₦airaland Forum

Antiparticle:
Thanks for the commentary bros. I understand that the extent of my knowledge is limited and I thus try to be as intellectually honest as possible.

While that is appreciated, this is not just a matter for intellectual honesty, it is also - and more cardinally - a matter for spiritual honesty.

Bros, if god(s) exist, the burden of proof is on it/them to reveal itself/themselves to me.

Have you really examined this statement carefully?

1. What exactly do you think you are?
2. Are you hidden from yourself?
3. Is there a burden of proof on yourself to reveal yourself to you?
4. If so why?

humans are fundamentally rational beings

No my friend, humans are fundamentally spiritual and intuitive beings.
Look around the world and tell me where in human society you see rationality as the be all and end all.

I test you yourself to claim that your deepest desires are rational.
Are they?

Your claim that it rests within every soul is a large logical leap. How is it clear? Based on what is it clear?

How is it a large logical leap? What are you? What causes your thoughts, your emotions, your ambitions, your ideas, your ideals, your ethics, your values, your sensitivities, your proclivities, your wonders, your dreams, your you. . . . . . .?

Another logical leap. A man breathing air is not a good analogy because there is a preponderance of consistent and reproducible and repeatable evidence that humans breathe air.

Excellent - now understand carefully - There is also a preponderance of consistent and reproducible and repeatable evidence that life only comes from pre-existing life. Louis Pasteur yet to be dis-proven. Care to take that up? Spontaneous generation? Primordial soup? Go on, let's go there. But think carefully first.

I have said a few things above and not responded to everything you have written.
Please let me know your thoughts and we can proceed thence.
In a hurry now.
Tata.

Excellent brother ^^^ Will revert later in the day. Few thoughts on yours.
Many thanks for the time.

Antiparticle:
I'm here What's up brother?

Very well. I read your first post on this thread and was intrigued at what you turned out. Aside from reading a few other posts on the first page though, I must confess I have not read much else on the thread which is well over ten pages now. Therefore pardon me if a lot has passed me by: I would like to snack on some of the thoughts that you laid on.

Let me first say that there are few posts I have seen on this board that are as balanced, measured and well delivered as that which I read in your first, and that is a pleasure indeed. All in all I cannot find anything to disagree with, and to a large extent (not to a full extent) what you have articulated embodies my worldview. That world view has generally been Deist - which you appear to be some variant of to some minor extent, however I for a long time preferred to refer to my thoughts as rational (or empirical) and intuitive deism. Rational, because the physical world and the laws of logic rationally suggest intelligent stimulation as well as intent or purpose - and intuitive because there rests within man the capacity to intuitively perceive that which the material intellect may not. There are many reasons to more than reasonably say this.

However here is the comment of yours I wanted to speak with you on. you said:

I love @menesheh's post that "[God] should know we are intellectually honest with our position as atheist. He should know that we are trying so hard to distinguish between facts and fantasy, and that the method and link he established for communicating with us is so vague and lack evidence and justifications."

I wholly disagree with this statement of yours for these reasons:

1. When you say that you like the post which says that [I paraphrase] "God should know that the atheist is being intellectually honest" - This infers that (a) God is to be sensed by the intellect only and (b) God is of the same dimension of the intellect so as to be sensed by it in the first place. I say to you that neither are true, and both - even from either side of the theistic or atheistic divide - are logical contradictions.

2. When it is said that the method or link established for communicating with God is vague - I disagree - as it is clear and rather abundantly obvious. It rests within every soul as clear as day light.

3. When it is said that it lacks evidence or justification I find this statement to be such as a man who breathes air and says that there is no evidence of air.

I say that the laws of physics as we know them, and the very existence of the universe, and most importantly the existence of living things, are manifest and incontrovertible evidence of the existence of GOD.

In saying these things, let me clarify that I am not religious so you do not need to revert in terms of rebutting any Abrahamic or other suppositions - although it must be said that all the old traditions contain many snippets of the eternal truth.

What are your thoughts?

@ Antiparticle. . .
A few words please.

Are you there?

successinlife:
You don't have to use derogative words to push your points for acceptance. ''twerp'' because my opinion is different from yours and nothing shows you are more intelligent than the person you called ''twerp''.It is always the case with many on N/L forgetting that we can't all be onesided in decision taking.You have to be cultured in a public faceless forum.

Sorry, not when one advocates cruelty to animals.
This has nothing to do with intelligence, it has something to do with ethics and your humanity.

I can't see any reason why you would take offence at such light words when you enthusiastically appauld cruelty to other creatures.

successinlife:
@ Deepsight, there is something you have to know,learn and try to use in day to day activities. Why is Bull fighting not banned?why is cock fighting not banned?it is considered as a means of entertainment.Don't judge only what come out of your country,if tomorrow it is considered a crime worldwide then i will also agree to it but others are practising it,it has not taken anybody's life,there are sports more dangerous and people are still into it.Don't stigmatise your own with bad while others in the western world do theirs with applause.

I do not limit my condemnation to this local version of the same banality. What happens with Matadors and Bull Riding or Fighting is as barbaric and filthy as it comes.

successinlife:
Nice one there. You people should not call it crazy sport because that tag might remain with it forever.It is normal animal sport.

Just as surely as you are quite a normal animalistic twerp.
Its cruelty to animals.

Just like Bull Fighting, Cock Fighting and others, this is nothing but another depraved sport which exhibits cruelty to animals and to nature.
I must say that there is something terribly banal about human beings.
We are scarcely worthy to exist in Creation.

AllNaijaBlogger:
As a christian, I cringe at times when I consider the messages that science fiction movies and novels try to pass on. It is not that science fiction is a dull or ridiculous genre of art and literature- in fact, science fiction has actually given scientists some inspiration for many inventions. The problem comes when some sci-fi stories end with chilling implications.

So, here are 5 troubling implications for religion that some sci-fi movies and novels have;


1) Changing history with time-travel; changing history through time-travel is a common trope in science fiction. However, the implication of such is that one could go to the past and kill anyone in order to change history. Well, that means that one could kill Martin Luther King, past popes and any prophet during biblical times.


2) Trying to become a creator; another common occurrence in sci-fi stories is the creation of conscious beings (usually robots). In essence, scientists are trying to become God by being able to fully understand consciousness and create conscious beings like humans.


3) Cheating death and the afterlife; continuing with the idea that humans can understand consciousness and create conscious beings, there is the implication that one day, humans could live forever because we would be able to transfer our consciousness into another being when our bodies are weak. This literally happened in the movie “Chappie” where a conscious robot transferred his human mother’s mind into a robot’s body.


4) Aliens are our gods; There is the “space engineer” or “space Jesus” theory that posits that religious deities were actually aliens from space who came to give man technology and guidance. This is heavily used in the movie “Prometheus” which overtly tries to say that humans were created by an alien race called the engineers.


5) There is no spoon (we don’t exist); This is the central message in “The Matrix” movie. The movie plays with the idea that humans are not exactly in the real world. The movie explains that what we as humans are experiencing as real life is actually a computer simulation and that we are actually asleep in some farm lab as guinea pigs.





cc
Plaetton
Joseph1832
Deepsight
onetrack
johnydon22
texanomaly
muskeeto
francistony
nihilist




Source; http://allnaijablog.com/5-reasons-why-science-fiction-and-religion-do-not-mix

4 and 5 are almost certainly true.

Brilliant observations. Utterly brilliant.
From my point of view though it troubles me that some fellow humans cannot recognize such obvious things. . .

plaetton:
Wordy Sire,

I am sure you know the meaning of " anecdotal conjecture".

The video only highlites the mystery of consciouness, and approaches these mysteries from the perspective of classical physics.

The brain has and does exhibit quantum mechanical properties. That is fact.

Therefore, any study of brain's connection to consciousness without approaching from a quantum mechanical perspective is bound to come up with erroneous and confusing conclusions.

I must be that you did not watch the video because it by no means addresses only classical bio-physics it discusses the quantum issues at play.

^^^ Fair enough, but doesn't hammer home the point effectively. A Plaetton for example would actually use it to underscore his point about the effect such chemical substances have on the brain.

^^^ Fair enough. it appears many people including myself may have misconceived you for atheist. You are anything but.

Who said that the big bang was an accident? Does mother nature do things by accident or by her nature? It wasn't an accident. It was carefully arranged by the universe itself, not an alien or humanoid being with consciousness.

Wow, wow, wow, ALL STAND UP AND SALUTE THIS RARE GENIUS PLEASE! I have never seen such profound knowledge and genius before in my life, hats off to you sir, for evidently you have a complete view and clear picture of the entire nature of the universe and its origin and its workings, you really deserve a Nobel Prize, as there is certainly no scientist in this world who has such a clear and certain picture of what you have just revealed to us.

We are most grateful for imparting this great knowledge sir, may you live long in the land of your fathers.

^^^ Did you watch the video?

It would seem to me that you have watched the video right from the "first few minutes" (as you put it) through the lenses of your previously conceived ideas - i.e: stock market. This is as dogmatic as you accuse anyone else of being.

I am not certain that you watched the entire video?

Did you see the evidence of persons with virtually no brain tissue at all who remained articulate, clear, sane and intelligent - even having higher I.Qs than normal?

Did you see the particular case of a person who only had virtually a stump left in the head, and scientifically should not be able to even function at all but showed normal consciousness and intelligence all the same?

Did you really go through everything that was said and presented and really ponder it or just took a dogmatic pair of glasses from the "first few minutes?"

There is not much in the first few minutes by the way. The real evidence is presented further on.

Weah96:
Abeg, please ask them again.

The problem for them is, if the universe is God, then the manufacturers of holy books, and the urchins who peddle their messages, will be out of business.

God must be a being, because of the talking business. There is a monetary reward, IN THIS LIFE, that is attached to making the creator a talking being. Someone wants to feed their family by claiming that it spoke to him in his native language.

There is no way to get money, or p*ssy for that matter, from saying that the universe created itself. It will be harder to move the books off the shelves.

Please at least know your audience.

Plaetton, with reference to your repeated questions on consciousness and the brain, I believe this lecture by a Professor of Psychiatry will be especially illuminating.

Its long, but especially worthwhile.

Bigfrancis21, Benodic, Rossikke - Tagged: loads corroborate a lot which you have said

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yosn_GHYiR4[url]

Weah96:
When I say that I don't believe in God, I am under the impression that the OP if referring to the Abrahamic ones.

Bingo, so why the "which god" rigmarole?

plaetton:
@Deepsight

Why is it so much easier to speak about a supreme self-existent mystery being than supreme self-existent natural processes that beget all things in the universe?

Lets be honest.
Could it be just mental laziness?

Maybe for some people, but no, not for me - indeed I have spent loads of time and back and forth on the very reasons why natural processes as known in the physical world cannot be self existent. A self existent thing cannot decay, for example. It's very existential quality is immanent. It is also logically intangible. These reasons, among others show that nothing physical can be self existent.

The only logical reverse is therefore that that which is self existent is intangible and non physical.

I have often mentioned infinite time as an example of a self existent thing.

plaetton:
Lol @creator supreme.
An an assumption clearly not in evidence.

For the millionth time, who do you suppose created the Creator supreme?

I did not here say it is in evidence, I say that that is the natural and well known definition of the word "God" when used in the singular and with the capital G, and weah96 must indeed know that.

He is free to then proceed to say that he does not believe in God, for X, Y or Z reasons, including the problem of the infinite regress you just mentioned.

That would be the simple way to answer the OP so that the OP could proceed with his trajectory, rather than stalling with the "which god" ruse.

plaetton:
OK.
I get You.

But how would I scan the universe of atheists to know which one believes in a god?

You don't need to scan the universe of atheists. By definition, an atheist does not believe in god or gods. Therefore by definition, there cannot be any atheist who believes in God or gods. Such a person is not an atheist. It would be a logical contradiction exactly the same as the existence of a square circle.

So that closes that, and I can thus come to the reason I raised the question. I raised it to show that the response of weah96 to the OP is completely illogical and an even impossible response to make. He is asked why he does not believe in God and he says "which god"? This would not be necessary to the question because as an atheist being asked that question, the clear assumption is that he does not believe in all and any possible God or gods!

Therefore there is no need for him to begin to look at each of the thousands of gods in antiquity in order to resolve the question: he should simply give reasons why he rejects the existence of all gods.

Finally, on a side note, even if he refuses to do that, perhaps seeking to contend that he may have different reasons for the rejection of the existence of each god in history (which is implausible), the truth is that he is still being pedantic because the OP's question is clear that he is referring to that God - which various tribes call differently and ascribe different qualities to, but have one quality at at least as a common denominator: to wit: the creator supreme being in all existence.

plaetton:
Again, that would depend on what is or what was assumed to be god.

If for example, giants were worshipped as gods, then surely, gods existed.

If volcanoes were worshipped as gods, then surely, gods existed.

No: this is still a very bad answer to the question.

The question is not whether some people worshipped giants or volcanoes as gods. If some people did so: then those people are certain not atheists, for no atheist believes in the existence of any god much less worship same.

In your example, the atheist would regard those objects as a giant and as a volcano - and would not regard either as a god.

Therefore you have actually turned the question on its head; for rather than answering the very simple question as to whether there are any atheists that believe in the existence of gods, you have provided examples of theists that do!

An odd thing to do, considering the very definition of the word "theist" as one who so believes in god(s)?

I hope you can see how terribly up-side-down your reasoning is?

So please attempt the question again - are their any atheists who believe in the existence of God or gods?

Simple.

plaetton:
Interjecting, I Say to you sir that his question is very very reasonable.
The streets of history are littered with dead and decayed corpses of gods from the beginning of human civilization.
Millions of gods, once considered real, immortal and self-evident, are now relegated to the realms of myth and fairy tales.
Today's God is tomorrow's myth.
So, the op's question should have been About THE IDEA OF GOD, rather about the existence of god.
If you believe in one god myth, then You probably don't believe in other god myths.
Therefore, at any given time, a monotheistic person has millions of gods that he/she does not believe to exist.
Everyone is an atheist to some degree.

Are there any atheists that believe in the existence (in the past, present or future) of any type of God or gods whatsoever?

wiegraf:
SMH

You do know that you are still of course entirely wrong. Still quite the antelope if you do not appreciate the functions of thought as enumerated.

^^^ Seems Christian to me, but probably does not subscribe to biblical inerrancy.

wiegraf:
Didn't say I didn't understand it, I said it's shitte. It fails on a variety of levels, including emotional. For instance, it makes some fairly silly assumptions that disrupt immersion. However, your analogy here does demonstrate something

You see, I'd say the antelope is better off figuring out say Newton and Einstein. I fail to see how Shakespeare would save it from, for example, hunters or disease. On the other hand learning how to make vaccines and bullet proof vests would very clearly do it some good.

Basically, the analogy does show how useless your wishy washy feely dreamy rainbow and butterflies poetry is to the plight of black man. It's nigh on totally worthless, so I do wonder why you persist.

Simple intellectual ma.sturbat1on? OK, I guess. To each his own, obviously. But even more bizarrely, you also seem to be trying to pass it off as something objective. Some sort of 'deep' truth....

lol no

Good come back and great writing for once. Thumbs up.

^^^^
https://www.nairaland.com/689050/spiritual-government

wiegraf:
Rather confused as to how that write up qualifies as 'deep'

Naturally. Just as surely as an antelope might have challenges reading Shakespeare.

dolphinheart:
Want to hear opinnions about choice. Can AI make different choices based on same knowledge and experience ?

Can AI experience joy?
Can they be really happy ?
Can the dream about things they have no knowledge or experience or pre programe about?
Can they imagine?

Very simple.
And yet the ignoramus says that they need no emotion because emotion is a result of evolution and goes on to say that AI would still experience all human experience and would also experience the moment of life better.

This ranks as far and above the most stupid comment I have ever heard in my life.

^^^ Please read it thoroughly.

These sorts of things are not open to robots.

Please stop being so shallow. I know you are a profound man. Wake up and be yourself.