dan964
what
Meaningless to you because you don't believe in him... you don't agree with my rationale, you don't consider the evidence that I consider.This is a meaningless statement. How does the existence of humans bring glory to god? By creating tiny, flawed, insignificant little creatures, this "brings glory" to an all powerful being? Really? And for whose benefit is the glory being brought? Does an all powerful god need to create insignificant little creatures to feel good about himself? To earn the esteem of angels in heaven? Why on earth would he do that?
But lets answer your questions regardless
"How does the existence of humans bring glory to god?" -
"By creating tiny, flawed, insignificant little creatures, this "brings glory" to an all powerful being?" - Short answer yes.
"And for whose benefit is the glory being brought?" - Both for himself and for his creation.
"Does an all powerful god need to create insignificant little creatures to feel good about himself?" - No.
Well, you say things like 'this is the experience of everyone' and these universal statements especially moral statements, for every statement you make, you actually have to demonstrate that. I couldn't care less if you proved anything or not.No, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that humans can literally will beliefs into existence. There is no evidence of this, and it contradicts the experience of virtually everyone on earth.
My view is that for any claim, if you have burden of proof especially you are making a universal truth statements. (Both the theist and atheist have burden of proof). But my aim is not to prove anything, just more show the logical outworking of your view as I see it. And to be honest, I'm not that fixated on the notion of proof personally, (as most of us here are not scholars).
1. Firstly, not 'necessarily'. Effects can be causes as well. All you've basically said is you don't understand it therefore it cannot be true; which again isn't necessarily the case.Everything we think or feel consciously comes from our unconscious brain as the product of some neurophysiological events that can be functionally described as performing some sort of information processing. Which is to say, our conscious experiences are an effect that arises from unconscious causes. To consciously choose what we believe would mean that an effect, conscious thought, is driving unconscious information processing, a cause; that is, an effect is controlling the thing causing it. This is nonsensical and necessarily cannot be the case.
2. Secondly, I think you views suffer from over simplification. There are a number of factors, some yes, unconscious that influence a person's belief system. But these unconscious factors are also influenced by conscious factors etc; its not merely a linear chain. Basically it is more complex that saying 'I'm born this way and I cannot change it.'
3. Thirdly, if a statement about reality is true, it is true regardless of whether your brain accepts it or not or whether you understand or not.
Logical absolutes and the idea of what is true, would exist even if your mind did not - these things are transcendent.
4. Fourthly my point was that if we take on face value what you saying is true, then I take that humans that cannot be held accountable for any action, since it is just the brain 'finds it compelling' to do that; which leads to a world with no real justice.
5. Fifthly, we actually differ on the notion of what we think belief/faith (the two terms are interchangeable) is. The best word to describe what you are commonly appealing to, is the notion of 'sense' (and you use the idea of 'compelling') that we may sense certain things to be true or not. This is not equivalent to belief. And again I think you conflate the two a little.
6. Sixthly, well it was the logical conclusion I took from your argument/worldview. You might as well be saying that, because you cannot go as far to say that someone does not exist or the notion of their existence is absurd (I use absurd, you use nonsensical) just because they do something which you see as contradictory/irrational; because a lot of behaviour is irrational.1. I'm not saying god is a moron, I'm saying that a god which holds us morally accountable for things we cannot control is nonsensical.
2. My criticism is more fundamental than belief without evidence. If you show somebody evidence and they still don't believe, this is still not a decision. Their brain either finds it compelling or it doesn't. To say we can consciously decide these things is nonsensical.
As you've presented it, that is how it reads.
7. Seventhly, I agree with this statement "If you show somebody evidence and they still don't believe, this is still not a decision."
But you use the idea of the brain finding it compelling, as if the brain is somehow de-attached from the person or their conscious.
8. Eighthly, I would agree that we do have difficulty believing in something that does not make sense to us. But there can be a number of factors as to why a person accepts a premise or not. Belief is something that is affected by other factors. The fact that we can be compelled to believe something, or even change what we believe suggests that are other factors that change. There are more barriers to understanding or accepting then merely insufficient good evidence, previous experiences/decisions, pre-existing beliefs all play in that.
For e.g. the reason why I would not believe in Allah and accept Islam at gunpoint, because I believe Muslims to be wrong about Jesus etc. So yes, their is a rationale that cannot necessarily be overcome by force.
9. Ninthly, thanks for the clarification, but that it is certainly appears to be from how (both in content and in repetitiveness) you engage with Muslims on this very forum, that you do want them to be held responsible from their actions.1. What you're saying isn't actually proof against what I'm arguing. Whether or not we can hold terrorists responsible for their actions is irrelevant to whether it is true or not. It's either true or or isn't, the societal impacts of it being true do not affect its truth value. 2. I'm not saying they're morally responsible. I'm saying they're doing harm, so its rational to get away from them or stop them from doing harm. Punishment makes no sense as a strictly punitive measure. It makes sense to remove people from society to stop them doing harm, to dissuade others from doing harm, or to rehabilitate people (if possible) so they do not do harmful behaviours again.
10. Tenthly, it is not completely irrelevant, because most people's actions are based on they believe is true and rational (except if at gunpoint say). If you say that these things, that we cannot be held morally accountable for these things, whether by some God or other agent; then it is self refuting to then say, we need to hold these people to account; since they are merely following their pre-programming. It is not pragmatically a liveable way of operating,.
11. Eleventhly, I don't agree with you that it is out of your control; but I do agree that pointing a gun (which is the specific you use) to something can force them to abandon their beliefs to accept another. As I said back in (8), there could be a number of reasons why that is so.You can want to believe it exists, you can say you believe it exists. But whether you actually believe it exists deep down is something entirely out of your control. The burden of proof is on you because its not even clear what consciously deciding to change your mind even means.
12. To provide a bit of clarity, changing ones mind (which is both conscious and subconscious) involves a shift in thinking, a change of rationale, a change in definition or what is acceptable, it is a bit broad term, but can really encompass any change to ones rationale basically.
13. Logic/rationale is a funny thing. Logic and rationale informs beliefs, and beliefs often inform and shape rationale.Morality is fundamentally how we FEEL about a subject. We cannot choose how we feel about something. I do not have a "moral" aversion to murder because I decided there are reasons why murder is wrong. There are logical reasons I think it is wrong, but fundamentally I have an aversion to it for non-conscious reasons.
Not all decisions are rational nor purely conscious things, and it depends what you classify as choice. But there are 'inherent' or 'implicit' things that we subconsciously form e.g. habits and preferences.
We may need to define what we mean by certain words, because I think part of why we disagree is we are operating with different understandings of what different words mean. For instance I tend towards considering preferences as in the same category as decisions/choices.
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