Shoney'sPonyBoy

I suggest a point guard or two. Since we're about out of those at this point.

What would frustrate you more is a wider angle on t.v. Because what you would see is that we get WRs running wide open just as often as anyone else. (Well, maybe not as much as anyone else, but way more often than you think). But Thorne already knows where he's going to throw it before he snaps the ball and that's the only place he looks. He could have a WR stripped naked and wagging his dong on the other side of the field & he'd never know.

Well, you can place a check mark beside Step 1.

On t.v. they said his name was "Mr. Fix-it." and all he does is come into struggling programs and rebuild them. Where the hell was he this time last year? Because that's exactly what we were looking for.

Well, you were worried for nothing. Because it wasn't even close.

I wonder if we can get them to throw in their head coach if we double it.

And of what moral significance is consciousness and intelligence or a subjective experience? I get that it produces a system that creates an illusion of has self and produces an experience of having preferences, but so what? Of what significance is that in the context of answering the question of why anyone should care what happens to you any more than rocks and trees. And just your language reveals the attempt to have it both ways. Intelligence and consciousness doesn't separate you from rocks and trees in a materialist universe. They may represent more complex (illusory) physical phenomena, but so what? They're still just the result of physical forces acting upon matter. How does that mean your existence is any more valuable or significant than a rock's? Why should consciousness or a subjective phenomena be protected from disruption (what we commonly call suffering) any more than any other physical phenomena?

And yet while those are two things required, they aren't the only two things required, are they? Definition of terms is also required. And a premise isn't true just because one starts with it. It has to be supported. To refresh YOU on the conversation, I agreed that according to your definition of the word "evil," God is evil. Did I not? I can copy and paste it if you'd like. I also pointed out that according to your definition of the word "evil," God shouldn't be too worried that we just pronounced him "evil," as your definition of the word doesn't mean much of anything significant. That is not true. I agreed with your claim. Now for the 4th time. Let's be honest, shall we? Agreeing with the claim and pointing out that the claim is meaningless are not the same thing. No, that's not how that point came up. Again, if you're going to just make stuff up, you don't need me for this discussion...I'm not interested in having to correct you point by point on everything. The claim that God is evil for having created the universe at all is again unsupportable for the same reason it's unsupportable to claim that He definitely could have created our current universe with free will and no possibility for suffering. Are people who have children evil for having had children? You know, not every minute of their lives will be pleasurable. They will inevitably suffer. They might even be raped or tortured. So are people who have them evil? If not, why not? Nope, I never said that. What I said is that according to Christianity, God IS creating a universe without suffering. I didn't say He tried, made a mistake, and tried again. You are attempting to float that narrative. God's creative process obviously involves evolution. According to the Christian Bible, we're evolving toward that universe and always have been. Not that the "Problem of Evil" trilemma is valid for reasons already explained, but I noted something interesting in your modification of it. The original trilemma allows for God to either be not all-good or not all-powerful. Indulging a flawed argument for a moment, what if God's just not quite "all-powerful?" What if He made the best universe He could? What if he would rather have a universe with no suffering (which is what you really mean by "evil"), but couldn't figure out how to do so, so He made one with some suffering that would ultimately evolve into a universe without suffering, and all who wanted could be a part of that universe forever going forward, although they might have to suffer some along the way to get there? That's a pretty good God, yeah? Since you mischaracterized my earlier related statement, this one is irrelevant. No, you don't want to debate with someone using logic because when logic is applied to your starting point it becomes irrefutably obvious that according to it there is no substantial such thing as a "horrendous thing." So what if Hamas cooks babies? Does it offend you when lightning strikes a tree? Then why does it offend you when Hamas cooks babies? There is no moral difference between the two if all that exists are material forces acting on matter. If I'm wrong about that, then explain how I am wrong. Explain how anything that anybody does is significant if human beings are what you say we are. You haven't even attempted to do so (because you know you can't, not logically, anyway). At this point it's time to put up or shut up. The original premise I agreed with and commended you for is that no truer statement was ever made on a discussion board than that no amount of evidence, however strong, will change your opinion. Your mind is closed tighter than a drum. I have also agreed that the things on your list are evil (like, actually evil, not just societally unpopular), but that is possible in my system. It's not possible in yours. To allow you to act like it is is to allow you to have it both ways logically, which I'm not going to do. I will answer your question, but only if you can tell me how Hamas cooking babies in a universe in which there is nothing but physical forces acting on matter is in any way significant or anything that anyone (other than the babies being cooked) should care about. You tell me that, and I will answer your question.

If materialist atheism is correct, EVERYTHING is the result of a biochemical process (or other impersonal forces acting on matter). Our thoughts, our concepts (including democracy), our emotions, our ideas...what else could they possibly be the result of? Again, this is atheism attempting to have it both ways. If materialist atheism is correct, there IS no "us." We're just part of nature (since you used that word) like air, water, rocks, bacteria, etc. We're not separate in any way from it. That includes our thoughts and ideas and intellectual constructs. Will is an illusion. Self is an illusion. Everything about us was set at the Big Bang and all we are are the confluence of forces acting on matter arriving at a certain point in time. That's not just part of what we are, that's ALL of what we are. There's nothing else. "You" don't have a thought. There IS no "you." Not like we conceive of, anyway. "Democracy" is not an analogy. It's a concrete example of (again) the logical conclusion of y'all's starting point. What y'all want to do is claim that the nature of the universe (and therefore the nature of human beings) is limited to matter and material forces but also tacitly act and speak about us as though we're more than that or have more significance than that. It's impossible for us to be more than that if your starting point is correct. Therefore, it's impossible for us to matter any more than rocks, trees, molecules, etc. The last paragraph that you claim to not understand means exactly that. We don't matter and our actions don't matter...it doesn't matter whether we live, die, suffer, don't suffer, nurture, kill, rape, build up, tear down, survive, die out...none of that matters because none of it is any more significant than dirt washing away from a riverbank or cloud formations changing in the sky or the planet Venus revolving around the sun. It's all simply impersonal forces acting on matter. What Trump does is of no consequence. Your disgust at what Trump does is of no consequence. If Trump starts a nuclear war that wipes out all life on the planet, that's of no consequence. It's no more significant than world peace. So you can indulge in such meaningless emotional exercises if your've been programmed to do so (remember, there really can't be any free will in your system, only the illusion of it), but I fail to see the benefit. Actually, logic confirms that there can't possibly be any benefit. Seems like a waste of energy, though. Of course, logic also reveals that a waste of energy is also just as insignificant and meaningless...on and on and on, like an endless hall of mirrors. Now, it's obvious why y'all don't actually live as though what you say is true. What's amazing to me is that people can so stubbornly cling to an idea that is so obviously false that they themselves can't even live one day—hell, one hour—as though it's true. How people can willfully (in my system people have agency and make actual choices) ignore such blatant contradictions despite having them pointed out clearly for them is beyond me. Even academic atheists will admit everything I have said is true, yet in the very next breath they will make some statement that obviously acts as though the survival of the human race is important or that people suffering is significant in some way. Lots of anger at God. Only explanation I can come up with.

I was conversing with that one poster so I missed it. I've of course heard that argument before and I find it unconvincing as an ideological construct, and the main reason I do so is that it is that so much of what people claim is "evolutionarily advantageous" so often very debatable. Democracy, for example. I'm not at all sure that democracy is a net positive from a utilitarian standpoint, yet it is something that most human beings nevertheless hold as an ideal and act offended and morally outraged at the prospect of something else that is less egalitarian. I don't think that impetus is a result of a practical survival advantage (it should be immediately obvious that everyone isn't going to have an equally valid or helpful opinion on how to survive or thrive), it clearly comes from some other impulse. Or at the very least, we've out kicked our coverage and the impulse no longer produces the benefit, assuming it used to. Whether I find it convincing or not, however, the problem with that construct in the context of the discussion I was having with the other poster is that it still provides no advantage over "societal popularity" in terms of a substantial basis for morality. Because if human beings are no more than randomly electro-chemically engineered automated talking meat bags under the illusion that they are personal entities with free will that sets them apart from the rest of the universe, what moral advantage or significance is there in the species surviving? So what if we don't survive? No more significant than a wave in the ocean that thinks it is separate and distinct from the ocean breaking and disappearing.

Without becoming a coordinator first?

I didn't turn anything on its head. I asked you for what you mean by "evil," you told me, and I applied logic to your definition. You don't seem to understand what logic actually entails. I find that common among atheists these days. If there's some other aspect of what evil means that you left out, go ahead and amend your earlier definition. I know I have. Because it's a discussion you can't win. One of a few reasons why atheism is fatally self-refuting out of the gate. You want morality to mean something significant, but you refuse to acknowledge any significant source for it. Like I've said all along, you want to have it both ways. Logic (actual logic) doesn't work that way. I'm going to assume that's a joke. Because the part that you act like is a throwaway insignificant detail is the important part. This part: " whatever that means to you in your heart and mind." Again, this discussion started because you claimed to be using logic when you are doing everything but. No even semi-serious logician would evaluate your proposition without defining terms. Also, thinking something is "awful" and thinking it shouldn't exist are two different things. What you mean is "especially if He could have created a physical world while still giving human beings free will." Two things about that. 1. That's an assumption. Neither of us know whether it's true or not that He could have created this universe in its current form with both of those conditions intact. To loosely quote C.S. Lewis, just because you slap the label "all-powerful" on God doesn't mean He's capable of logical contradictions. Does being all-powerful mean that God is powerful enough to make a rock so big He can't lift it? Exactly how would that work? To directly quote C.S. Lewis, nonsense is still nonsense, even if you speak it about God. 2. According to the Christian conception of God, He IS creating a universe without pain, suffering, etc. Once all of the rebellious have been culled and removed from the equation the imperfect will be perfected. Because they would understand that just because THEY find something reprehensible doesn't mean it actually is. Like I said from the outset, they understand that a Timeless Being great enough to create an entire universe probably knows a little more about what should be happening in it at any given point in time than a created being who has been around maybe a few decades and has never even seen a significant minority of one planet, let alone the vastness of the universe for all of time. They would understand that they don't get to judge God, and to think that they could is laughably arrogant. Of course. Just as long as you aren't under the delusion that your stance is based in logic. Like I said from the beginning, you started out being commendably honest. That the evidence doesn't matter to you and no amount of it would change your opinion. But like almost everything you've said in this discussion, you want to say things like that but then act like they aren't true when it suits you to make some other point. That was the truest statement you've made the whole time.

LOL. Not on this topic or any other topic on an anonymous message board. You think that's why people post on these boards?

I'm going to go ahead and respond to what I anticipate will be next, which will be another attempt to logically have things both ways. I suspect the next thing will be, "So you don't think someone who facilitates torture rape should be ashamed of being called out for it?" Which presupposes that torture-rape contains some element that makes it bad beyond your given definition of "evil." Because the obvious answer given your definition is, not if the only reason it's considered bad is that it happens to be societally unpopular at this point in time in our society, no. Now, we both know that's not the only reason it's considered bad. But that's the only reason YOU gave for something being bad. You can amend that definition now if you'd like, but according to the logical conclusions of the conditions you've claimed, nothing much anybody does should be very morally concerning to anybody. It might be of practical concern as relates to self-interest, but not true moral concern.

Of course it is. I don't mean to be insulting, but that's frankly a ridiculous statement. The post I originally replied to was basically saying that anybody who believes in God is evil. To act like morality is irrelevant to that statement is kind of absurd. I But surely you realize that it kind of matters what the definition of the word "evil" is to you when you adopt that sort of justification for calling someone evil. Because I have a different definition of the word than you...so do the strong majority of people around the world and in our own country. When asked what your definition was, you replied (paraphrase) "societally unpopular." I guess that makes atheism itself evil—so fundamentalists who call you evil for your atheism are correct according to your own definition of the word—but that's a discussion for another time. And here's why it matters: The modified "Problem of Evil Trilemma" argument you are attempting to make falls apart precisely because one has to define what evil means in order for the syllogism to work., and that requires presupposing there there either is or is not a transcendent moral authority above the universe. If you presuppose that there is, then the definition of evil is necessarily, "Whatever is in opposition to that transcendent authority," in which case the syllogism immediately shatters, or you have to presuppose that there is not, in which case you can pick any definition you like, but whatever it is is going to be meaningless in the context of an all-powerful Uncaused First Cause. So if all you really mean by "God is evil" is that God is responsible for happenings that the majority of people in a given society at a given point in time don't like or think are "wrong," then fine. Big deal. So what? That means that God was "evil" in 1865 for allowing people to sneak slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad. What a rotten bastard He was for doing that, eh? He wouldn't become "evil" for allowing slavery to exist in the first place until the majority of society felt that way, some time in the future. Then he would be absolved of being "evil" for allowing them to escape, but condemned for allowing slavery. So if you're going to stick to that definition, o.k., you win, but you didn't win much. Because that doesn't mean God is really evil in any sense that matters. Certainly not in any sense that comments on quality of character or inherent divine goodness. Just relative to the whims of the day. Surely you realize that there's not one thing on your list that wasn't considered acceptable in society at one time and therefore not "evil" by your own definition. You mean other than the specific list you typed? Nope. We have to define it first in order to KNOW whether we really agree that it exists. If I say I believe in UFOs and you agree, then we find out through discussion that by the term "UFO" I only mean secret military aircraft not known to the public and you only mean spacecraft piloted by alien beings from other planets, then we do not agree, do we? See above. I believe that society deems certain things acceptable and other things not acceptable. I can easily observe that those things change...some things that didn't used to be acceptable society now deems acceptable and vice versa. So if all you're saying is that, and God created the world, so he created the eventuality of society adopting (ever changing) opinions on the desirability of actions, and the word you want to use to describe that is "evil," then sure, God's evil as hell. Wow. That's some win you got there. I'm not refuting it. I'm agreeing with you. But I'm doing so based on what you've actually said, not your attempts to have it both ways, which is what atheism ends up being a lifelong exercise in. We both know that the whole reason you would even take the time to type that stuff out on a message board is because you think it's significant that you can prove that God must be "evil." That it says something meaningful about His character or goodness. But when asked what that actually means, your definition of "evil" is nothing God or anyone else should be afraid of being called. Like I said above, at one time people who helped slaves escape slavery were considered "evil" by society, as they were seen as taking property that didn't belong to them. Any moral innovator throughout history was evil according to you. Jesus was evil for telling people who lived according to "an eye for an eye" to turn the other cheek. Ghandi was evil for teaching non-violence to a violent society. So was MLK. They were all three assassinated because their "evil" views were so incompatible with the societies they lived in. Gay people are still overwhelmingly considered evil in the Middle East, and according to your definition of the word, that makes them actually evil in their society. So, sure, God's "evil," and so am I because I believe in Him. Big deal. I'm in some stellar company on that one. Now, there's one of the two of us who has attempted to avoid the discussion since it began. But it's not me. What you actually have no logical reason to believe is that life is entirely materialistic. And I never said you had no emotional reason to believe in an all-powerful creator. That's not what I have said at all. That statement makes me wonder whether you have understood anything I have actually said. I will say that your anger at a God you claim does not exist is revealing. You might want to ponder what it might mean. I genuinely don't believe in the Easter Bunny or the Boogie Man. Therefore, I don't feel any emotion at all toward either one.

FIFY

I'm afraid I have made a mess of the above post by trying to quote and respond point by point. Hopefully you can sort it out. You may have to click on lots of the "quote" arrows to see everything that was posted. My apologies.

So then back in Biblical times no one would have been evil for raping, plundering, or committing genocide against his enemy tribes. Those were agreed upon rules in ancient society. At one time not all too long ago, slavery was an agreed upon rule of society. According to your definition, slavery was moral in 1860. No, logical. You claimed a LOGICAL argument. This is what LOGIC looks like. It actually has to have a reasonable foundation and be consistent. Then what is the reasonable foundation for the universal belief? When you say "reasonable," that means that logical reasoning was used by all of these people to arrive at that conclusion. So what's the logic? You still haven't posted any. I've warned you and I will warn you again, starting with your a priori premise, there isn't any. If all we are is a relatively complex result of entirely impersonal physical forces, then raping or nurturing, killing or saving another human being is no different essentially than a river flowing downstream or air pockets creating weather. It may be different in terms of complexity or biological involvement, but not in essence. If your starting point is correct, there aren't any "people" to suffer in the first place or to cause suffering. Not the way we define that word for the purposes of defining morality, anyway. Not as a true distinct entity with free will and moral agency, which would be a foundational requirement for real morality to exist, even if you define morality as "popularity," which is how you defined it above. A person would still need to be a separate entity in some sense from the rest of the universe with a free will to either join the popular "morality" and choose to conform to it or not. If not, if your starting point is correct and human beings are simply part of the universal river of electrons flowing around the universe, including our thoughts, emotions, and sense of "self," then there's nothing significant about "morality" at all. Define it as you will, it doesn't mean anything or have any more significance than most humans (although not all) preferring pleasure to pain. That's not "reductionist," it's the actual application of logic. That's what logic and reason is. Again, you THINK you're using logic here and you are 100% using emotion. What you're arguing is empathy, which is an observation of emotion, not an application of logic. Most people (though not all) feel empathy to a certain degree and that's why the view you posted above is popular. My advice is to realize that and accept and admit it. You started this discussion off very well, telling the truth that you didn't care about evidence, that regardless of any evidence you were presented with, you would still reject God and implicitly admitting that you want to set yourself up to be God and judge Him rather than submitting to His judgement. That was the truth and you should have stuck to it, but as I have seen so many times before, you had to try to act like atheism is the stance of "reasonable" people. Actually, atheism is the most logically self-refuting position anybody can take. If I were one of you atheists I would embrace post-modernism instead and start arguing that reason and logic itself is invalid and obsolete. Because you're going to lose a logical debate every time...atheism can't stand up under logic unless the atheist admits the logical conclusion that materialist atheism = human beings do not truly have personhood, that there is no basis for any moral agency, free will, or even personal epistemology, and that nihilism is the inescapable result. Atheists will pretend to admit those things (as you did below), then make all sorts of statements implicitly refuting them. Moving on and going back to your examples of what all "reasonable" people believe, were people (pretty much all of them) not reasonable in ancient society when all of those "atrocities" were normal parts of life? Were most people not reasonable 200 years ago, when slavery was popular? The common ground I have requested is logic. You were the one who made disparaging statements about people who worship an all powerful God and you claimed you were making those statements on the basis of logic. So i have requested that you lay out the logic, which starts with presenting a logical case for your starting statement in that post, as I dispute it. I First of all, that premise is not even true; not from a logical standpoint anyway. Secondly, that's an intentional straw man. This will be the THIRD time that I have stated that I believe those things to be immoral. What I disagree with is everything else you've said, including WHY you deem those things to be immoral. I assert that you are the one without sufficient logical foundations to deem them immoral and have asked you to support them using logic, which as of yet, you have not done. Then what's the problem with the above "atrocities?" How are they violating any aspect of an inherently injust, brutal, painful, miserable universe in which people have no ability to control their choices or their actions? Sounds to me like they fit right in. This is what I was talking about above. You pretend to admit those things about the universe because it's dawning on you that you can't logically refute them, but you still want to act scandalized by injustice, brutality, violence, unfairness, etc. How can you be outraged or scandalized by the universe acting like the universe?

I'm clarifying your stance. You claim you're arguing from logic and you aren't. For example, you said YOU consider the examples above to be evil. For the sake of argument, let's say I don't (I do, but not for the same reason as you). Make the LOGICAL argument to me that they are. Let's start from your a priori premise that the universe is uncreated, random, there's nothing or no one outside it, nothing and no one transcends it, and everything in it is nothing more than random particles of matter or aggregates of random particles of matter responding to purely impersonal physical forces (albeit configuring to sometimes create quite complex phenomena), including our thoughts, emotions, mental impulses, and behavior. Start there and make the logical argument that anything can be "good" or "evil" in the sense that those words have actual meanings beyond entirely subjective emotional experience. Include the concept of justice given the same criteria. Here's a hint. You can't. No one can. Basically what everyone who tries ends up doing is—either right off the bat, like you did, or eventually—sputtering, "Well, anybody who thinks rape isn't evil is disgusting." Notice I didn't say rape isn't disgusting. I think it is. And I can make a logical case based on my worldview that supports my opinion. I'm confident that you can't. But feel free to prove me wrong. Tell me how justice fits into a random entirely physical universe in which even the concept of individual personhood and free will to commit rape (or not) has to be nothing more than a persistent illusion.

I'm glad you said this. IME this is really the foundational viewpoint of atheism. At least for people who would answer the hypothetical the way you did (and I really do commend you for being honest and admitting that no matter what the evidence, you still refuse to acknowledge it...most atheists will not). It has nothing to do with science, logic, reason, evidence, or anything else that many atheists claim. It is an emotional viewpoint based on actually refusing to accept logic, reason, evidence, etc. due to your own emotional bias. If God proved to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that He exists and you still "chose" to "not believe in Him," that really means you would know He exists...it would be impossible for you to not know it...but you reject Him because you think you know how the universe should run better than the entity who created it and you are angry that he has the power to do so and you don't. No. Not unless you would define Jesus as an atheist, and you'd also have to come up with some other classification for Stalin or Mao. Again, no. You said "logically." In truth, LOGICALLY, you don't even have any objective basis to consider the things you object to about the universe "evil" other than your own subjective opinion, which would hold no more water than anyone else's subjective opinion. You mean EMOTIONALLY ACCORDING TO ME, not logically. Speaking of people who are not clever enough to understand what they espouse...

I agree. I was in a hurry.

So what do we need a public school system for, then? I'm giving statistics for kids who have graduated from the system. Why do they spend 13 years in public school if it's the parent's job to teach them something as basic and fundamental as literacy, without which very little learning about anything else is possible? I do agree that with only rare exception, parents are the prime influencer of how kids turn out academically. But then back to the first question. Why do we need public schools, at least in their current form? Why not just put a national curriculum online and have a few teachers available at public libraries for tutoring students past bumps in the road that they and their parents can't get past and leave the rest up to the students to work through the curriculum at their own pace?

I'm of course being somewhat hyperbolic, but how many videos would you like me to post of parents complaining at school board meetings about exactly that sort of stuff? One thing that's not debatable however, is what they are NOT learning. They aren't learning reading, writing, and arithmetic, are they?

What makes you think they are reading what is assigned in school or discussed in class? Heck, for that matter, what makes you think they are even capable of reading it? Two-thirds of high school graduates read below grade level and almost 20% (1 in 5) are functionally illiterate. That's graduates. That doesn't count the ones who dropped out. But, they know all sorts of woke stuff, including the fact that white people are evil, that the leading cause of death for unarmed black males is being killed by police officers, that very soon people are going to start spontaneously combusting from Climate Change crisis, that the probability is that they are really the opposite gender, and they know exactly and in explicit detail how to have gay sex. So they get taught the stuff that really matters. If you think you only have 10 years to ruin the country, that is.

He'll be fine. I'm just kidding.