English Standard Version
The FOOL says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.

There, now you know it

 

Right cool , thought you may have as much of what you have written appears to be rather similar in many ways
I guess that's partly the problem for myself in that what is written seems to offer very little if anything in terms of original thinking or new ideas
You can go all day and quote Hume\Russell and talk of "A virtual world" and quote empirical premises about Atheism and someone can then babble on about Copleston or Leibniz and how your ideas are not correct as you have misunderstood the true nature of God??
Will it really get us any further forward if it offers no new ideas
I'm willing to guess that they probably had a better chance back then at sorting out than any of us will have now
Anyway best of luck making sense of all those symbolic references & educating all us laymen about the true nature of the universe

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 21, 2017

Yes, all thoughts are virtual and not real, but that does not necessarily mean that they do not reflect truth. As everything is physical in nature, our thoughts mean absolutely nothing to the universe unless we choose to act on them in a physical way. Stated another way, it doesn't matter what we think, only what we do.

 

Whoever started this thread is deceiving others and can't prove what he/she is saying to be true. No one other than his/her self can endorse what is being said, by the individual. They can't possibly be objective without having experienced GOD, so to keep rattling on with this fool is unfruitful. It will yield you nothing but deception. The devil is a LIAR and so are his children. Satans knows good and well that GOD created the universe, and he knows that some men don't believe unless they see. He loves intelligent men because he uses their logic, to say what they can't say for certain because they weren't there when God created the universe. A theory is an assumption based on a lack of information. Most intellectual people out smart themselves into hell, because again they live in self deception. They also fear coming out of their comfort zone, so if you ask them to really study scripture, or other evidence that challenges their unbelief, they hide behind their logic and man made jargon. Carl Sagan, Darwin and Stephen Hawkins are their gurus and go to gods of information. They where used by the devil on very high levels , to deceive the gullible. Jesus said only his sheep hear his voice, if your not hearing him it's because your not a child of GOD.

 

Well what we think is determinant regarding how we act and what we do. And the social world is not only made by us, but it's also something that we act or not act on according to our representation of said social world, what we think of it. How we act toward the opposite genre when we face it and interact with it, how we handle the interraction with other cultures, what meaning we give to our environnement, to signs, symbols,....Viewing the world, the physical world, only as a physical world ironically is a very recent social construct, an occidental one at that.
In fact I would say that the unability to believe (not just in god but in watching any part of reality in unscientific terms), is indeed something that is socialy determined, and to that regard there is as much conditioning required for a scientific apprehension of the world or for a religious apprehension of the world. The unability to believe for "rational" minds (a rationality in scientific reasoning, which isn't rational in other terms), or to apprehend any unmeasurable part of reality (the majority of it) in an unscientific way is in that perspective as much an osburantism as explaining it magically or religiously.
In the social world everything can be constructed objectively and subjectively, we act according to what we see, who we are (socially), etc, and there isn't one rationality that can explain every actions.
Everybody believes in the social world, even if many apsects of it aren't visible and no one agrees on what it means. Even if it's a moving reality.

Completely off topic of course, but that's the problem here, by dividing it in fiction/non fiction terms you predetermine the result of the challenge and render it meaningless.

 

Last edited: Apr 21, 2017

When I ask why you believe in a God you tell me:

Well. this is a circular argument that simply presumes there is a God.

Yes please, tell me about the proofs that one of the books is written by God.

 

Can see the benefits
Possibly why some might consider the most productive way forward on such a level of thinking to be changing that which they are able.
Maybe simplistic rather than visionary but possibly the most relevant in a real world sense given the confines

 

Quite a journey you took us on there. The challenge presented is nothing else but a challenge for a believer to be observant to the possibilty that they might have a double standard regarding how they come to their conclusions. Not many makes a well judged decision when they start "believeing" there is a "God".

I know you are smart and you have a couple of interesting points, but when it comes to devalueing the challenge presented you are doing nothing but a disservice to people blinded by faith.

To also make a 180 and say people brought up in scientific societies are blinded to unscientific experiences, also religious, is not hitting any nail on its head. Religious experiences, and any other human experiences, is most certainly questions suitable for scientific reasoning and examination. For you to suggest otherwise is just obscuring things further.

 

And you can't most certainly not do that when it comes to your belief in a specific "God". So... where does that leave us...

 

For a rational mind your pov is quite uninformed.
A few read : Michel Foulcault "Les mots et les choses " (Words and things, probably in English). It will be a great teaching for you as it involves travelling through the centuries long journey of how the scientific look is something built, what came before and how the conditions of possiblity (épistémé) of the way you speak were born. But positivism is already behind us. The blind faith in science - in the sense of the belief that science is something that give us unquestionable knowledge - incarnated by people like Auguste Comte and Charles Darwin, which lead to beauty and horror (like evolutionism applied to races, hierarchy of races, prelude to the XXth century holocausts) has been buried by scientists themselves. Which lead to a lot of questions regarding the conditions needed for scientific facts to be considered...scientifics. Really a basic but very important matter, not so easy to find a solution to.
For understanding that better I advice that you check the readings of Thomas Kuhn (but Polanyi held the same views) ("Structures of Scientific Revolutions") which explains that social conditions for scientific production at one point in time are the most important for discoveries (which aren't the fruit of accumulation of knowledge but of revolutions which are rendered possible only by changes in the social structures which allow changes in how nature is viewed by scientists, and thus conditions the theorical representation of the wrld by scientists), in short everything seems in order and theoricaly makes sense in the world for scientist when we are in a normal period, and then it doesn't anymore because an external anomaly arises (an obstacle), so the scientific community must think of a solution which will establish a new paradigm for things to move forward normally again. He opposes to Popper (largely at the heart of our discussion although not quoted) that scientific theories aren''t rejected when they are refuted but when they are replaced (which is very different, because in Kuhn's view scientific activity becomes a social activity like any others).
Also against Popper we have Feyerabend ("Against the Method" and "Science in a free society") which speaks in favor of anarchism in the methodology of science production in order to have no limit in the field of scientific research, he shows - amongs a lot of things - that for the copernician revolution to happen every rules of methodology of his time (which prescribed what was to considered science at the time and how to do it) had to be broken, and ends up concluding that philosophy of science (and thus science itself) will never be able to fully describe science or gives a scientific methodology fullproof, able to distinguish perfectly scientific discovery from "non" scientific discovery.
All in all those are all scientific questions, questions at heart of the matter at hand, which consist in showing what is fiction or non fiction, it is actually imo perfectly on topic.
Just food for thought. I'm not against questionning religion, but I wonder when does science becomes a religion itself. I think I show the scientific claim of science itself is questionnable.

 

Last edited: Apr 21, 2017

I'm not sure about that at all

From a personal perspective he raised quite a few interesting & somewhat valid points that have not maybe been addressed.

Shouldn't your own premise or way of thinking rule out all other possibilities in order that it can be considered valid?

 

All very interesting. And I thank you for the historical pointers, Inreally do.

I do think you are off topic though. I think it might be better if you just stated, to the point, YOUR reason why the challenge is not valuable in discovering faith percieved as reality.

When it comes to discovering faith percived as reality, the challenge seems to me very valuable to unveil the disharmony in ways conclusions about fiction and non-fuction are reached in every other area in most belivers lives except when it comes to their belief that there actually exist a God.

Maybe you can come up with some other challenge that better show the disharmony in how conclusions about storytelling and reality are reached? I suppose you yourself make a distinction between reality and storytelling, don't you?

 

I can see some here going of topic by obscurity here, maybe not intentional but by failure to adress the question at hand: in what way does belief in an existing God differ from belief in other fictional characters and how do you reach the conclusion some other characters actually are fictional and your "God" is not.

 

Last edited: Apr 21, 2017

It's not a history lesson. I'm also not trying to derail the topic.

I'm postulating that science itself is nothing more than a langage,, the most precise langage at hand to describe the reality we perceive, but the reality we perceive is something always changing (because our look on it change, reality itself is still), and the langage used to describe this blury picture isn't perfect, and misses alot of words which makes it always not completely "true".
From that perspective the challenge should also question science itself in its pretention to perceive reality rightfully, while it obviously can't, and thus ask to us believer of the scientific perspective why we believe in this always moving fiction we hold dear.
Don't you think that in this process your faith too is involved ?
I think if we don't have those questions more, it's because they shake our faith in what we absolutely want to believe in. Today it's easier to not believe in afterlife and angels, but it's also easier to not ask the same question to the science langage than the ones we ask to the theological langage. We don't question its logic, and the obvious limits of its validity. Not very scientific imo.

 

Last edited: Apr 21, 2017

"English Standard Version
The FOOL says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.

There, now you know it "




yes, there is a storytelling which says that hahah

 

Well, I a not sure that the process of science even is at heart of the question here. Please just answer me if you yourself in your life think it is valuable to make distinctions between fiction and non fiction, or do you not make such distinctions?

 

I can understand why someone wants to believe in a God. I really do. It makes life easier. Just follow the rules of that God and you get through life. Your daughter dies? God wanted her with him. You earn a lot of money? God is pleased with you. You had an accident and are now disabled? God wasn't pleased with you.

The only difference to other fictional characters is that this one exists for like 2000 years. If Spiderman would have been created back then, it might have been the believe that this spider-like saviour of the world exists.

It is this little detail. The story of God exists for such a long time. And history tells us that it won't be forever. There once were religions that existed even longer. The religions that involved dozens of Gods (Ancient Egypt, Greek, Rome). They were abandoned when christianity became popular. It wasn't less true or created less faith in the believers. No, they were forcefully abandoned, including killing people, raping woman and destroying temples. All in the name of God. Which by the way didn't change up until today. It's always about oppressing any other belief or disbelief. But, and that's the good thing, it will only last a few thousand years, so we are at least halfway through. Then religions will be replaced again. Maybe we discovered aliens until then and they bring us a new form of religion.

So, those who don't understand why someone believes in a God, watch the X-Files series. There's a poster on the wall in the office. It says: "I want to believe".

That's not my way of living, but whoever gets happy with it.

 

"Well what we think is determinant regarding how we act and what we do. And the social world is not only made by us, but it's also something that we act or not act on according to our representation of said social world, what we think of it. How we act toward the opposite genre when we face it and interact with it, how we handle the interraction with other cultures, what meaning we give to our environnement, to signs, symbols,....Viewing the world, the physical world, only as a physical world ironically is a very recent social construct, an occidental one at that.
In fact I would say that the unability to believe (not just in god but in watching any part of reality in unscientific terms), is indeed something that is socialy determined, and to that regard there is as much conditioning required for a scientific apprehension of the world or for a religious apprehension of the world. The unability to believe for "rational" minds (a rationality in scientific reasoning, which isn't rational in other terms), or to apprehend any unmeasurable part of reality (the majority of it) in an unscientific way is in that perspective as much an osburantism as explaining it magically or religiously.
In the social world everything can be constructed objectively and subjectively, we act according to what we see, who we are (socially), etc, and there isn't one rationality that can explain every actions.
Everybody believes in the social world, even if many apsects of it aren't visible and no one agrees on what it means. Even if it's a moving reality.

Completely off topic of course, but that's the problem here, by dividing it in fiction/non fiction terms you predetermine the result of the challenge and render it meaningless."




""Well what we think is determinant regarding how we act and what we do. And the social world is not only made by us, but it's also something that we act or not act on according to our representation of said social world, what we think of it. How we act toward the opposite genre when we face it and interact with it, how we handle the interraction with other cultures, what meaning we give to our environnement, to signs, symbols,....Viewing the world, the physical world, only as a physical world ironically is a very recent social construct, an occidental one at that."


you are just mudding the waters here








"In fact I would say that the unability to believe (not just in god but in watching any part of reality in unscientific terms), is indeed something that is socialy determined, and to that regard there is as much conditioning required for a scientific apprehension of the world or for a religious apprehension of the world."



a person can be convince of a proposition or not but what warrants to be convinced that a proposition about reality is true when the person is inside their inner experience, a tiny fragment of reality?

what you are saying is not making the topic any more clear but more ambiguous i dont think you have understood at all the question at a
hand.




"The unability to believe for "rational" minds (a rationality in scientific reasoning, which isn't rational in other terms), or to apprehend any unmeasurable part of reality (the majority of it) in an unscientific way is in that perspective as much an osburantism as explaining it magically or religiously."


what is the point of this?






"
In the social world everything can be constructed objectively and subjectively, we act according to what we see, who we are (socially), etc, and there isn't one rationality that can explain every actions.
Everybody believes in the social world, even if many aspects of it aren't visible and no one agrees on what it means. Even if it's a moving reality.
"


sorry i cant understand what point you wanted to get across which is indicative of only one point that you wanted to get across (too ambiguous)

 

Yes, most convincing is it not. And even better when they add "you were brought up to believe in science so your senses must be clouded so you can't see God". This is how you play tennis without the net.

 

Questions go both ways, and in a way I've already responded to yours. You on the other hand fail at rejecting reasonably my objections and choose to ignore the obvious flaws that are contained in the premisses of the weird question that has been debated for almost 14 pages.
Debating doesn't work quite this way.