Rick's comments (member since Nov 15, 2008)

Rick's comments from the Debate Religion group.

One more possibility. Alister McGrath is a theologian at King's College London who talks about being a former atheist here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBRKY8Qx9...

My impression is that he picked up atheism from teachers and friends without giving it any serious thought -- in the same way that most believers pick up religion from their families -- so there was no rationality in place to stand in the way of his turning to Christianity. (And now he uses his own history of having been an active but unthinking atheist as an excuse to accuse atheists in general of being less thoughtful than believers.)

"The second quote is my analysis of Stephen's statement. As such it doesn't reflect exactly what I am saying..."

I know, however it seemed to me that your "shorthand" summation was more a restatement of your original assertions than a restatement of what Stephen had been saying. My mistake. In any case, I think we can agree that either the physical brain can detect qualia, or it cannot. If it can detect them then wherefore do we call them non-physical? If it cannot detect them then what purpose do they serve? Consider this sequence:

The brain senses neural input that informs it of an itch (that is, the physical condition that we label "itch," not the feeling of itching.)
The brain generates a qualia that is the sensation of an itch, and the desire to scratch.
The brain produces the nerve impulses that cause the body to scratch the itch.
The brain generates the qualia that are the sensations of willing the body to scratch, and the scratching itself.

Remove the steps involving the qualia and the situation is physically unchanged; their absence would be as undetectable as their presence. The qualia are voyeurs, "observing" the action, "experiencing" the delusion that they are in control, but in fact merely going along for the ride, every step of the way. One might imagine a scenario in which the qualia go "out of sync" with the body that generates them, in which they no longer "experience" the delusion of controlling that body. They would find themselves to be experiencing sensations (perhaps I should say "being sensations") but unable to take any action (perhaps I should say "being the sensation of taking actions"). Would such a situation even have any meaning? Would there be a sense of despair over this situation, without the body to create that emotion? And who would it be that was experiencing the condition (if indeed anyone or anything could be said to be experiencing it), and how would anyone else ever know that anything was amiss?

It follows that when you state that there must be some non-physical phenomenon to account for your perceptions, that statement itself must be the product of the purely physical processes of your physical self.

"This is correct..."

If you agree that your argument could be the product of purely physical processes then you should also agree that you would be making precisely the same argument whether that argument is true or completely false; the you that is typing your posts has never experienced the non-physical subjectivity of which that material you so earnestly speaks. That being the case, why propose the non-physical element at all? What function does the non-physical serve, other than to satisfy your incredulity that the physical suffices to account for subjectivity?

Hi Eli,

"This is not dualism in the usual sense because there is only a one-way interaction between the physical and the non-physical. Physical mechanisms create non-physical phenomena (qualia), but non-physical phenomena cannot cause anything to happen in the physical world."

"A = cause of a subjective experience B = subjective experience C = mind"
"A causes B, which is detected by C."
"you have said A and C are physical. I have agreed with you multiple times. But you have refrained from calling B physical. ... B is what I am talking about, not A or C."

In the first quote you say that qualia can't affect the physical world but in the second you say that the physical mind is capable of detecting them. I believe that this is a contradiction. If the physical mind can detect qualia then they must be physical and we should be able to study them by studying their effects on the brain. On the other hand, if qualia aren't physical then they should be completely undetectable to the physical mind.

If qualia can't be detected by the brain then they can't have any effect on our thoughts, nor on our spoken or typed words. It follows that when you state that there must be some non-physical phenomenon to account for your perceptions, that statement itself must be the product of the purely physical processes of your physical self.

If this is the case then qualia are superfluous, and Occam's razor would suggest that we have no reason to think that they exist at all.

Jerry, you say you're tired of hearing that Christians believe in things that are scientifically untenable and that defy common sense, and yet ... you believe that fallen angels mated with humans to create evil mutant giants, and you believe that the omnipotent and omniscient God who could have destroyed these evil mutant giants with a metaphorical snap of his fingers chose instead to wipe them out with a flood which turned out to be a failure, and you believe in magical curses and magical bloodlines and who knows what else.

Can you not see the irony? Can you not see how ludicrous it is for you to believe that all of the Jews and Muslims are wrong, and that all of the other Christians who interpret the Bible differently from the way that you do are wrong, and that all of the other believers in all of the other mythologies that humanity has invented are all hellbound (oh pardon me, lake-of-fire-bound), and that only your particular fantasy is God's Own Truth?

Can you not see that from a rational, skeptical, objective perspective, you are all deluded?

"I'm just tired of hearing Christians say things that are scientifically easy to prove wrong and in some cases defy common sense."

Jerry, I feel your pain.

One more point about the local flood scenario. If the Biblical flood were regional then why was the ark necessary at all? Wouldn't it have been more sensible (from the point of view of preserving genetic diversity) for the animals to have simply migrated outward, away from the flood area? Wouldn't it have been more sensible (from the point of view of the practical impossibility of the ark) for Noah to have simply taken his family on a camping trip? The mere existence of the ark suggests that there was no safe place to go, that is, that the flood was indeed global. (I mean, of course, within the fictional world of the Bible.)

Stephen,

I'm still trying to figure out how free will enters into natural disasters. What freedom of choice are flood victims exercising as they're drowning?

R.C.,

Re Post # 40, No argument. I was merely suggesting that in addition to being a mother lode of physical and biological absurdities, the flood also doubles as historical error.

Re Post #92, I'm feeling a little masochistic today but I'm almost outta here.

Re Post # 95, "... this really tells us nothing about the extent of Hebrew language at the time." Again, agreed. I was tossing out a possibility, not stating a fact.

Jerry,

In post #41 you claimed that the flood rose to at least 10,000 feet. A 10,000 foot flood could not possibly have been regional. About 95% of the Earth's surface is below 10,000 feet (above sea level). For flood water to rise to that height, either the flooded area would have to be completely surrounded by 10,000 foot mountains, or about 95% of the Earth's surface would have to be submerged (compared to about 71% today).

In post # 43 you wrote "Regarding message 39, all of the scriptures you stated refer to the lake of fire in the book of Revelation, not hell."

My point was that the Bible does state that there are souls that will burn for eternity. There are other passages that contradict this, but that only proves that the Bible is internally contradictory. One would think that given the importance of this issue, a loving God would take care to ensure that his message was clear and unambiguous, yet Jesus has allowed generation after generation to languish in ignorance for two millennia, all the while waiting for you to come and straighten things out.

I agree with Charity's analysis on whether the original word referred to the planet or a region. A related point: To the bronze-age primitives who wrote the flood myth, their region was the entire world; perhaps they didn't possess the vocabulary to distinguish the two ideas.

And another thing. Since Original Sin was passed on through the Adam line, wouldn't the destruction of that line have obviated the need for a savior at all? Kill off Adam's cursed family and the remainder of mankind is free from the curse: happy ending, no? By allowing Adam's lineage to mingle with the rest of mankind, wasn't God thereby guaranteeing that curse-free families would sooner or later inherit the curse, thus damning billions of souls who otherwise would have remained innocent?

And where did the non-Adam bloodlines come from? I think that most Christians would say that Adam and Eve were the grandparents of the entire human race and that there is no such thing as a non-Adam bloodline; what's your evidence that they're all wrong on this? And since you accept that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and since you presumably also accept the reality of evolution, who do you believe Adam and Eve actually were? What were their roles in your worldview?

Satan destroys this blood line and a Savior can't be born.

I'm also a bit curious to know how you believe this arbitrary and silly limitation came to be imposed upon God's omnipotence.

Jerry,

"...the covenant not to bring this flood again was to Noah in Gen 6:18, not to mankind."

Nonsense.

Genesis 6:18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.

There is nothing in there to suggest that simply because the promise was addressed to Noah that it therefore only applied to Noah's family. By your contorted reasoning, I suppose you also believe that when a witness in a courtroom swears to tell the truth, her oath only applies to questions asked by whomever administered that oath, but not to questions posed by the trial lawyers.

I notice that you also conveniently ignored the passages that disprove your claim; I'll reiterate those passages and highlight the pertinent words, because I'm helpful like that:

8:21 And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth ; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

9:15 And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

And by the way, the covenant was not fulfilled in 9:15 as you strangely claim; it was spelled out there. It would have been fulfilled by God living up to his promise to not repeat the deluge.

...Noah is the "mans sake" of 8:21.

Really? In 8:21 God says of the "man" that "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth," so how can that possibly be referring to the Noah of 6:9 who is described as "...a just man and perfect..." a man who "...walked with God." Clearly, the "man" of 8:21 is not Noah but rather mankind.

And what exactly are you saying that God promised after the flood? That he wouldn't destroy the Adam family? This also makes no sense. Why would he promise to never again do that which he had not done in the first place?

Let's assume for the moment that the Biblical flood was merely regional, and let's take a look at a couple of passages from Genesis:

8:21 And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth ; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

9:15 And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

Whatever it was that God had done, he promised never to do it again. So, if the thing that God made happen and promised would never happen again was a regional flood, then why do we still have regional floods? Where was God's love when 225,000 people died in the tsunami of 2004? Where was his covenant when 1,500 people died in the New Orleans flood eight months later?

Jerry,

"The word for hell in the Old Testament is ... sheol in Hebrew, which simply means 'grave.'"

It's interesting that even though "sheol" is etymologically unrelated to "hell," and even though it's used in a completely different sense, you assume that "sheol" and "hell" refer to the same thing, in order to impose a continuity between the two testaments that doesn't actually exist.

"It's the smoke from their extinguishing that rises for ever."

So the fire goes out but a little column of smoke continues on its merry way in a straight line away from the Earth, without dispersing, without being absorbed by a dust cloud, without being prodded by stellar winds or gravity, without bumping into anything, for all eternity? That's rather a stretch. Obviously, the writer's intent was to imply that the fire would burn forever, constantly producing new smoke.

"Don't let this verse confuse you into thinking God really does torment these individuals, or anyone else for that matter, forever in a fiery hell."

OK, how about Matthew 13:40-13.41 (bold emphases mine)

The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Or Matthew 18:8-9

... it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.

Or Matthew 25:41 and 25:46

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels ... And these shall go away into everlasting punishment...

Or Mark 9:43-48

... it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched ...

Or 2 Thesselonians 1:8

Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction ...

"Why would a loving God have His children burn forever in torment?"

Why would he torture his children at all?

"Don't let anyone scare you with the threat of burning for ever in some kind of Dante's Inferno."

Instead, let Jerry scare you with the threat of spending eternity in anguish-heaven...

R.C.,

Jerry is asserting the Bible is "100% historically inaccurate". The Bible being "100% scientifically inaccurate" is strike two.

I would argue that, although the disproof of the flood has more to do with science than history, the flood itself would have been an historical event, so the fact that the Bible is wrong about the flood counts as an historical error. The same might also be said about the Biblical account of the origin of the world.

"Then there is divine intervention.An example with Paramhansa..."

This "example" fails on so many levels.

First there's the fact that the student spent so much time praying that he neglected his schoolwork; this is an unintended illustration of the fact that time spent in so-called "divine contemplation" is time wasted, time that could have been spent doing something that might have actually mattered, such as studying.

Then there's the arrogant presumption that if a so-called "master" gives God two options then she will somehow be compelled to choose one or the other; God couldn't possibly ignore both. Why doesn't some "master" put this to the test by praying for God to either eliminate cancer or eliminate heart disease? Whichever seems more "convenient."

Then there's the fact that, having chosen to help the foolish student, God was incapable of giving him perfect knowledge of the subject. The best God could manage was to cheat by arranging for the slacker to study only the material that was to be on the exam. And even then, with Omni-Everything Über-Soul on his side, the best the sluggard could accomplish was an execrable 40%?

And that 40% is the funniest part of the post. If this is a true story then the teacher was utterly incompetent for allowing such a low grade to pass. If it's not true and the numbers were arbitrary, then the fact that Mohit would choose such low figures, and the fact that he believes that the lowering of an already laughably low standard is an act of divine intervention, speak volumes about the quality of his education.

If God were omniscient then he would always know the next number in any sequence, thus random numbers would not exist, and God would be incapable of creating a random number generator. (Of course he would be able to produce numbers that appeared to be random to those of us without omniscience.)

In the pendulum analogy, the choices made by a being with free will correspond to the numbers generated by a random number generator. Just as an omniscient God is incapable of creating a random number generator, he is incapable of creating a being with free will.

I'm tacitly assuming here that "free will" can be defined as the ability to make choices that are not predetermined, that is, choices that are unpredictable even to an omniscient mind. The problem may be that you disagree with that definition (it's certainly not the only way to define it). If so, how do you define free will?

R.C.,

I agree with most of what you've written here however I maintain that theists can only win the free will argument at the cost of conceding that their God is not omniscient. The fact that Christians are unwilling to make this concession makes omniscience central to the argument, in my opinion. Also, I don't think that the problem is semantic, but rather is another demonstration of the incompatibility of omniscience and omnipotence.

If God is omniscient then he's incapable of creating beings with free will; the entire course of the Universe is predetermined and free will is thus an illusion. If God is capable of creating beings with free will then he's incapable of predicting their choices, and he's therefore not omniscient.

(God or no God, it may yet be the case that the Universe is predetermined and that free will is merely a compelling delusion. Even in a nondeterministic Universe, free will may be a delusion. But that's another thread, I think.)

"Since I believe that abortion ends a life, I can't agree to your arguments."

The belief that abortion ends a life is founded on the belief that life begins at conception. This is a purely religious notion which is refuted by science. There's no reason to consider a zygote or an embryo to be equivalent to a fully formed human being, apart from the fact that the priests and theologians say so, but there are excellent reasons to believe that it isn't. To understand why life doesn't begin at conception, consider the phenomenon of anencephaly. In a normal pregnancy, between about the 18th and 28th days, a tube forms which will eventually become the spinal cord. In about one out of every thousand pregnancies in the United States, this tube fails to close and as a result, despite the pregnancy having begun perfectly normally, no brain forms. Very often the remainder of the gestation continues normally, and eight months later a baby is delivered either with a gaping hole at the top of an empty head, or with the upper half of its head completely missing. About half of the time such babies are stillborn; the rest may live for a few hours, or at most, up to about ten days. Even if it were possible to extend the life of such a baby, there would never be any possibility of it developing a personality, or of experiencing any emotions, or of acquiring any memories. This phenomenon clearly demonstrates that there's infinitely more to the development of a human being than the fertilization of an egg. Yet according to Christian belief, an anencephalic fetus, despite the total absence of even the possibility of the slightest brain activity, is the moral equivalent not merely of a healthy fetus, but of a fully formed adult. By the Christian reckoning, a pregnant woman who's been told she's carrying such a fetus would be forced to carry it to term, to undergo the physical, mental, emotional and financial hardships of pregnancy, only to be guaranteed the heartache of losing her baby at birth or soon after.

"Because seeing as I equate abortion to murder, agreeing with the logic you provided me would be wrong. To me, it would say 'Abortion is murder, but it would be too costly and hard to stop it."

I know it doesn't seem this way to you but that's actually a very selfish position to take. What you're saying is that you don't care whether or not legalized abortion can be proven to reduce the net amount of suffering in the world, and you don't care whether or not legalized abortion is better for the welfare of society as a whole. What matters most is satisfying your personal sense of self-righteousness, regardless of the consequences to others who may or may not share your religious beliefs.

"If you saw abortion as murder, I'm pretty sure you would agree to that."

It's a moot point but even if I did believe that abortion were murder, I would still say that it ought to remain legal, for the reasons that I stated in my earlier post, and also because I would respect the right of a woman to control her own body, even to the extent of murdering a life within it. And again, how would you go about enforcing a law banning abortion? What punishment would you mete out to a woman who had had an abortion? And while we're on the subject, would you forbid abortions to rape victims? What about twelve year old rape victims? Would you forbid abortions in cases in which the mother's life is in danger, or in which the baby will be born with no brain?

"Thanks for answering my questions so thoroughly Rick."

No problem.

"About the sun - I was just wondering how science figured all that out. Because that's A LOT of information."

That's a fair statement, and a healthy, skeptical position to take. Science isn't only about the facts, it's also about discovery and understanding, so it's always appropriate to question the facts. The short answer is that the predictions are derived from data that's come from studying the sun with Earth-bound telescopes, satellites and space probes; from studying many different distant stars, each of which gives astronomers a "snapshot" of a particular phase of the life of that particular type of star; from theory in several branches of physics (quantum mechanics, plasma physics, thermodynamics, orbital mechanics etc); and from computer simulations. If you'd care to learn more, NASA.gov, space.com and Wikipedia are all good places to begin searching.

"Hey look, a religious scientist! :)"

I thought you'd like that. lol