Book of Romans suggests that you’re a nitwit without God.
“ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man…” (Romans 1:20-23)
One of those ‘futile speculations’ is that your brain produces all your thoughts.
Don’t misunderstand! You need your brain if you’re going to think.
But that 3-pound clump of tissue in your skull is not where wisdom resides.
“But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5)
So…I’m feeling kinda stupid…what should I do?
Will myself to enlightenment?
No. Ask God.
Your brain is like a radio.
Wisdom is transmitted on a specific frequency.
God will tune your brain to that frequency.
But not without permission.
He’ll let you listen to whatever station you want.
He’s not gonna reach over and fiddle with the tuner.
(He knows we all hate when someone does that.)
“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” (Philippians 4:8)
‘Dwell on these things’ means ‘listen to these tunes’.
You’re not writing the music. You’re just hearing the groove.
Perhaps you’ve been told that the brain is the center of consciousness.
Everything we think, feel and know is a product of the brain.
That’s like saying all that music is produced by the radio.
Without an external signal, the radio is just static.
Same as your brain without the wisdom of God.
“And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind…” (Romans 1:28)
When God leaves you to tune your own radio, it’s gonna produce static.
People have written entire books about static.
Many people teach static at college.
Static works perfectly as an internet meme.
Fans of static get defensive when you try to tell them about radio transmitter towers.
“There’s no external signal! My radio’s pumping out jams all by itself!”
There is no need for a radio unless there’s a signal for it to receive.
There is no need for a brain unless there is wisdom for it to process.
If you found a radio on the street, you would assume it was built intentionally to serve a specific purpose.
You have a brain in your head that is WAAAAAAY more complex than a radio…
…why do you suppose it’s there?
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)
63 Responses
You do know many people have destroyed reductionism.
See, we can do it too.
Local units obeying local rules can be demonstrated to produce astounding complexity. So, no, I don’t know ‘many people’ who have actually destroyed “the practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level.” You, Jeffrey Davis, are a beneficiary of exactly this practice in many, many ways… not least of which is the physics applied to the connective device you are using to comment here. So don;t tell me you can do it, too, when you seem to have little clue why the phrase ‘you do know’ is backed by more than some contra-reality faith-based belief.
Those “local rules” are also called “God’s will,” in some circles, Tildeb.
Why is “local rules” a more palatable way for you to say it?
Tildeb,
Do you understand the complex phenomenon of sarcasm?
I’m going to take a page out of JZ’s playbook and copy-and-paste one of my own comments:
——
We’ve amassed quite a list of words our Atheist friends must handle with care, haven’t we?
It seems they have to buffer almost everything with caveats and disclaimers. (See words like: belief, worldview, morality, thought, consciousness, knowledge/wisdom/truth, etc.) (EDIT TO SAY: We can add “thing” to that list, too.)
I think I’ve figured out why they’re so squirmy about definitions…
Atheists will take little stabs at explaining “reality,” when we demand they do so. But after just a couple of clarifying questions, they’ll jump right back to the safety of “I don’t know!” Any theory they try to offer devolves into inconsistencies and paradoxes every time. So, at the end of the day, Atheists won’t say ANYTHING for certain.
This becomes a problem when a Theist (like JB) demands that the non-believer actually take a STAND on something–ANYTHING! “Explain the basis of consciousness” or “summarize the truest thing you know–and how you KNOW it’s true.” Because, the Atheists CAN’T do “basics” or “summaries” or even the tiniest, simplest absolutes.
They can’t even begin to stand because of their a priori elimination of the Foundation.
Furthermore, they can’t propose a replacement foundation, on which we might build a body of knowledge, because anything solidly true enough to serve as that Foundation would be–by definition–GOD.
If we know anything absolutely, then it demands an absolute God. So, an Atheist HAS TO give up absolutes altogether.
They’ve traded a place to stand for perpetual hovering in a void.
And, even more frustrating (for them), should they ever find something reliable enough to repeat universally and true enough to transcend human invention–it ends up sounding EXACTLY LIKE the reliable, timeless, true God.
So, it’s a sad, complicated demonstration of futility, when an Atheist tries to use phrases like “Search for truth” or “Gain knowledge” or “Conform with Reality.” Because, every time, a Theist replies–YES! That’s exactly what I mean when I say, “Seek God!” And the Atheist retreats to find another set of words which would allow them to talk about “Truth” without capitalizing the T. Or to discuss Knowledge without the capital K.
They have utterly rejected Truth himself.
Just because you ignore the answers many non believers provide you for your questions doesn’t mean we’re not providing them. I don’t know how many times it takes to say ‘biology’ as the foundation for the various emergent behaviours you select to be classified as evidence for Oogity Boogity! You pay no mind whatsoever to the evidence atheists provide to link biology to those emergent behaviours. None of that – aka reality – has any effect on your considerations. So, apparently, it doesn’t matter what any atheists say to you because then you’d have to change your faith-based belief about atheists and atheism and we can’t have that because, well, just because. You seem dedicated to misrepresenting atheism and atheists who bother to respond to your questions and comments regardless of anything they might provide counter to or in mitigation of your entrenched negative opinion.
It’s not that I’m ignoring your answers. It’s that they don’t hold water.
Again–just a few clarifying questions, and you HAVE to jump back to the safety of “I don’t know!” or “You’re misunderstanding!”
Trying to build a worldview entirely on “biology” is too small…. because understanding biology is dependent on the senses and thought and logic and a bunch of other building blocks which are even smaller than “biology.”
So, when your interpretation of biological “reality” contradicts another person’s interpretation, then who’s right?
Mrsmcmommy, yuo assume they don’t hold water… in spite of the mountain of evidence in their support that atheists bother to link their answer ‘biology’ with these emergent properties. That failure to deal with the linking evidence belongs entirely to you. You simply wave this responsibility away and pretend people who don’t go along with you faith-based belief in some divine causal, creative, and interventionist loving god you APPOINT by fiat to be responsible for these emergent properties are the real problem with your explanatory model that explains… absolutely nothing.
No!
You have not even matched what non believers have produced: a direct link between the evidence and the explanatory model.
By all means, prove me wrong and show us all the evidence from reality independent of your faith-based beliefs that can be shown to link your Big Daddy Boss and, say, consciousness. Go ahead.
In the meantime, I think it merely prudent if I hold off notifying the Nobel committee to prepare for your submission, to gird their loins for this remarkable case you are privy to but are willing to now share, and get out their checkbook.
Tildeb: listen carefully. NO ONE has said there isn’t a link between biology and reality. Indeed, biology is PART of reality.
Given.
I’ve already said (to someone in one of these threads, though I can’t remember if it was you specifically) that I would accept ANYTHING that is logically, consistently true which is discovered by biologists.
But, the very concept of “truth” cannot be explained by biology.
I know this is a very brain-stretching concept. But you are stuck in a loop, my friend. Your problem is with philosophy and epistemology…which are things biology depends on, rather than explains.
You seem to have conveniently forgotten just how often I have pointed Laplace’s observation regarding the source of emergent properties used to suggest some divine agency at work, that ‘we have no need for that hypothesis’. Adding a god doesn’t explain anything but increases the complexity of the problem of understanding the source needlessly. You alter that to mean I am declaring a ‘Truth’ but am not certain of this ‘Truth’ and so there’s an element of hypocrisy at work in my answers to your questions.
No, Mrsmcmommy, I’m not declaring a ‘Truth’ but showing why my confidence in the biological explanation as the source of these properties is well supported by compelling evidence and so is deserving of a much higher level of confidence than the explanatory model of Oogity Boogity! exercising some magical means through POOF!ism that you are certain is the case.
The philosophical and epistemological loop you think I’m ‘stuck’ in continues to produce new insights into how reality works, yields evolving understanding, expands our capabilities as a species (not to suggest that we utilize this capability very well on the whole), and consistently produces applications, therapies, and technologies that work for everyone everywhere all the time. You have a very strange understanding of the term ‘stuck’ when compared using the same metric to your Iron age version of ignorance that cannot compete in the same arena of human knowledge.
If you honestly want to find out what is the case, then methodological naturalism – my epistemology – is a very rich vein to tap. Its products – the method’s ontology – is indisputably useful. By comparison, your epistemology – your selected version of religious faith – is not useful but pernicious and continues to cause real harm to real people in real life every day when applied and smothers this harm in piety. Your methodological credulity using this method leads you to a depth of gullibility that interferes with critical thinking and that’s no way to honestly investigate reality. It IS, however, a guaranteed method to fool yourself and motivates you to teach others, including children, how to fool themselves, too.
*Bangs head on the keyboard*
Lapace uses LOGIC, Tildeb. LOGIC is your foundation. Oy, vey. I hate when I have to come right out and say that to someone instead of letting them figure it out themselves…
No response to my statement that logic is your foundation?
This is why music industry went downhill. As people got dumber, the music got crappier till even static is socially acceptable as entertainment now.
You know you’re quoting Pauline letters, right? Why not Mohamed’s?
You know there’s no signal, right? It’s only in your imagination. But even so, why so many scrambled and incompatible ‘frequencies’? For godly amusement?
You know ‘wisdom’ is not a thing, right? You have to earn its attainment. Being a follow of some religious belief is hardly and guaranteed way to do this.
You know complexity doesn’t indicate design, right? Here’s your reasoning: a radio is designed. Your brain is waaay more complex. Therefore, your brain is designed by a god. There’s you ‘static’ in action, John B. Religion seems to screw with the brain/radio.
You know this analogy doesn’t work, right?
Apparently not.
Umm… because Pauline letters promote loving one another even when they disagree, and Mohammad’s promotes killing one another if they disagree? Could be a good reason.
Why so many different frequencies? Why so many flavours of icecream? Why so many kinds of flowers? What kind of question is this, anyway? It only stands to reason that thinking, reasoning, flawed human beings would come up with different wrong ideas, doesn’t it? Is it God’s fault we muddied the water?
Oh wisdom is definitely a thing. And I’ve met enough idiots who try really hard to know that you can’t earn it. It’s a gift (although I guess you could say idiocy is a gift too, since some people are evidently quite gifted at being stupid. That’s another argument for another day).
You know there’s no substance in your response, right?
I’m going to to give you a little time to adjust your claim about the signal being imaginary. If you have any wisdom at all you’ll walk that back a bit.
If there were a signal, then we would expect many people to receive it. What might that look like? Well, it means it should be transmitted, so to speak, from an independent (and single) source to an audience, many of whom receive THE SAME SIGNAL. Geography should not be able to block it and we should find THE SAME MESSAGE repeated from various locales, within different cultures, in different languages. At the absolute minimum, we should find this happening at least twice.
Sorry to pop the bubble belief you think is solid enough to invest such a high degree of confidence, but there is not a scintilla of evidence I am aware of for this. All I see is faith unrelated to the reality we share. No two identical ‘signals’ has ever arisen independent of each other from different locales. The only evidence we do have is that each of these tens of thousands of different ‘signals’ (you just so happen to have ‘received’ the ‘correct’ one) are transmitted is from one person to the next in the form of indoctrination using Just So stories. In fact, the evidence that should be present if your analogy were the case is lacking from reality in its entirety. There is a chasm of emptiness in place of what should a mountain of evidence for your model (although I have no doubt you will cherry picks bits and pieces from wherever you can that might appear to fit with your model while completely ignoring and thus failing to account for all that does not).
You think I should walk back on my claim that your hypothetical signal is purely imaginary? I will… if you can summon from reality evidence in its favour worthy to consider OR a reasonable explanation why its absence should be the case… neither of which you have produced and that I think you cannot. By all means show me the error of my case.
Billions of spiders make webs without first seeing one or ever taking a lesson.
Bees communicate with each other in a language that they’re never taught.
Trillions of plants grow right side up regardless of the direction the seed is planted.
Countless cells make perfect copies of themselves without the aid of a central nervous system.
All by themselves, molecules bind together to form vastly complicated structures like DNA.
You think I’m imagining all that?
Or is there some invisible wisdom floating all around us?
And those examples are LINKED to this supposed signal how?
By your imagination!
Attaboy!
I admit I couldn’t imagine how you were going to hang on to your bias!
Respecting reality is not a bias, John B. I thought you knew that. My mistake.
You asked for evidence.
I supplied evidence.
If these things are not LINKED to a transcendent wisdom, how do you explain them?
There you go again assuming the conclusion! In your IMAGINATION the examples are linked because you don’t understand how something complex could ever come to be without something more complex intentionally doing so. Therefore, you’re satisfied by the pseudo-answer godidit.
Of course, that’s not an answer at all. It’s simply another claim masquerading as a conclusion accompanied by the assumption that it is correct because it is believed to be correct, correct because it’s a matter of faith (and revealing so much for the quest to find a real explanation, to find out what’s actually the case, revealing the dishonesty of saying one has an honest inquiry because one doesn’t know and wishes to change this state of ignorance… all bullshit assertions when push comes to shove because the faith-based claim masquerading as an explanation is revealed to be an a priori unshakable faith-based position, one unalterable by anything from reality that disputes it).
In reality, the brute fact is that you cannot link any of your examples to the supposed source of the supposed signal that supposedly produced them. You say the source produced them and yet have no evidence at all for that claim. You’re providing the imaginative answer, namely, your god. You are pulling the rain dancer’s trick: pretending there’s a link between dancing and rain because of a perceived order – first dance, then rain… must be causal! No, you’re simply pretending there’s a link because of some perceived order – first god, then DNA… must be causal!
No. This is a classic thinking error. It’s called the argument from incredulity, where because there’s this perceived order – an order WE bring to the table – some complex thing YOU don’t understand must mean, therefore your godidit. That’s a claim, not a conclusion.
And that’s why this godidit explanation pretending to be an answer but is in fact just an imaginative assertion never ever produces knowledge but implies superstitious nonsense is actually a reasonable alternative. When questioned by appropriate skepticism, the defense is the pseudo-answer has merit because it’s pious. Knowledge and piety are not synonyms; they are antonyms..
Pious claims pretending to be knowledge answers are not a reasonable alternative to actual knowledge answers. You seem to have great difficulty grasping this argument.
In effect, religious belief that god must have done whatever is actually an admission of a failure to understand whatever and a desire not to… because, hey, you already assume you do! Reality plays no part is adjudicating this claim and there’s no honest inquiry going on.
Right. You’ve said all that a zillion times before.
How do you explain those things?
Why are you pretending this is an honest question you have?
You’re toast.
I’m kind of surprised. You’ve done much better in the past.
The tired old watchmaker analogy . . . You must be aware how many people have destroyed this, right?
Hi Carmen,
Zero.
I’m not in the habit of writing articles on theories that have been destroyed.
You must be aware that watches are not radios, right?
John, your replies (and Jasmine’s and your daughter’s) seem to reflect your own, oft-repeated thinking – “I don’t understand it, so it must be magic . . . (aka my god)”. No matter how much logic you are confronted with, you still cling to your illusions.
Don’t get me wrong, imagination is a wonderful (and often profitable) endeavour. I mean, just look at Tim LaHaye! You thinking of switching careers? 🙂
Carmen, you are welcome to give an example of my ‘I don’t understand it so God did it’ thinking.
Then, I will eagerly read your explanation so that I will have a small bit of the knowledge you and your atheist pals possess.
So, fire away! Blast my ignorant thesis to pieces!
That reply illustrates your occupation, John. 🙂
And your reply illustrates your vapidity
I’m amused by that, John. If you knew me ‘in person’, that would be that last thing you’d say about me . . .that I was ‘vapid’. More proof of your illusions.
That you cannot recognize your own magical thinking is pure comedy, as I have suggested. 🙂
The best way to prove your profound intellect would be to reveal the foolishness of my thesis.
Ahh, but Tildeb’s profound intellect has already done that, John.
How?
Re-read his rebuttals, John. It’s all there. As I have suggested to you many times before. THINK. Also, consider reality as opposed to imagination.
You can do this, John! 🙂
You saw where I said Tildeb was toast, right?
Another of your illusions.
Can you unpack what Tildeb said so I’ll understand?
Now John, you and I both know that I could never top Tildeb’s sensible, to-the-point analyses of your suggestions.
Simply put, your ‘faith’ (belief without proof) and nothing more – keeps you believing in superstitious nonsense which has been shown to be nothing but conjecture. There’s no proof for any of your suppositions, John. NONE. Yet you keep talking about imaginative fantasies as if they are reality. You suggest that “God will tune your brain to the frequency”, (using the radio analogy) yet how is it that out of our eleven grandchildren, not one of them has ever mentioned any gods? Yet they instinctively (even the 3-year-old) know that the Gruffalo is a fictional character and that monsters are a product of one’s imagination.
Your assertions are a product of your indoctrination and something you feel you must keep aping for those around you. Do yourself a favour and start thinking logically and realistically.
That’s the best I can do today, John, because it’s a gorgeous day here (for a change!) and I’ve promised my two granddaughters that I’d take them to the park. . . 🙂
Bless your heart, Carmen. If I were Tildeb, I’d be silently wishing you would stop “helping” me. lol.
He doesn’t like being called “Dear Leader,” and having a fan girl who defers to him about EVERYTHING (even/especially when it’s over her head) doesn’t look very good…
Well, thankfully for you you’re not me! And I have no problem with Carmen commenting on anything I’ve written – she seems to take the time to actually comprehend what I’ve said and even goes so far as to think about it. Whether she agress or disagrees is beside the point; she bothers to read what I’ve written and for that I am grateful. Her example is something I wish more people would bother to do especially when they presume to disagree. Agree or disagree on merit is all I ask and we shall both benefit from the exchange.
By all means agree or disagree or withhold one’s opinion but at least comprehend it first. What Carmen is pointing out is that you haven’t even done that much because your commentary in response to mine doesn’t reveal any comprehension. (That’s why she keeps asking people who snipe at my commentary to think because if I’m in error or my reasoning breaks down, then a correction from others will also benefit her! But to do what you do and It simply labels things I’ve said as you want to label them rather than as they they are (almost always accompanied by a few derogatory terms), means you sallies forth in some preset belief regardless of what I have actually written. What your commentary doesn’t do is actually reveal good comprehension.
In the written form, comprehending an argument takes a bit of time and, yes, even some effort. That’s why I write, because I think this effort is worth it. One must take note of the form: introductory paragraph with some thesis followed by a series of point-by-point paragraphs each with a topic sentence that leads to the final paragraph in summation. That’s why it’s essential for good comprehension to read the whole thing first to understand what my concluding comment actually is.
What many people do is fail at the very first task: read the whole thing first. What I find is that many people start to read, realize I am criticizing some aspect of their opinion, get fired up over some wording or tone or criticism and immediately take issue with it for that reason and not the ones I have presented, and then go straight to crafting a snarky response.
I see you do this time after time and allow your emotional state to dictate the kind of response you then post. That breaks the typical debate form and turns what could be quality exchanges into a juvenile sniping match as if someone were keeping score of the quality of the snipe. By doing this, you are cheating yourself from understanding what my argument actually is (an argument that always has some validity) and fail to understand the opinion for which I have taken the time and made the effort to explain the reasons that inform the opinions and criticisms I hold. That exposition gives the reader something to work with – informed reasons I use that may or may not be compelling and the opportunity to respond with better reasons, with reasons I might not have considered. You don’t tackle the reasoning I use but substitute your simplistic and often asinine version of it. That cheats me and wastes my time and effort.
And so what you’ve found is that I don’t bother to respond to many of your comments because they don’t do what you think they do: they don’t address the points I raise for the reason I raise them but become nothing more than a motivation for you to express your hurt feelings with snark. Your hurt feelings have exactly zero insightful value to the quality of my reasoning, which may in fact be weak, may benefit from better reasons you have. But I’ll never find that out from your typical commentary.
You don’t ACTUALLY believe Carmen understands this conversation, do you?
Whatever, it’s not important. (But, for the record, I have people in my life who “like” and “share” everything I write on Facebook, and I feel the same way about them: they’re nice, but not helpful. If I want to know whether I’m being clear and logical, I DON’T ask my perpetual cheerleaders…particularly when they’re as vapid as Carmen.)
Anyway, no–I’m not going to do a point-by-point analysis of every sentence you include. Sorry, but no. I asked what your foundation is. What is the truth upon which you build everything else that you know, or are at least pretty sure about. I suggested it was logic, and I’m waiting for you to agree or disagree.
Everything else you wrote is off topic.
I am wondering if you realize that going ‘ad hominem’ is a strong indication that someone has lost the argument, (along with their credibility) Mrsmcmommy? 😉
Saying, “Carmen is a poopy head” would be ad hominem.
Saying, “This conversation is about 100 feet over Carmen’s head” is just the truth.
Also, it’s not possible to ‘lose an argument’ when no argument has been put on the table.
Is this the part where I say, “Yay, McMommy! That’s telling ’em!”…?
I’m really and truly disappointed that–after the THOUSANDS of words I’ve read from Tildeb, he’s going to try and blame ME for not understanding what he’s trying to say.
…I wonder if there’s EVER a point where he realizes he can’t make someone understand what he believes because he currently builds his concept of “reality” on an epistemological loop.
Yep.
‘Reality’ is everything-except-God.
And so far, we’ve been unsuccessful in convincing any of them that we don’t believe in God the way they describe Him either!
Seriously! How many times do I have to say, “Yes–you’re right. The God that you used to believe in when you were a ‘Christian’ doesn’t exist.”
But we mostly have other Christians to blame for the misunderstanding. There are a lot of people who worship a childish caricature of God. Lot’s of people learned about a Wisard-type figure when they were children and never really evolved from there.
In some ways, I think the Atheists are better off for having rejected that OBVIOUSLY FALSE god. But, it looks like they’re going to spend the rest of their lives congratulating themselves for being smarter than the Wizard-People–rather than trying to figure out something True to put in the Wizard’s place.
Sorry, Carmen. This was soooo good that I had to tweet it. Awesome!!
Mrsmcmommy is suggesting that I have no understanding of what’s being discussed. This is a woman who believes that HER god (among all the thousands) is REAL, that she’s going to be holding hands with Jesus after her brain, heart, and body is dead, and that her actions are being guided by her invisible (Dear) Leader.
Anyone else’s irony metre in the red?
Excellent example, Carmen.
That’s a picture of God much like my 5-year-old would describe him.
My conversation about philosophy and epistemology with Tildeb would go over my 5-year-old’s head, too.
It’s okay.
Shoot. You were faster than me.
If you had an irony metre, you wouldn’t have written that last comment…
Let’s see if McMommy is gonna let you slide.
Bravo! We would all be better off if we just understood you better. This is nothing but a long-winded whine about how frustrated you are because we don’t understand that you’re brilliant.
You told me you’d walk back your earlier accusation, remember?
I listed those evidences for wisdom as a transcendent signal that’s received by spiders, bees, seeds, cells and molecules.
And you promptly changed the question.
Those Pauline letters talked about people like you, two thousand years ago. You’re not enlightened. You (and Carmen) are steeped in the most ancient of superstitions. The evidence for God’s wisdom and power is EVERYWHERE. It doesn’t go away just because you refuse to acknowledge it.
The truth doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s free for the taking. Toss away the bad idea and take hold of the better one.
John B, you state as if true, “I listed those evidences for wisdom as a transcendent signal that’s received by spiders, bees, seeds, cells and molecules. And you promptly changed the question.”
This is not true. I asked you to LINK these with your god. You’re the one who couldn’t do this. You have no link. Hence, your reasoning is based on an assertion that come not from reality, not from the list you give but entirely from you imposed belief that they are so.
But rather than deal with this point I raise straight up, you ignore it and pretend I have evaded your fatal evidence. That’s not just utter crap you’re trying to pass off as ‘wisdom’ but either an intention to deceive or an utter failure to comprehend my point that your assertions really are just your imaginings projected on to reality and not evidence from reality as you continue to believe they are. Your thinking is wrong, John B, because your methodology is broken.
I don’t know what it means to LINK these things to God.
And yet I carefully spent time and made the effort and explained what that means. Funny how you simply missed all of that.
You have to show a connection between what you select as evidence for a causal claim and the cause – the hypothetical ‘source’ – for that evidence. I even used the rain dancer example and showed why claiming something to be evidence for a cause doesn’t make it so. What is needed is an explanation how you know – adduced from reality and not one’s faith-based beliefs – the two are connected. That’s the necessary link. Without that link, all you have is another claim masquerading as a conclusion… something I continue to accuse you of doing repeatedly and criticizing your assertions for this error post after post after post. You avoid this criticism by claiming it’s somehow all my fault, the fault of atheism, the fault of a different worldview, the fault of different faith-based beliefs, yada, yada, yada. By avoiding the problem YOU HAVE that I’ve pointed out time after time after time in example after example after example, you continue to make the same mistake time after time after time, confuse your claims for evidence, confuse your premises with conclusions, confuse your assertions about reality for reality.
Find out what it means, John B. That’s actually kind of important.
You stated there is no ‘signal’ being sent to bees, seeds and molecules. Do you need to link these behaviors to a cause or are these just taken as ‘the way reality works’?
I have said REPEATEDLY that there is no good reason to add that complexity about some imaginary divine causal agency, that there is ample and compelling evidence that producing useful and applicable explanations lie for them within the purview of biology and not religion, not metaphysics.
Have you always been this obtuse or is it going to become a standard go to method to avoid actually dealing with criticism of your knowledge-empty faith-fueled claims about an agency of Oogity Boogity! causing miraculous deeds by exercising magical POOF!ism? If so, you’ve left the realm of reality we share (and that I happen to care about understanding) and immersed your mind fully in your own rabbit hole religious fantasy where no one with intellectual integrity wishes to go.
At the top of this blog post is Romans 1:20-23. It’s about you, Tildeb.
Every unbiased reader can see your pattern. (So, not Carmen or JZ…)
1) Accuse me of POOFism when I don’t agree with your defined ‘reality’.
2) Insist that questions are ‘dishonest’ when your myopic worldview cannot effectively answer them.
3) Create the caricature Oogity Boogity and demand that I defend whatever outrageous characteristic you ascribe to it.
There is evidence of a transcendent wisdom in the universe. It may not be ‘God’ as I understand Him. But there is ‘something’ giving order to the universe that operates outside of physical brains.
Saying otherwise is, to use a term I learned recently from a mutual acquaintance, willful ignorance.