Bob Carabbio
Well-known member
Theism.
Next question???
Thought Experiment
- Thread starter Lighthearted Atheist
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Next question???
El Cid
Well-known member
Minds can reason, but since brains are physical and operate by the laws of physics, they cannot.
Whatsisface
Well-known member
But minds are bound by the laws of physics that brains are bound by. I cannot be an Einstein because of the limitations of my physical brain.
You still haven't explained what it means for brains to operate by the laws of logic. We all get things wrong and are illogical at times. In fact minds generally have to be taught to be logical.
El Cid
Well-known member
We come to the conclusion something is true because of the evidence.
But next time it probably wont be. Big difference.
Eightcrackers
Well-known member
But the evidence doesn't make it true; the evidence makes us believe that it's true.
"Probably"?
Based on what?
El Cid
Well-known member
We can reason.
El Cid
Well-known member
When you reason, you defy them.
Whatsisface
Well-known member
Yes, we can reason. This doesn't tell me how that defies the laws of physics, nor does it tell me what you mean by saying minds operate according to the laws of logic.
Eightcrackers
Well-known member
Prove it.
El Cid
Well-known member
So you agree that numbers which are nonphysical entities existed before humans.
It may FEEL unfair but how do you know it is actually and objectively unfair?
Hitler thought the jews were being unfair to the German people. So how do you know whose version of unfairness is wrong?
Whatsisface
Well-known member
It's difficult to know how to put it, but there are such things as necessary concepts. They are necessary because they can't be other than they are, they are absolute and non contingent and would be true whether a God existed or not. For example, the Idea of the number one can only be about a single thing. The idea of one thing can't be about two things by definition. Whether you can say these concepts exist or not I'm not sure, maybe you can, but they need a mind for them to be realised.
Really? You have to ask this? It's unfair because in my example someone is receiving preferential treatment of course. Why would God say something was unfair?
It's not hard to understand when someone is being treated unfairly. I certainly don't need a God to tell me that to execute someone, for example a Jewish doctor or nurse who would help others, just for being Jewish is at the very least grossly unfair.
Do you need a God to tell you this?
El Cid
Well-known member
Christians have Gods moral laws which are based on His objectively existing moral character. Therefore, having an objective basis unlike atheists.
Right, such as:
Lev 25:44 As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. 45 You may also acquire them from the sons of the foreign residents who reside among you, and from their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession. 46 You may also pass them on as an inheritance to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another.
Atheists do not have such appalling scripture as a basis for morality, and so do not believe slavery - owning another person as property for life - is morally acceptable.
During the American civil war, it was the pro-slavery south - Bible Belt - that used the Bible to argue that they were right.
They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.
...
Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.
...
It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made “one star to differ from another star in glory.” The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders “is become the chief of the corner” the real “corner-stone” in our new edifice.
— Alexander Stephen's Cornerstone speech
The parties in the conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders. They are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground – Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity at stake.
— James Thornwell, American Presbyterian preacher, pointing out that atheists were anti-slavery
[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God ... it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation ... it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.
— Jefferson Davis, President, Confederate States of America
... the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.
— Richard Furman, President, South Carolina Baptist Convention
Meanwhile, Darwin's new book was cited by abolitionists. See for example here:
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species sent shock waves around the world when it was published in 1859. The suggestion that all human beings, of whatever race or color, share a common ancestry, had an especially seismic impact on a country teetering on the brink of civil war, as Randall Fuller shows in The Book That Changed America: How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation.
...
A number of prominent American scientists at the time argued that God had created black people, brown skinned and white people separately, and each of them were different, had different capacities, and there was a hierarchy. Some went so far as to suggest that black people were a different species, and that they were not only different, but inferior. These scientists were praised in the South and provided the perfect rationalization for slavery. Darwin’s argument that all living things shared a common ancestor provided the abolitionists with a great rebuttal of the dominant, American science of the time.
And here:
What is the relevance of all this to abolitionism? At the time, it was debated whether humans had a single origin or several, with each race being separately created. The multiple-creation school, polygenism, was popular with apologists for slavery. If, as they supposed, the Adam-and-Eve creation produced whites, but other races derived from earlier and inferior acts of creation, then whites were justified in applying a different moral standard to people of nonwhite race, who were not created in God’s image. Polygenists sometimes saw blacks as subhuman intermediates or even as members of a different species, justifying their subjugation and enslavement.
But if humans had a single origin (monogenism), as Darwin proposed for other species, then all human races were genealogically connected: Blacks were every bit as human as whites — equivalent to distant cousins — and slavery became morally untenable.
You can keep God's moral laws. I prefer a system that makes it clear slavery is wrong.
stiggy wiggy
Well-known member
Tell that to the slaves that the atheist Stalin put into the gulags.
Got any examples of that? Quick! Start the selective googling.
Well, you're sure not going to find that in your favorite "system," atheism.
Eightcrackers
Well-known member
All characters objectively exist.
I base my morals on mine; you base yours on somebody else's. That's the only difference.
El Cid
Well-known member
Having a large number of random events does not eliminate the randomness of the events.
El Cid
Well-known member
It shows that the cause of the effect (the universe), is more complex than the effect.
Eightcrackers
Well-known member
There is a difference between an isolated event, and the cumulative result of such events.
The randomness of the former does not entail the randomness of the latter.
El Cid
Well-known member
No, that is due to a nonphysical characteristic, ie intelligence.
The ability to reason. Physical entities cannot reason, they operate by the laws of physics. The product of the physical brain would just be based on the ratio of chemicals in the brain. But the mind reaches conclusions based on the weighing of evidence and the rationality of argument.
For more abstract reasoning yes, but we quickly learn that ourselves and an eighteen wheeler cannot occupy the same space at the same time and in the same relationship. This is the basic law of noncontradiction. We also learn to communicate based on that law.