wouldn't accept it?

yes

> I find that *highly* unusual.

I don't think it is, I just say it. No matter what evidence they come up 
with (other than the person/thing itself, see below) I would always 
assume that they made a mistake or used a false assumption, even if I 
didn't see immediately what was wrong.

>>> But such evidence doesn't exist.
>>>
>>> Compare the creationists view - they're not willing to be convinced
>>> there is no creator.  The only thing that works for them is if the
>>> question of whether or not their is a creator is taken off the table.
>>
>> I don't think that there is too much difference in attitude between them
>> and me. Other than that I understand the world and they don't. So I am
>> defending the truth and they a fallacy.
>
> Then you're arguably just as religious as they are.

I know some people in this group have trouble accepting that I am a 
religious atheist, but that is what I think too.

> Otherwise, you'd
> have to be open to a rational explanation or evidence for God.  For me, I
> don't see it today, but if credible evidence were presented, I wouldn't
> just look away from it and say "no, that cannot be".  That doesn't mean
> I'd accept it unchallenged, either, though.

I was going to say that if a Godperson/thing came up to me and said it 
existed, I would still not believe it. But Darren beat me to it.

>>> That undermines not only teaching real science, but the ability for
>>> students to think about problems in a rational way.
>>
>> Are Americans worse programmers than Japanese?
>
> I have no data to support one being better than the other.  Do you?

When Japan became industrialized a couple of decades ago, they started 
with copying things and then imported foreigners that were in thinking 
not bound to the traditional ways, i.e. creative and daring. Only then 
were they able to design new things. Or at least that was the chauvinist 
western view a couple of years ago.

The thing to test here is if Japanese programmers are improving and 
native US ones getting worse. Perhaps comparing them to countries whose 
inhabitants do not accept any authority (like the Netherlands ;) )


-- 
Apparently you can afford your own dictator for less than 10 cents per 
citizen per day.

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On 4/24/2011 1:00, andrel wrote:
> I was going to say that if a Godperson/thing came up to me and said it
> existed, I would still not believe it. But Darren beat me to it.

Me neither. There would have to be evidence beyond it just saying it's god. 
Of course, if it actually were omnipotent, it could make me believe, so it's 
difficult to say what kind of evidence would really be necessary.

Anyway, I was saying the *religious* people wouldn't even believe it, not 
the atheists.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 4/23/2011 22:05, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Sure, but that's different than when it comes to religion.

I was citing it more as a cause, you see. For so long people have been 
persecuted for heresy that maybe it has just become a normal part of culture 
to avoid discussing it.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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Le 24/04/2011 18:04, Darren New nous fit lire :
> On 4/24/2011 1:00, andrel wrote:
>> I was going to say that if a Godperson/thing came up to me and said it
>> existed, I would still not believe it. But Darren beat me to it.
> 
> Me neither. There would have to be evidence beyond it just saying it's
> god. Of course, if it actually were omnipotent, it could make me
> believe, so it's difficult to say what kind of evidence would really be
> necessary.

Back to the St Augustine books... and free-will vs God...
Would God still be omnipotent if God was not able to grant free-will to
humans ?

Also, at the end, when God is revealed, two of the seven virtues are to
disappear from the world: hope & belief, because they won't be possible
any more.

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> On Sun, 24 Apr 2011 04:47:48 +0200, Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:
>

>> Some say that there is no such thing as
>>> truth - each person has his own reality. I wonder how that would stand
>>> in court...
>>>
>>
>> Are you talking of "truth" or "Truth" ot "truths"?
>>
>> Search your own Truth and admire those who search for it, but be
>> extremely wary of anybody who say he have the Truth.
>>
>
> I personally think that anyone who has a Bible has the Truth and they
> can search for the Truth in the Bible. But I certainly do not think that
> I know all the answers to everything - the Bible says we know in part.
>
> I believe that God created the rules of science so ultimately science
> won't contradict God.
>

I just can't beleive in God as he's described in the bible. His 
depiction is not even self consistent. In some place, he's a good of 
goodness, other times, he's a war god, then a god of ire, then...
Probably from several different fire side stories counted by various, 
unrelated, tribes that eventualy came to live together and merge.

I just can't beleive that the bible can contain The Truth. The truth of 
some, maybe, but The Truth of everybody, never.

Considering how the bible came into existence, after many generations of 
oral tradition, you can only take it as a fable, or fire side entertainment.

Even the new testiment was transmited by oral tradition for some 400 
years before it was put down in writing... IF it realy originate from 
teatching from years 30 to 35 (the "public" live of Jesus).
But, then, there is NO traces of Jesus in the Roman archives. There is 
NO traces of the Massacre of the Inocents, ether in any archives nor any 
unusual number of youngs boys in the cimetaries.



Alain

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On 24-4-2011 18:04, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/24/2011 1:00, andrel wrote:
>> I was going to say that if a Godperson/thing came up to me and said it
>> existed, I would still not believe it. But Darren beat me to it.
>
> Me neither. There would have to be evidence beyond it just saying it's
> god. Of course, if it actually were omnipotent, it could make me
> believe, so it's difficult to say what kind of evidence would really be
> necessary.
>
> Anyway, I was saying the *religious* people wouldn't even believe it,
> not the atheists.

I know, just wanting to maintain symmetry. ;)

-- 
Apparently you can afford your own dictator for less than 10 cents per 
citizen per day.

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On 4/23/2011 12:22 PM, andrel wrote:
> On 23-4-2011 0:03, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> On 4/21/2011 3:35 PM, andrel wrote:
>>>> ID's central premise, sadly, is that it just "poofed" into being. Hell,
>>>> even the ones arguing "front loading", fail to grasp that any such
>>>> "master genetic code", to avoid breaking the organism fatally, while
>>>> inserting new features, has to take clear steps, in which it replaces
>>>> parts of the system, only as possible, before reaching and end result.
>>>
>>> I know it would be hard to find a sensible way to construct something in
>>> such a way that it could not have been evolved. Precisely because your
>>> bridge example is a known pitfall (and the paragraphs above therefore
>>> effectively a strawman argument). But simply the fact that you believe
>>> it is not possible does not mean you have in any way proven it to be so.
>>> Man and nature are often more inventive than either of them would have
>>> though.
>>
>> Which then brings up Russel's Teapot. Its that a strawman argument, but
>> an accurate description of the problem. There is no logically
>> conceivable way that you can construct something in genetics where it
>> just appears, any more than with a bridge, so trying to find one that
>> did is like chasing invisible teapots. Its a useless pursuit of
>> something that you can't be 100% sure doesn't exist, but for which there
>> are lots, and lots, of evidence to suggest that its simply an
>> unnecessary complication to go hunting for it.
>>
>> The first step, if you want to hunt for such a thing, is to come up with
>> a plausible description of what, and where, it will be found. Given a
>> few thousands years, some idiot is bound to find a teapot (if for no
>> other reason that that by then some other idiot will have accidentally
>> left one in an airlock, before someone else went EVA). By the same
>> token, if some clown keeps hunting long enough, they are bound to find
>> something "designed", but not because DNA was designed, but because
>> someone actually inserts some designed DNA in someone/something, then
>> dies, or something, without telling anyone.
>>
>> Its the only conceivable condition where you can spend your time looking
>> for the genetic equivalent of Bigfoot, and actually find something that
>> isn't a man in a gorilla suit.
>
> The problem here is that every argument you use assumes that everything
> evolved in a natural way. If you assume that (or even if you know that
> it is a fact,) then everything is entirely clear. But it all falls apart
> if you start from the other assumption.
> Somewhere in my library is a book I inherited from my father. It gives a
> number of arguments that proof that God does exist. Very convincing,...
> if you believe God does exist. I found most of them amusing and/or
> interesting but none was convincing.
>
> So unless you have a proof of evolution that convinces even the die hard
> creationists then we better leave it at that. You don't have to convince
> me.
>
>
The real problem with things like that book though is that 50 people 
have written 50 different books, all making the same arguments. Its the 
whole, "deep theological position", issue, where you go to a modern 
theologian tell them, "The arguments I have heard are all silly, can you 
come up with some that are not.", and they reply, "Well, you just 
haven't heard the deep ones, so yes." A few days later you are handed a 
list of their *best* arguments, and... it looks like its been cribbed 
out of the list you previously rejected.

By contrast, we started out with, "Something like evolution might 
explain this", went to, "See, more examples of why this is likely true", 
to, "heh, we just found DNA!", to, "Heh, look at this microbe evolve the 
ability to eat something it never could before, and the process is just 
like what we thought!", etc. The "depth" of the argument grows, because 
their is something tangible to examine, and from lack of evidence to 
suggest another mechanism. Theological arguments don't, because all they 
do is rehash the original premise, without having a damn thing to 
examine, or test against. They also don't seem to have a single clue 
what arguments other prior theologians already made on the subject. lol

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On 4/23/2011 2:45 PM, andrel wrote:
>> That undermines not only teaching real science, but the ability for
>> students to think about problems in a rational way.
>
> Are Americans worse programmers than Japanese?
>
Two problems with that question. 1) Japanese are hardly atheists, they 
*tend* to be some strange mix of pantheist/animist/pagan, 2) they are 
driven heavily to achieve, not slack off, 3) while a lot of twits that 
go for ID also seem to be programmers (due to the, "I design something 
like DNA, so something else could have), they **must** otherwise have 
fairly robust problem solving. So.. I would say, on a whole, more of 
them probably *could* program, whether they are better or not. And, by 
contrast, you will find US programmers babbling idiot nonsense on 
biology websites like, despite the US military using such things 
effectively for decades now, "genetic algorithms are not as good at 
target tracking, from my experience using them to try to build one, as 
hand coded designed stuff!" So.. I would say that, also, in some cases 
the answer would be, "hell yes".

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On 4/24/2011 11:08, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> Back to the St Augustine books... and free-will vs God...

Free will is almost as poorly defined as "god".

> Would God still be omnipotent if God was not able to grant free-will to
> humans ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NGOuAIusLA

> Also, at the end, when God is revealed, two of the seven virtues are to
> disappear from the world: hope&  belief, because they won't be possible
> any more.

So I stop believing in god if he actually shows up? I think you have that 
backwards.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 4/23/2011 10:09 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 23:45:04 +0200, andrel wrote:
>
>>> I think there's a fundamental difference, if you're like most of the
>>> atheists I know - you're willing to be convinced given sufficient
>>> evidence.
>>
>> No, I am not, that is the point. There being a God is to such an extend
>> contradictory to being me, that I will never accept any evidence(, hence
>> my reference to that book of my father). I think you will find that true
>> for other atheists as well.
>
> That is different - so you're saying that if someone presented rational
> evidence for a God, you wouldn't accept it?  I find that *highly* unusual.
>
Problem is the "rational evidence" part. How do you tell someone playing 
at god, with super advanced tech, or even abilities maybe, and that they 
"are" god in any real sense. Hell, to most of the people over thousands 
of years a Jedi would constitute a god, but we would, if any such person 
showed up, be looking at blood samples to work out how the hell they did 
it, not bowing to them in worship, a fact true even for most religious 
people. First, you need a coherent definition of god, then you can talk 
about what constitutes evidence.

Since most of the stuff in religious texts fall into these categories:

1. Things any two bit magician can replicate.
2. Things we could replicate now, with preparation.
3. Things we could at least imagine replicating, if we had certain 
technologies.
4. Things we couldn't replicate, like making a new universe, and then 
showing someone around in it, and which are probably not possible.

There isn't a lot of room for someone coming up with evidence. Even Q 
from Star Trek, to a modern thinker, tends to look less like a god, than 
merely a powerful, but otherwise normal, different species.

The bar is pretty damn high be miracles, unless you already think damn 
near everything imaginable is a miracle, as some seem to. And, gods 
themselves... not one of them ever defined in past works *qualifies*, 
not in the least due to their failure to live up to the ethics/morals of 
their own followers.

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