StJohnofChrist:
Yes!!
Questions.
Good questions.

The planets, the ones that make up the solar system. Couldn't there have been a mind capable of such...such...such magnificence?

The fact that there's you're here on this forum.
Wait...you'll say it's as a result of your parents knowing themselves, yes, you're right, the ovum, testosterone and Bio-chemical activities therein. Say, down to the microscopic levels, what could have brought about the coordination of these things, what could have brought about the existence, coordination of these cells and what they do in the body?
There must be an intelligent, unseen being responsible for this, No?
Perhaps, you'll say the red and white blood cells function due to the term called "adaptation" in line with the concept of evolution. Well, what could be responsible for the materials involved in evolution in itself?
Big bang?
How did the meteors and celestial rocks come about, how is there a Sun ☀ which just works perfectly to nurture plants and aid growth in mankind. What's responsible for the intelligence of man? Your parents again?

Cells again?

Okay now we are about to go into a loop.

Tetehjewels:
My Son is super smart and at 8 has already been given double promotion twice in school. The 1st one he got was in the 2nd term of that year and he was only able to join the new class in their 3rd term yet he still came first and the school thought it necessary to move him again. So he is now in a class with kids 3yrs older than he is and already besting them too.

We are a very God loving family and even though I have never sat my son down to talk to him about God, I do ensure he goes to Church with me and joins me in my daily morning devotions. I do notice that he has an extremely inquisitive mind and would rather watch educational channels on DStv than cartoons especially since they stopped showing his best cartoon "Goku"

So we have this neighbour who is from Greece. His 7 yr old son and my son can be considered best of friends and they visit each other at will. So on this day he came to visit and while they were hanging out I suddenly heard them arguing from his room. Normally their arguments would be over a video game or something else but this one was interesting. They were arguing about God!

I stood by the door and listened. Apparently that day revealed to me that my neighbour is an atheist but I never knew and he has been indoctrinating his 7yr old son along those lines because I clearly heard the boy say to my Son, "God does not exist, he is just a story"

So here is the convo

Him: God is not real, He does not exist, He is just a story

My Son: Ethan what did you say?

Him: God is not real, He is just like Santa who also isn't real

My Son: How do you know he isn't real?

Him: Well my dad said he isn't real because he just isn't. Have you seen him?

My Son: So your dad says God isn't real because he hasn't seen him? So something isn't real because you can't see it? But what about feeling Him?

Him: Feelings are not something we can um um fully determine because they can be misleading

My Son: How can you say Feelings are misleading, you are my friend right? (He goes yeah?) So how are you sure you are my friend if your feelings can be misleading. Can you say your feelings misled you into being my friend?

Him: No that's not what I was trying to say

My Son cuts him off with a sharp tone: So if your feelings did not mislead you into being my friend how then do feelings mislead you?

Him: Have you felt God before?

My Son: No but I do know that I think about him a lot

Him: umm umm but How would you possibly be thinking about something that does not exist

My Son: Exactly Ethan!

At this point I step into the room and cheerfully say Okay guys playtime is over (because I needed to stop the argument and get my Son to study by asking his friend to go home)

However his final comment "Exactly Ethan" resonated with me and made me think that comment was actually directed at Ethan's dad and not Ethan because apparently he had been talking about the non existence of God to his Son A LOT!

So how do you constantly talk or think about Something or Someone that doesn't exist?

sonofthunder:




E shock you?

Arguing with atheists can be very tiring?

InvertedHammer:

/

Are you a court recorder to have captured the debate ad verbatim?

/

ReacherSaidNoth:
Your son is like every regular Christian, places emotion and feelings over reason. It is this that allows people to believe in a loving god that sacrificed himself to himself, to save them from his own punishment.

StJohnofChrist:
Perhaps you just didn't understand the material you read quite well. Don't you see a possibility in that?

LordReed:


If the universe is explained in concepts a human being can understand then yes. The vastness is a different thing that is a quality humans may always struggle with because of how limited our cognitive capacities are. Maybe if we develop that ability to link our brains with computers we will be able to comprehend that vastness.

johnydon22:


In what planet did your son win the argument? First, your son tried to establish feeling as a basis for God's existence, committing the first blunder of mistaking emotions to somehow infer objective existence of an entity.

Then even though your son tried to establish feelings as a basis for the existence of God, he also agreed he never felt God but rather thinks about God a lot, how on earth is thinking about something a pointer that it exists in reality?

Thinking only alludes to conceptual existence not actual.

Example: Dragons does not exist because we think about them a lot, Captain America do not exist because we think of him a lot, the avengers do not exist because they awake intense emotions (feelings) in us whenever we read about their fictitious heroic deeds in comics or movies.

Conceptually, these fictitious ideas exist, in reality, they do not.

Your son strawmaned the other kids argument, based his on a faulty premise and just talked over the other kid.

There is absolutely nothing smart about your fictitious son, bring out your arguments proudly instead of trying to heap them on an eight year old that exists only in your imaginations.

Tetehjewels:


Well to be honest with you, I could say that if someone's imagination could create the avengers or the Lord of the rings and make sequels out of them enough to entertain a cross section of the earth it can also be argued that an even bigger imaginative force could imagine the universe and bring it into existence to the service of the entire universe.

Your example could actually be a microcosm of a much larger template of imagination

StJohnofChrist:
Actually science is not sure of these phenomena, the mind.

It's still very much hard to tell. So objective manifestation of something to show its existence can be subjective.

Take for example.

The "existence" of magnetic field.
You may wonder, are these real.

The Simple answer is, you may choose to believe it exists or not.

But of course it's real because certain "objective manifestations" come to be in alignment with the existence of it.

Which boils down to the unseen things of science which science agrees to be true but can't behold.

dettolgel:


Ain't there scientific test that can be replicated to prove the existence of magnetic field?

StJohnofChrist:
Okay. Great logic there.

But you should be critical about such sensitive topics to avoid error in understanding.

Brains are essentially a group of clustered neurons. Filled with these nerve cells, animals (including humans) control all bodily functions, all bodily functions ☝�

Now permit me to list a animals that do not have a Brain according to what a brain is, that pink, sometimes red, blueish hemisphere residing In our skulls or wherever they lie.
1. Jellyfish
2. Starfish
3. Sea cucumber
4. Sea sponges
5.Oysters
6. Portuguese man-o-war
Et cetera.

Would you say these animals do not have a mind?

Wait...just so you know, animals do have minds but perhaps you've seen a fallacy, an error.

Even technologies have a mind of their own.

Tetehjewels:
My Son is super smart and at 8 has already been given double promotion twice in school. The 1st one he got was in the 2nd term of that year and he was only able to join the new class in their 3rd term yet he still came first and the school thought it necessary to move him again. So he is now in a class with kids 3yrs older than he is and already besting them too.

We are a very God loving family and even though I have never sat my son down to talk to him about God, I do ensure he goes to Church with me and joins me in my daily morning devotions. I do notice that he has an extremely inquisitive mind and would rather watch educational channels on DStv than cartoons especially since they stopped showing his best cartoon "Goku"

So we have this neighbour who is from Greece. His 7 yr old son and my son can be considered best of friends and they visit each other at will. So on this day he came to visit and while they were hanging out I suddenly heard them arguing from his room. Normally their arguments would be over a video game or something else but this one was interesting. They were arguing about God!

I stood by the door and listened. Apparently that day revealed to me that my neighbour is an atheist but I never knew and he has been indoctrinating his 7yr old son along those lines because I clearly heard the boy say to my Son, "God does not exist, he is just a story"

So here is the convo

Him: God is not real, He does not exist, He is just a story

My Son: Ethan what did you say?

Him: God is not real, He is just like Santa who also isn't real

My Son: How do you know he isn't real?

Him: Well my dad said he isn't real because he just isn't. Have you seen him?

My Son: So your dad says God isn't real because he hasn't seen him? So something isn't real because you can't see it? But what about feeling Him?

Him: Feelings are not something we can um um fully determine because they can be misleading

My Son: How can you say Feelings are misleading, you are my friend right? (He goes yeah?) So how are you sure you are my friend if your feelings can be misleading. Can you say your feelings misled you into being my friend?

Him: No that's not what I was trying to say

My Son cuts him off with a sharp tone: So if your feelings did not mislead you into being my friend how then do feelings mislead you?

Him: Have you felt God before?

My Son: No but I do know that I think about him a lot

Him: umm umm but How would you possibly be thinking about something that does not exist

My Son: Exactly Ethan!

At this point I step into the room and cheerfully say Okay guys playtime is over (because I needed to stop the argument and get my Son to study by asking his friend to go home)

However his final comment "Exactly Ethan" resonated with me and made me think that comment was actually directed at Ethan's dad and not Ethan because apparently he had been talking about the non existence of God to his Son A LOT!

So how do you constantly talk or think about Something or Someone that doesn't exist?

StJohnofChrist:
There are of course but it's more abstract than physical. You know there's magnetic field when something obeys the laws relating to magnetic field. Of course I could as well say such field is hoax and that it's just some other thing that happened, because there isn't any substance of it itself.

Bluezy13:


Permit me to comment on this quote as it was not directed to me.

It is insulting to fallaciously equate your contender's remark to your son's sense of judgement and inadvertently adding that you'll direct his post to your son for a "better" reply.
It portrays a father who thinks his son is smarter that himself such that himself does not have the capacity to intellectually withstand a fellows propositions but seeks solace under his own 8 years old son for intellectual redemption.
I must confess that your maturity is questionable.

My inference is not on the matter but on your manner of approach as it depicts your sense of reasoning.

StJohnofChrist:
Such bold statements depicting understanding.

Perhaps you didn't understand the material you read quite well. Think about it.

SmartyPants:


You're an adult so you must be smart enough to reason beyond this point. An athiest probably grew up in religious home where he would have been taught about God a lot.

Thinking about God a lot does not prove that there is God, though it might suggest the athiest is conflicted.

Tetehjewels:
You seem angry at a lot of things but certainly my Son or his little argument cannot be one of the things that has you all blowing hot.

First of all where in my OP did I remotely hint at my son winning the argument. I rather left it as anticlimactic.

I do know you are an atheist but then trying to indirectly bully my son through your comments with your choice of language is laughable and I am sure he would also laugh at this by the time I show him once he comes back from school.

I will type his response to you as he tells me because I want him to be the one to respond to you intellectually. That is how I got him to become smarter than those ahead of him and you certainly wouldn't be any different

Good luck with arguing with an 8yr old who knows how to hold his own any day of the week.

Tetehjewels:


Had my kid read through your comment twice and he looked at me with a smile after reading it the second time and asked me to really explain to him what an atheist is (what is an atheist) those were his words after I had told him an atheist typed that. So had to take a few minutes to explain the who and what of atheism.

Solofresh2:

My brother you are deceiving yourself
Let's even assume it was your son that made the argument.Who the hell is he if I may ask?
Are you so foolish to know that what you feed your son with is what he will digest?
So does that makes him right in any way?

You are bragging about a boy that hasn't even experienced about life yet talkless of knowing if God exists or not

Tetehjewels:


The key words here is that you can only prove the existence of a magnetic field when you carry out an experiment which confirms to the rules that prove the existence of a magnetic field.

I had to point that out just in case they missed it

Havertz10:
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

your mind is vast, you people under rate the depths your mind is capable of reaching, load your head with information and your mind will actively see parallels, that is intelligence right there

Ofadaman:
To everyone who left the argument and aimed straight at the kid or trying to poke holes on Op's yardstick for measuring smartness, y'all dumb as fvk. Na jealousy go kill una.

Focus on the debate and leave the person.

Martinez39s:
Why conclude for no cogent reason that Johnydon22 is angry at a lot of things and is blowing hot? So giving a honest analysis that outlines that logical flaws of your son's argument is indicative of anger and hostility? SMH. That's emotional of you: irrationally conflating mere disagreement, or takes you dislike or disagree with, with some intense feelings to discredit or attack the speaker is emotional and childish. Would you have said the same if he gave your boy a pat on the back and supported his arguments?

Firstly, you referenced your son's precociousness and unusual intellect. Secondly, you followed up this references with a story of your son's arguments which obviously left a profound impact on you and seemed to attest to his great intellect. I don't think you would have been gyrating this way and narrating the argument if you really thought your son spoke so stupidly.

He is not bullying your son. Don't be soft. He simply pointed out the logical flaws of your son's arguments. Had you any iota of intelligence (compounded with honesty) on this issue, you would have immediately noticed the irrationality of your son's argument and you would have agreed with Johnydon22. But no, emotions and sentiments (due to your inclination towards the belief of God's existence) blinded you from noticing the simple flaws of your son's arguments.

The same emotions and sentiments coloured your judgement and made you misconstrue a man's honest take as anger, hostility and indirect bullying. SMH.

Still flaunting your son's intelligence. You actually thought your son spoke excellently in the argument, but he didn't. You are even prepared to have your son ready and you are ready to convey his responses to Johnydon22; you clearly think he will yet again speak excellently, profoundly and sagaciously as the young prodigy you esteem him to be. I am sorry, you and your son are out of your depths on this issue and it's now a case of the blind leading the blind.

There is nothing reasonable you and your son have to say.

LordReed:


How do you know an oyster desires?

Like I pointed out a brain is required for a mind, I didn't say a brain is needed for life. I think you are conflating the 2. Not all living things have brains and to imagine that because they live and respond to their environment that therefore have minds is stretching of what a mind means.

A mind is how we describe the totality of the higher cognitive functions. These cognitive functions we have evidence are taking place in the brain. Any living thing without a brain cannot have these higher cognitive functions and therefore cannot have a mind.

StJohnofChrist:
Do you believe in the inherent desire to seek a God, lemme put it this way, an intelligent being outside time and space, the desire to know if there's a greater being responsible for the rocks, plants, animals, intelligence in itself, coordination of natural elements?.