Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Please Read OP)

If ye do. Benny and Me (well me anyway. Benny's got more integrity) are just going to assume each post is conforming to the charter. :pac:

Are you guys really sure you want to get into that argument?

nagirrac wrote: »

Related to that is the debate I am having with virgil on the mind-brain problem. There are many who think it isn't even a problem, that mind simply emerges as an aftereffect of neural activity in our brains. Our conscious experience of being a specific human or sense of self is just an epiphenomenon or an illusion. I have a hard time with this interpretation, and don't accept the evidence supports it. If our brain produces this "thing" that makes us who we think we are at least, then what do we do with the knowledge there are people who have multiple personalities, and completely different ones. We can just dismiss them as mad but that doesn't get us any closer to an understanding. I am wading through "The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick" for the second time and it is fascinating to read the first hand accounts of someone with this condition, literally an unrecognized stranger entering your mind, coming and going like an unwelcome intruder. What do we make of that?

Isn't he a science fiction writer? Much like L. Ron Hubbard.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Not quite, there were two differences:

1) Dick for the main part wrote intelligent SF, Hubbard was the worst kind of pulp author, a bad hack (trust me, I've read both authors).
2) Dick had the personal integrity to not found a religion.

Oh and Dick's "religious" visions were as a result of either his mental illness or hallucogenic drug usage.

I think it's gas, id say when someone comes up with something interesting you'll try to dig up some dirt or controversy about their facts.

However I don't think everyone on the atheist side has a clean mental health record or short of having illusions from time to time. ...

Do you always believe what you read online ?

Seen as we talking about conditions. I recall vaguely reading about researchers finding some people who'd have one part of their brain that believed one thing but the other part believed the opposite. There was even one subject where the person was, well, an atheist and a theist. Now, honestly I can't say whether this research was thrash or not but it does sort of make sense. Or concepts for 'mind' 'person' are mostly intuitively based and it would stand to reason that for something as complicated as the mind intuitiveness is the last thing we should be expecting.

nagirrac wrote: »

I would say there is very little that separates a deist from an atheist.

Except one holds to the idea that the universe was created by an intentional or intelligent agent, while the other does not. I would find that to be no small difference.

nagirrac wrote: »

In my experience it comes down to simply interpreting evidence and forming a personal worldview.

I see no way of interpreting any evidence to support the above idea. You would have to lay out your reasoning. Simply declaring you interpret it differently but without laying out how is about as useful as me saying "The apple on my table proves OJ did kill his wife, you are just not interpreting the evidence like I am" and then running out the door.

nagirrac wrote: »

I find the evidence for something like reincarnation (some aspects of individual memories being maintained across lifetimes) quite compelling, having read every available source, supportive and skeptical, that I could find on it.

I am aware of no such evidence. You would, as before, have to lay out what it is for me to be able to evaluate it. There appears to be some consistency in threads like this of people discussing the existence of evidence for things without ever getting around to saying what it is.

nagirrac wrote: »

There are many who think it isn't even a problem

That might be somewhat disingenuous. It is not that people do not think things like that are "not a problem". They just see them as open questions. The "Problem" for people like me is that while questions are open people play "god of the gaps". As if an open question by proxy is capable of lending credibility to any old nonsense one makes up to explain it.

Why is there a universe. Why do we appear to have "mind". They are open questions, sure. But being open questions in no way lends credibility to the notion there is a god, an after life, reincarnation, the capability of the mind to exist independent of the brain, or any of the other things people simply make up in and around those open questions.

Fantasy and imagination are great. Through them we do find answers to our questions. But there is a long process involved after simply fantasizing an answer. All too many people are simply content to stop there however and act like their ability to imagine up an answer is alone enough to lend that answer credence.

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

I'm pointing out that the religious "experiences" of Philip K Dick are explained by his mental illness, just like the vast Soviet anti-American conspiracy he thought fellow writers who praised his work were part of.

And you think I'm making **** up? Seriously? Are you that desperate for validation of your own beliefs that you have to diminish the mental issues of another in order that you can point out "nya, nyah, nyah, I have proof and you don't"?

Proof of what ?

There you go again with your cunning, baffling and condescending replies. ..

Mr Crystal Ball, tell me my beliefs.

Looks like you're more delusional than I, because I don't discuss my beliefs. ...

Brian, Geomy, CUT OUT the personal spat or cards and bans may follow

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Well I wasn't trying to make it personal. I was just utterly mystified that a poster would dismiss out of hand a person's well documented mental illness in a discussion.

If I went too far, I apologise to you.

No bother thanks Brian, sure we can all get a bit emotive on these topics, I apologise if I got a bit personal too...

nagirrac wrote: »

The paper I posted isn't an attack, it's a response to an attack.

Which as I said is no good to me. If you think reincarnation exists I want to see the positive substantiation for that. The original substantiation. Not a reply to a reply to that original substantiation. You are bringing me into the conversation several iterations into it, and third or fourth hand.

Once again if you think "reincarnation" exists then by my three step process above (which I note you "thanked") I want to know exactly what you think that means, exactly what you think supports the claim, and exactly why those things support that claim.

nagirrac wrote: »

The reincarnation claim is that some aspects of a human personality are transmitted from one lifetime to another.

They are, even in early life, my exposure of the very young to older people around them. Our personality is formed by a combination of genetics and nurture, often from an early age. In fact in late stage pregnancy even voices recognised by the developing child, especially that of its own mother, have been shown to have massively different effects than the voice of complete strangers. As has playing music in and around developing children.

But something tells me you are talking about more than this which is why I am being a stickler for being specific about what your ACTUAL claim is. Because many people who subscribe to the idea of "reincarnation" are suggesting that personality and memory leave the dead body in some kind of "spirit" form at which point they transfer.... by means unspecified, unknown, and unsubstantiated.... in part or in whole into a new host.

And THAT claim I have never seen even the remotest substantiation for. Much less from anyone on this thread.

Again all my time spent reading your link seems to do is suggest that some children have said things the origin of which remains a mystery. An open question. And as I have pointed out numerous times on this thread and others.... open questions are NOT evidence for something you simply made up on the spot.

For example if one were to say "I do not know how or why child X knows information Y..... therefore reincarnation" this is at best a complete non sequitur and at worst a canard.

Your link is also horrifically undetailed for anyone who is versed in reading scientific papers. Not that this is a scientific paper you linked to, but an opinion piece on a blog.

For example in the opening lines it says "He thoroughly questioned the child and the child's parents, including the people whom the child recalled were his parents from his past life."

What questions were asked EXACTLY? What were the answers EXACTLY? This is important information but your link asks us to take it all on faith. However we know from painful experience, especially in the area of child abuse, that the wrong questions can get positive answers. People have been accused of child molestation because "leading" questions were asked to children and "positive" answers were received falsely.

So you will forgive me if I am unimpressed.... in fact the complete opposite...... by being told a child remembering past lives was merely "Questions Thouroughly".

Perhaps some actual peer reviewed science rather than an opinion piece on a blog would be a better move from you in such discussions in future? That way we can hope some of the Methodology and Information is at least cogent and useful and not so easy for me to dismiss.

Worse in the following sentence there is a link to the papers this man is meant to have published. I followed the link but his papers are not on that link. Perhaps they are somewhere deeper in that site but they are not where the link points to.

Worse there appears to be a lot of Chinese whispers and Memetic natural selection in what is being presented here. Rather than point out that there is a massive lack of supporting evidence one instead goes on about 12 or 20 or so specific cases. In other words out of a huge melting pot one cherry picks the 12 cases that most supports the conclusion the scientist in question WANTS TO REACH. That is massively massively bad methodology. If you presented this to anyone even remotely interested in epidemiology they would likely start bleeding at the eye balls.

Further, as I said with chinese whispers, there is a massive time lag between cases of this and the actual "research". In one of his "top 20" cases he not only did not interview the child involved when it was a child.... he did not even interview the PERSON involved at any stage but in fact over a decade later talked to OTHER people over the period of another decade.

But of course all possibilities of lies, mis-remembered facts, embellishment or Chinese whispers are dismissed in a fetid need to find a "positive case" to write about. This is the danger of a "scientist" with an agenda.

But from reading through your link, and from your post above, it really seems that NEGATIVE evidence is the only evidence you have. Which is, once again as above, the idea that since you do not know the source of a childs knowledge on a certain topic that this suggests reincarnation. And you, for some reason that escapes me entirely, appear to find this intellectually compelling.

Even worse again is that the "positive cases" come often from people or cultures that strongly believe in reincarnation. You attempted, quite poorly, to pre-empt that objection above by suggesting this is because such people are more willing to listen to reincarnated children. Another possibility you gloss over entirely however is that such cultures have a natural penchant to embellish and accept such stories. Which will compound the "false positive" of failing to interview the child at source but instead interviewing people second hand who are already believers and inclined therefore to give the answers that will also lead towards the positive that this "scientist" himself sought to find.

So in summary all I am seeing here is confirmation bias, compounded with horrifically bad methodologies, compounded further by this need to almost present lack of answers and open questions AS evidence for the desired conclusion. All of which leads me, as I said before, with nothing but a mounting awe that you find something here even remotely intellectually satisfying when all I can muster from it is vicarious embarrassment on your behalf.

All I am seeing here is a list of open questions. And the open questions are being presented AS evidence for the desired conclusion. This is horrific at best. They are NOT evidence for the conclusions. They are merely a restatement of the original problem.

I will skip over your on going need to get personal with everyone you disagrees with you with comments like " haughty condescending pontificating superior language" and words like "dullard" and "arrogant" and so forth. I am having a conversation on a topic YOU brought up and if you do not like my reply so be it. You can keep the personal rhetoric and attacks out of it thanks.

I presented MY assessment of your link. Not Paul Edwards assessment. If there are overlaps between them then so be it. But those overlaps do not justify suggesting I was summarizing someone elses arguments. My responses were my own, made after having respectfully taken the time.... over a space of three days.... to actually read the link you presented rather than just dismiss it out of hand as many others would. My assesment of that link not going the way you wanted to is not ground to launch a personal tirade of ad hominem.

Once again you brought up reincarnation. Not me. And you presented a link to a blog as support for that position. So the only response open to me was to take the time (which I did at length) to read that link and respond to it. Your response.... to vaguely refer to OTHER things you claim to have "read on the subject".

Perhaps you have read things as you claim but what use is that to me? I can only comment on what you have presented to ME in this thread HERE. So claiming to have read other things in no way progresses the conversation here and now.

And once again: Having read the blog you linked me to all I can see is massive methodological flaws, information that should be included but was left absent, claims based on interviews second hand with people who were not even the original person claimed to have been "reincarnated", and the actual problem being restated as if it is evidence for the conclusion.

Any ONE of which is enough to torpedo the idea that reincarnation is substantiated but taken all together simply leaves the idea in tatters.

Now if you claim to have read better evidence than that which you have presented thus far then I remain, as I was above, very open to reading and assessing it. I think, as I said, we can proceed without the personal attacks you opened your last post with however.

nagirrac wrote: »

What Stevenson and others have done is to demonstrate without reasonable doubt that it does happen.

Have they? Where? Certainly not in the link you gave above for reasons I have already explained at length. Perhaps you have better links to present, or better evidence, but one is left wondering why you chose the bad evidence if you claim to have better evidence.

You can claim, over and over, to have engaged in a "careful review of the evidence" but until such time as you present that evidence I can only take your word for this. Which I fully intend NOT to do.