Materialist Manifesto. It is a fact that there is no soul.

[big_bad_buff]

First of all, you are half full of shit. Half of what you say is passable argument. The other half is just shit. Let's just clear up some issues right now. I have composed several research papers that have appeared in computer science journals in the US. I speak two languages fluently and I'm working on a third - and I don't mean only Western European languages which would be quite a lot easier. I have lived in 4 countries in my life so far. I travel a lot and I read a lot.

do you think you could beat splinter from the teenage mutant ninja turtles at a battle of the wits competition?

 

[thelegacy again]

Your thoughts/feelings feel a certain way in so much as they affect your judgments of them. Your judgments become your beliefs/perceptions that you thought/felt said thoughts/feelings. These beliefs/perceptions affect your other thoughts/feelings (and any related beliefs/perceptions), as well as your behaviors and speech. In general, beliefs/perceptions that you exist independently of your brain demonstrate very little, excepting the fact that you hold said beliefs/perceptions and had thoughts/feelings leading to said beliefs/perceptions.

Neurological research has continuously found physical explanations for psychological phenomena. Thoughts/feelings and beliefs/perceptions, according to computational theory, could be implemented by a silicon robot as well as a biological human. These robots would seem to have thoughts/feelings in the same way that other humans seem to have them.

There would be reasons to suppose that these robots do not feel and only seem to feel, but these reasons would only be ‘correct’ in quite subjective and/or illusive realms: an individual’s beliefs/perceptions, a mythological faith, a piece of propaganda, and other realms with assumptions about the mind. In these realms, mystical explanations of the mind are indeed often ‘correct’ while material explanations are 'incorrect'.

The 'self' is very useful folk concept dependent on the physical world that may or may not be correct or consistent. So are many other ideas in religion and morality.

Knowledge is by default a non-absolute folk concept with the following general properties. When an explanation can be shown to be non-causative due to a more demonstrable and correct explanation, the original explanation is generally deemed incorrect. Science has become a more correct explanation of the existence of the 'self' and of the universe itself, than the idea of a soul and a god. The concept of a soul and a god are both incorrect, unless we include faith and assumption in our concept of knowledge.

It is popular to claim that science is flawed, and that this purported fact means that there is a god ("intelligent designer") and there is a soul. This is just anthropic bias. Even if our scientific models of physics and evolution are quite flawed (they are not), we are still left with the problem of our existence and with no reason to suppose that there is a soul and that there is a god without assumption.

There is no god, there is no soul. Get over it bitches.

Another evolutionist claim to try and discount God by science--how did we get here? how did our speech evolve into thousands of intellectual language from groans of apes? how did our earth so perfectly evolve from time and chance? how does the sun rise and set so perfectly daily? evolutionist answer is time and chance-absurd---time and chance arent a driving force to create...one simple yet complex answer that majority of human race doesnt understand because of sin--Creator aka God

 

[Mastardo]

Thi is getting boringly repetitive

Science is more scientific

Gotcha

Any other profound statements you wish to declare, while ignoring everything thats addressed to you in rebuttal?

As to "what remains being skeletal, thats just silly hyperbole? What religion, what doctrine, please be specific. I have no intention of debating inane charecterizations.

Whats hard for me to understand is how an "educated" person can so blithely make the absurd representations you did in your initial post.

I dont know how much further I can dumb it down for you.

Your article presents a how, which is the province of science.

The rest of "why" is a theologicasl or philosophical debate.

You parrot ad nauseum that theology isnt science. Who made that claim but you, in an attempt to set up a straw man argument?

Your accusation that I ignore your rebuttals is a juvenile attempt to discredit my arguments. If you had addressed my posts point by point I would have done the same, but instead we chose to address the main points of each others' posts. Your posts are obnoxious, but I have attempted to address the main features of them.

As for the skeletal remains of religion, allow me to clarify: Monotheism for many people has moved from being described as an anthropomorphic being whom created the universe, earth, humans and ideas themselves, to a non-conscious beingness that spawned the universe itself and then stopped interfering.

We are talking past each other. I argued that science-inspired philosophy and science itself is more explanatory than monotheistic religous doctrine. You argue that there still remains the question 'why?'.

Here is what I should have explained about my ideas: What I think is that recent secular philosophers, possessing modern scientific knowledge, have better explained the nature of the question 'why?' than have religious doctrines and institutions. Evolution and game theory are two subjects that provide a framework for describing how meaning and purpose arose among living creatures, notably humans. One notable author on the development of meaning among humans is Daniel Dennett. Christianity has been "psychoanalyzed" by everyone from Voltaire to Nietzsche to Freud to Russell.

The concept 'Why?' has been explained naturalistically.

If you insist that the question "Why are we here?" is intelligible, then perhaps "god" is a passable answer. My opinion is that it only appears to be such a compelling realm for religion because of the fact that the question is based on faith in a demonstrably non-causative concept of a pre-human 'why?' - a belief that can't be explained without resorting to belief in entities that don't exist. Faith.

It seems like science (and philosophy inspired by scientific ideas) is somewhat redefining the concept of knowledge because of the fact that it is. The concept of knowledge has changed as science has made more discoveries and religious claims have been subject to more open criticism. Many people claim to believe in god, but have very secular lifestyles to the point that the main feature of their supposed "belief" is their belief of their "belief", as well as many unexamined philosophical assumptions.

This does not mean that science defines knowledge. It means that faith is not included in the modern definition of knowledge and that certain scientific ideas are regarded as facts, NOT that one must use the scientific method to establish all facts (there is a such thing as common sense, for one example among many).

 

[Mastardo]

Ten men in different parts of the world are about to commit the same type of horrific crime against a child. In each circumstance the assailant is struck down and killed by lightning prior to completeing the horrendous act.

Scientists are called out to examine the phenomena. An explanation is given for what causes lightning. It is pointed out that in half the cases the requisite conditions for lightning , according to scientific models, did not exists in those locations. In one case the ligtning struck the assailant inside a building thats should have been proof against any such occurence. The scientists rightly determine that they cant offer an acceptable explanation, but that given time, they will.

Some high school kid then reads an artiucle on lightning and comes on elite and attempts to disprove the existence of God by pointing out that lightning has a natural cause, thus annoying anyone more familiar with what occured.

A poorly composed example, which I will correct and use to argue one of my own points.

If you wished to make your example even somewhat exemplify my arguments, then you would have said the following:

Ten men in different parts of the world are struck down and killed by lightning.

Scientists are called out to examine the phenomena. An explanation is given for what causes lightning. It is pointed out that in half the cases the requisite conditions for lightning , according to scientific models, did not exists in those locations. In one case the ligtning struck the assailant inside a building thats should have been proof against any such occurence. The scientists rightly determine that they cant offer an acceptable explanation, but that given time, they will.

Some high school kid then reads an artiucle on lightning and comes on elite and argued that no non-living anthropomorphic force caused the lightning in the aforementioned example, and that no hidden meaning existed behind those events.

That high school kid would have had a pretty good point.

Without leaps of faith and viewed objectively, he could have successfully argued that a superstitious explanation of the behavior of the lightning was... superstition.

Your original example included an occurence for which the probability could be calculated fairly accurately. That example is not analogous to the existence of the universe. Similarly, we do not very well know how evolution began from the "primordial soup", and thus have no way of constructing a single accurate statistical model of the likelihood of evolution ever beginning naturalistically.