mererdog
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Posts posted by mererdog
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1 hour ago, Dan56 said:
Never thought of that before, its obviously a government conspiracy to subconsciously promote Christianity 
Taken another way, all these little tees are clearly blasphemous. Taking a sacred symbol and using it for profane purposes... We should be ashamed.
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56 minutes ago, Dan56 said:
God cannot judge someone on the basis of what He knows they would have done or not done. The record is for our understanding of judgement, and the test for our edification and growth.
If God is all-powerful, as you have said, any sentence beginning with "God cannot" is incorrect. If God is omniscient, God has perfect knowledge, and what is a better source of judgment than perfect knowledge?
Now, note that the motive you cite is pointless if everyone passes the test. While the motive you now propose is logical, it is also morally questionable in the context of omnipotence. I would feel guilty if I harmed some in order to help others, if I knew I had the power to help everyone without harming anyone. Would you?
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I vaguely remember a Gnostic story about a violently insane god who pretends to be the creator god. I never understood what he was supposed to be getting out of the ruse, but he was described as being insane, so I suppose that's a moot point...
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19 hours ago, Dan56 said:
A test is just confirmation of what a person has determined to do, untested faith is evidence of nothing.
You only need evidence if you do not already have knowledge. If God knows, why would he test?
Look at it this way....
You say it is obvious that God would not need to ask where someone is, because God already knows. In other words, God does not need to do something to get information He already has. You say God knows everything, so God does not have to test anything to find out about anything. Any exception, whether caused by free will or a lead-lined briefcase, would be a limitation that prevents the word "omniscient" from being accurate.
This is not to say that an all-powerful God could not run tests, merely that it is not sensible that an all-knowing God would want to- there is simply no reasonable motive because there is nothing to gain.
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7 hours ago, zamber said:
Does that mean the Statue of Liberty is violating the constitution twice?
There is basically no symbol that does not have a religious use. That something can be religious in one context does not mean that it is religious in all contexts. Otherwise, government would be banned from using lower-case tees.
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1 hour ago, Dan56 said:
He has knowledge of what will occur, He also has the ability (power) to intercede, changing the natural course of what might have been.
Which does not address my point. I know that if I drop a ball it will fall. I have the power to change the natural course of what might have been. But there is no motive for a test. I would only need a test if I did not know the natural course, and therefore needed to know whether (or how) to use my power.
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4 hours ago, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
We can always spin our philosophic wheels on a special pleading. I don't know why you insist on doing this -- but go right ahead if it pleases you to do so.
Claims of omnipotence are claims that logical limitations do not apply. This is not special pleading, but an assertion about the fundamental nature of existence.
If God is omnipotent, the universe is irrational, as everything is a matter of God's whim. Nothing is truly impossible and nothing is truly inevitable. As such, using logic as evidence when dealing with claims of omnipotence means failing to recognise the nature of the claim. It is an attempt to play baseball with a wiffleball bat.
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20 minutes ago, zamber said:
Since the Statue of Liberty is a statue of a the goddess Libertas,
It is a statue inspired by depictions of Libertas, but also by depictions of Sol Invictus and by other works of art.
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14 hours ago, Dan56 said:
Obviously, God wasn't asking because He didn't know. He was asking to give Adam, Eve, and Cain a choice. They disobeyed God, so would they also reject God, would pride cause them to lie as well? Today, God still expects us to confess our sins, not because He doesn't already know them, but because it expresses repentance.
If God is omniscient, God knows what will happen before it happens. We test things because we do not know what will happen. We have expectations about what will happen because we don't have knowledge about what will happen. When you say God was testing, and that God has expectations, you are saying that God is not omniscient. You are saying that there are limits to God's knowledge.
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On 7/4/2018 at 2:54 AM, RevBogovac said:
Hmkay, next level, let's step in a bit further than "only" Genesis (although that book alone is already full of "seeming" contradictions):
If God is all-powerful, would that not make God contradiction-proof? Able to both be and not be, do and not do- all at the same time? To presume that such a being's actions must make sense is to attempt to force logic onto the patently illogical- to weigh what has no weight.
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21 hours ago, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
If God were both real and good.
Speaking of lack of common reference points, what qualities makes something good? Is this objectively provable? Universally agreed upon?
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2 hours ago, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
We can't even define God. Without common reference points, we can't even agree on what we are discussing.
Form my point of view, it looks like all you are really saying here is that you do not know what God is. You have no knowledge of God, therefore you cannot tell which definition of God, if any, is accurate. Once again, this is the "We don't know how they could do this without modern tools" argument. The "We" is presumptive, projecting personal ignorance onto the world at large.
Without common reference points, you cannot understand what others are saying... And yet facts exist whether or not we understand them. So common reference points can have no bearing on what is fact, merely on what is understood about fact.
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On 6/29/2018 at 2:14 PM, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
I stated that there were no objective facts about God.
I only saw you say there was no "objective evidence." Objective facts and objective evidence are not the same thing. The reason for this is that an objective fact can only be observed subjectively, and evidence exists at the intersection of fact and observation. It is both what exists and what we think about what exists, you see? As for a lack of objective facts about God, well... To speak about objective facts requires starting from the question "How does one objectively recognise the difference between what does not exist, and what exists but has not been observed?" In other words, what is proven by lack of proof?
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12 hours ago, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
No standards for evidence...……….
Do you know of an objective standard for what qualifies as evidence in normal daily life? I know many objective standards for what qualifies as faulty evidence, but they all sort of work on the unspoken assumption that everything is evidence, or at least potentially so.
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6 hours ago, RevBogovac said:
But it has been proven not to be.
It has been asserted, but not proven. Your proof srandards may be lower than mine, of course. As such, it may take less evidence to convince you of a thing .
As for your link, note that I already noted that those scenarios are an exception. Note also that arbitrary rules developed by people to impose a guiding standard really only create a veneer of objectivity while remaining patently subjective. If I impose a "no math" rule of evidence, that would not prevent math from being evidence. At most, it would prevent people from calling it evidence around me.
As for evidence that has been exposed as fraud, this would be akin to testimony that has been stricken from the record. We may not want the jury to be swayed by it. We may specifically tell the jury to not be swayed by it. But once the jury hears it, they have heard it. It is a part of the evidence they will use to make their findings, for good or for ill. The only way to prevent it from being used as evidence is to prevent the jury from ever seeing it. A lawyer who does not understand this, on an instictive level, should stay away from jury trials.
Keep in mind that the Bible is often used as evidence that the Bible should not be believed. A lie is often the best evidence of the truth.
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On 6/25/2018 at 4:23 PM, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
-- does it or does it not; require more than the assertion that it is evidence?
It does not. Because evidence is subjective. Outside the particulars of specific scenarios like court cases or scientific papers, there is no objective standard you can cite to determine whether something qualifies as evidence.
What makes something evidence is the fact that it leads someone towards a conclusion. It is both that simple and that complicated.
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19 hours ago, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
An emotional response on my part, based on two sets of experience.
So, a point I have been trying to make in this thread is that our emotional reactions can prevent us from being able to engage in fair critical assessment- and that this can happen without us being aware of it. This kind of cognitive bias is very well documented and no one seems to be immune. When our bias against an individual or group can cause us to be biased against evidence presented by that individual or group, our beliefs simply cannot be wholly evidence based. There must be other factors in play that are just as important, if not more so.
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1 hour ago, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
Are you sure you posted to this board?
Yes. And your response is not that far off from what I got. You insulted the study and its sources, but provided no objective reason to think the study is actually flawed. As if you were responding to a personal slight, rather than a scientific paper
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15 hours ago, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
I don't remember any evidence. What am I over looking?
I linked to information about Emily Rosa's Therapeutic Touch studies. It was met with a lot of hostility and ad hominem. I dont remember whether that was from you, specifically, so that's not a personal accusation. Its just why I remember it. It seemed like the reaction was way out of proportion to just a link to a set of research papers.
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16 hours ago, cuchulain said:
if all evidence is subjective, and all fact is determined by evidence...do you not follow? or is this more mind games? i have a hard time believing you don't follow this logic.
I follow the logic. I disagree with the premise "all fact is determined by evidence."
If You don't want me to reply to you, I won't. Provided, of course, that you stop talking about me.
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On 6/19/2018 at 8:51 AM, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
2. You might remember that the next time we talk about Reiki or Therapeutic Touch.
Hey now. I have never said things like "There is no good reason to think that Reiki works." I have simply expressed my personal opinion and presented the evidence that led me to my conclusions. And I have been careful to note that it is simply an opinion, and that the evidence can be explained differently. This is my idea of being fair. Not intellectual purity. Fairness.
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On 6/20/2018 at 10:45 AM, cuchulain said:
knowledge, or purity therein. evidence and the ability to define some as subjective and objective. mererdog seems to say there is no objective.
If you look back, you will find that I said that facts are objective, but that using facts as evidence requires putting them through a subjective process. Evidence is the word we use for the things that cause us to form opinions. This is how we can look at the same fact and consider it evidence for different things. The facts are objective. The evidence cannot be.
This does not mean that we cannot learn. It means that learning is a subjective process. It means that we can have all the facts and still come to wrong conclusion. It means that there is no real way to know the answer to the question "Why dont you believe" because it is too subjective a subject.
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17 hours ago, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
Does it actually matter whether the Bigfoot species exists?
My wife cares, so it matters to me. If "forest brides" are a real thing, it matters to them and to those who care about them. You don't care, but it still may matter to you. It is hard to accurately gauge the impact of something when you know little about it. Like doctors back in the day thinking that hand washing doesn't matter, you know?
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28 minutes ago, Jonathan H. B. Lobl said:
Bigfoot is the classic Black Swan. There is no good reason to think that it exists -- but it could.
There is no good reason for me to think it exists. That does not mean there is no good reason for someone else to think it exists. There was a period in time where people were reporting seeing black swans, but were not producing other evidence of what they had seen. It was reasonable for them to believe their own eyes, and reasonable for others to doubt their word.
My wife has a story. We explain it differently, but I wasn't there.
a common atheist fallacy
in Freethought, Secularism, No Religion
Posted · Edited by mererdog
Mostly due to the same motives as anyone else, but unrestrained by empathy due to a lack thereof. Empathy is a kind of knowledge, so it should fall under the omniscient umbrella. I would think that all-knowing would be all-loving