₦airaland Forum

plaetton: Satan? lol.
Satanists must be pleased. lol

But thanks for this great thread.

Great? Really?
Well you're very welcome good sir

Its a bit of an in joke, the satan situation. While most other types are glad to not be associated with it/him (whatever it is), most NTs actually hustle amongst themselves to claim him as their type . Alas, sadly, it can't be INTP (my type) because we just don't get involved the way he does.

mkmyers45: Well it was not so deep..Mind if we pursue a fresh discuss?

Why not?

So basically, both S types just go with the flow and don't attempt to over think things. The religion they were born into is fine to most of them.

NF usually originate spiritual movements. They are more likely to be atheistic than an S in today's world, but generally value spirituality greatly. If you do meet someone creating a religion out of nothing, or being religious even in a setting where it's frowned upon, good chance the person is an N, and probably NF

NTs question everything. They do dream up religions as well, but in todays world are more likely to drift towards atheism (well, in the west)

Note though, I am extremely biased...

Famous artisans : micheal jackson, mike tyson, maradona, messi

Famous guardians : goerge washington, mother theresa, martha stewart... Can't think of anyone else. As the majority they are just... Normal. Well no, anyways your headmaster was probably sj

Famous idealists (plus fictional): mandela, gandhi, jesus, yahweh, christian god, shakespeare, alduos huxley, j k rowling, tolstoy, oprah, hitler, bin laden (these last two were probably INFJ, the rarest type, incidentally so were jesus and gandhi)

Famous rationals: einstein and just about every popular scientist ever (including adam smith, darwin, not neccesarily just physicists and mathmaticians ie), lincon, jefferson (arguably NF), benjamin franklin, socrates, alexander, both caeser's, hannibal (including the fictional one), kant, da vinci, liebniz, satan, mohammed etc. See why you must bow down to us, slaves?

NFs (Idealists) are harmony loving hippies that apply imagination to whatever spiritual pursuit interests them. For instance a kid with imaginary friends is probably INFP.


NTs (Rationals, or d mastah race) also place a focus on imagination, but apply it to more object persuits, like science, math etc. An NT kid will probably break stuff just to see how they work and turn their toy trucks into some sort of interstellar rocket that's also a deep sea submarine.

Both these groups are less practical with their day to day living then the sensors. But just about every paradigm shift originates from an N.

S' generally consider Ns flighty, Ns think S' are rigid and imaginationless

Most of the regulars would have done this a lot already, I think. Even I have

www.nairaland.com/1012011/freewill-determinism

^^
Off topic: I can't speak for all atheists of course, but I have virtually no desire to convert anyone. Actually it would sadden me to do so in some cases, especially those of ppl who would lose a certain spark without it. Very live and let live for me. My issue is usually when ppl won't let others let live. The spirit of your post got me thinking about that.

I'm not convinced you've thought it through though.
You, I think, are a closet atheist. Stop hanging out around places like this, as they bring you ever more closely to discarding this 'faith' thingie you deceive yourself to like
Don't be afraid. Let it aaaalllllll out

Sorry about that. Had to wait for PC time as I wanted a point by point approach to my reply.

Mr_Anony: Ok so I didn't get your answer after all.

Well no actually. I actually agree with most of your points from that post to a degree, we just more or less arrive at different conclusions.

Mr_Anony: This thing that deserves the ultimate good must then be more important than the man.
The moral law then must be transcendental to the man for it to favor something of higher importance than the man. . . .and since all men are equal he must expect other people to hold it in higher regard than themselves i.e. be bound by this moral law.
Now if it is true that this morality is truly transcendental then it cannot be man-made and everyone should be bound by it.

And I've changed my mind. I was going to the point by point thing but I think this is the juicy bit of the post.

Where we most disagree is on the nature of this universal morality (universal from the pov of our test subject, of course). I do not think it's transcendental (hell, I can't think anything strictly transcendental at the moment, from my pov ie), rather I think it is man-made, just made by the collective rather individuals. It's more complicated than this, but I'll have to give it some thought so as to give you a fitting reply.

@avi, you know, you might really be stoned to death. You damned apostate you.... I was disowned, but they more or less could see it coming from far away, and certain members of my family are fairly cool.

You, on the other hand, being an alfa may have a hell of a lot more trouble from what I can see here. You best remain the secret atheist for a while

Random: I will never, ever ever ever ever ever subscribe to their beliefs. I'd rather die frankly... And I mean it...

Mr_Anony: I get your answer. if christian morals are man-made, then they shouldn't be binding upon you but then the same can be said for any other such moral law. No man-made moral code should be binding on another person.
If everybody makes their own morality, then there is no true morality as everyone will make their own personal moral laws. If each individual is the absolute moral authority to himself, then the greatest good becomes the one that benefits the individual best i.e. Self-preservation becomes the highest law. Don't you agree?

No.

Why do you deduce self-preservation becomes the highest law from acknowledging that the greater good is the one that benefits the individual best? That could help me see what you are trying to say as I can't see how you conclude that. Also, the greater good is not always what benefits an individual best, if we are being really selfish ie.

Random, from here on out not fully relevant: Even brutal application of logic to the point where one is considered 'heartless' need not arrive at a conclusion where some sort of selfish self-preservation is the most logical outcome.

Perhaps no morality should be legally binding on fellow man, unfortunately for practical reasons this is not feasible. We have to work something out, we wouldn't satisfy basic biological needs without some sort of ethical rules to abide to when dealing with others. We also have to do this while respecting basic rights, else it becomes a chaotic mess with productivity and equal opportunity hampered. In essence, and this is critical, we have to be fair while respecting individual rights. This is why most humanists look at some version of the golden rule with an emphasis on rights as a starting point. It is, and this is arguable, objectively the fairest and productive (not just materially of course) way to go about building a moral code.

You may be over-simplifying things. The simplest solution is usually the best, but when it doesn't solve the issue adding some complexity is needed.

Also see why I don't state the obvious often? It comes off as condescending apparently

@cyrexx
I know this will come off as mean, but do ho ho ho ho...
Especially where a certain dd (whose name we must never speak) is concerned...

On another note, a thread about whether absolute morality exists would be interesting, no? But is that 'religion'?

Mr_Anony: Beautiful reply.
The question now arises, if we are the law-givers, why should moral laws of one person be binding on another person?

Well, plaettons post more or else says it all. I personally am not sure of objective morality.

They shouldn't necessarily be, and this would apply to christianity's morals as well. Bear in mind, as I've already stated and plaettons post suggest, in the mind of sundry unbelievers of your gospel, christian morals are man-made. Even those who still acknowledge the christian god would view christian morality as outdated, just as you view judaic morality. Its dogmatic nature makes it particularly questionable as well.

Moonies have leveled up legally to a religion. Scientology still can't get a break. I vote for joshua getting his own official religion ahead of the others.

I was just asking for your opinion btw. This doesn't have much to do with open-mindedness, but we can continue with this tangent if you're interested.

Double post

okeyxyz: It's not exclusively objective or subjective reasoning in this matter, rather i'd be looking for consistency with whatever approach. objectivity has it's limits just like subjectivity, yet both evaluate real phenomena, thus both are valid within their scopes. For example: it may not be possible to evaluate love & beauty objectively, infact it's probable that these phenomenon are non-existent in objective/scientific terms, yet these are the same phenomena that people(yes, even the "objectivity" champions/scientists) deal with every day of their lives. So are we all mad then?

True, subjectivity adds a lot of spice and impetus to life. But in matters that concern others from other cultures, in essence secular issues (especially rights imo), the objective choice should be the default so long as you are interested in being fair.

Mr_Anony: Again you've joined the bandwagon and jumped ahead to attacking religion.
The question I asked is this how does a law exist without a law-giver and if it does, why should it be binding?

You didn't ask me any question. Even if you did ask one to the thread in general I was just pointing out that even if we were not pre-packaged with some 'morality' by our genes (which seem to be an issue with you, and that is debatable even, but we can ignore that) there's no reason to take up christianity's. In fact, its arguably more pernicious than many other philosophies. And I was not attacking religion, I was stating facts, mostly about christianity.

The question you ask, I'm not sure you've constructed it properly. Laws of what nature? Physical laws, the laws of nature etc do not have a creator for instance, they just are. You can't break them thus they're being binding is a non-issue. You don't have a choice. These are still called 'laws'.

Are you referring to moral laws? Perhaps there are some coded into us making them physical laws (well, as much as is possible when you consider free will vs determinism, emotions etc). I think this is the majority view in the scientific community. But for laws that are not physical or strictly objective in nature (like mathematical), of course there's a law-giver. If you want to know who the law-giver would be in the case of morality (edit: assuming it is non-physical ie) and other non-physical laws related to human affairs then that would be: us.

Even if one didn't come pre-packaged with some sort of morality, and that is debatable, he should accept christianity's code why? The code of ethics of a religion which believes in talking fires and espouses the death penalty for those who work on sabbath (the current discrimination against homosexuals is usually attributed to an OT verse so it counts, many simply enjoy cherry picking when it fits their needs). A religion based on faith. One, crucially, often crippled by dogma.

Sam harris points out that if you whisked an european from about 1000 years ago to today, even doors that seem to magically open when you approach them will dazzle him, let's not even talk of exploring the solar system. However, mention christianity, its still pretty much the same thing. There isn't much you could tell him that would surprise him so long as he could read and had access to the bible during his era. If he were a christian, he might even be pissed with what he'd view as the church making concessions (as it's constantly being proven wrong) on various issues. A religion from a bygone era where slavery, mysoginism etc where morally acceptable (in fact favored, eg with the way women were treated. who let them out of the kitchen?).

How are this religions ethics, man made as far some members of other religions and the irreligious are concerned, outdated or from rival deities to other religious denominations, be more acceptable then a group of ethics arrived at by a consensus and accepting a few basic principles which objectively aid the survival, success, quality of life of sentient life: basic rights for all sentients?

Mr_Anony: Lol, I don't even know how to come back from that. My own words condemn me


Dawkin's selfish gene argument is really interesting because he has been called to task on it a few times. Personally, I haven't read the work in detail but his arguments have some flaws
1. When an ant dies for the colony, it does not consciously die i.e. it is not a sacrifice for the ant because the ant does not reason.

2. Dawkins holds that our genes dictate our actions....when asked in a debate against professor John Lennox how we can be held morally responsible for anything since we are under the control of our genes, Dawkins' response is that "we have to rebel against our genes" It is further pointed out to him that this is self contradictory as it will mean our genes rebelling against themselves. To this Dawkins' gives the example of how we use condoms and pills so as to control our genetic urges towards reproduction. He calls this an instance of us rebelling against our genes.

Now what Dawkins unknowingly implies here is that our reasoning minds are not a product of genetic evolution since we can use our rational minds to go against what we are genetically predisposed to do.
To be fair, Dawkins introduces memes which are units of ideas and culture that are transmitted much like genes i.e. behaviours we have but we don't know why we have them. Basically, Dawkins contradicts himself as he seems to be saying on the one hand that we are powerless against our genes/memes and then on the other hand that we can fight against our genes/memes.

Anyway, long story short; For something like self-sacrifice, Dawkins says it is the product of our selfish genes i.e. the human gene would want to propagate it's species. This is all well and good but it fails in instances where a man risks his life for his pet animals or pets animals risking their lives for their human owners (or maybe that's an instance of anti-gene rebellion....you never know with Dawkins these days lol)

Whichever the case, point is that Dawkins fails to point out a rationale for altruism/self-sacrifice. According to him "it is those genes at work again" or maybe "it is those gods at work again"

What is this? Decent arguments?
I'm not sure what to think of the selfish gene yet, I'll have to consider it some more. Also, this response does not consider morality much, as I've not read the thread yet.

1. According to dawkins I don't think genes reason either. Self-preservation is just coded into them, like the ants, randomly. This aids them battle natural selection, but there was no purpose behind it. So genes wouldn't need a 'reason' to be altruistic. It might aid them as far as natural selection is concerned, it might not. But if most types of organisms do indeed have altruism coded into them, then it probably aids them in some way hence the ubiquity.

2. We are back to determinism vs free will here. I can't get my head around 'rebelling against genes' yet. It could work if you imbue it with natures probabilistic workings but your point is worth mulling over (it jumped out to me too).

With regards to the pets example, I would say that is one of those instances where emotion overrides other considerations as far as determining what an organisms actions would be. Remember not every trait inherited need be beneficial (though that is not the case here as emotions are indeed beneficial). Emotions may seem to distort whatever the presumed balance/objective is and cause actions that may not seem to be beneficial from an objective pov (think, sadly, of the irrational woman stereotype). Again, emotions are useful, but in some cases they might (or seem to) misfire. In the cases where they are indeed misfiring think of the famous example of insects that fly into certain flouruscent lights mistakening them for the light of a star which they use for navigation purposes.

okeyxyz: Automatically, you guys are already believing that open-mindedness means one thing. Rather it's relative, it can harm or strengthen your position depending on what what form of open-mindedness you adopt. So, are you open-minded in that you consider & critically evaluate other propositions, or are you open-minded such that it's easy to persuade/influence you, thus you are gullible?

The meaning of open-minded is unequivocal. For the second scenario you give, jane is being open-minded initially (though probably not critical, among other things). If after jane accepts the initial claim she refuses to acknowledge subsequent claims (from say john) even if his are more plausible or logical and backed up by objective evidence then she has now become close-minded.(this is usually accompanied with jane claiming john is being close-minded and her failing to see the irony or her hypocrisy). If john's claims are not verifiable or logical after examination and she discards them when dealing with other people then she's done nothing wrong.

Which do you think is more is more important when dealing with matters that concern other people who do not share your world view btw, objective or subjective arguments?

Mr_Anony: .....bla bla bla says the other bigot in the room

You accept that you are a bigot?
I'm not even sure what the wahala is about, so I'll be on my way...

@avicenna , I had to read up a synopsis of dawkins' the selfish gene, if I understand correctly he posits that it is not the individual that is programmed for self-preservation, rather it's the genes themselves. They are something like an ant-colony, ie like a hive, so the genes inside you might be willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, which in this case would be ensuring the ant colony (the same gene in other people) survives. It's a little more sophisticated than that of course, but that's the general gist I think. I'm not sure what to think about his arguments yet though.

solomon111: But,how long will this atheists keeps defiling every christian thread with unadulterated buffonery?!
I was actually looking forward to learning from this thread,and possibly chip in my own contribution,but the way it is,i dont think i can anymore.
SMH.

Interesting, he mentions the koran and other religions. This is a christian only thread? If he had mentioned that then I wouldn't have posted anything. Else as it stands now your post is totally worthless. So if I'm not mistaken that would make you the buffoon, no?

okeyxyz: The question was: why are there no more prophets that god reveals himself to. How does your response address that?

In case it isn't bleeding obvious my response is there are prophets that god reveals himself to.

okeyxyz: except for the mention of prophet in the last line, How is your response in anyway related to the question?? Or did you mean to post this on another thread?

Do cults have prophets oh wise and great one?
Do the religions I list, all recent, have prophets or not oh brilliant one?

MOAR

Away from pc.. Only have pics to contribute..

You do know what 'cults' are, yes?
Off the top of my head, consider the bahai, who have achieved 'religion' status. At least they are peaceful (iirc) and by abrahamic standards, extremely tolerant
Mormons (whose founder was hung by a mob, for 419, it has over a million adherents today) and yes, scientology (rumour is it started off as a bet, read rumour)
Quite a lot of these die in their infancy. A few reach critical mass then don't look back unless there's some sort internal disaster. Like a social network, once it attains a certain amount of users its survival is more or else guaranteed if it keeps up with the times (I'm still not sure how myspace failed). Actually, similar to how the bits of evolution work.

Edit: clarity
Mormons: 14 million
Bahai: 5 million
Scientology: ha ha ha, nobody knows. They claim 15, others claim less than 1
All began less than 200 years ago. All have prophets of course

BUZUGEE, HOW CAN ONE BE BUZU AND A 'G'? YOU'RE A $DEITY DAMNED APOSTATE AREN'T YOU? OR FROM A FAMILY OF APOSTATES, IT DOESN'T MATTER, IT'S ALL THE SAME...
YOU ALSO ASSERT JESUS IS BLACK, WONDERS SHALL NEVER END

And you're aware that it doesn't matter you troll, you... It's when he's gay that it becomes an issue... see the similarities?

Mr_Anony: I'll be right back, give me some time to digest your argument

Take your time bossu, it may help us achieve/maintain quality in the discussion

Ihedinobi: @wiegraf, I confess that I thought you were a little like Ptolomeus, probably using a translating program, when I first read you on my thread set up to defend Yahweh. Your posts were practically incomprehensible. But, for awhile now, I see that you can type clear English that nobody could rightly misinterpret. But your ability to become incomprehensible has again shown in your response to Mr Anony. Is it perhaps a ruse to avoid giving a clear answer? Or what? I couldn't make it through half of that "write-up", dude.

What I said was jhhgcttyjjnbuugfrddknvyjktff

Point out the bits you don't understand

Hkivyfffuumkbigjll

Calm down, there's enough wiegraf to go round..
oh, someone took over... anyways, taking you back

Mr_Anony: Ok wiegraf, let's work through this...

First of all human beings are a very complex organism. Basically, a human being is a whole universe of individual cells living together and these cell all have to work in near perfect uniformity for a human being to function. A human being who doesn't feel pain will be seen as diseased. It won't be attributed to genetics. Perhaps we should make it a bit simpler by focusing more on unicellular organisms.

Now you talked about probabilities, let us put a number to it shall we? The number of atoms present in a single cell organism is estimated at 100 trillion. Now, the chance of life starting from a primordial soup means that these 100,000,000,000,000 atoms need to come together in a specific way. This puts the chance of life forming on earth at one in 100 trillion factorial (100,000,000,000,000 x 99,999,999,999,999 x 99,999,999,999,998......3 x 2 x 1). Please take a minute to consider the magnitude of that number. Just for comparism, 50 factorial is approximately 3 x 10^64 (3 with 64 zeroes following). Now even if this "probability" happened (and mind you it would have to repeat itself quite a number of times), it wouldn't still explain life.

This has little to do with evolution, this is more abiogenesis. I'm not familiar with the topic, but these guys seem pretty pissed whenever ID people bring up numbers like yours http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html . It wouldn't be too fair to use this link though as they seem to be particularly concerned with claims like the ones you make (and I actually haven't read/researched it yet ), a neutral would be more acceptable. Regardless, it's got little to do evolution, and I believe there are others on NL familiar with the topic (I believe Avi for one is)

Also, like thehomer points out, lots of other things in nature work similarly. Simple + simple = complex, till you get very complex. Even atoms are made up of many particles (and if string theory is correct, the average string is supposed to be the size of tree when compared to the full size of an atom, but string theory is far from confirmed). You can imagine how many atoms make a whale? What about a mountain? What about a star? etc

The odds though I would imagine would probably still be fairly low, and I cannot see how that aids ID actually. If ID were involved, why this highly inefficient system? Also, low odds help explain the seeming paucity of intelligent life, much rarer than multi-cellular life (we've had millions of these on this planet, only 1 attained intelligence), which is also rarer than single celled life. I remember reading somewhere that the jump from single to multi-cell is very unlikely (a dawkins book, I think 'The Greatest Show on Earth', will have to clarify). There are many other options that could explain why we've not gotten any evidence of intelligent life though.

Don't forget they're hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy, and hundreds of billions of galaxies in this universe (though ours is fairly big). So when you look at low odds...

ID designer sure is astronomically inept if we were the objective or purpose.

Edit: whether the mutation is classified as a disorder or not is irrelevent to my point. What's important is that the trait is hereditary and harmful or not up to par as far survival
is concerned. There are people born without the ability to feel pain, not sure if its hereditary though. But I'm sure of people born without the ability to sleep, and theirs is hereditary.

Mr_Anony: Let us leave the above aside for now, let us assume that the conditions were just right (which by the way is another "probability" of it's own) so that life "miraculously" happened and we have the first living cell or groups of cells, let us also agree that these cells don't have any consciousness whatsoever and the basic characteristics of living things (movement, growth, respiration, feeding, excretion, reproduction and response to stimuli) are just chemical reactions for this cell since it doesn't have a conscious life.

The question now becomes why would the cell reproduce at all in the first place enabling it to pass it's genes on? Why would the gene want to be propagated?

I think it's already been pointed out. It didn't need a conscious reason. It's just a natural process. Rivers flow downstream. Clouds form. Stars shine, etc.

random: if you're insinuating an ID how did the ID acquire such complexity in the first place? There must have been a natural process at the beginning, and it would work like all of nature, logically, which is: simple -> complex. But the requirement of an ID is completely superfluous, not to mention illogical considering the inefficiency of the system for one.

Mr_Anony: Let us also ignore this question and assume that reproduction is just a random chemical reaction such that the cells that don't reproduce simply die. same thing for feeding respiration e.t.c.

Another question pops up: How can an organism die if all the characteristics of it being a living thing are more or less, chemical reactions? This should point to the fact that as long as natural conditions remains the same, these chemical reactions should continue and the organism should stay 'alive' and never die or decay.

The same with the question in the op actually. Evolution didn't set out to achieve anything (or in this case, abiogenesis), it just so happens a configuration that could be termed "life" was achieved and it was not configured to last forever. We (humans) for instance have acquired the means to engineer life ourselves, rather than leave it to chance. We are now working on things like SENS with the goal of elongating our lives. We are being a hell of a lot more efficient than nature because we have a purpose. We've drawn up plans, experimented, tested etc etc and continue to do so. We now have optimistic estimates of achieving something similar to "immortality" in ~30 years. Evolution, on the other hand, has non of that. Just blind random mutations and natural selection. Living forever, or any other similar goal, is not the aim. It doesn't have one.

Why didn't an ID use an approach similar to ours?

Look up senescence for reasons for cell death though, and as already mentioned, entropy (put wear and tear to entropy as well)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence

Also, it's not impossible that species that have been "immortal" once existed and have died out. Cell lines exist which are immortal (HeLa, from humans, a cancer cell line) and even looking at complex animals Hydra's are basically immortal, or sort of, they don't die from old age. But there are debates about the nature of its immortality. Other biological life forms fit the bill too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality

Mr_Anony: Let us not even talk about the probability of these 'mindless' organisms eventually evolving into complex animals like we have today (A human being that weighs 70kg is roughly 7 quadrillion synchronized cells).

The above are some of the logical steps we have to jump across before coming to complex organisms.

Now most animals are in such a way that they are adapted to their environment, this evolution explains is as a result of natural selection i.e. these are the animals that survived and the traits are not developed in response to the environment rather, they are developed in spite of the environment. the environment only lets some traits survive. This sounds like a good explanation until we look at it a bit more closely.

Take for instance the presence of melanin in the human skin, or the absence of tails in human beings. If evolution is really by purposeless natural selection, shouldn't a surviving trait simply continue to exist even though it we have no more use for it? After all it is not threatening our survival.

Doesn't this suggest that rather than mindless natural selection, there is a purpose that allows the animal to adapt to it's environment.

You are aware of course of lots of useless bits in life forms from their ancestors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigiality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vestigiality

If you're going to ask this, you might as well ask how are species formed, it's more or else the same thing. As time, a lot of it, passes the changes in members of a species somehow divided (be it by geography or what not) become so extreme that you get 2 or more different species. Breeding dogs from wolves in a few millenia alone show how drastic changes can be when directed with a purpose (we have hairless cats and dogs without tails). Island gigantism shows said dramatic changes without the aid of intelligent planning. While these changes are taking place, if a trait that is not critical to the species survival anymore keeps on becoming less and less of priority, other mutations will take precedence, and we can have changes as drastic as snakes not having any limbs, and far more dramatic of course.

Mr_Anony: As for dawkins and his selfish gene theory, well that's another pot of soup on it's own.

Looking up his selfish gene theory, it has little to do with the current issue. But if it were what I thought it was, it would have. In essence, if the problem is why do most life forms seem very eager to live, procreate etc, then the answer would be because natural selection favours the 'selfish'.

Over to you good sir, and of course editing later

It's beautiful. Maybe not as scathing as I'd like, but still beautiful. Where's it from?