Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Part 2)

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

This was the only part relevant to my argument so I will respond accordingly:

"A source that's inside our brain is unreliable"
We use our "Unreliable" brain through the scientific method to arrive at the conclusion that the universe runs according to a universal set of laws and principles, In fact it was our "Unreliable" brain that produced these laws of mathematics and physics which again cannot be trusted being the product of a an "Unreliable brain/reasoning".

And what is the origin of our unreliable brain - the initial set of circumstances that set life upon it's course and brought us to where we are now?
We cannot trust our minds? We cannot rely on the systems we use to determine the existence we live in?
Perhaps we should complain to the management!

ScumLord wrote: »

Yes, if you do the experiment once there is a chance you might survive and a chance you might die. It tells you nothing essentially. That's why you run it thousands of times. There are a lot of human behaviours that you could call false beliefs. The benefit of humans believing something that isn't true is that it often keeps them away from danger. If you believe a water supply is cursed but in fact it's actually polluted the false belief has the same effect.

I have copied/pasted some portions of my main argument which I believe to be relevant and no response was made regarding them.

I argued that based on Naturalism,natural selection and evolution that true & false believe are both adequate in resulting in survival.

Hence even if the experiment is repeated it remains that based purely in the process of natural selection/SOF False belief can still lead to survival.

Looking at the definition of survival of the fittest(SOF) in the dictionary of Biology.
survival of the fittest
phrase of survival
1.
Biology
the continued existence of organisms that are best adapted to their environment, with the extinction of others, as a concept in the Darwinian theory of evolution.

Adaptation hence has nothing to do with intelligence.

Even if we agree that evolution is true again I would say that you can't test that you got your logic from evolution unless you want to use the half truth fallacy, consolidated by the fact that due to our limited senses and the fallibility of the scientific method we can never claim any certainty and even if evidence is given, it will still unreliable to relay on your reasoning, since they weren't over watched by a perfect designer.

Therefore if you say that your reasoning abilities/cognitive abilities are a by product of evolution which help us survive, I just shown that it doesn't make sense from such perspective.

even if we grant that simple true belief can lead to survival it doesn't follow that we can understand mathematics,philosophy and do science

If our reasoning capacity was just for survival then unlike animals who have very low capacity of reasoning, just enough to survive and reproduce, we have reasoning capacity different to animal that allows us to understand how the galaxy work, how the ocean waves work & how all these complex thing in the universe work which a Cat cannot do.

Again it doesn't make sense for such cognitive faculty to develop which lead us to such advanced thinking and reasoning since it doesn't not even make sense for simple truth bearing faculties to develop via this process & the very fact that they do work can only be explained appropriately by the presence of a Creative mind, that allowed for these things to work and for us to have these faculties as trust worthy and reliant.

Harika

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

This was the only part relevant to my argument so I will respond accordingly:

"A source that's inside our brain is unreliable"
We use our "Unreliable" brain through the scientific method to arrive at the conclusion that the universe runs according to a universal set of laws and principles, In fact it was our "Unreliable" brain that produced these laws of mathematics and physics which again cannot be trusted being the product of a an "Unreliable brain/reasoning".

Here you are wrong, those laws are not required to be interpreted by our brains, the stars, planets and the universe are following those rules. We can observe them in action, we can predict the future and we can explain the past by it. We will never be 100% right, because of our limitations, but can we live with this limitations while it is openly stated that it is limited or instead believe in a dogma that has not been proven but insists to have the absolute truth without the chance to challenge it?

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm afraid I need convincing on this.

I cant convince you of this if you believe your brain to be unreliable, as any conclusion you arrive at will be questionable and untrustworthy being the product of unreliable thinking and reasoning.

Harika

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

Even if we agree that evolution is true again I would say that you can't test that you got your logic from evolution unless you want to use the half truth fallacy, consolidated by the fact that due to our limited senses and the fallibility of the scientific method we can never claim any certainty and even if evidence is given, it will still unreliable to relay on your reasoning, since they weren't over watched by a perfect designer.

Therefore if you say that your reasoning abilities/cognitive abilities are a by product of evolution which help us survive, I just shown that it doesn't make sense from such perspective.

....

Again it doesn't make sense for such cognitive faculty to develop which lead us to such advanced thinking and reasoning since it doesn't not even make sense for simple truth bearing faculties to develop via this process & the very fact that they do work can only be explained appropriately by the presence of a Creative mind, that allowed for these things to work and for us to have these faculties as trust worthy and reliant.

Logic has developed from higher thinking with our brain growing bigger and more space to compute information around us and learn from it. Basically a caveman that learned when another caveman goes into a cave and gets eaten by a bear, the same will happen to him and he does not go in there, will help him to survive and reproduce. What is a perfect example for evolution.

Harika wrote: »

Here you are wrong, those laws are not required to be interpreted by our brains, the stars, planets and the universe are following those rules. We can observe them in action, we can predict the future and we can explain the past by it. We will never be 100% right, because of our limitations, but can we live with this limitations while it is openly stated that it is limited or instead believe in a dogma that has not been proven but insists to have the absolute truth without the chance to challenge it?

You keep forgetting the fact that our brain,deduction and reasoning was the source of these laws and since you refuse to accept that our brain and reasoning is reliable instead saying it's "Unreliable" it follows that any law,theory or principle is unreliable.

As how can something reliable come from something that's unreliable?

Harika

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

You keep forgetting the fact that our brain,deduction and reasoning was the source of these laws and since you refuse to accept that our brain and reasoning is reliable instead saying it's "Unreliable" it follows that any law,theory or principle is unreliable.

As how can something reliable come from something that's unreliable?

Because it is not based on our brain. Our brain is used to describe what is observed, with the limitations it has. But you cannot invent e.g. E = mc3 and hope it stands through review and testing, while the statement "We need a creator to use logic" has no base in science at all.

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

I argued that based on Naturalism,natural selection and evolution that true & false believe are both adequate in resulting in survival.

But it won't always result in both surviving. If one animal can run faster than another both might survive but survival is only half the battle, they also need to reproduce. Females are the ultimate deciders of which path evolution takes because they tend to decide which males get to reproduce.

Even if the less fit animal can survive the female is more than likely going to choose to reproduce with the fitter male, she gets to decide that by making them fight each other for the privilege of mating.

Hence even if the experiment is repeated it remains that based purely in the process of natural selection/SOF False belief can still lead to survival.

Again, in isolation this theory makes some sense but put into the real world where this is going to happen thousands of times that false believe will end up killing off a lot of stupid people.

Looking at the definition of survival of the fittest(SOF) in the dictionary of Biology.
survival of the fittest
phrase of survival
1.
Biology
the continued existence of organisms that are best adapted to their environment, with the extinction of others, as a concept in the Darwinian theory of evolution.

Adaptation hence has nothing to do with intelligence.

What do you mean by that?

Even if we agree that evolution is true again I would say that you can't test that you got your logic from evolution unless you want to use the half truth fallacy, consolidated by the fact that due to our limited senses and the fallibility of the scientific method we can never claim any certainty and even if evidence is given, it will still unreliable to relay on your reasoning, since they weren't over watched by a perfect designer.

I don't know what you mean by "you got your logic from evolution".

What fallibility of the scientific method?

Therefore if you say that your reasoning abilities/cognitive abilities are a by product of evolution which help us survive, I just shown that it doesn't make sense from such perspective.

That's because you're using a twisted view of science to make your god seem more plausible. The mental gymnastics that people go through to try and make religion seem logical while denouncing logic is quite impressive.

If our reasoning capacity was just for survival then unlike animals who have very low capacity of reasoning, just enough to survive and reproduce, we have reasoning capacity different to animal that allows us to understand how the galaxy work, how the ocean waves work & how all these complex thing in the universe work which a Cat cannot do.

We have pretty similar reasoning capacity to animals (let off a loud bang in a group of humans and you'll get a pretty similar reaction to any other animal)we do have another level we can go to, and it is a survival technique.
The human mind has often been described as a prediction machine. We can essentially see into the future, we know if we plant a seed now it will grow into food in 6 months time, most other animals don't have that ability, at least not to the extent humans do. We weren't born with that knowledge though. We didn't know how Galaxies worked until pretty recently, or how waves worked, it took us thousands of years of trial and error and passing down the knowledge to our children who improved it slightly and passed it on.

But it wasn't until science came along that we really began to understand things, we've advanced more in the last 300 years than we have in the previous 100,000. All because of science. religion had the best part of 10,000 years and didn't come close to advancing the human race like science has.

Again it doesn't make sense for such cognitive faculty to develop which lead us to such advanced thinking and reasoning since it doesn't not even make sense for simple truth bearing faculties to develop via this process & the very fact that they do work can only be explained appropriately by the presence of a Creative mind, that allowed for these things to work and for us to have these faculties as trust worthy and reliant.

It's hard to make sense of this but are you saying there's no evolutionary advantage to being intelligent?

ScumLord wrote: »

First of all I think you mean "Empirical" not "imperial". :P

You're breaking it down to it's most basic level and then misinterpreting the whole process and what it's intended to achieve.

A scientist may observe something and come up with a theory, but then he has to come up with some way of proving it. They don't just observe something then fit a theory around their assumptions. Most the time all that scientists are doing is depriving things and being left with most likely scenarios.

Scientists do thousands of tests and let the data tell them the truth of the matter. So while human cognitive abilities have routines that can produce false assumptions science allows us to develop tools that counteract those routines and biases.

Physics and maths are much easier to defend because they're completely unbiased, they're simply a most basic language for representing basic data. There's no wiggle room with the number one, it can't be misinterpreted, it is what it is. We have the Islamic faith to thank for modern mathematics, and their system has been proved effective by being put into use in factories all over the world. If numbers were not exactly true we wouldn't be living in the world we live in.

When you assumed that our brain is unreliable this automatically meant that the brain of every Human begin is unreliable including the scientists; when these scientists do all these thousands of tests they are using their "Unreliable brain" to produce the data which is also unreliable as something which is reliable cannot come about from something which is unreliable.

It follows that while Physics and maths are unbiased they were still the product of our unreliable unbiased thinking from which we concluded that 1+1 will = 2

The only way you can really trust that the laws of physics and mathematics.. are reliable is admiting our brain is reliable for us to trust our reasoning and deduction being the product of a relatively reliable brain.

how can you really know you're perception is right and everything you see and think you know is correct if nobody over-watched the designing of your brain and senses?
If someone makes a mathematical error a mistake or a false assumptions these are not related to whether our brain is reliable or not rather does it mean their brain is not functioning well? of course not no one would say that to a student,just because you're reasoning is poor doesn't mean your brain and senses are not reliable, the more you learn and study the lower the chance of you making a mistake.

My question in the end is how based on your current beliefs of Natural selection,evolution and naturalism, that in the absence of a Creator you can still account for & trust your cognitive faculty & reasoning.

[Deleted User]

What is reliable?

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

When you assumed that our brain is unreliable this automatically meant that the brain of every Human begin is unreliable including the scientists; when these scientists do all these thousands of tests they are using their "Unreliable brain" to produce the data which is also unreliable as something which is reliable cannot come about from something which is unreliable.

Your twisting or misrepresenting the facts again there DoF. Our brain developed to be great at hunting and planning ahead. I posted a link to you earlier which you obviously ignored because you're misrepresenting what I said again.

Our brain has ways of making instantaneous decisions, this is the more primitive way of thinking. It's not always right but it doesn't need to be, it's generally for getting you away from danger. Then there's a slow way of thinking that's logical, it's a way of thinking that requires more energy and concentration. You can run this experiment yourself, go for a run and ask yourself simple questions like, "what colour is my front door".. Instantaneous answer without a second thought. Now start doing multiplication tables while your running and you'll find you slow down and may even have to stop as your brain starts dedicating itself to more complex and logical thought.

It's not so much that our brain is unreliable it's that it's functions are designed to achieve tasks in particular ways in particular time frames. We need additional outside help for more advanced thinking, tools like language, maths, literacy.

It follows that while Physics and maths are unbiased they were still the product of our unreliable unbiased thinking from which we concluded that 1+1 will = 2

If they were developed yesterday you could maybe make that argument but we've been using it successfully for over a thousand years. If it's flawed show me the flaws.

how can you really know you're perception is right and everything you see and think you know is correct if nobody over-watched the designing of your brain and senses?

This is getting into Matrix stuff now. Human perception is limited. We can't see infrared for example. But it works. In the natural world if your perceptions are wrong it gets you killed.

My question in the end is how based on your current beliefs of Natural selection,evolution and naturalism, that in the absence of a Creator you can still account for & trust your cognitive faculty & reasoning.

I don't see how a creator makes any difference?

Life experience and the fact we can talk to each other and confirm our experiences shows that our individual experiences are not just a figment of our imagination.

ScumLord wrote: »

Your twisting or misrepresenting the facts again there DoF. Our brain developed to be great at hunting and planning ahead. I posted a link to you earlier which you obviously ignored because you're misrepresenting what I said again.

Our brain has ways of making instantaneous decisions, this is the more primitive way of thinking. It's not always right but it doesn't need to be, it's generally for getting you away from danger. Then there's a slow way of thinking that's logical, it's a way of thinking that requires more energy and concentration. You can run this experiment yourself, go for a run and ask yourself simple questions like, "what colour is my front door".. Instantaneous answer without a second thought. Now start doing multiplication tables while your running and you'll find you slow down and may even have to stop as your brain starts dedicating itself to more complex and logical thought.

It's not so much that our brain is unreliable it's that it's functions are designed to achieve tasks in particular ways in particular time frames. We need additional outside help for more advanced thinking, tools like language, maths, literacy.

If they were developed yesterday you could maybe make that argument but we've been using it successfully for over a thousand years. If it's flawed show me the flaws.

This is getting into Matrix stuff now. Human perception is limited. We can't see infrared for example. But it works. In the natural world if your perceptions are wrong it gets you killed.

I don't see how a creator makes any difference?

Life experience and the fact we can talk to each other and confirm our experiences shows that our individual experiences are not just a figment of our imagination.

That's what I have been trying to get to and my whole argument was simply from a naturalistic perspective alone you have no reason to trust your cognitive faculty or reasoning at all and I proposed that the best current explanation for this would be a perfect Creator who designed the brain to make it reliable.

Your second point regarding the development is basically a circular argument as you are using your successful reasoning to validate your reasoning. It still doesn't account for how based on Natural selection,evolution and naturalism you can account for such a successful reasoning.

ScumLord wrote: »

But it won't always result in both surviving. If one animal can run faster than another both might survive but survival is only half the battle, they also need to reproduce. Females are the ultimate deciders of which path evolution takes because they tend to decide which males get to reproduce.

Even if the less fit animal can survive the female is more than likely going to choose to reproduce with the fitter male, she gets to decide that by making them fight each other for the privilege of mating.

Again, in isolation this theory makes some sense but put into the real world where this is going to happen thousands of times that false believe will end up killing off a lot of stupid people.

What do you mean by that?

I don't know what you mean by "you got your logic from evolution".

What fallibility of the scientific method?

That's because you're using a twisted view of science to make your god seem more plausible. The mental gymnastics that people go through to try and make religion seem logical while denouncing logic is quite impressive.

We have pretty similar reasoning capacity to animals (let off a loud bang in a group of humans and you'll get a pretty similar reaction to any other animal)we do have another level we can go to, and it is a survival technique.
The human mind has often been described as a prediction machine. We can essentially see into the future, we know if we plant a seed now it will grow into food in 6 months time, most other animals don't have that ability, at least not to the extent humans do. We weren't born with that knowledge though. We didn't know how Galaxies worked until pretty recently, or how waves worked, it took us thousands of years of trial and error and passing down the knowledge to our children who improved it slightly and passed it on.

But it wasn't until science came along that we really began to understand things, we've advanced more in the last 300 years than we have in the previous 100,000. All because of science. religion had the best part of 10,000 years and didn't come close to advancing the human race like science has.

It's hard to make sense of this but are you saying there's no evolutionary advantage to being intelligent?

Your point regarding the rabbit deals with survival of the fittest and not survival through "True/false belief".

Lol @ false belief killing a lot of stupid people, but what am saying is the exact opposite! that false belief could possibly save a lot of stupid people here is another scenario to make the image clearer:

Two men who came too close to a fire one of them uses his reasoning and deduce that if he comes any closer he will burn(true belief) the other however due to his inadequate cognitive faculty deduced that a demon will jump out of the fire and grab him(false belief).

Both men survived but one based on false belief and one based on true belief.

When I mentioned that "Adaptation has nothing to do with intelligence":

I would argue that evolution is only concerned about adaptation and not thinking or reasoning. Surviving does not require intelligence necessarily, that's why we say survival of the fittest not smartest. Even if your cognitive functions have evolved to be strong how do you still know reality is how you truly think it is? sure it might be strong but not perfect.

If you say because "we don't understand evolution, therefore god gave us these functions." I would say that it is a strawman, its not that we dont know how we got our cognitive senses therefore god, its if we got it from evolution then since it was not over watched by a perfect being it could end up being unreliable, its like me making a car engine when im not a engineer in anything, you cant know if its reliable.

ScumLord wrote: »

We have pretty similar reasoning capacity to animals (let off a loud bang in a group of humans and you'll get a pretty similar reaction to any other animal)we do have another level we can go to, and it is a survival technique.

"The human mind has often been described as a prediction machine. We can essentially see into the future, we know if we plant a seed now it will grow into food in 6 months time, most other animals don't have that ability, at least not to the extent humans do. We weren't born with that knowledge though. We didn't know how Galaxies worked until pretty recently, or how waves worked, it took us thousands of years of trial and error and passing down the knowledge to our children who improved it slightly and passed it on.

But it wasn't until science came along that we really began to understand things, we've advanced more in the last 300 years than we have in the previous 100,000. All because of science. religion had the best part of 10,000 years and didn't come close to advancing the human race like science has."

What you just said still does not account that unlike animals who have a low reasoning capacity to survive and reproduce we have a reasoning capacity that allows us to understand the universe and do science and since such a high level of intelligence cannot be attained from a Naturalistic perspective currently the best explanation is a Intelligent Creator who over-watched the designing of our brain and senses.

ScumLord wrote: »

It's hard to make sense of this but are you saying there's no evolutionary advantage to being intelligent?

Basic intelligence which allows us to reproduce and survive not the level of advance intelligence Human beings currently have.

I would argue that the best explanation is a Intelligent designer who designed the Human mind to such advance level of intelligence.

However before I can make an argument for his existence you need to accept that currently the best explanation is a Creator unless you can provide another explanation through a different mean then Naturalism.

I would argue that the best explanation to claim that our cognitive faculty and reasoning are in anyway reliable is that they must have been over-watched by an Intelligent Creator which also account for our advanced thinking and reasoning that cannot have evolved through naturalism and natural selection alone.

Okay Defender of Faith, I'm back. I've read the discussions that have been going on since yesterday, but before I get to them, I'll reply to that question you posted before. This is going to be a long post, so grab a cup of tea or coffee.

If Naturalism[as you asserted] is true, then I would argue that we have no reason to trust our cognitive faculties/reasoning abilities, why is this you might say..

No reason at all? I think the problem you're having here is that for some reason, you think that in order for us to think, we must be able to think absolutely correctly. You demand perfection, for some reason. Why?
Yes, I can trust my cognitive faculties. They're obviously not perfect, but that is what education is for. To improve. So, let's imagine a scenario under naturalism. I've got a plate of food in front of me. Since my cognitive faculties aren't 100% perfect, there is a chance that it could contain poison, and I wouldn't know before I ate it.
Is it your contention then, that under a naturalist mindset, under a "my faculties aren't perfect" mindset, we should be paralyzed in that scenario, unable to make a decision?
Since that doesn't happen, I will eat the food, as long as it looks, tastes, and smells appetising. Could it be poison? Well, I've eaten this particular dish thousands of times before, odds are very low, virtually zero, that it isn't poison. I don't know absolutely that it doesn't, but I'm not going to let that stop me from having a good meal.
(Just to demonstrate this, I'll let you know that I've got a nut allergy. I've got to be careful with what I eat. As I type this, I'm eating a take-away meal. The restaurant assured me that they were careful with their cooking implements and ingredients, but of course, I can't know this for absolutely certain. However, does my lack of absolute certainty prevent me from eating the food? No. I take the chance, and I'm feeling fine. I'll still be careful in the future of course, but I'm not going to let a lack of absolute certainty prevent me from living my life).

From a theistic/Islamic perspective if I am grounding my foundations in my religion, then I have all the reason to believe that our cognitive faculty is valid and trustworthy as throughout the Qur'an God/Allaah tells us to think and reflect, "Do they not ponder/reflect?" this is assuming that we are blessed with the capacity and cognitive ability that if we don't use we are sell ourself short which is our intellect and mind.

So to make sure I understand that correctly, you trust your faculties only because this other being tells you to? As a muslim, you obviously believe this Allah to be/have perfect faculties, correct? If so, how did you determine that? It's logically impossible for a fallible being to determine if another being is infallible - the fallible person could always lack some piece of information or make a mistake in their reasoning. Sure, some people just say "I have a very high confidence that Being X is infallible", but that's not the same as what you're demanding here. You're demanding perfection if I'm understanding you correctly.
In order for you to determine correctly that Allah actually is infallible, you would have to be infallible yourself prior to speaking with/experiencing him. Even then, how would you determine correctly that you actually are infallible? There could be some piece of information that you don't know that you don't know.

for example if I take two people and blindfold them both & take them to a busy highway then I would tell both men to run across the road blind folded.

As others have said, you have to run this experiment thousands of times. Also, how does your experiment falsify the obtaining of intelligence through evolution? That scenario only deals with two men in one situation.
Evolution has to do with populations over long periods of time. The long and short of it is, that our ancestors lived, mated and died, with each successive generation being just that tiniest bit more intelligent than the previous one. Each time a couple used intelligence to get ahead of their competition in the game of life, that trait (intelligence) got passed down to the offspring. The nature of their environment was such that those who utilized intelligence (in our case, the use of tools) were the most likely to survive and reproduce.

However if you argue that this actually works because it works in the past, I would say that of course it does work! our reasoning abilities and cognitive faculty, as most people in the world are sound. However the only way to you can accept and validate these is by an existence of a Creator.

No...you've just agreed with us that we accept our faculties precisely because they've worked in the past. You're now violating Occam's Razor by saying that we can only trust them by adding in this new element, namely a creator.
For one, by throwing in the element of a creator, you've automatically endowed it with perfect intelligence. Why? How is it you've determined that it/he is actually that intelligent? Isn't that you going multiple steps too far, too quickly? The human body certainly isn't the product of what we would expect of a perfect intelligence.

how the galaxy work, how the ocean waves work & how all these complex thing in the universe work which a Cat cannot do.

That is because a cat's environment doesn't require cats to try and understand complex concepts in order to survive and reproduce. In the past, our ancestors struggled for survival. Those of our ancestors who learned to navigate by starlight for example were better able to survive, find food, mate and pass on this technique to their offspring.
Physically speaking, our bodies are nothing remarkable. It is our minds that helped us survive the harsh world of the past. Where one species might have used their sense of smell to track prey, our ancestors would have used their minds to remember the migratory patterns of prey, and to plan out hunts. Thus, they survived.

However assuming Naturalism to be true all your left with is a vicious cycle "My reasoning is valid because it works I tried it" or "I am using my reasoning right now to validate my reasoning

This is a problem only if you're alone. If I validate my reasoning with other people, and more importantly, lots of other people, we start to see patterns. Lots of people, when fed the same information, will tend to come out with the same answer, as long as they carefully check to make sure they're not doing mistakes.
That line you used just there I remember hearing in the Matt Dillahunty vs Sye Ten Bruggencate debate from last summer. Check it out, Sye Ten tries to say that thought is only reliable when you presuppose/assume a creator beforehand, and he fails miserably at it.

Until you can prove to me based on your current beliefs of Natural selection,evolution and naturalism, that in the absence of God you can still account for & trust your cognitive faculty & reasoning we cant really go further.

Simple. I'm in my mid 20s, and have not yet died. If my faculties were as faulty without this belief or assumption of a creator, then wouldn't it stand that I should have died? Also, this again is a reversal of the burden of proof.
Just so we're clear, when you say "you can still account for & trust your cognitive faculty and reasoning" is there an unwritten "absolutely" in there? Do you want me to account for an absolute trust? Is that what you're really asking for?

In other words you cannot or should not reject God as an inference to the best explanation for consciousness on the basis that you may not have an explanation for God. The first thing that needs to be addressed is does God explain our advanced reasoning and cognitive faculty adequately?

The first thing isn't an explanation of just what the word God means? Now you've just jumped the shark...again. I can't say that the word God is the best explanation unless I know what the word God means. I can and should reject that Concept X is a valid explanation for Problem Y if I don't even know what Concept X actually is! You might as well have said "Blgfughr is the best explanation for consciousness"...well what is Blgfughr? I haven't got a clue!

Here’s an analogy to put things into perspective, imagine if there is a group of archaeologists digging on the moon; they find pieces of pottery, arrow heads, pieces of parchment and so on. Looking at these findings they conclude or infer that there must have been a civilization here. Now along comes Dr. Daniel Dennett and says “How dare you infer such a thing?! Who put this civilization here?! Unless we know who put this civilization here we cannot conclude that there was a civilization!”

I'm not familiar with Dr. Dennett, so I don't know if this is imaginary quote from him is fallacious or not.
I suppose the key word there is civilization. How many artifacts are you talking about? If it's a small number in a loose pile in a few square feet of ground, then no, I wouldn't call that a civilisation. It would be rational to conclude that someone must have visited the moon in the past and left this pile of artifacts.
Now, if you mean a large number of artifacts, strewn all over the place, with the remains of what appears to be some sort of dwellings, then yes, the term civilization could be used.
(For the purposes of this hypothetical, we are of course ignoring that the moon is a dead rock in space, with no atmosphere and no resources that could be used to cultivate food).

I would argue that evolution is only concerned about adaptation and not thinking or reasoning.

I would argue that this is because you haven't seen animals use intelligence in order to survive. Check out footage of monkeys or gorillas on youtube. Here's a good one

Imagine that gorilla goes back into the wild and starts living with a pack of other gorillas. He would use what he's learned to better survive. He doesn't understand exactly what fire is probably (I wouldn't be surprised if all he thinks about fire is "Hot!" "Ouch!" and "Danger!") but clearly he has learned to use it. He would teach his offspring what he knows and they would understand it from a younger age than him. Assuming they survive, they would have longer to live around fire, longer to get to know it and understand and discover something new about it, which they in turn pass on to their offspring. This all adds up over long periods of time.

that's why we say survival of the fittest not smartest.

The phrase survival of the fittest means those who best fit into their environment. It does not mean those who are best physically fit i.e. those with the biggest muscles.
Imagine I have three animals, two male and one female. One of the males is larger, stronger and faster than the other, who is physically weak. However, there's a disease, and the stronger male contracts it, gets sick and dies. The other male, though physically weaker, happens to have a natural immunity to the disease. He survives, and gets to mate with the female, and pass on his immunity to the next generation.
Now imagine the same three animals, but the best and most nutritious food is encased in hard shells. The stronger male is unable to crack the shell with his fists. Try as he might, he just isn't strong enough. The weaker male, although his muscles are smaller, has an idea. He grabs a rock and bashes at the shell for a while, and presto! He gets the food. If the stronger male thinks for a bit, he might hit upon the idea of waiting for the weaker male to crack open the shells, and then steal the food for himself. If he doesn't think of this, if he stupidly insists on constantly trying to bash open the shells with his fists, he gets nowhere.

Adaptation hence has nothing to do with intelligence.

You say this only because you are either ignorant of the many times in the past where intelligence helped our ancestors survive and later reproduce, or are deliberately ignoring them. For you, survival has nothing whatsoever to do with thinking oneself out of a bad situation.

Basic intelligence which allows us to reproduce and survive not the level of advance intelligence Human beings currently have.

Wouldn't you say that being able to produce spacecraft and hopefully building habitable structures on other planets would be a method of survival? Imagine Earth stops being habitable for us. Then, our intelligence would be the only thing capable of ensuring our continued survival.

The conclusion remains that False belief can lead to survival just like true belief.

In the short term, maybe. Someone who believes something that is false, and more importantly, doesn't test to see whether what he believes actually is true, is more likely to believe other false things. So the guy who believes his feet get stuck to the path, or who believes there are demons in fire, could believe other false things that prove detrimental to his survival. If he had tested what he believed before and found out that in fact, there are no demons in fire, he would have learned to be careful around it, and to use fire to help him.

but rather accept that the best explanation for my argument is the presence of this "Existence".

Which you haven't done. You've just put forward the claim that a creator is the best explanation, but have not yet gone into any detail about how it is the best explanation - just insisted that it is. Rather, you've spent most of your time trying to debunk our beliefs. This is getting awfully similar to christian creationists who spend all of their time and energy trying to debunk evolution and then trying to shove in creationism as the "best explanation" by default, as if there are only two options, without actually demonstrating creationism to be true.

In fact it was our "Unreliable" brain that produced these laws of mathematics and physics which again cannot be trusted being the product of a an "Unreliable brain/reasoning".

False. We don't produce laws of mathematics and physics, we discover them. What you said there makes no sense - it would be as asinine as saying "Christopher Columbus produced the Americas on his voyage". No, he discovered them.
Our understanding of these laws isn't perfect - note how we went from a Newtonian understanding of gravity to Einsteinian, but we are improving all the time. Again, it seems here as if you're demanding that humans, when they think, must be able to produce perfection right from the get go, and that the only way to do that is through a creator god...while we're saying that we obviously do not need perfection at all.

consolidated by the fact that due to our limited senses and the fallibility of the scientific method we can never claim any certainty

Again, I'm sensing an unwritten "absolute" there in that sentence. We do not require absolute certainty.

I cant convince you of this if you believe your brain to be unreliable, as any conclusion you arrive at will be questionable and untrustworthy being the product of unreliable thinking and reasoning.

Again, I'm sensing that you demand perfection. What I'm getting from this is that for you, there are only two states - perfect reasoning, or absolute failure at reasoning. For you, for some reason, you don't want to go with a mode of thinking that doesn't require absolute perfect reasoning. Like my meal analogy earlier on, I don't need to know everything or have access to a being who I think knows everything before I will eat it - I just need to have at least some measure of confidence in my reasoning to do it. What you're demanding is completely unreasonable.

It follows that while Physics and maths are unbiased they were still the product of our unreliable unbiased thinking from which we concluded that 1+1 will = 2

Imagine a scenario where, in order to survive and mate with a female, I must do a sum of 1 + 1 and then pick a door with one of ten answers. If I've done the sum 1 + 1 thousands of times before, I don't need absolute certainty. I can reason out that the last five thousand times I did the sum, it equated to 2, and therefore, more than likely, if I do it again in this scenario, it should equate to 2 again and therefore, that's the door I should pick.

how can you really know you're perception is right and everything you see and think you know is correct if nobody over-watched the designing of your brain and senses?

Yet again another time where I sense an unwritten "absolute" where one isn't required. I don't need to know it absolutely, I just need a high level of confidence.

since such a high level of intelligence cannot be attained from a Naturalistic perspective

What evidence do you have that supports this statement? So far, you have presented nothing that would support it, just an outright dismissal.

What you just said still does not account that unlike animals who have a low reasoning capacity to survive and reproduce we have a reasoning capacity that allows us to understand the universe and do science

Because our environment was one where those who had intelligence were better able to survive, where those who had the bigger muscles or could run faster lost out in the mating battles to those with the better brains.

However before I can make an argument for his existence you need to accept that currently the best explanation is a Creator unless you can provide another explanation through a different mean then Naturalism.

No. Just no. I can read or listen to someone's argument without making completely unnecessary presuppositions. Is this you saying that you are unable to present a case for what it is you believe, if those of us on the opposite side do not blindly accept your assertions first?

Defender OF Faith wrote: »

That's what I have been trying to get to and my whole argument was simply from a naturalistic perspective alone you have no reason to trust your cognitive faculty or reasoning at all and I proposed that the best current explanation for this would be a perfect Creator who designed the brain to make it reliable.

I just don't get what your trying to say here, there's no naturalistic argument that ant particular animal can't trust it's cognitive faculties. You've taken one snippet of information, isolated it and expanded it out into a story that suits your viewpoint.

Your point regarding the rabbit deals with survival of the fittest and not survival through "True/false belief".

Lol @ false belief killing a lot of stupid people, but what am saying is the exact opposite! that false belief could possibly save a lot of stupid people here is another scenario to make the image clearer:

This makes it no clearer. You're going to have to start from the beginning on your analogies because you've lost me.

I would argue that evolution is only concerned about adaptation and not thinking or reasoning.

Evolution is a by product of animal killing each other, riding each other, random mutations, environmental cues, it has no concerns.

Surviving does not require intelligence necessarily,

No the majority of life on this planet is as stupid as dirt, the majority of life doesn't even have a brain.

that's why we say survival of the fittest not smartest.

Survival of the fittest is a bit of a catchphrase that's somewhat misleading. Natural selection is a better description of the process.

Even if your cognitive functions have evolved to be strong how do you still know reality is how you truly think it is?

I have the senses that I evolved with to survive, humans are as much of an experiment as any animal. My reality isn't the whole picture, we don't see the full spectrum of light or anywhere close to the entire range of sound but we have what is required to survive. Science allows us to see the true magnitude of reality.

What you just said still does not account that unlike animals who have a low reasoning capacity to survive and reproduce we have a reasoning capacity that allows us to understand the universe and do science and since such a high level of intelligence cannot be attained from a Naturalistic perspective currently the best explanation is a Intelligent Creator who over-watched the designing of our brain and senses.

Of course it can, we can follow the evolution of the human animal right back to it's beginnings and further back to when it wasn't even human, back further to when we weren't even mammals. We have historical evidence, archaeological evidence, biological evidence, DNA evidence, environmental evidence . We can explain pretty detailed the likely scenario that lead to the human evolving, how it developed, came up with religion, civilization and just about every technological advance since. There's no mystery, we evolved through natural selection.

I would argue that the best explanation is a Intelligent designer who designed the Human mind to such advance level of intelligence.

You can argue that all day long but unless you can prove it to me then I'm not going to believe you or the people who wrote the book a thousand and a bit years ago. I think the history of religion is fascinating and it was even beneficial at the time but it's just an ancient attempt at explaining the world as far as I'm concerned.

However before I can make an argument for his existence you need to accept that currently the best explanation is a Creator unless you can provide another explanation through a different mean then Naturalism.

No I can't provide a better explanation than what actually happened. A creator I can accept, an administrator makes no sense and the god described in holy books is just the best attempt ancient people could come up with, basically a powerful, infallible king that micromanages everything making the perfection of the universe pointless in the first place.

I would argue that the best explanation to claim that our cognitive faculty and reasoning are in anyway reliable is that they must have been over-watched by an Intelligent Creator which also account for our advanced thinking and reasoning that cannot have evolved through naturalism and natural selection alone.

Why would this intelligent creator behave in this way? A perfect being creating an imperfect one?
The simple answer would be to watch this fallible person grow, learn by error and achievement etc.
The intelligent creator, who in this thread is called God, would have to accept responsibility for the error he created.
Again this goes against the standard view of the infallible god that I suggest most people have.

indioblack wrote: »

I would argue that the best explanation to claim that our cognitive faculty and reasoning are in anyway reliable is that they must have been over-watched by an Intelligent Creator which also account for our advanced thinking and reasoning that cannot have evolved through naturalism and natural selection alone.

Why would this intelligent creator behave in this way? A perfect being creating an imperfect one?
The simple answer would be to watch this fallible person grow, learn by error and achievement etc.
The intelligent creator, who in this thread is called God, would have to accept responsibility for the error he created.
Again this goes against the standard view of the infallible god that I suggest most people have.

Hey, Indio, just a small suggestion. It would be a good idea to highlight the part you're quoting and put QUOTE tags around it, just so we know that that is not your own speech, like what I did here with yours. It makes for better reading comprehension. You might get someone who reads that and thinks that that is you saying the first paragraph.

RikuoAmero wrote: »

Hey, Indio, just a small suggestion. It would be a good idea to highlight the part you're quoting and put QUOTE tags around it, just so we know that that is not your own speech, like what I did here with yours. It makes for better reading comprehension. You might get someone who reads that and thinks that that is you saying the first paragraph.

OK - these electronic computing mechanisms get me confused!

We are all born on this planet - stating the obvious, I know.
And, within the passage of our lives so far, some have chosen to accept a creator and some have not/cannot.
Each side will have based their decision/choice/preference upon their experience of life - up to now.
Our life experience will take us along many different routes - a consequence of the vagaries of this planet and the business of existing on it.
And in this broad church of life it is no surprise that there can be quite different perspectives on just about anything - including the notion that our very existence may extend beyond the mortal.
I don't accept that there can be any future penalty for those whose experience leads them to doubt - the inequality of our lives makes it hard for me to see how one can be judged solely on the basis of this life.
And for those that do accept the idea of a creator - their lives, and behaviour, differ little from most of the rest of us.

Mod Note: Moved from fornication thread.

JimiTime wrote: »

Read the account of King David and you will see the very great mercy and Love God has for us. He had everything he could want. Communion with God, wealth, respect of his nation, great courage etc. Then he saw a woman bathing and 'kept looking' and lusted after her. The lady was somebody elses wife, but King David slept with her anyway and she conceived. Her husband Uriah did not know about it, and David had him placed at the front of a battle line so that he would be killed.

So do not fret! 'Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand'. Remember, Jesus did not condemn the adulteress (One of the most heinous of the sexual sins) neither, he said, 'Go, AND SIN NO MORE'. We have been washed clean in the blood of Jesus, and your faith in him has made you an inheritor in his Kingdom. Keep leaning on him, and you will not be let down.
You have been saved, rejoice and be glad, and in the words of Jesus, 'Go and sin no more'

God Bless.

Just to let you know, God isn't so wise in that story or forgiving or any of the other positive traits you give him. Read the full passage, especially the part here in 2 Samuel 12

Now, in every generation some of your descendants will die a violent death because you have disobeyed me and have taken Uriah's wife. 11 I swear to you that I will cause someone from your own family to bring trouble on you. You will see it when I take your wives from you and give them to another man; and he will have intercourse with them in broad daylight. 12 You sinned in secret, but I will make this happen in broad daylight for all Israel to see.’” 13 “I have sinned against the Lord,” David said.
Nathan replied, “The Lord forgives you; you will not die. 14 But because you have shown such contempt for the Lord in doing this, your child will die.” 15 Then Nathan went home.

So God is loving and merciful...by causing children to die, to causing a woman to be raped by her neighbour, causing them to be punished for the actions of another?

Mods, note that this isn't related to the debate on the existence of God. It is simply me pointing out to these people, when they point to a story and say "This story shows God's love and mercy" that the story contains details of horrors that show in fact the opposite.

Another detail that might have escaped JimiTime's notice is that Bathsheba (the woman David slept with) is supposed to be the mother of Solomon, the supposed greatest king the Israelites had. If David hadn't committed adultery, he wouldn't have been born. The same story that derides adultery and calls it evil and a sin...also shows a supposed good thing happening, a great king being born, precisely DUE to adultery.
(As an aside, when God there says "I will take your wives and give them to another man" there is NO scenario following that statement where those wives are having intercourse with the other man out of their own free will. Either God mind-controls the women and the man to feel attracted to one another and to have sex with each other, or the women are taken against their will, placed before the man and raped).

I don't know how I ended up replying to this thread when I started in the other. Gods playing tricks on me now.

ScumLord wrote: »

I don't know how I ended up replying to this thread when I started in the other. Gods playing tricks on me now.

Wait, did God say he is or isn't the author of confusion?

Liberalbrehon

If there was a God I'd like to put it on trial for genocide and the host of other crimes it is responsible for by inciting hatred among the people of the world, forced conversions, and the barbaric customs it has promoted etc etc

My post is gone altogether now, I don't think this argument will go anywhere, I will just say that the only actual evidence of god is the universe itself. Science is the only legitimate way of studying gods work (if it is gods work). Religion is the assumption that people know what god's intentions are, based purely on their own experiences.