₦airaland Forum

Kay 17: Mr Godfather

Commands operate with a disregard for free will, commands preempt the free agent and EXPECT an automated response in line with stimulus either reward or punishment. To claim God grants and thereafter issues a Command, implies God immediately withdrew the free will at the issuance of the command or else a conflict evolves.

Its impossible to believe rewards and punishments are ineffective at a free agent, with our modern knowledge on psychology; positive reinforcement, conditioning play a big role our psychological setup. We impulsively avoid pain. We seek out pain to gain greater pleasure. Our bodies and minds are pre-tuned.

Hence to claim our free will is outside the influence of the consequence of our actions, is ridiculous.

Kay 17 and Wiegraf:

There is a fundamental misunderstanding here of what freewill is. It is a misunderstanding that has been repeatedly echoed despite the fact that the error has already been addressed. Some of the misunderstanding stems unfortunately from your jaundiced paraphrasing of what I have said. The imprecision in articulating what you think I have said or perhaps the misapprehension of such is perhaps to blame here.

Freewill/freely willed actions/voluntary actions, I repeat, are not invalidated or rendered non-existent simply because there is a threat or a promise attached to their undertaking. The fundamental and categorical error that an atheist or a moral nihilist is making here is to draw a false equivalence between freewill on the one hand and freedom from the consequences of one’s actions on the other.

The concept of freewill simply posits that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or even divine forces. As free rational and moral agents, human beings possess the ability of their own will or intention or desire to effect or actualize any number of actions or goals. For instance, I can freely will or decide to stand up, or sit down, or hop on one foot, or sing a song in the shower, or turn the television on, or tell a lie, or help a neighbor in need, or poison another person’s drink etc. I can freely think and nurture these intentions and execute them if I so choose. In other words, I am not a cybernetic pre-programmed organism merely acting out a predetermined script or program. These freely willed actions of mine as anyone can see (and which in fact sensible atheists affirm)are not and do not need to be immediately and directly caused by any concatenation of noticeable physical forces. In other words, if I pick up a knife and proceed to stab another person in the back with the intent to kill, I cannot claim that my actions were completely outside my control or that some external physical forces ought to be blamed for my conscious rational decision.

If the free voluntary actions of human beings were really thought to be no more than the dictates of some personally removed agency, then there’d be no basis upon which to accuse anyone of wrongdoing; moral accountability or even moral culpability goes out the window. On such a view—such as might be espoused by a moral nihilist or a strong advocate of Darwinian naturalism—murder, rape and child abuse for instance would be morally neutral or perhaps morally permissible actions being that the persons committing such actions clearly exercise no control over these actions. They would merely be acting out some physical or naturalistic predetermined script being utterly captive to the same. Now, I suspect that no atheist is going to want to be thought of as lacking a sufficient moral barometer, and thus it is not surprising to read or hear atheists squeal in protest at any charge that the logical extrapolation of their worldview—the determinism inherent in unvarnished naturalism—would necessitate such demeaning conclusions. The plain fact of the matter is that these are voluntary actions based on my own personal freewill.

However—and this is a noteworthy distinction—in as much as I have the freedom to will, purpose, aim, intend, contemplate or plot some course of action (notice how I am painstakingly delineating a difference here), I do not have and cannot demand to have a freedom from the consequence of that action. This is the point of departure folks; it is precisely on this score that the atheist/nihilist gets it wrong. Actions have consequences and the consequences for our actions have to be faced. One’s freewill is not obviated simply by pleading that one’s freely willed actions ought not to carry any threat of punishment. Follow me as I attempt to expatiate on this.

Suppose that you designed a gigantic, intricate house. Also, assume that to deal with possible incidences of burglary you designed a secret chamber in which you kept bloodthirsty vicious hounds capable of ripping a man to pieces. At night, when everyone was safely tucked in, you would quietly let slip the dogs of ‘war’. In the morning, having completed the night watch, these hounds will crawl back into their secret chambers and you would lock them up again. Now, assume furthermore that you had a visitor whom you warned expressly not to go outside at night for whatever reason because you had vicious man-eating dogs on the prowl. Now here’s the question: does the visitor in this thought experiment have the free will to obey or disobey the owner of the house as it regards not going outside at night?

It would appear that from your understanding, you imagine that the visitor in this thought experiment had inexplicably lost his freewill. That idea is unquestionably false. By what strange mechanism did the visitor in this example suddenly lose the ability to purpose, aim, intend, design, contemplate or plot a lovely night stroll into the woods at the back of the house? It is clear that he still has every freedom of the will to desire to venture outside the premises in clear contravention of the house owner’s directions. He might consider the consequence of such an ill-advised night stroll and of his own free will decide that it probably was not worth the effort. However, if he acts on this same freewill (which at no time was ever impeded) and freely decides to venture outside (possibly because he disbelieved the owner of the house), then he cannot upon seeing the hasty advance of bloodthirsty canines declare the housekeeper unjust on the grounds that his freewill was tampered with or preempted. He cannot declare that freewill ought to imply that he should be free of the direct consequence of his decisions and actions. That will be the height of crass buffoonery.

Again, if I tell a child not to put his hand into a fire because doing so would get him burned, he has every right to do so or not do so. It is his personal choice. What the unthinking atheist fantasizes about is to have an impractical state of affairs whereby he is absolved of or free of the consequences of his actions. Like a child who inflexibly sticks his fingers into an open flame in defiance of his parent’s admonition, the atheist wants a scenario where he is able to retrieve his finger from the flame and have it unburned as it naturally should be. Or to press the point further home, the atheist or moral nihilist imagines that the concept of freewill is undermined or torpedoed by suggesting that a man who seriously intended to murder a roomful of children might be given pause by the realization that he would be imprisoned or possibly killed for going through with such an action. It is clear that such a would-be mass murderer has absolutely no problem with willing, contemplating and even carrying out these actions (freewill) but he is definitely not entitled to thinking that he ought to be free of the consequences or ramifications of that action.

Therefore, whether we impulsively avoid pain, or instinctively hanker after pleasure, the fact is that such pain-minimizing or pleasure-maximizing personal indulgences speak only to the proper working of our homeostasis-seeking faculties; our desire for some sort of equilibrium. They do not dictate and cannot impose on any rational moral agent’s freewill. Like I pointed out earlier, it is abundantly clear that people can freely will and execute some actions DESPITE the possible threat of some negative consequence. In like manner, it is also evident that people can also freely will and desist from taking some action DESPITE the possible promise of some positive consequence. In all cases, it is patently absurd to suggest that such voluntary human actions (borne out of our libertarian free will) automatically become non-existent because some natural or divine agency has ordained some deleterious consequence for certain actions.

You’ll reap what you sow if not here then in the hereafter—whether anyone wants it to be so or not is I’m afraid immaterial.

Cheers.

Affiliated: OK. to 1Godfather. I am the original poster and I'll try to briefly address all the issues you raised.

2. On Christianity God is believed to have created everything that exist including all possibilities. Therefore sending people to Hell and people choosing Hell are two different things. You paint the picture of people choosing Hell as if God had no hand in it and can't do anything about it when He was the one that set the system up. Based on Christian logic, it is God's wish for many souls to be separated from Him and that's why He structured the system so

1)Once again, the Christian concept of hell is that it is some place of eternal separation from God's loving and warm presence, reserved for those who have voluntarily rejected God. Such persons have of their own freewill decided that they do not want God, and therefore have legitimately marked themselves out for separation from the God they have vehemently opposed and rejected. This really doesn't require much mentation on anyone's part to see how that any rebellious entity who decides NOT to abide by the dictates of a society may in a short while be removed from that society by incarceration. God does not delight in the death or loss of anyone - he is not a sadistic entity that has created a torture chamber for people. But in his capacity as creator and God, he has set forth his own rules for his own creation and built into the equation consequences for the deeds and actions of men. The actions or lifestyle that aperson ultimately lives is in a sense the person's own assent or disagreement with the dictates of this divine order and thus these actions will in the end result in happiness for some as they are united with the fountain of all joy and happiness , or sorrow and damnation for some as they are separated from that same fountain of happiness. It is literally too simple a point that should be grasped immediately. I say it is his own universe and thus his own rules. You are perfectly free to counter that you do not concede the point that the universe is his or that he even exists in the first place. You would be arguing honestly if you were to do this. But what you cannot however do is to argue with his own rules claiming that his rules somehow circumscribed your freewill. That will not fly.

2) You may need to reconsider what you are saying. There is NO SENSIBLE way of saying that you could be presented a CHOICE as to whether you should be born or not. Forget the point you think you just made and try to understand what I just said to you. You do not have a say in the issue of whether you would be born or not - that is just the plain truth. Freewill, or at least the principle which we are considering, operates only when we are appropriately in the domain of existing, sentient and rational creatures. What sense does it make to speak of the freewill that a yet-to-be-conceived baby has? None, I guarantee you. Therefore, you cannot shirk the demands of accountability for your freely willed actions merely by pleading that if you were given a choice, you would have chosen not to be born in the first place. That is just one choice you cannot ever get to make.

Kay 17: However, everything changes if commands are followed by punitive measures, then free will is deliberately and intently diminished, because punishment is accompanied by an intention to enforce compilance.

Its different from deliberately jumping off a cliff

Freewill - and this definitely needs clear emphasis - does not rise or fall on whether there is punishment or reward for a purportedly freely willed action. In other words, any freely willed or freely executed action is completely independent of the consequences for said actions. Actions do not lose the quality of their being freely executed merely because there may be punishment or reward for them. I suspect a serious conflation is going on here. To counter the idea of freewill is not (as you seem to be thinking) to suggest that people may have strong disinclination to refuse a prescribed action because of some possible negative consequence - it is quite plainly to suggest that people are automata or robots and have no say or control over their actions; it is to suggest that questions of morality are about as involuntary as the body's autonomic processes like heartbeat, digestion, respiratory rate etc. As a matter of fact, in daily life we see that people are in fact capable of refusing to comply with some directive despite any accompanying promise of reward or punishment. Such refusal is only possible if people are free moral agents and not genetically pre-programmed automata.

Fascinating..

OP, so as the praise session was going on, you weren't moved or touched or even inspired to praise God or to dance in your own way? All you were careful to do was to look around you making mental notes of the way others were dancing away their sorrows and problems to God. Are you also one of these people who is fond of looking around at others to see how they pray--whether they pray with eyes closed or not; whether they pray silently or vigorously? We were made to understand that King David was overcome with great joy in the house of God that he danced so vigorously and passionately that his garment began to fall off--and yet unmindful of the watching eyes of the people, he danced and danced. The glory and the praise belongs to God and he alone knows the hearts of the people offering the praise. Therefore, rather than stalking off in your righteous rage, why not go on your knees to God and pray for these young ones who you doubtlessly think are importing carnality into the House of God? As for your subtle insinuation that the pastor there did nothing, I'll have you realize that the pastor's job was simply to dish out the unadulterated word of God. It is up to God himself, through the Holy Spirit, to provide the conviction and the direction needed to get these young and perhaps immature Christians to lead more Godly lives. After all, when Jesus was carrying out his earthly ministry, he did not despise or remove himself from the company of tax-collectors, publicans and sinners. It was by interacting with them that he eventually succeeded in influencing many of them into becoming his disciples.

If the host pastor of that church is speaking the clear oracles of God, then you do not need to be too quick to judge. All it requires is that God alone be magnified--he knows best how to draw the souls to himself when he is magnified in truth and spirit.

Most people can multitask; they can walk and chew gum at the same time. Therefore, I do not think it required much mental effort to drive a car and talk/preach at the same time. The problem the OP had was probably with the content of the driver's speech. If this driver was cracking jokes or rehashing some incident, I'm sure that many would have gladly listened, laughed or participated in a jovial back-and-forth with the driver not minding the fact that he was driving. The best and mature thing to do if you absolutely could not stomach the preaching was to get off the bus immediately or at the next bus stop. Arguing with and shouting down a person merely trying to share his views on his bus is undisciplined to say the least--obviously, others did not mind, and could not figure out why you alone happened to be so animated.

Oh, as for calling yourself a believer, trust me, that was hilarious-- a believing Christian indeed who goes to insane lengths to prevent the gospel from being shared; makes you wonder what one ought to expect out of non-Christians and atheists.

If I may be bold, I'd say that a paradoxical relationship has not successfully been established between Free-will and Religion. That is an assertion that deserves to be fleshed out in greater detail, and sadly, it hasn't. When an effort is made to that end, then we can be better positioned to understand the argument. Are the people claiming to see this paradox arguing that one proscribes or prohibits the other? If they are, I'd like to see this argued out more conclusively. If not, what exactly is the Freewill-Religion paradox?

Affiliated:

Thanks for the blog plug up there, but honestly, I have not been faithful to my blog like I really should be. I don't think I have written anything spectacularly interesting lately. I just may start to write more on Religious, Science, Philosophy issues even though I realize that not too many people seem to be interested in these matters.

Affiliated: Many religions justify God ultimately sending almost all of mankind to an eternal punishment that our most evil minds cannot even comprehend.
The basis for this justification is that God gave us freewill and we didn't choose Him.
Aside from the pettiness and jealously that statement portrays, did God really give us freewill?
Looking at it from an unbiased perspective, I was born on this earth without being given a choice. If there was freewill, I should have been able to choose if i wanted to exist or not. But once I can make that choice, then I already exist.
In essence I was not free to make that choice so religion cannot subsequently claim that humans have freewill.

We only have partial freewill from a religious point of view

1) The first sentence of this post is unnecessarily broad and therefore empirically false. First, of the thousands of religions or religious beliefs out there, only a handful (3 to be precise) are MONOTHEISTIC. This fact invalidates the idea that many or even a sizable proportion of religious beliefs have a clearly defined position on this matter. Secondly, in Christianity, it is understood that while God is absolutely sovereign and has the power to cast a sinning soul to hell, it is not his wish for any soul to separated from him in the end. Therefore having invested humans with free-will, or to put it another way, having made humans free moral agents, we must thus bear the pre-specified consequences of our rational decisions and actions. On this view, God doesn't so much as send people to hell as it is the case that people who INTENTIONALLY and CONSCIOUSLY reject God and his prescribed blueprint for daily living have on their own chosen to separate themselves from God. A loving father may say to a young child "I strongly encourage you not to play with fire. I forbid you from sticking your finger into an open flame". To the child, this is a commandment from the father. However, the child has freewill and may choose entirely on his own to obey or disobey his father. If he disobeys his father and eventually burns his finger, or worse sets the house on fire in his father's absence, he has no rational grounds upon which to decry the consequence of his actions. The choice was there; he freely chose to disregard his father's commands, and has automatically reaped the consequence.

2) It is extremely irrational or at best laughably idiotic to posit that freewill must not exist because you were not given a choice as to whether you would be born or not. What sort of unthinking objection is this to the idea of freewill? Some of you atheists just blather on without really thinking about what you might be saying. Pray tell, how can you be given a choice as to whether you would be born or not? To whom would this choice be presented to? Isn't it even clear to all and sundry that for any choice to be presented to you in a matter, YOU must at least first of all be here for the choice to be given to you? You cannot have any say as to whether you would be born or not. That decision was made by your parents. Having been born however, you possess as a free moral and rational agent the ability to make your own choices when you are confronted with moral situations. If you claim to not have this free-will, you do not caricature the idea of God or of theism; indeed you would merely be insulting yourself as you immediately mark yourself out to be something slightly less than fully human.

3)You may need to explain what you mean by "partial free-will". My guess is that when this is explored, it may turn out to be that what you derogatorily refer to as "partial freewill" is what most people understand free-will to mean. I'm inclined to think that when it comes to free-will, our freely willed actions are total and complete. I do not see freely willed actions as susceptible to minute divisions therefore notions like "half freewill", or "partial freewill" are patently misleading.

Logicboy03: Wow, just wow. Lies and failed arguments on your dead blog.

[shakes his head]Whimpering does not become you. Then again, I suppose its not surprising as you are hardly the poster-boy for restraint and refinement, are you?

Logicboy03: What a tool. Those arguments were written in my own words. The law maker argument for instance is my own argument. Google it and see whether you will find material on it. Or the borrowed prophet argument.

Don't get your knickers in a twist. Reproducing material that has been formerly written somewhere is not a crime so there is no need to sound somewhat pissy. The fact is that sometimes, what we want to say has been better articulated somewhere, or we just may not have the time to write the sort of robust response we would like. In such cases, pasting a link where the matter under contention was properly addressed is not only necessary but smart. At any rate, since you've now referred me to your law-maker argument, I shall take a look at it and see whether it is a defeater for the God proposition.

Logicboy03: If we ask any lawyer today about law books, he or she will tell you that they mostly get obsolete after a year because amendments and new laws come into place. The reasons for these amendments are to keep up with advances in technology, to keep up with advances in human knowledge and to close loopholes.

Unfortunately, religion have holy books that have religious codes and are considered the laws of God. This is seen in religions like Christianity and Islam. This means that their holy books would have to be edited for modern times to be relevant. However, these religions claim that their holy books contain erternal truths (Chistianity) and that their holy book is complete (Islam). This creates a problem because we know for a fact that truth is based on evidence and knowledge which both change as time and society progress.

The problem is very simple; religious books like the Quran and Bible will continue to be outdated naturally, no matter how many times they are interpreted because laws by nature have to change with the advance of societies and technology or we will be looking at arnarchy from loopholes.

If the words/laws of an eternal being cannot be eternal, what is the point? Why not focus on laws that work?

First of all, this is not an argument against the existence of God as the title of the thread seems to suggest. Even if we grant, for the purpose of the discussion, that the argument succeeds, the atheist would have only succeeded in showing that some religious texts as we have known them are not inerrant or that they are incomplete. It does not even begin to make a case for the non-existence of God. If anything, the atheist has only succeeded in showing that the God who is commonly said to exist might have been misrepresented by some religious texts or worse that if the religious texts were completely accurate, some or all of its contents transgresses against some understanding of God’s attribute that the atheist might currently harbor.

However, that is not even the main thrust of this atheistic argument. This argument as I understand it is as follows: “human laws are mutable—i.e they are likely to be changed or altered to reflect the realities of the time they are operating in. If that is the case, we should expect that Divine laws are likewise mutable. But since the religious texts suggest that the divine commandments contained therein are to be regarded as immutable, one should disregard such divine commandments when a dynamic human society evolves a contrary position.”

But as anyone can immediately see, one should never hinge morality on the ever-changing zeitgeist of human societies and cultures. I don’t think the atheist has fully thought this point through yet. Does he even realize what he is asking for—for the rightness or wrongness of human actions to be arbitrary?; to be subject to group consent?; to be only as valid as the next revision or amendment? And what if some segment of some hypothetical society decides that another segment of the same society has different values from it and thus should not be bound to the same laws?

Why would the atheist think that we should equate human laws with divine laws? Why make the assumption that a divine law-giver, if such a being exists at all, would be like some human lawyer?

The problem isn’t so much that the divine laws which constitutes the basis of morality (i.e one’s duty and obligation towards the lawgiver himself and to his fellow humans) are faulty and need changing. It is rather the case that people do not want, or rather do not feel like they should be accountable to some divine law-giver in the first place. This is the root source of the willful disobedience and the intransigence that comes to the fore whenever people feel like they can attack the idea of a divinely ordained foundation for human morality.

Another issue is that all too often the atheist cannot tell the difference between some point or issue in some alleged divinely inspired text being simply a recommendation or suggestion or wisdom of the human hand writing divinely-inspired scriptures AND those points or issues which are express declarations of God by revelation. This is a point I simply expect no militant or evangelical atheist to be able to wrap his or her head around. Sadly there isn’t much that can be said really to make the matter much clearer to anyone whose ideological commitment hangs on a misapprehension of the point.

http://www.gfpanorama.com/2013/01/how-about-mutable-divine-law-giver.html

What a weeping monologue of a thread...

Since the thread starter has expressed the desire to stifle all discussion and debate on the points raised here, it is not surprising that the thread has been reduced to an echo chamber for various atheistic talking points found on other sites. Well, at least no one ever accused Nairaland Atheists of lacking the motivation to duplicate posts made elsewhere.

From reading the thread, it is clear that there is a subtle play on words here. There is a term that has been used somewhat disingenuously throughout the thread—the term is“4D” or the “Fourth Dimension”. This term as has been mentioned repeatedly throughout this thread deserves a better treatment than what it has received so far.

Firstly, human beings can only speak experientially about 3D. On this planet and anywhere else within this universe, one can only speak properly of three dimensions for spatial objects. That will be length, breadth (width) or height parameters. Nevertheless physicists trying to incorporate a time factor to physical observations have created a useful convention called space-time which is realistically just a plot of 3D against time. No wonder they speak of time being a 4th dimension. But as anyone can see, time is considered a dimension only in a loose space-time projection/plot sense; and not as anything that has a true spatial component.

Secondly, there are no verifiable 4th, 5th or higher order dimensions in THIS universe. This effectively dispatches all these speculative but altogether unproductive assertions about multiverses and alternate realities. So long as we are talking about physics and the physical realms, one must understand that all talks about an alternate or parallel universe or perhaps the multiverse are useful but ultimately unproven fictions. When these theories (fascinating though they may sound and possibly possessing vast explanatory power) become empirically verified then we can entertain their introduction into discussions of this nature. For now, they serve as nothing but distractors; they are little more than red herrings which lead people away from the real topic under consideration. It wouldn’t do for people approaching the topic to conflate the physics-related spatial higher dimensions, such as one might encounter in theoretical physics or Brane cosmology with the stuff being discussed here.

Now, this brings me to the real stuff being discussed here about NDEs and OBEs. After reading most of what Billyonaire had contributed, it beats me why he just doesn’t come out and plainly say that he’s been talking about Astral Travel/projection.—and frankly this is not new. A lot of these somewhat mystical concepts that he has spoken on come straight out of classical or medieval Hermetic, Neo-Platonist or Rosicrucian thought—they are not new at all. As a matter of fact, I’m sure people who follow The Grail Message have similar teachings.

So for the avoidance of all doubt, it would do everyone a world of good if he stopped talking about these like they are fantastic discoveries which everyone ought aspire to experience. My thinking is simple—if you are curious enough about these matters, and you are itching to have an out-of-body experience, then familiarize yourself with the necessary mind-altering drugs or else contact someone already deeply immersed in any of these supposedly “mystical” or perhaps even occult paths and having found such a mentor, declare yourself a worthy apprentice and hope to be shown these things.

Now to Billyonnaire…

Do what you please, but you’ll do well to stop giving the appearance that what you’ve decided to apply yourself to is definitively Christian. That is where you run the greatest risk of being deceitful or perhaps disingenuous. In order words, since an in-depth discussion on the details of astral projection (some “pastime” which you doubtlessly cherish) will reveal quickly that it is incongruous with mainstream Christianity, you would do well not to identify yourself or these practices as Christian. People who are far less discriminating might read your profession of the Christian faith earlier and be led to believe that what you are advocating is in its gamut “inconspicuous” or perhaps “scriptural”. That would be outright deception—it is Mysticism of some sort (- heck it might even be called “Christian Mysticism”) but it is certainly NOT “Mainstream Christianity”.

At any rate continue with your disquisition on bilocation, astral travel and other such mystical phenomena—you seem to have captured the attention and imagination of many greenhorns who are far too eager to have their bearings rattled.

Self-important but nonetheless aggressively idiotic or clueless atheists are usually too funny for words. This person probably imagines that he has hit upon something spectacularly grand--typical of New Atheist converts--you know, the loquacious novices who after a few college classes, and mingling with the Godless, jump around in discussion forums, beating their chests furiously, and proclaiming to have hit upon a set of clinical 'insights' that conclusively disprove the existence of God. All the while, as they prattle on with mindless confidence, you just can't help but cover your face in embarrassment for these sorts who are completely ignorant of their own philosophical or logical incompetence or to shout at these pesky rude neophytes to go do some more reading before deigning to speak ever so pompously on a subject they are clearly ill-equipped to handle. Hopefully, one of the better informed atheists out there will come along and gently nudge this rip-roaring fledgling to the side of decorum, or at least false modesty.

[SMH @ new atheist converts]

The answer to this issue is NOT that God is the problem. The answer could be a number of things ranging from poorly informed citizenry on matters of faith; to poorly informed religious authority figures who do not adequately instruct their congregants on the right balance between Faith and Works; to general unwillingness on the part of the masses to hold their leaders accountable thus leading to the rise in the number of helpless people who would seek redress from on high. The problem is a human problem--it is human ignorance or incompetence-- when it is carefully examined.

I make bold to say that to simply declare GOD the culprit (and not even something like 'Religion' which has become a thoroughly maligned word) is to be duplicitous at best, or willfully dense at worst.

There is reason to believe, granted the sheer enormity of the universe, that there could be life on other unknown worlds. It is indeed the rational position on the matter, given that the more we learn of other solar systems, we’ve also come to discover that there are indeed earth-like planets out there—i.e. planets which closely mimic the earth’s privileged position in its solar system and possess similar set of factors which helped sustain life on this planet.  Nevertheless, it is also useful to stress (and this emphatically), that there has been no definitive confirmed extraterrestrial life out there. This is not to say that there necessarily isn’t or that there couldn’t be—it is just to say that to the best of our knowledge, Life has not been found anywhere else YET. This is what keeps SETI occupied as they search for possible signals from possible civilizations out there in the mind-staggering expanse of space.

This realization should make proponents of the whole ancient alien idea a little bit more modest and humble with their claims. It is admirable that these pro-ET discussants have thus far maintained a dignified civility with their elucidations, but I would caution that we do not allow ourselves be carried off entirely by what can at best be described as hopeful conjecture. As anyone neutral on this matter would have observed, this discussion makes more sense when we are granted the liberty of making a lot of generous assumptions and speculations.  Now, unless we’ve become blinkered sci-fi enthusiasts, we needn’t blur the lines between hopeful speculations and verifiable facts.

Now, what exactly would alien life look like? Have we made space in our deliberations for the fact that we could indeed stumble upon technologically less advanced, carbon-based extraterrestrial life forms? What about technologically less advanced non-carbon-based extraterrestrial life forms? Seriously, why do we assume that aliens must necessarily possess superior technology and/ or are capable of harvesting us for their benefit? The answer would be because it seems to be the familiar motif generated by imaginative sci-fi writers.  I think it can be deeply entertaining to ponder the vast mysteries that will yet be unfolded to us with the passage of time, but I’d be caution against some overweening presumptuousness on the basis of inconclusive and highly speculative sci-fi literature. While the ideas tossed about in popular sci-fi literature can eventually become reality, it wouldn’t help things to treat it as such now. The best one can hope for in these circumstances is that people who have consumed a staggering amount of sci-fi literature would find themselves sufficiently motivated to want to conduct real science with a view to bringing refreshing new perspectives and insights into what we now cavalierly accept. Indeed, such transformative paradigm-shifting moves may make some of these exciting sci-fi ideas an eventual reality.

I say these because there is no shortage of conspiracy theories and fantastical but improbable notions that are making the rounds. 

Now let’s get on with the physics…

You would pretty much have to say that the entirety of modern physics and cosmology are on shaky grounds if we are to grant the leaps needed to make some of these ideas come through. At the barest minimum, if possible alien spacecraft is to traverse the mind-boggling distances required for deep space exploration, they need to fly at or very close to the speed of light—in fact it would be better if they could fly at faster-than-light speeds.  But nothing in physics suggests that anything the size of a spacecraft –no matter how powerful (no matter the vast amount of energy you would burn for such a vessel to fly) –can ever hope to approach the speed of light. Not only do you have to ponder the vast length of time it would take these possible aliens to traverse galaxies shuttling around in spacecraft which albeit more powerful than anything this planet has ever known is nonetheless demonstrably slow at astronomical scales, you would also have to wonder how long these possibly non-carbon-based life forms can possibly live. Can this alien non-mechanical life form live/survive for say 500 years on one single leg of a deep space odyssey? 1000 years? 5000?

Indeed, to make some of these ideas work we would have to seriously tinker with contemporary physics: we would have to revise or discard general and special relativity theories; the concept of time would have to get another meaning or look; the speed of light will pretty much cease to matter in calculations if we can experimentally prove the existence of superluminals  (objects which display faster than light motion); we might even have to revise the already experimentally verified idea that the universe is expanding i.e. the fabric of space-time is still expanding  as stars, planets  and indeed galaxies continue to fly away from each other. We might also have to invoke and provide evidence for the existence of wormholes etc.

But let us now limit ourselves to interstellar space travel. If indeed there are aliens zipping around in superluminal propulsion spacecraft in this galaxy alone, then it becomes at once conspicuous why in all these years they have not been able to make contact. Why has SETI not been able to at least spot a signal from these proposed advanced civilizations? Granted we are not talking about flying from one end of the Milky Way to the other (that will easily take 100000 years flying at the speed of light), why haven’t they been able to make any contact at all? The closest known stars and brown dwarfs are within or less than 16 light years from our star. This means that if the stars closest to us have planets that contain advanced alien life forms that could fly around in superluminal jets, we should have had one of those civilizations approach this distinctive planet on this solar system in less than 17 years!  SETI was created in 1984 which makes it 28 years. If they have not seen anything approaching extraterrestrial intelligence all this time, we would be led to conclude that a) the possible alien life forms might be found even further away in this galaxy (if at all) or b) no matter how highly technologically advanced we suspect these proposed beings are, they are subject to the same physics as we are and thus could not possibly have erected superluminal jets.

None of these observations is designed to put a dampener on the possible ecstatic expectations of alien visitations that some might possibly harbor. It might be that if there are other life forms out there, we may never know. Also, it may be that by the time they eventually discover this planet we might have long ceased to be here having already destroyed ourselves and wrecked the planet with nuclear weapons. Another enthralling possibility given the 5 billion-year proposed life expectancy of our sun is that whatever race of humans are around in another 100,000 years will be as advanced over us presently as we currently are from microbes—this is so that any possible visitation by aliens would perhaps not fill the humans existing at that time with anxiety and/or trepidation.

Interesting discussion.

I'm more interested in exploring/examining the possibility of alien life-forms on this planet in this present day and age, and not as the focus of the thread so far has been, on possible ancient aliens. The way I approach this, I find no useful benefit to speculate on the meaning or origin of cave-markings by pre-literate humans, or the possible semiotics of ancient art. I should point out, I suppose, that I'm properly agnostic on the issue of alien lifeforms having visited earth, and I am therefore open to the evidence of recent alien visitations if and when it is presented.

On a different note, let us consider the vastness of galaxies as our starting point. This Milky Way galaxy has between 200-300 billion suns (stars)! These stars often have their own planetary systems that revolve around them. Indeed, as we are finding out, there are indeed much bigger stars than our sun all spread out within this one galaxy. And mind you, we are talking about vast swaths of real estate here. As if that is not incomprehensibly large already, you should note that in the universe there are billions upon billions of galaxies!

Just to give you an idea of the dizzying scales we are talking about: our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across! Light travels at approximately 671 million miles in an hour. Therefore in one year, light travels 9.4605284 × 10^12 km.
This distance is astronomical;insensibly breath-taking; incromprehensibly large. And yet, you have to multiply this by a factor of 100,000 to get the sheer size of just this galaxy alone! If current physics suggests that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, you are at once left wondering how intergalactic travel is possible.

I'll be back later.

JeSoul:
Nice arguments. I'm afraid they might be quickly countered by this - what if a person before they pass away gave full and unrestricted access to a necro? much like people donate their bodies for medical research and end up as cadavars, with pieces of their body displayed in jars. That is an otherwise reprehensible action that has been permitted by the owner of the body.

Nice input as usual from Jesoul but I anticipated this response. As it turns out, this seems to be the most popular sort of objection given by advocates of necrophilia. However, there are other things to consider generally as well. First of all, it goes without saying that a majority of people find this attraction to and c.opulation with corpses to be indicative of some abnormality or some mental or psychological impairment. A good number of people also consider it deviant behavior. That normal and healthy people find such practices as necrophilia morally offensive and reprehensible is, as I am sure you are aware of, without regard for the feelings or persuasions of necrophiliacs themselves.

Just think about it—if the rightness or appropriateness of actions depends on universal assent, then we run the risk of never deciding that anything is moral. This is because no matter how perverse, immoral, or abnormal any action might be, you can always find people who have no problems with it and might even consider such acts or practices a morally neutral or morally permissible act. The argument here therefore is that actions which are clearly morally offensive to the generality of decent and mentally or psychologically-balanced individuals are not to be tolerated or permitted on the basis of the whims of people with a morally-deficient barometer. Therefore, I would contend that normal people will never consent to have their bodies sexually violated by necrophiliacs upon their death. The fact that some morally and psychologically deficient person somewhere may as a matter of fact give such permission does precious little to invalidate the argument.

To buttress the argument, would you say that cannibalism (defined as the conscious eating of human remains by another human being) is a permissible or a morally indifferent act if someone demonstrates that he secured the consent of the human whose remains he now consumes? In other words, would the cannibal be justified and thus be held as morally inculpable if he produces a note stating that the human being he was found eating volunteered to be killed and cannibalistically devoured? I would hope that your answer would be an unequivocal NO. Morally and psychologically-balanced individuals will never consent to be ritualistically killed and cannibalistically devoured. As a matter of fact, balanced individuals would not even consent to have their bodies consciously devoured by cannibals even if they were to have died from an accident or an illness, and there was a means of giving them a proper burial. Therefore, the fact that some people with a morally-deficient barometer might give such consent does precious little to invalidate the argument.

Secondly, on a different level, desecrating the bodies of the dead offends the living relatives of the dead who have suffered the loss of a loved one. This argument basically tries to communicate the idea that upon the death of a person, the family or the cherished guardian or the relatives of the dead assume secondary ownership of the dead physical body. Thus a necrophiliac would be guilty of a property violation if he were to sexually violate the bodies of a deceased loved one since such well-meaning individuals would clearly not want such for their dead loved one.

In the end, unless the laws of a place specifically forbids things like necrophilia or cannibalism, it is possible to imagine that some people will not only excuse such practices by not attaching a moral dimension to them, but might actually engage in such things themselves.

The divine attribute of omnipotence when properly understood does not entail that God performs logical absurdities/contradictions or logical impossibilities such as creating married bachelors or making square circles. Omnipotence as it applies to God does not [/b]mean literally that God can do any and everything as there are clearly things which God cannot in principle do. This is a common misunderstanding that people have regarding Divine Omnipotence. Divine Omnipotence simply means that God has the [b]power to do that which is intrinsically possible or feasible and NOT that which is intrinsically impossible or infeasible. Secondly, divine omnipotence holds that God is able to do anything that is in accord with his very own nature.

I can think of several reasons why the practice of copulating with the dead is wrong, distasteful and immoral. As I am pressed for time, I’ll sketch out a brief response and as the discussion progresses I may seize the opportunity to elaborate on my point of view or to entertain objections to my point of view.

1)A s.exual act is generally considered immoral or wrong if it nonconsensual. Proper s.exual intercourse involves people who properly understand the ramifications of the proposed s.exual intercourse and voluntarily give consent without compulsion, force or threats to achieve the s.exual act. This is why it is moral to frown on r.ape, pedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia, objectum sexuality, s.exual assault or sex slavery, or other extreme forms of s.exual deviancy. There is a nonconsensual element to these paraphilia; if I were to talk frankly, people who find themselves captive to these sexually deviant behaviors ought to seek help for this situation. As such, it is completely muddleheaded to begin to equivocate on what is clearly immoral, unsound and abnormal because persons who are captive to these paraphilia feel like their actions should be excused or understood. A corpse clearly has no way to consent to s.exual advances or entreaties and as such sex with deceased persons is clearly wrong.

2)Every individual is endowed by inalienable personal or individual rights which include the right to self-ownership. This means that it is immoral for someone to treat others as if they were chattel or property. Every individual has the right to own his person, his body, his labor and the fruit of his labor—therefore for someone to seek to possess these things or to borrow them for a season, one must necessarily secure the consent of the people who originally own them. Necrophilia entails the abuse of the body of a previously living person—it is a criminal act against the property of a once-living person and that in my mind is clearly immoral and wrong.

3)Beyond the evident moral reprehensibility of necrophilia lie immediate and pressing health concerns which would immediately highlight the odiousness of such a practice. There is a serious case to be made that the bodies of dead persons should be treated with respect and properly and immediately disposed. This is because corpses rapidly become reservoirs of deadly pathogens which could potentially cause an epidemic of frightening proportions if due care is not taken to clean up and dispose of the dead bodies in their final resting places where they can rapidly decompose without posing a threat to living populations. It is clearly immoral and wrong to engage in acts which endanger or potentially jeopardizes the immediate health and well-being of your fellow humans.

If I may reflect on this Sun-Sunbeam analogy that has been presented by adherents of the Grail Message to explain the nature of God, I’ll have to say that I am not convinced that the sunbeams or the sunrays are essentially different from the sun. There is no sensible way to talk of the sun (crudely put, a hot burning radiating ball of fire) existing without its sunbeams or rays. I contend that the sun’s rays have always existed together with the sun. In other words, there was never a time a pre-existing sun suddenly decided (as it were) to produce emanations.

When the star called the sun was born, that same instant did it begin to radiate away its beams. The nature of the sun is such that it produces emanations; it is incandescent. The sunbeam essentially flows out of the sun containing the very essence of the sun. To put it differently:  it would be a strange star, indeed a star not worthy of its name, if it could be demonstrated that the Sun did not have its rays or beams co-existing with it at all times. If we then cannot properly speak of the sun without the sunbeams, I think the analogy that portrays God as the Sun and Creation as the Sun’s beams (sun’s radiations or emanations) is altogether faulty.

2) I also have a philosophical disagreement with any view that essentially reduces God to energy. The word energy has a rich physical meaning which can be brought to bear in these discussions as they provide an illustrative framework upon which to anchor concepts. God is not to be conceived of as merely some inanimate, unconscious, driving force or energy or motivating principle. He is not to be thought of as some primordial energy that somehow dissipates into Creation. To be fair, the human language can prove to be inadequate to convey our deeper thoughts on the subject, nonetheless we should really try and simplify our definitions as much as we can, taking care not to conflate ideas. The view of God as “primordial energy”, or “primordial light” or “primordial time” may sound very poetic and numinous but they are altogether mistaken in that these qualifiers essentially depersonalize or de-animate God. The only way to redeem this view or to imbue it with any merit is to say that these descriptors are to be regarded as God’s attribute in some poetic or metaphorical manner of speech. Ontologically speaking, these descriptors fail hopelessly in establishing the nature of the being we are talking about because on that view God is some nebulous inanimate or non-sentient entity.

3) God is first and properly speaking, a mind or a sentient (conscious) being. You can also call him the Primordial Consciousness or Primordial Life. He is personal—which is to say that he has self-will, free will, rationality, and consciousness.  I must point out rather quickly that when I say that God is personal, you shouldn’t take that to mean that he is a human being or a human person. Personhood is not limited to Homo sapiens or for that matter, any other physically instantiated particulars. Philosophically speaking, personhood involves a self-conscious and rational being, or a unit of self-consciousness; and thus the concept of personhood cannot be straitjacketed and appropriated solely to evince some naturalistic presuppositions. Once you have established this, you can then go ahead to speak of other divine attributes that he properly possesses. Some of these attributes are that God is metaphysically or logically necessary, immaterial or incorporeal, eternal, non-spatial, immortal, all-knowing or omniscient, morally perfect, omnipresent or ubiquitous, and maximally powerful. So please let us stop borrowing excessively from the rich language of physics here in analogizing God to some Primordial force, energy, pressure, light, magnetism, singularity, electricity, gravity, momentum, or other quaint physical phenomena that strike our fancy. In my opinion these analogies to physical phenomena can be altogether counterproductive and belittling.

4) God’s infinite attributes are qualitative rather than quantitative. I find that often when people talk about divine infinity, they picture a God that has parts or components, and/or is spatially extended. Thus, they imagine that while speaking of God’s infinity, you are talking about some mathematical concept of infinity. For example, the set of all numbers (if you successively count upwards from 1) is infinite. God is not said to be infinite in that quantitative sense. He is not proposed to be made up of an infinite array of discrete or finite particulars; his infinite power is not to be understood as saying that he possesses an infinite amount of quantized energy; his omnipresence is not to be understood as saying that God literally physically occupies every inch of space-time. Infinity as it applies to God is merely qualitative as it seeks to express the total, undifferentiated and maximal nature of God. Indeed, as some have already pointed out, one can readily see vestiges of God’s superlative or infinite divine attributes in human beings and in the created order.

Hahaha, once again, Real Madrid fans go home empty and disappointed. They can scream and yell and accuse Barca of anything they like, but in the end, Barca will show why they are still the best.

I pity Iker Casillas. He is a great goalkeeper and deserves a better team than Real Madrid. He doesn't deserve the humiliation that Real Madrid receives at the hands of Barcelona. Benzema played well, but he is not a consistently reliable player. The rest of the Real Madrid team is pretty unimpressive to me.  Marcelo, Sergio Ramos and Pepe are not footballers---they are probably the dirtiest, unsportsmanlike, foul-committing players I know. Di Maria is simply overrated. Kaka should leave Madrid and find another team because he is clearly non-existent in the scheme of things. Xabi Alonso and Lass dont seem to have learned how to work together effectively in midfield against a team like Barca. Perhaps against lesser teams they would have been better. Ronaldo is good, but he doesn't deliver in critical games. This was a very disappointing performance on their home turf.  It seems that the way Real Madrid can ever hope to beat Barca is by employing Rugby tactics--shove, push, stomp and kick any Barca player and hope that you can injure at least half of them. I must confess that coming into this game, I felt like Real Madrid looked better and should have won the match convincingly--but I guess Barcelona would rather lose to Getafe or the worst team in the world than lose to Real Madrid. When it comes to the Clasico, Barcelona will show why they are much better.

What has Mourinho not tried strategically now? At this point, whenever the Clasico comes around, he should sit quietly on his easy chair with a pipe in hand, and watch the game passively without a stress in the world. Because somehow or the other, magic or no magic, Ronaldo or no Ronaldo, Messi or no Messi, fair play or foul play, cards or no cards, good pitch and good weather conditions or not, good refereeing or not, come hell or highwater, Barca comes to dominate. The current cast of Barcelona players (with their coach) have to be replaced for Real Madrid to start winning Barca convincingly again. As things stand, Real Madrid are already psychologically defeated even before a match starts.

The fear of Messi and his Barca teammates is the beginning of football wisdom.


Now, let the usual Real Madrid whiners carry on.

Kay 17 you said in your opening post:

The idea of God, as the supreme uncaused Cause, helps in escaping the irrationality of springing out of an absolutely unproductive void -- nothing. But in an empty world, there would be God and nothing, but now there is us and something. Does that mean your God created from NOTHING? Also in your view, is design necessary for a creation out of nothing, with no rule or character to conform with?

I would agree with the first part of your submission that God as a necessary being is absolutely required if one wishes to avoid the utterly irrational proposition that things which were not in existence suddenly and spontaneously popped into existence from NOTHING. That is a metaphysical impossibility. Being does not, cannot, and never will, emerge from non-being. The problem I notice in discussions of this sort is that far too many skeptics and atheists have a twisted and unrealistic understanding of the word ‘NOTHING’.

Quite frankly, I am amazed that this same misunderstanding has continued to appear in discussions of this sort. When people who claim to be able to demonstrate that being can emerge from non-being (from nothing) attempt to explain this deeply irrational stance, you can immediately see that they treat the ‘NOTHING” as if it were indeed ‘Something’.  This is to say that they playing semantic games and not quite coming to grips with the philosophical meaning of ‘nothing’ (i.e. not anything at all). “Nothing’ or ‘Nothingness’ does not imply vacuum, or void, or empty; has no components or parts, and certainly no attributes; is not governed by any physical laws and certainly cannot be meaningfully thought of as involving any interactions. To be painfully tedious, nothingness (nothing) is simply what it states: the non-existence of anything at all. This is a concept that naturalists or empirical materialists sometimes have a hard time to come to grips with.

Now, what does it mean when people say that God created “ex nihilo”? This simply means that God did not create the universe out of any previously existing matter; he created literally out of nothing. There was no pre-existing material substance which he used (as it were) to create all physical reality. This happens to have been confirmed scientifically as well. It boggles the mind to read people in 2011 say something like “matter is eternal and merely changes form”. To me, it sounds like reading someone saying that the earth is flat. But I suppose I shouldn’t judge harshly because I must admit, sometimes it can be hard for people to imagine that at some point in the past  the universe came into being with all matter, energy, gravity, dark matter, dark energy, and all the initial set of conditions and constants. To suppose there was some pre-existing matter which reorganized or reassembled into this universe is to work with an outdated view. Frankly, no one who is familiar with the state of current cosmology or astrophysics will say this—not with the degree of scientific and evidentiary support the Big Bang model currently enjoys.

To answer your last question as to whether creation out of nothing presupposes design, I’ll answer thus: logically, one is not committed to saying that creation out of nothing must presuppose design. In other words, we can quite imagine that it possible for a God capable of creating all matter and energy to have done so without imbuing said creation with a final cause/purpose/design. That is, there is no logical contradiction inherent in stating that “a maximally powerful God exists” and “God created the universe without any teleological implications.”  

However, as one begins to probe the universe, one will quickly and immediately recognize the exquisite and mind-numbingly precise degree of fine-tuning that is required for this universe to have continued to exist immediately after the Big Bang event and further to have continued to expand as it has to eventually support life. Now before anyone starts muttering “the anthropic principle”, you should realize that I am not personally invested in the appearance of life per se, as I am invested on the idea that the universe, without these initial conditions and constants, without this exquisite fine-tuning, would have collapsed in on itself shortly after the Big Bang creation and thus ceased to exist. This is before we even get to the possibility of other macro-worldly phenomena like stars, galaxies, clusters, super-clusters, black holes, nebulae etc.

Besides, as you continue to investigate, you will see unmistakable and tell-tale signs of design or fine-tuning that permeate the universe. It is also important to note that not everything exhibits a teleological imperative. Nevertheless, if you choose to be unconvinced about the clearly evident signs of design or fine-tuning in the universe, I have no quarrel with you. But, unless you can conclusively demonstrate why anyone should doubt a design inference, anyone is within his/her rational right to hold and affirm what is painstakingly clear.

plaetton:
@1godfather: Do you have a problem with free thought, intellectual rigor and rationality? As a father or godfather, would you demand less from your children? As god, would you have demanded less from your creation? If God exists, free thought, intellectual rigor and rationalism is the best homage we can pay to him, not blind zombie-like surrender. This is what every so called athiest stands for . I'm glad you used those keen words.

What would our world be like today without people who exercise free thought, intellectual rigor and rationality?. We certainly know what it was like without free thought, intellectual rigor and rationality. Those were the era of churchmen. We now remember that era as the dark ages.

The point, if it eludes you, is not that intellectual rigor and rationality should be discouraged. It is that the much-vaunted intellectual sophistication and rationality claimed by the New Atheists (and people of the same ideological bent) is conspicuously absent or simply underwhelming. This is revealed starkly when they attempt to reproduce a theistic philosophical argument with its appropriate deductions. In essence, most atheists, when they attempt to wrestle with the arguments from the other side of the aisle, seem to be really only capable of interacting with caricaturish and simplistic misrepresentations of the argument. It betrays a certain level of intellectual vacuousness that would make you question their pretensions to the contary. It seems that much of the contents of the new atheist arsenal are simply appeals to ridicule and sophistry.

^^^^
LOL, apparently the New Atheist daftness, as is exemplified above, cannot be overemphasized. Anyone might think this is a hilarious atheist parody of actual theistic philosophical arguments, but that person would be sorely mistaken. Here, in glorious outlines, is possibly one of the best atheistic understanding of the other side's main arguments, LOL. If you doubt this, you can challenge any of the truculent mouthpieces of pop-atheism you come across to do their best job of presenting an actual theistic philosophical argument and deduction. I wager that you will get replies that are egregiously simplistic, erroneous and laughable.

You know, the more the supposed disciples of free thought, intellectual rigor and rationality speak or type, the more they put a lie to their assumed maxims.

Martian:
are you serious?? Do YOU even know what the term means because the people who love to use that argument are you and your ilk!!!

When you say  atheists don't understand the bible and other "spiritual things" because they haven't read enough of it or are ignoring other "evidence" or scholars, that's the so called Courtier's reply. It was coined by an atheist biology professor at the University of Minnesota.
lol. Common Man!!!

[b]Myers has voiced the position that many of the responses to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion are what he calls "Courtier's Replies". Replying to critics who felt that Dawkins ignored sophisticated versions of modern theology, Myers compared them to courtiers fawning on the legendary emperor who had no clothes:

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk. Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of Unclothedness.[18]

Dawkins himself quoted the Courtier's Reply in a debate with Alister McGrath.[19] He also referenced the Courtier's Reply in the preface to The God Delusion's 2007 paperback edition.[20][/b]

He probably said it after tiring of arguments from christians claiming atheists don't kow enough to say that their god doesn't exist. You don't neeed to read a thousand books to discredit the loch ness monster, do you?

Case proved. Let me make this much simpler for you to understand since it is clear, despite your quote up there, that you clearly do not know what you are talking about.

The Courtier's Reply, which is a retort by atheists against detailed and sophisticated theistic arguments, is a non-argument. It is basically a dodge, a flight from sustained intellectual engagement, and in the final analysis, it is fallacious or erroneous reasoning. I've seen this exasperated atheistic waffling amusingly called the Myers Shuffle. Your assignment is to find out why the 'Courtier's reply' canard is anti-intellectual and bereft of merit. I choose to file this as one of these polemical sleights of hand employed by atheists when they clearly have no superior arguments.

And while we are on the topic, let us not also forget the infamous atheist response when confronted with glaring evidence of his elementary or caricaturish understanding of the theistic concepts he seeks to disprove or denounce--the COURTIER'S REPLY.

I can't tell you how many times this hilarious non-argument is trotted up in discussions with atheists, whether or not they recognize its actual name.

Is there a way to read this book online? I am curious because I have strong misgivings about this book and as such, I am not inclined to spend some money to actually purchase it.

First of all, according to Christian doctrine, Heaven and Hell are not physical places, nor indeed are they places where physical beings can supposedly approach. What this means properly is that Heaven and Hell are another dimension (a spiritual dimension); a dimension completely removed from all physical and material reality. It makes abundant sense then that no human mind can adequately imagine or comprehend what these realms would be like. Of course since human beings are gifted with imaginations, it is not surprising that people can generate fantastic mental constructs of what these spiritual places could be like but there is no way for them to interact with Heaven or Hell in an empirical manner.

Yes, you cannot locate heaven anywhere in this material and physical universe no matter how long you peer into space, and no matter what equipment you use in such a search. It is categorically impossible to locate the spiritual heaven out there in the cosmos. That is why you sometimes have to laugh at the facile retorts from atheists who imagine that Christians believe Heaven to be up in the skies; or that God indeed is a grizzled old man sitting on a fluffy cloud. Ever heard of them derisively talk about some "sky daddy"?

In the same token, you cannot locate Hell by burrowing into the earth. Hell, that  place of separation reserved for beings or minds who have on their own, and by their own choice rejected God in their consciousness despite glaring and eloquent evidence, is not located anywhere on or inside the earth, nor indeed anywhere else in this physical universe. If this book makes this claims, then I submit to you that it is propagating falsehood. Another possibility would be that the author has a completely different and strange understanding of what Heaven and Hell really are--an understanding that is basically non-Christian.

joyuchesun:
I found more often than not it is better to keep atheists beliefs to oneself. The debates become pointless. Many believers actually have not fully thought about what they believe, and so when confronted by logic or the thoughts of an atheist, it takes them out of their comfort zone. This is usually not a good feeling for them and leads to actions that are intended to protect their current state of "ignorance is bliss."

There was a time when one could reasonably discuss with an atheist on belief and non-belief and expect a polite but firm discussion. Ultimately, the theist may not succeed in getting the atheist to see his point of view, but the exchange would be as cordial as it was passionate. This is because, the atheist would be interested in showing why he is not fully persuaded to believe. Perhaps, if you run into a decent friend or acquaintance who is ideologically opposed to you on the God question, such a frank but civil discussion can truly occur.

Alas these days, with the birth of this New Atheism, unsophisticated and full of sound and fury, it has become quite fashionable in atheist circles to deride, cajole, mock, insult and pollute theists and theism. This is what usually passes for intelligent debates with many of today's atheists--some haughty posturing borne out of a sincere atheistic belief that virtually all theists are STUPID and DELUSIONAL. It is no wonder that these discussions quickly devolve into a mud-slinging match because people cease engaging honestly and respectfully. Much heat expended but no light thrown on the issue before consideration. After one has tried a few times to discuss issues of great personal import with a person who seems more disposed to aggression, one inevitably tires of the whole affair. Perhaps, like some have suggested, there is really no point to these discussions. Atheists can gather together, as often as they are wont, listen to speeches (read sermons) delivered by their atheistic high priests, build up and exhort one another in their common God-disbelief, share an intimate fellowship of universal mockery or umbrage at some offensive actions from the faith arena, and disperse to their respective homes--ALL WITHOUT BOTHERING ABOUT THESE 'IGNORANT' THEISTS!

But I think that would be too easy--for how else is an atheist going to satiate the inner hunger to rid theists of their meddlesome and 'ignorant' God-belief if they can't utilize sundry web fora, Youtube videos, billboards and citybuses to fulminate on the ills of religion? I mean, how dare anyone hate on atheists anyway? Aren't they the hallowed few who managed to see through the puerile sunday-school caricature of Christian orthodoxy they were unfortunately given to when they were much younger? Aren't they the uber-logical geniuses against whom every contrary opinion must be the product of some delusion and faulty reasoning? Why should the largely 'ignorant' mass of humanity squirm upon being upbraided by the ever-so-gracious but nonetheless 'completely rational' and 'supremely intelligent' atheist? Shouldn't they consider the atheist's sophomoric diatribe against theism, or his endless bellyaching over the ills committed by religious people, an act of charity? Oh well, I don't know about you--but in the interest of peace, and to massage the egos of newly-minted atheists, who are eager to jump into a debate to vomit the latest things he has picked up in college, perhaps it is better to just sit still and allow an atheist to lecture for all he is worth.

Sadly, I have noticed that too many atheists are rather diffident about honestly sharing what they truly believe; you know, about constructing a positive worldview and philosophy that is completely devoid of God and its implications. Worse, an alarming number of the atheists who feign a serious dedication to science are actually terrible at it; do not seem to understand its finite scope, and regrettably cannot lecture on it. But of course, that shouldn't matter--nothing is as satisfying as a smug dismissal of your theistic opposition as a bunch of deluded dingbats. Its a nice zinger, and I am sure if you deploy that characterization often, in no time, you would rise within atheist ranks. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone--intolerance is a vice only when theists employ that against atheists. When atheists show intolerance for theists, it can only be because they are genuinely concerned about the theist's refusal to see the light.

Let the discussions rage on, then.

LOL,  Ah Dawkins!

He is still avoiding any serious examination of his godless prattle and running from academics who want to challenge him to a serious debate. But of course, he has enough time in the world to go after your children. Apparently, not satisfied with preaching to his uncritical New Atheist followers on the vast danger of allowing theists raise their own children with the belief that there is a God, he has taken it upon himself to catch YOUR children young! Of course, he would not like you to point out to him the utter irony of baiting young children with a book called "The Magic of Reality" after supposedly denouncing and critiquing the alleged 'numinous'. Yes, he can dash any appeal to the numinous to the rocks only when he is not borrowing the same concept to peddle his worldview. It makes me laugh the way Dicky Dawkins and his merry band of materialist science fetishists go to some lengths to borrow and imitate these fundamentalist Christians they love to rail about.

Anyone with slightly better-than-average critical reasoning skills, both atheist and theist alike, can see "The God Delusion" for what it really is after reading it. It is little more than an unsophisticated piece of sophomoric diatribe. But of course, you don't have to take my words for it. You can read it and see how far YOUR own critical thinking skills will go in spotting the illogical arguments that litter the whole religion-bashing screed. But of course his book achieves a vital purpose namely to empower other hitherto closet atheists to speak their anti-theistic convictions boldly. Having recorded such a phenomenal success by this initial endeavor, judging by the brood of militant atheists that now litter the public discourse and sundry web fora with their rancid obloquies, I suppose Dicky Dawkins has now embarked on another leg of his quasi-Pauline atheological missionary journey. Yes, now he is coming for your children!

Read the rest here: http://1godfather./2011/10/08/dawkins-wants-your-children-now

I’ll start out by informing the initiator of this discussion thread that the president of the British Humanist Association Polly Toynbee has pulled out of an agreed debate with Dr. William Lane Craig in October claiming as her reason that she “hadn’t realized the nature of Mr. Lane’s debating style.”

It will be useful to provide a little bit of backdrop to this story.

First of all, I’ll encourage you to disregard the duplicitous pretensions by Mr Dawkins in this matter. I’ll get to it later. Let’s just state that for brevity’s sake, Dawkins’ staunch and inflexible refusal to debate Mr. Lane Craig, a formidable apologist for Christian Theism, has lately begun to sit uncomfortably with his fellow university professors and other eminent personalities in the skeptical movement. When a lot of hullaballoo was made about his seeming cowardice on the matter, even as he continues to reap handsome profits from the sale of a God-bashing book, Miss Toynbee decided to toss her hat in the ring to protect as it were, the ‘reputation’ of atheism or secular humanism from charges of being intellectually incapable of defending their beliefs and convictions.

So, she signed up to debate Craig when he visits the UK this fall as he challenges the fallacious fulminations in “The God Delusion” and defends Christian Theism against the now-fashionable assault by many of today’s New Atheists. There had to be a reason why Dawkins was running scared of Craig, but of course at the time, it will be fair to say that poor Miss Polly Toynbee was not cognizant of this. So you’ll have to admire her guts or bravery for offering to take on Mr. Craig. But upon closer inspection, it quickly begins to look like that all-too-familiar arrogance and hubris that unfortunately affects a lot of these New Atheists. Who on earth could Mr Craig be anyway that one ought to think twice about a debate with him? What preposterous and laughter-worthy points is some so-called philosopher from America going to raise to successfully attack atheism or skepticism anyway? Why bother to do any research on this chap? It is not likely that he would be on the same intellectual footing as we fashionable God-abolishers with his mumbo jumbo about the existence of God, so why are some respectable academics in the atheism and skeptical movements apprehensive of a debate with the fellow? So with nary a thought, and of course brimming with her cocky self-assurance, she offered to debate Mr. Craig without as much as knowing anything about the man.

In hindsight, it is rather hilarious that the woman chickened out of the debate afterwards. In all honesty, I cannot blame her much. My guess is that not too long after she cavalierly threw her hat in the ring, her handlers apprised her of the formidable nature of her opposition. Now, I am not going to suggest that she was painted a flattering picture of William Lane Craig, but whatever she was told, she was made to understand in unmistakable terms what heavy intellectual and perhaps political toll would be her portion from a widely publicized debate in which her highfalutin secular humanism or atheism was intellectually, imperiously and conclusively dealt a devastating blow. The fact is that for all the bluster, or the haughty pretension to a superior knowledge on the God-question, many of these militant evangelistic atheists and secular humanists are shockingly and I daresay disturbingly under-informed on exactly what they are supposed to be against. She can thank her lucky stars that she got out of a very severe public embarrassment.

Now, concerning Richard Dawkins, I wish to make it absolutely plain that I think he deserves respect in the field of evolutionary biology. That’s his area of expertise. The man has a gift for metaphor and for explaining evolutionary concepts in very beautiful almost poetic language. Whenever he is speaking on the issue of evolution (that narrow field in which he specializes), one may be well-served to listen to him and take his words seriously as they represent perhaps the most current understanding of evolution we have today. I make this caveat here first of all, to assure you that I do not harbor some visceral distaste for the chief apostle of atheism.

So what happens when an evolutionary biologist leaves his narrow area of discipline, and then dabbles into Philosophy or Theology by writing a best-seller bashing God? Should he be given the same deference as he might be given when he is speaking on evolution? Should his words be swallowed whole and entire by a majority of the uncritical self-styled New Atheists seeing as this man was pronouncing entirely on a subject that he has at best, a rudimentary understanding? One doesn’t even need to be a theist to see that the answer is a vigorous negative.

This is why some Christian and Skeptical groups have on their own privately sought to sponsor and organize a debate where Richard Dawkins expostulations in his book will be robustly challenged thoughtfully and intellectually. It makes sense, doesn’t it? For example, if some economist, with little or no training in Biology decides to write a strongly worded book vehemently criticizing evolution, it is normal to expect proponents of the evolutionary theory to challenge that economist’s understanding of evolution.  Notice here that I am not saying that Richard Dawkins, or the economist in this case, have no right to write a book on any subject or academic discipline they fancy. But if they want to be taken very seriously, they should be very open to a mature and robust challenge of their understanding on the matter. This is where William Lane Craig steps into the picture.

We have seen that Richard Dawkins apparently has no scruples about debating persons of religious faith. His duplicitous claims of not debating creationists is belied by the fact that he has on different occasions debated people who are not rigidly wedded to his Evolution by Natural Selection like Alister McGrath, or people who might be in favor of Intelligent Design (spitefully dubbed creationism by the willfully ignorant) like John Lennox or indeed people who are creationists! We have seen that Dawkins is happy to join issues with lay clergy, and ordinary believers and theists. So let us dispatch this lie at once. When he was caught flat-footed with that lie, he is famously known to have said that he would love debates but only with someone like the Pope, a cardinal, an archbishop or some other visibly high representative for Theism. All these pronouncements sadly seem to be devoid of any real commitment. Why then is he afraid of debating someone who is reputed to be the best or rather the strongest mouthpiece for the opposition? Why is he running scared of Craig?

I suspect that the simple reason is because Richard Dawkins knows too well what a debate of that nature may do to him and his influence with this rapidly expanding quasi-religious New Atheism. As one of the four horsemen for Atheism in these times he has an image and a reputation to protect. By the way, the arguments that these New Atheists offer are neither different from that of atheists of the past century nor are they any more sophisticated. Richard Dawkins has seen clips of Craig where the unscientific and sometimes patently illogical and irrational presuppositions of latter-day New Atheists were graciously laid bare. For now, Richard Dawkins maintains that he is too busy to debate Craig—even as he runs to the bank with the handsome profit that a sophomoric treatment of the God Hypothesis has earned him. LOL, let’s not begrudge the man the fruit of his labors okay? As things stand now, it  appears that none of the shrill and highly regarded mouthpieces of the UK atheist and humanist community is willing to stand up and be counted. Of course, it’s always easier and fashionable for belligerent New Atheists to cajole and to mock on various web fora and in YouTube videos’ comments section. I suppose when Craig is done and gone, they’ll emerge to attack and discredit whatever he might have said. Nonetheless, I can’t help wondering how the rest of the high church of ‘internet atheism’ feel about this sort of spinelessness from their much adored high priests.

Truly, far from being dead or a delusion, the God-issue is alive and well in the US, the UK and many other parts of the world. Unbelief it would appear is not really anchored upon the realization that there is no God; rather it seems to be a willful and concerted refusal to accept one higher than oneself to which one must give account. It seems to me that this New Atheism isn’t so much as a result of a genuine failure to see glaring evidence that calls for a creator; it seems to be anchored on a desire to rid one of moral accountability to some moral law-giver; a petulant fist-shaking at a God who as it were, failed to prevent some personal calamity from befalling one.

Conclusively, I wish to point out with very earnest tones that the truth or the falsity of beliefs and worldviews are not decided by the outcome of a debate. Inasmuch as there is no doubt in my mind that a debate with Craig will expose the laughable superficiality and the gross misrepresentations in Dawkins’ best-seller, I would not take that to mean then that the existence of God for example, has been conclusively proven or established. Likewise, if Richard Dawkins were to somehow demolish Craig’s argument in that debate, it wouldn’t also mean then that the existence of God has been refuted. It will simply mean that one side has succeeded over the other in making a compelling case for their worldview. Nevertheless, it still falls on you to honestly and sincerely weigh the evidence and choose in the teeth of mankind’s incomplete knowledge of himself, his surroundings and the universe on a grand scale.

It will be easier to objectively answer the OP if one had a means of getting hold of Pastor Chris' messages. Some of us are not intimately familiar with the man or his message, or even his general attitude towards the ministry. Please, can anyone point to an online resource or archive of Pastor Chris' messages? That will greatly help me in objectively assessing the man.

Anyone (or group) who has ever organized a big event will know the considerable financial strain it places upon the organizer/s. It is hardly surprising therefore that sometimes other larger venues may be rented to properly accommodate a multitude that may be gathering for a convention, seminar, etc. That invariably means that to recoup the costs, the organizers would make it a ticketed event. This is hardly news or surprising to anyone who doesn't live under a rock. To come on here and affect some grand surprise because Pastor Chris' event drew large crowds, or to nitpick over ticket prices is to be stultifyingly otiose. Get a job or something already. Or perhaps these people with their limited imaginations and even yet limited exposure, imagine that Pastors or preachers of the gospel cannot command the attention or interest of vast crowds.

Having said that though, I still want a clear archive of Pastor Chris's messages to held color my perception of the man. Only then can I decide what manner of preacher he is; of course I duly note that my perception, whatsoever they may be, in no way or form affects the ability of any group to effectively gather a multitude at any location.