Posts made by FinsterniS

@cystic:

As YB says, the myth of the tooth fairy is easily dispelled. For one to say that “it is impossible for the tooth fairy to have created the world” is something that is a little more difficult to dispell, except for the fact that our parents have announced that they ARE the tooth fairy, and they never created the world.

As the tooth fairy, there is an human being (well, some human being) behind every religion.

That would imply that you knew it. You might say “due to O’s Razor it is philosophically unlikely that the universe needs to have a creator”, but that is playing with likelyhoods based on your take on philosophy.

If there is no reason to believe in an intelligent design, if as we go further in science, everything seem to be natural, then how can you say it is unscientific to say god does exist ? How can it be unscientif to tell a theory is false when there is nothing to support it ? Science is the enemy of religion, when science gain knowledge, religion loose power. Just look how much god is small now.

With regards to YB’s argument based on 85% of the world, i think the point here is that God has obviously influenced a great many people, possibly many more than might be diagnosed schizophrenic/schizo-typal etc. If only 2-4% of the world believed in God and that corresponded to the numbers of people with mental illnesses, one might begin to suggest a correllation.

Here CC you support an argument just because it go by your side just like when you supported YB’s circular argument, which is not very logic. The fact that people believe something to be true does mean it is true. I cannot believe someone can use argumentum ad populum as anything near a method of understand what is true and what is false. Then why don’t you go outside asking people how to treat X sickness ? Most people don’t have the knowledge to be atheist, when you don’t know how nature work, how evolution and how logic work; god seem to be theonly answer. (note that i am not saying Theist lack education and logic, nor do they lack intelligence, i just think they lack objectivity).

Your argument against miracles because “the Shroud was not likely one” is also poor.

I never said that, but the Shround of Turin is a good exemple of how blind people are when they face religion. Also the argument of Miracles is by itself very poor… it is an argument for nothing. Lots of phenomean attributes in ancient time to god(s) are now scientificly explained. A mircales is something we don’t understand, and that we will likely understand someday, claiming it is some sort of divine message it what i call a lack of vision/objectivity.

YB’s reference to the existance of the Catholic Church is not that unsound.

I don’t believe you really support this kind of argument, this is using very poor, demagogic rethoric ! Just look at how christianism spread in the world ! Certainly not with tender words about god’s love. It is more an argument about the religion conformism, it does not change.

Also, has it been proven that opium and religious beliefs stimulate the same part of the brain? Or that the two have an identical effect? If we were to take a person in pain, sit him in a church for an hour, would that be worth an hour’s worth of a morphine-derivative? No, what a silly thing to say.

You misunderstood something in the opium analogy, religion is certainly not for physical pain. But for moral/psychological pain. It is far more easy to go in life, following some rules, don’t have to think about how the world came to existance, and to believe you will have eternity just for following some rules…

Also - please note that the New Testament and words of Jesus are significantly different than what the Israelites were ordered to do in order to establish their home. Jesus is very clear on the “no killing” bit - “turn the other cheek”, etc.

… still it is the same god, no ? Jesus is the messager of the god who give order to Joshua ?

Finally, your deft ability to counter an argument with “you’re a fool” does not seem as effective as some of your other ones. Are you slipping?

In fact it is full of logical fallacies, i don’t said he was a fool (only when he said he want communist to go on working camp). And no, i am not slipping, are you ? But when someone he saying that the fact most people on earth believe in god constitute an argument for religion; that is just really funny and the only answer i can give to that is; this is fallacious. If i say; X is the greatest genius, he did not believe in god, then god does not exist, that is clearly fallacious, what will you say to that ?

You will have to explain me how you can me from Right and Communist. That is not like being Black & White without being gray ?

@yourbuttocks:

Falk, where did the matter for the Big Bang come from?

Where god come from ?
…he can exist without being created ?
…Then why not matter ? Why not physics law ?

Fisternis, there is to a burden of proof on both sides. Maybe it is greater on theists side, but that is because they are trying to prove something specific.

That is a non-sence. If i say; the tooth fairy exist, you will ask why ? I will say that you have to prove his inexistance ? How can i proove the inexistence of something that does not exist ? The burden of the proof is on the shoulder of those who are exposing a thesis. That is very simple logic i don,t know why i need to repeat it again and again, if you have somethign against it then show me your argument but stop repeating the same thing.

And for the last, THIS IS DIFFERENT FROM THE TOOTH FAIRY

There is a lot of difference. The tooth fairy doest not have a church, people never massacer anyone in the name of her… Anyway the two are mythological being.

With the tooth fairy, you can wait up when you loose a tooth and find your parents coming in with your quarter. The tooth fairy hasn’t had miracles accredited to him. Every person is not born with a “tooth-fairy center of the brain” IT goes on and on.

In fact the god center can be attribute to anything philosophical. Maybe not the tooth fairy, but all existensial question.

…85% of the population believe in him?

Argumentum ad populum, a very inconsistent kind of argument that only try to give weigth to an argumentation without giving any real argumentation. I am sure you feel suported, but this does not constitute an argument. What, God exist because people believe in him ? whaooow. 1000 years ago, while it has been proven several time that the earth was not flat, how much people believe the earth was flat ?

…natural law/intrinsic concience exist?

You are showing off our ignorance and say; it’s god. While you are maybe poiting out a real dark side of our knowledge, this does not constitute any kind of argument for god. In logic we call this fallacies a “Bifurcation”. A is false because blablabla… Then it is B, but you forget all the other possibilities. As science become more “powerfull”, god is loosing power…

…miracles, such as Fatima, hundreds in this century alone, occur?

There is miracles in every singles religion, so i don’t see how it can be some sort of argument as most religion are in contradiction. Also what is a miracles ? Is had been proven by c14 and by microbiology that the Shroud of Turin was a false, but people stil believe it’s true…

…people have a built in need for him? (God-Center of the brain)

Your interpration on the subject is clearly biased, and you and i don’t have the knowledge to analyse in deep the subject. But at first it seem to me it’s a good proof of all atheistic theory; like religion is an opium.

...the Catholic Church, the longest lasting institution in the history of man, continue to thrive, continue to exist, even after periodic corruption, schisms, revolts, etc.?  Every HUMAN institution is crushed by similiar burdens.

Argumentum ad antiquitatem, another logical fallacies. This does not give anything to an argumentation. Other religion in complete contradiction with Christianism like Bouddhism are in very good shape.

The list goes on and on. That was just off the top of my head.

There is nothing consistent with that, i can resume your argumentation to logical fallacies and attack on some physical theory (existence of matter), there is not a little trace of argument for god.

What kind of music do you guys listen to during your games?

Tchaikovsky (1810 ouverture), Wagner or Dvorak

@cystic:

acckkkkk
Berlioz? Debussy? Chopin (half Polish, half French) The only good things to come out of the Romantic movement (aside from certain nationalist composers)? (well, Verdi if you like opera . . . )
and you missed Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, the Mighy Five etc.

I like the french very much, but i am clearly not a big fans of their music. Maybe sometime Ravel, but certainly not Debussy, not that french music is crap, i have 1 cd of Debussy, but i never feel to listen to it.

Sure i missed a lots, Glinka, Borodin, Beethoven, Bach, Pachelbel, Schubert…

… what kind of fool are you ? Communist are’nt as dangerous as a lot of people, the fact you think they are wrong does not give you the right to say such thing nor the right to send them to work camp.

you are fool

Simple enough, this violates my 4th Amendment(sp) rights. If this act is not repealed, your going to see Critics, Minority Leaders, Muslims, Athiests, and others arrested on Shaky evidence.

don’t forget Communist

WRT God - i think it is unscientific to consider it impossible that intelligent design may have taken place. The only evidence you’ve thrown up to support this is that “God is not necessary” as per Occam’s razor.

I think it is unscientifis to limit the world as an intelligent design, as there is only evidence rising that there’s no intelligent design. I can give you lots of exemple of design in the nature, that does not need any intelligence, a star, a moon, a cloud, a snowslake… and we are getting close; the universe’s birth itself.

Also about the “i did’nt give evidence against intelligent design”;

There’s no evidence to proove the tooth fairy exist, no reason
So we will go with occam’s razor to justify it’s inexistence

In short; if nobody give me any argument for an intelligent design the only thing i would be able to answer is the occam’s razor.

I can give you counter-argument about god, but atheist don’t have the burden to proove the inexistence of something.

Also any figure that commands Christians to go out and kill other people is acting against the commandments of Jesus.  There is no where in the NT that supports wars against the "infidels". 

When you look at the history of Joshua; god kill lots of people because they were infidels nos ? and they are called “wicked people”, so why the pope Urban was’nt right ? His interpretation of his religion was really so bad ?

Another interesting question that arises from the so called “standard model” (which is the theory to all that above):
Why does nature seem to favor the numbers “2” and “3” ?
We have 3 families of particles (and it seems like there is no fourth one out there), 3 different flavours (red, green and blue), in each family we find 2 different classes (leptons and quarks) of particles, each having 2 members (the family one (lightest) has the electron and electron-neutrino as leptons, the up and down quark as quarks). For each particle there exists a mirror particle (matter and antimatter), another “2”.

Funny, Plato said the movement of the celestials body around the earth make the planet position look like.
2^0, 2^1, 2^2, 2^3
3^0, 3^1, 3^2, 3^3

I don’t know if you even seen the problem, but when we take n(2^(1/2) mod 1). with values of n between 1 and 30, we get an equipartition. While it does not work with a simple number like 3/2. (1.5)^n mod 1 is complety incoherent. Why ? Why some make equirepartition and other not ? It is a paradox, why a simple number like 1.5 is incoherent, while another irrational number can be equirepartitional ?

In math and in physic we often see and order without understanding why. That’s part the fun, but sometime it’s frustrating :)

Richard Wagner was a great artist, with very emotional music. I like mostly german-slavic music, like Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Dvorak, Mozart… et cetera. As long as it is not Italian, French or Spanish (with only some rare exeption for the three)

your science, eh? hmmm . . . my science, i think, is different than yours.

Well you must use somekind of “out of space” logic or very old logical theorem (they are not false because they are old, but we still use a better logic now). I never saw anything scientific about god, only thing scientific against god. Just think how god loose space in science.

Believe it or not, one of the basis of Christianity is that it is the true religion. If a Christian does not believe this, then they are just a person who thinks that Jesus was a cool guy. That’s it.

• If you believe your monotheistic god is the good one

• Then and Odin, Thor and Belenos are false gods

• So other polytheist and even maybe some other monotheistic religion are complete lies, or at best an innacurate vision of god.

• If you believe that theres a lot of gods

• Then Allah, Odin, Zeus and Isis are all real gods, just from another - people

• So you won’t believe other religion are false.

That is the problem in most monotheistic dogma; you believe you are right and the others are wrong. If you were a greek from antiguity, you would not believe frigg does not exist, she would only be “another god”. Sure Norse believe their gods were better, but these polytheistic religion were not subject to war between parties like monotheistic religion. I think it is a good reason why monotheistic religion were active actor in most religion wars.

But this does not constitute an argument against the concept of god.

I want an answer of this; Was the pope Urban II, when he declared the wars against the “infidels”, really acting against fondamental law of christianism ?

Whoa, Fisternis is at it again, beating up poor crypt with his “Unicorns never existed so neither does God” arguments.

I never said god does not exist because unicorns never existed. I just said the bible make reference to unicorns and i find that amusing. Don’t make me say things i never said.

So, Fisternis, where did matter come from? Has it simply always existed?

“Where did matter come from ?” Just another way to say “How can the universe exist ?”

I know somes things, but not everything, i am not a christian and i do not pretend to know how the unvierse exist and what is good or wrong. However, i have enough knowledge to know god cannot be the first cause, because it is certainly where you are going with your “matter”. This argument seem just to be a variant of the “Each thing require a cause”, and as the “Each Desing need a Designer” argument, it has been refute again and again by different people. In your topic “Defence of Catholicism” I clearly expose my argument why it is not a valid argument, and the interesting thing is that Falk use another way to refute it. You were not able to answer my questions about the logical coherence of your argument, i don’t know why you are asking the same question again. If you who an argument of the type;

Matter exist
It must have a cause
And God is the only possible uncaused cause
Then god exist

I will soon burn them, as they are full of fallacies…

If you want to believe in god; don’t look at science and don’t use deformation to caution your belief. You want to believe in god ? Well i don’t care. But please don’t come up with the “uncaused cause” and the “design need designer”, it’s an insult to my science.

Moses, your sister is a Christian? What denomination? Has she told you of the error of your ways?

Wooooo, the “error”… i wish you are not serious, otherwise it is another good exemple of christian arrogance. I can hardly believe someone can really believe, that of all the religion, he’s on the right one, as most of them goes on different direction.

It make me thing of a tale, a real tale; the history of japan’s religion. There’s was a religion called shintoism in japan, the emperor was one of the gods (a Kami if a remember right), and it was a religion for everyone. Then buddhism came from Korea, the two religion meet, and they merge. Shintoim get a little of the buddhism and Buddhism get a little of the Shintoism, still there was no important war (maybe even no war at all) for religion. Often those who represent Kami were goind to buddhist monastery at old age. Then, christianism came. Christianism does not want compromise, as other religion were false… It was an era of wars as christians daymio (lord) were fighting buddhist/shintoist daymio.

The morale; of all the religions, the more dangerous are the monotheistic, because they think they have the true message of god, others are infidels.

Liechtenstein is an european country between Austria and Swistzerland, it it very small, with a poppulation of ~40 000. It should’net even exist; it is just a vertige…

…another attack of Einsten againts the evil probabilistic face of Quantum physics…

Not that i am a fan of Einsten (i think he is too much glorified), but maybe he is right. Maybe the quantum physic use of probability is just due to the ignorance of a X factor. I will not go as far as to say quantum’s physic is’nt effective, but maybe someday a new physic will rise (it would’nt be the first time) and probability would be banish from the world of theorical physics. I think physicist are often too much sure about the existence of probability… But maybe this is my ignorance of physic that make me say that :)

Nous devons envisager l’état présent de l’univers comme l’effet de son état antérieur et comme la cause de celui qui va suivre. Une intelligence qui, pour un instant donné, connaîtrait toutes les forces dont la nature est animée, et la situation respective des êtres qui la composent, si d’ailleurs elle était assez vaste pour soumettre ces données à l’analyse, embrasserait dans la même formule les mouvements des plus grands corps de l’univers et ceux du plus léger atome : rien ne serait incertain pour elle et l’avenir comme le passé serait présent à ses yeux. L’esprit humain offre, dans la perfection qu’il a su donner à l’astronomie, une faible esquisse de cette intelligence. Ses découvertes en mécanique et en géométrie, jointes à celle de la pesanteur universelle, l’ont mis à portée de comprendre dans les mêmes expressions analytiques les états présents et futurs du système du monde.

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827)

What i don’t like about Canada, and about lots of country in europe; it’s the monarchy and even WORST; people that take it seriously. In Western Europe we still have a lot of monarchy… Danemark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Spain, Monaco, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and the UK. I am even pretty sure i forget 1 or 2…

Note; i know this is off-topic

@cystic:

a “non-local reality”? is it just me, or is this a little vague?

Sure it is vague, i don’t want to make dangerous interpretation.

Also i wouldn’t expect “one example” to suffice for an affected consciousness of an entire people, but this example seems to be “just one more thing”.

I don’t not really said that, but these kind of things are often getting bigger than they really are.

The fact is, you hear about this all the time. I know of well-respected scientists who witness these things in Haiti, Kenya, and even in some parts of the Western World (outside of N’aulins), never mind countless stories and personal experiences from trusted friends of mine, as well as relatives.

I never sais they were liar, i am just prudent as to make interpretation. These kind of things are rarely what they seem to be.

At least nothing christian…

When you say it can be saw as “evidence” i find that a little exagerated. If it is not an hoax, it could still be subject to a lot of interpretation, without a very deep look at the subject it cannot be consider as an “evidence” for anything. A little like poltergeist and morphogenetic fields, that was consider paranormal and proof of a spirit realm until a valid scientific theory came up (still not very clear but anyway…). I don’t believe some mythology to be true nor i believe in somekind of spirit realm; but non-local reality seem to exist. And some are mixing up non-local reality with spirit realm because they have something in common; you cannot see them, still in reality the theory and the mythology is very different.

when in the article someone said…
“Evil exists, they insisted, in those spirits.”
It is a very exagerated extrapolation, there is nothing to corroporate it. With only a single strange phenomena people are making with time, exageration and interpratation, a very big story.

1. i’m amazed F is using CIA figures . . . if you can’t beat em’ . . .

I have their “WORLDBOOK 2001” on my computer for a long time as well as i had the previous version (1999 i think), it is full of usefull information on economy/poppulation/language…

I still don’t pardon them what they did to Allende :evil: , that is not a reason to reject everything they are making…

2. Kyoto, i think Alberta is planning to leave Canada if we implement this.

That is hysterical, reducing greenhouse gas emission is a good thing for any economy at long term. The kyoto protocol is based on very scientific research and projection about greenhouse gas emission, and the present protocol is even for some scientist (as well as some green extremist) not enough.

And to answer to Horten…

“as at 12-July-2002, 84 Parties have signed and 75 Parties have ratified or acceded to the Kyoto Protocol.”

Ok, there is a problem somewhere… when i look at CIA’s statistic, it is clear… (2000 est.).

#1 USA, #2 Japan (don’t need stats for those…) then…

GE = 1.936 (23 400/capita)
FR = 1.448 (24 400/capita)
UK = 1.36 (22 800/capita)
IT = 1.273 (22 100/capita)

Note that I don’t say my statistic is better i really don’t know…

4th Largest Economy ? Base on what ? The GDP is ~1.36 Trillions, the GDP/capita is’nt great too; 22.800. France, German, Japan & US surpass the UK on all these points, the UK is even close to Italy in term of GDP & GDP/capita. I don’t see how it can be the 4th largest economy !

Besides, UK isn’t dumb, allying themselves with the world’s most powerful (notice I didn’t say greatest) country is a smart move.

Every country make sometime a stupid move; like UK allying themselves to the US. Not because the US are not powerfull, that is not the question, but because English are still european, anyway from a geographic point of view. By following USA like a little dog they will eventually suffert from the Anti-european feeling of the American and the Anti-american feeling of the European (it is not getting better with the International Court, Steel, Agriculture, Kyoto…); that is already the case. Also they do not want to be in the Alliance, London could (should?) be a very important city for busness in the union, but they don’t feel european and prefer to be isolated. Another thing, they may always follow america, their economy is still close to europe, and most of the Import/Export is in continental europe.

UK; Exports - partners: EU 58% (Germany 12%, France 10%, Netherlands 8%), US 15% (1999)

UK; Imports - partners: EU 53% (Germany 14%, France 9%, Netherlands 7%), US 13%, Japan 5% (1999)

No no no i never said that you said the unknow was the work of god. But one time i said; “everything that is not understand was somewhere in time the “work of god””, you answer “that is an overstatement” and then, after CC’s argument i said;

“Hey Moses, that was what i was talking about, when we don’t know, it is god… And i really don’t see how our ignorance on the subject can be use as an argument for god ?”