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The Ancient Islamic Empire (History)
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Chad wrote:
I am simply not prepared to plug the gap in my knowledge by accepting the existence of a divine entity.


A childish understanding of the principle of "God".

This doesn't mean that I am incapable of taking meaning from the aesthetics of nature.


Yes it does. But that you do not grasp this is because you are not a true atheist. These are very few.

The attributes of beauty and wonderfulness are ascribed by the beholder.... not imparted by "God (or inherent reason and logic)".


Then the object is never beauty-full. And that was the point you attempted to dispute -- and yet have found yourself espousing.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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But stay away from beauty on this subject. It's a hornets' nest. Stick with reason and logic.

Are they subjective or objective?

If they are objective than you have found God.

Everything else is theology.
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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Ishmael wrote:
Chad wrote:
I am simply not prepared to plug the gap in my knowledge by accepting the existence of a divine entity.

A childish understanding of the principle of "God"


No, a childish expression of the principle of "God", not understanding... and deliberately chosen.

This doesn't mean that I am incapable of taking meaning from the aesthetics of nature.

Yes it does.


Patronising and so very, very wrong.

To assume you know and are able to evaluate, the very nature of the meaning others are able to gain from their interaction with the natural world, more still the source of that meaning, is bordering on bigotry or at the very least arrogance.

But that you do not grasp this is because you are not a true atheist
.
Did I ever claim to be an atheistic fundamentalist?

The attributes of beauty and wonderfulness are ascribed by the beholder... not imparted by "God (or inherent reason and logic)".

Then the object is never beauty-full.

I stand by what I said. Whether beauty and wonderfulness are divinely imparted or not, it need not affect the quality of the meaning derived by the beholder. To think otherwise is the stance of a believer.... and belief does not equate to truth.
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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Ishmael wrote:
But stay away from beauty on this subject. It's a hornets' nest. Stick with reason and logic.


I try never to stray from reason and logic.

Are they subjective or objective?


Subjective... as is beauty.

Everything else is theology.


And should be left to the theists.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Chad wrote:
Ishmael wrote:
But stay away from beauty on this subject. It's a hornets' nest. Stick with reason and logic.

I try never to stray from reason and logic.

Is this just a(nother) form of fundamentalism? I'm not being sardonic, honest, but it seems to me a tad limiting. Not necessarily the way to wisdom.

Ishmael wrote:
Is the statement, "There is no god", the badge of rationality?

Don't be simplistic. "There is no proof of god". No one-size-fits-all deity exists. If you don't require proof to believe something is true, well and good.

Let's have a bit of common sense here, an atheist can be an atheist toute simple and not an atheistic fundamentalist. And, please, stop confusing a man with his followers.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Hatty wrote:
Let's have a bit of common sense here, an atheist can be an atheist toute simple and not an atheistic fundamentalist. And, please, stop confusing a man with his followers.


Look. I'm not without respect for Dawkins. He has some talent. He gave us the sociological concept of the "meme" -- a very good idea that has a lot of explanatory power.

But he's still a bigoted, small-minded weasel.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Coupla things you guys are getting wrong. There is no equivalence between Creationism and Darwinism. They may both be wrong but they are wrong at completely different levels: the first is just soppy, the second isn't. This is irrespective of the fact that the first might be the correct one -- its adherents would then merely be lucky, nobody has any business believing it at our current levels of knowledge.

There is some equivalence between and Creationists and Darwinists. They both learned their respective beliefs from Authority Figures as Received Wisdom. Dawkins can argue that he at least can "check the data for himself" (as of course Creationists cannot) but it is doubtful if many Darwinists (Dawkins included) has actually done this on any kind of truly rigorous basis.

On a personal note, watching the Discovery Channel and stuff on my digibox, I cannot understand how American Creationists can withstand the relentless tide of Darwinian Assumptive Programming they must be subject to on a daily basis. It's quite impressive that they do (or is there a Creationist Parental Control Button on Bible Belt televisions?).
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Brian Ambrose



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Mick, if by 'Creationist' you mean someone who believes the Earth was created in six literal days, etc etc, then you may have a point (although despite the ongoing fanfare Darwin's clever theory is in serious need of a makeover itself). But that's not what we've been talking about.

If by 'Creationism' you mean belief in an intelligent origin for life, I take issue with your statement that "nobody has any business believing it at our current levels of knowledge". On the contrary, at current level of knowledge the only rational belief is that life must have been designed. Even the simplest proposed form of life has a complexity and contains an amount of specified information that would be impossible for the universe to arrange by chance. What is is what was. The only known source for this type of information is intelligence. At our current levels of knowledge, nobody has any secure basis for asserting otherwise.

But this only says that life had an intelligent origin. It says nothing about what that intelligence is, how involved it got in subsequent development, or whether it has any interest in what it created. It says nothing about theology. However, we are bound to consider the implication of the observation that there is usually a purpose behind any reasonably complex design.
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Brian Ambrose



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Don't be simplistic. "There is no proof of god". No one-size-fits-all deity exists. If you don't require proof to believe something is true, well and good.

Let's have a bit of common sense here, an atheist can be an atheist toute simple and not an atheistic fundamentalist. And, please, stop confusing a man with his followers.


Hatty, I'd suggest there is a huge gulf between your reasonable statement "There is no proof of god" and Dawkins "There is no god". Yours allows for the possibility. Dawkins does not. He's a bigot. You (and everyone else here) are not.
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Grant



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Chad wrote
The attributes of beauty and wonderfulness are ascribed by the beholder

That's right but that's not what Dawkins says. In order to promote atheism Dawkins pretends - most recently in his book The God Delusion - that the contemplation of nature provides all the solace anyone should need. He takes as his cue Darwin's paragraph in the Origin about there being "grandeur in this view of life."
But Darwin knew that this argument had no legs. There is certainly no evidence that he tried personally to convert his wife or any friends to it.
Unlike Darwin, Dawkins is trying to found a new religion. I reckon it should be called Attenboroughism - don't worry you're going to die, look at this pretty butterfly. And isn't it amazing that there's a pile of mud in Arizona with a mile deep gash in it?
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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Hatty wrote:
Chad wrote:
I try never to stray from reason and logic.

Is this just a(nother) form of fundamentalism? I'm not being sardonic, honest, but it seems to me a tad limiting. Not necessarily the way to wisdom..


We all have our 'flights of fancy' (especially on this site) and I'm no exception. But after analysing such excursions, do you not reject those that you find to be unreasonable and illogical?
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Brian Ambrose



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Chad said:
But after analysing such excursions, do you not reject those that you find to be unreasonable and illogical?


We do not always have that luxury. For example, the underlying order of things, as best understood by current science, is neither reasonable nor logical. To put that another way, the only way to 'understand' quantum mechanics is to reject logic and reason. We may have to admit that, at some point, reason and logic fail us.
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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Brian Ambrose wrote:
We do not always have that luxury. For example, the underlying order of things, as best understood by current science, is neither reasonable nor logical. To put that another way, the only way to 'understand' quantum mechanics is to reject logic and reason. We may have to admit that, at some point, reason and logic fail us.


If quantum mechanics is unreasonable and illogical, then it is almost certainly bollocks.

When we truly understand what is really going on, it will undoubtedly be reasonable and logical. But you are right that to arrive at that point, it may be necessary to temporarily discard reason and logic.

However reason and logic remind us that we have not yet reached the truth.
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Grant



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When we truly understand what is really going on, it will undoubtedly be reasonable and logical
.

No, because reason and logic did not create us. What created us was Chaos. We live in a reasonable and logical world because only in such a world can consciousness exist.
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Brian Ambrose



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When we truly understand what is really going on, it will undoubtedly be reasonable and logical. But you are right that to arrive at that point, it may be necessary to temporarily discard reason and logic.


Ah, but you make an assumption which is by no means necessarily true. There may never be a "When we truly understand". If that is the case then the temporary dismissal of reason and logic will have become permanent. As Hatty said, we have no guarantee that reason and logic is the only way to wisdom. How about the demonstrable power of intuition?
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