What do atheists think that "to know God" means?

Yeah, totally, and you are the one to decide whether something is in line with "the accepted convention of an argumentative discourse" or not, and everyone is supposed to bow to your discernment, totally.

Duh.

 

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My God you are unbearable.

 

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@wynn --

You do realize that your refusal to adhere to any of the common rules of discourse makes it impossible for others to discuss things with you, right? It's not the other people making this hard, it's you.

 

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So, no argument, then.

 

It's your contempt for philosophy and introspection that does it.


:shrug:

 

@wynn --

That might be true if it were just me, but it's not. There are quite obviously plenty of other people having the same or similar troubles. The only common element here is you.

 

And there are others who don't.
The common element is not me.

 

@wynn --

In the case of those who have problems dealing with you, yes, you are the only common element. Of course the trend won't hold if it's erroneously extended to those who aren't involved(i.e. those who don't have problems communicating with you), but that doesn't invalidate the trend.

 

I don't think your allergy to purpose keeps your nose above the surface

 

actually its not since unlike the anticipation of the sun rising tomorrow, we have no previous experience of life spontaneously arising from matter and numerous complete failures of trying to engineer an environment where this could occur.

Actually its more like faith along the lines of the sun will shine out one's backside.

:shrug:

 

@LG --

I wouldn't call them complete failures. Many such experiments produced a lot of the components for our kind of life, that they didn't spontaneously start to replicate is to be expected given that we've done so few experiments and it's a rather rare phenomenon(or, at least, I should hope so).

 

That isnt even true, much less logical, rational or relevant!

 

Seconded.

 

So, you grant then that you know nothing of chaos theory.

Once we thought chaos of the natural world had no rules. (Once we also thought the sun went around the Earth.) But in this century (and much of the last), no rational person thinks your chosen definition of chaos is what drives the universe. Rational people know that the processes have simple driving forces resulting in fabulously complex emergent properties (such as spiral galaxies and life).

Now who is ignorant of what they speak, hm?

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This is a science forum. Bone up on the scientifically well-defined definition of the terms before you use them.

 

Have you noticed that there is a specific brand of atheists who have problems with me?
Other people have no problems communicating with me.

 

Read up on logical fallacies, especially on equivocation.

And secondly, you apparently missed the whole point of why that passage ("Try to really believe ...") was brought up.

 

wynn

Yet every atheist on this thread makes a point of saying we don't know and cannot assert certainty that a god does not exist, even when we conclude that that is likely to be true. As opposed to the theists on this thread that assert certainty that he does exist(some even saying they have met him and "know" what he thinks, wants and commands). This is a transference of the theists own flaw in their logic onto those who do not share that flaw.

I have strong and clear ideas about god concepts, but they are not all the same. If you were a Spinozist, for example, we would only dissagree about whether god was the cause of all the other things we would probably agree on. And neither of us would be basing our conclusion on evidence. Those who express an opinion when they don't even know what they are expressing an opinion about(or based on personal opinion that may have nothing to do with the question)are not being reasonable, nor will it lead to any valid discussion.

And the opinions of those two have been thouroughly shown to be...ill-informed(to put it civilly). Atheism says one thing about what worldview any atheist has, that it does not contain a belief in any god. It says nothing else.

I have met few militant atheists. Religion is not important to almost all atheists, unless and until it starts intruding on our right to be free of it in the conduct of our lives. I have, however, met many militant theists.

It is not my interpretation, the Bible claims god did these things at his whim(whatever the reason, he chose to interfere with the Universe). You are a theist that believes a willful and mysterious(thus inscrutable)spirit changes the laws of the Universe any time he wants to for any reason he has(on a whim, IOW).

You aren't fooling anyone, your words give you away. A stealth theist is still a theist.(IE see reaction above to what I said about the Bible's claims).

Faith is belief without evidence. We have evidence and thus no need of faith.

No, just the rules of reasoned debate. We won't force you to respond reasonably, but we will point and laugh if you just refuse to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

Rather, maybe you should learn to use reference material coherently.

What, did you use so much acid that it completely burned out your ability to appreciate beauty? How about this...

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You mean the reasonable ones? Your error, attitude and refusal to follow the rules of reasoned discourse is becoming infamous. Character is something you should have, not something you should be.

Grumpy

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Well at least you're big enough to call yourself out on a fallacy.

"...the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense. "

You bring up chaos on a science board, yet you choose an outdated and non-scientific definition. In this century, chaos is well-understood with a preponderance of evidence backing it. In all the time we've been talking about chaos, practically spoonfeeding you the basics, not once have you shown you understand the relevant scientific definition.

All right. I too can admit I might be wrong.

It sure sounds like you were saying, in essence "it's pretty hard ("try" to "really" believe) for anyone to believe the universe is ruled by (among other things) chaos."

Did I misunderstand?

In fact, there is a preponderance of evidence that many, many process of the universe are driven by highly describable chaotic processes.

 

You frustrate them and they don't respond to frustration very well.

You'll inevitably start having trouble with several of them as soon as you presume to disagree with them.

 

There's clearly more than one meaning of 'chaos' in play here. One has 'chaos' meaning the opposite of order. The other has 'chaos' referring to non-linear dynamics.

Somebody might want to argue for the stronger metaphysical thesis that all instances of chaos in the first sense are reducible to and explainable in terms of chaos in the second sense. But that's going to require a lot of argument.

It seems to me that it's more likely that the two uses of 'chaos' are kind of analogical. Applied mathematicians were reminded of the conventional meaning of 'chaos' when they realized that simple functions could generate unpredictable and potentially infinitely complex graphs.

That doesn't necessarily imply that all examples of seeming disorder in the physical world are really examples of these nonlinear dynamical functions at work. Some might be and doubtless many others aren't. In some cases A and B will simply have no causal connection at all and their behavior will be independent.

But the thing is, all this talk kind of misses Wynn's earlier point (if I understood it correctly). Wynn isn't questioning whether there's some physical dynamical principles underlying all physical events. Wynn seems to be suggesting instead that the abstract principles of mathematical physics don't have any meaning or emotional resonance for human beings.

Imagine putting a huge bomb inside some human artifact, somebody's house let's say. Then we blow that house into a million tiny bits, scattered around more or less at random. We can say, with a great deal of justification, that we've reduced the house to chaos. (We've certainly boosted its entropy to such a point that continued use of the word 'house' to describe it is probably unjustified.)

Arguing that the motion of every single explosion fragment was totally governed by the laws of physics might be entirely true, but that fact isn't going to give the pile of rubble very much meaning to the family that used to live there. It's not their home any longer, it's not their familiar place where they could all go and be together after a hard day.

I think that's what Wynn was getting at. Wynn was wondering if atheists can really live their lives as if the events taking place all around them are just mechanical clockwork, mathematical functions working themselves out, meaningless in human terms, devoid of purposes and intentions and values.

My own answer might be rather different than Wynn's would be, but it's obviously a serious question.