riskVSreward
Member
So the first set then. The one that God failed to replicate when Moses broke the tablets and instead worked in some shit about boiling baby goats in their mothers milk... God must get high cuz his memory is suspect.
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about that Stephen Fry interview and atheism in general...
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Don't worry, in heaven they'll get two of those.
Lol, it's been a long time since I read the old testament. I forgot about that part.
PhantomHound
Banned
I'm not saying you're wrong.
I'm saying the bible does not say that animals are rationale or posses a soul to have the inherit ability of free will.
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
I remember when that stupid video/photo was going around about 'Albert Einstein challenging his philosophy teacher/professor' first made the rounds. People thought it was so cleaver and it even came from Einstein!
Hitler was just doing God's work with the Holocaust. Surely the pain of millions of dead Jews translates into an unfathomable amount of happiness for everyone else? It sucks they had to die, but their lives are in God's hands anyway!
riskVSreward
Member
Do you need the bible to tell you that you have two hands?
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
Hitler was just doing God's work with the Holocaust. Surely the pain of millions of dead Jews translates into an unfathomable amount of happiness for everyone else? It sucks they had to die, but their lives are in God's hands anyway!
It was just an attempt to strengthen their faith.
Epsilon-delta
Banned
Don't forget Stalin and Pol Pot doing more of God's work.Hitler was just doing God's work with the Holocaust. Surely the pain of millions of dead Jews translates into an unfathomable amount of happiness for everyone else? It sucks they had to die, but their lives are in God's hands anyway!
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
Nah, that was an attempt to show you how evil atheists were.
PhantomHound
Banned
Hands aren't a theory governing the idea of free will or what constitutes a conscious choice
Maninthemirror
Banned
if there is only Cold then you will be a popsicle forever.
riskVSreward
Member
Hands are self-evident, as are animals having the free will to make decisions!
Epsilon-delta
Banned
HiredN00bs
Banned
That alone is enough to throw it in the fucking garbage.
PhantomHound
Banned
it's not self-evident by any means. Science has researched that animals work on a combination deterministic and random behavior and govern a very loose term of free will
Why?
riskVSreward
Member
Sounds like you're describing humans. Are you sure we're not animals?
HiredN00bs
Banned
Some middle-aged fucking bullshit up in here. I suppose you were fine with Descartes disemboweling live monkeys.
Because we're merely animals at a different evolutionary stage, made of the same stuff. They have brains that make neural connections.They learn.
All this is aside from the hilarious contradiction of supposing that your free will was granted because of some being's say-so. SMGDH
PhantomHound
Banned
Humans have a clear concepts of free will because we can communicate with each other. Where the term can only loosely be applied to less forms of animal life.
Wtf are you saying.
Why exactly should we care about the biblical definition of anything? Remember, we think it's BS.
God can't be omnibenevolent while simultaneously allowing for natural disasters, disease, genocide, etc. A God who has that quality does not exist. So not believing in him makes sense.
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
Animals cannot communicate with each other? News to me.
I think I'm starting to understand why you just keep linking/quoting scripture.
You don't need to know the concept of free will to have free will, and other non human animals can communicate via symbols too.
superseohyun
Member
are you agnostic about the invisible dragon in my basement?
PhantomHound
Banned
I meant we can communicate on a rationale level. We're discussing religion and concepts of god. Morality and why people suffer... some clear advanced brain thinking.
I meant we can't really communicate with animals to know what goes on in their thought process. We don't know how they make decisions or by what rationality they would come to those thoughts.
Again, Arrogant. I'm not stating what the bible has in it is true, but just pointing to what it says inside of it about these concepts.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Isn't that what heaven is though?
Or do we have free will in heaven but choose not to do bad things? If so why couldn't we have that type of free will on earth?
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
Does someone with a severe mental disability have free will?
Ok? Let me pull out what my five year old said about free will and these concepts. If you aren't declaring that it is delivering a truthful statement, what is the point of trotting it out?
Honestly, I cannot overstate how ridiculous this is. I'm not saying what the bible has in it is true, I'm just telling you whats in it. Mind boggling statement you just made there.
This exchange is why atheism is boring. "Do animals have free will" doesn't matter. No stakes there. You're just trying to score points.
Fudgepuppy
Banned
The argument is pretty silly from Fry's side, as he attributes human values in a world that's not human. We just perceive it as so.
He's essentially taking the mystical elements of life attributed to religion, and using them to prove his non-mystical beliefs about life. It's like trying to beat someone at football with a basketball.
We're biological beings that has grown and evolved as a chemical reaction to the big bang. We then created a human god because we fear death out of our meta-cognitive nature.
He's essentially taking the mystical elements of life attributed to religion, and using them to prove his non-mystical beliefs about life. It's like trying to beat someone at football with a basketball.
We're biological beings that has grown and evolved as a chemical reaction to the big bang. We then created a human god because we fear death out of our meta-cognitive nature.
HiredN00bs
Banned
Only a believer deals in absolutes.
riskVSreward
Member
I'm gonna take a step back here for a moment and this isn't directed at you specifically.
When atheists ask you these questions like "why does god allow evil" we aren't actually looking for an explanation because lets be quite honest, there isn't a good one. The problem is the fact that the question can even be raised, it illustrates a greater point.
Personally, I'm fine with people who pick an old book and use it to justify their belief in god. "This book says there is a god, I believe it." it's at least logically sound. It's the very second you have to appeal to things outside of the bible to justify it, it all starts to fall apart. You know damn well the bible doesn't articulate "free will" and distinctions between man and animals like you say it does, you are INTERPRETING the words to mean other things. Or, at least relying on other peoples interpretations. People coming together for a consensus on a given topic, that sounds more like science to me. If the bible is the word of god, and it can convince people of his existence, then it should be entirely self-contained. Every possible answer should already be there, it shouldn't rely on people interpreting it to make it fit with modernity.
You are somehow able to speak on animal psychology and morality, but you know damn well the bible isn't your source for that. Its simply that you have a presupposition and you are trying to make reality conform to it at all costs. It's backwards.
You think human decisions is due to some special rationality? We rationalize the decisions to ourselves post hoc that the decision was purely rational, in reality all our choices are driven by our genetics, environment, societal ideals, and past experiences. Choices are not made in a vacuum.
*murders a bunch of children*
FTFY
Someone made posts who wanted to talk about it, people responded. Simple as that. It's not like every conversation has to have some stake in it. *shrug* I mean I don't call people who wants to discuss their own stuff like sports boring just because it doesn't interest me.
riskVSreward
Member
We are having a discussion and it is under no pretense to be interesting to you.
Atheism is a lack of belief in gods, it's not a discussion, or a game with points, or a way of life. You are boring because you are inferring intentions to why Im saying what Im saying without really knowing why.
Take yourself to a boring school and learn how to boringly interact with the rest of boring society and maybe you will learn something boring.
XD
PhantomHound
Banned
It would be a case by case basis, but the scientific studies i read would indicate that yes even someone with mental disorders do have the free will thought process.
The bible definition would assume that you also have a soul, which would be incompatible with the science model because we cannot prove the existence of a soul.
I was saying this to earlier arguments which was saying god cannot exist because he does not intervene. And I was offering references to the bible because of one poster who wanted sources of the god i was referring to.
HiredN00bs
Banned
You know what's really boring? 31 flavors of circular logic.
Yeah, there's some stuff on that table that doesn't even make sense being there.
Outdated Jewish circumcision ritual where some holy man called a mohel sucks the blood from the freshly cut baby penis. One time a baby contracted herpes from the guy in the process, ending up with permanent brain damage as a result.
Like, why is that even possible? I get that stories are boring without conflict, but that's the kind of obstacle that doesn't even make sense existing - the baby isn't even given a fighting chance to begin with. Nobody who wrote holy texts was smart enough to account for shit like that, which is why their books don't work.
Outdated Jewish circumcision ritual where some holy man called a mohel sucks the blood from the freshly cut baby penis. One time a baby contracted herpes from the guy in the process, ending up with permanent brain damage as a result.
Like, why is that even possible? I get that stories are boring without conflict, but that's the kind of obstacle that doesn't even make sense existing - the baby isn't even given a fighting chance to begin with. Nobody who wrote holy texts was smart enough to account for shit like that, which is why their books don't work.
Maninthemirror
Banned
as a previous poster said "you dont need cold to know if fire will burn you" if there is no heat, you will reach extreme cold and if there is no cold you will reach extreme cold. If there is no friction, something will move in a direction forever.
Similarly you need suffering to balance out pleasure because if there is only happiness then there is no progress as there will be no emotion and life will cease to essentially exist if there is no concept of suffering, if there is only suffering life will cease to exist as well as there is no happiness.
if there was no suffering and happiness combined. either everything would be wiped out of the universe because of only suffering or nothing will progress evolution wise as everything would win at the game of survival of the fittest, at there would be no evolution. the first cell which created life would not move as the opposing cells which counter it would be winning the game at the same time as all other cells,
You need an opposing force to balance out one thing. If one army is killing someone, if there is no defending army that army will kill everyone and wipe everything because there will be no one to say enough. life needs balance which is why suffering exists and happiness exists.
Now what can be controlled is human free will. they can reduce suffering and increase happiness while knowing the quantifiable value of both
if there were no concept of suffering dinosaurs (dinosaurs wouldnt exist actually if there were no evolution) wouldnt be wiped out and humanity would technically not exist. there would be no one here even conceptualizing the concept of free will because we would have nothing
Similarly you need suffering to balance out pleasure because if there is only happiness then there is no progress as there will be no emotion and life will cease to essentially exist if there is no concept of suffering, if there is only suffering life will cease to exist as well as there is no happiness.
if there was no suffering and happiness combined. either everything would be wiped out of the universe because of only suffering or nothing will progress evolution wise as everything would win at the game of survival of the fittest, at there would be no evolution. the first cell which created life would not move as the opposing cells which counter it would be winning the game at the same time as all other cells,
You need an opposing force to balance out one thing. If one army is killing someone, if there is no defending army that army will kill everyone and wipe everything because there will be no one to say enough. life needs balance which is why suffering exists and happiness exists.
Now what can be controlled is human free will. they can reduce suffering and increase happiness while knowing the quantifiable value of both
if there were no concept of suffering dinosaurs (dinosaurs wouldnt exist actually if there were no evolution) wouldnt be wiped out and humanity would technically not exist. there would be no one here even conceptualizing the concept of free will because we would have nothing
Bullshit.
Not everything is life is either suffering or pleasure. Most of the time it's neither.
One could argue that even without suffering, happiness isn't the "default" state of life.
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
You can definitely have pleasure without pain. Imagine feeling endless elated never ending perfect pleasure for all eternity. It would not be impossible for God to put us all in that state.
PhantomHound
Banned
The bible does allude to free will and only really states that humans are the benefactors of this through the human soul. That god made man in his image. Animals aren't covered as free thinkers in the bible or that they are able to make decisions based on morality of if they carry a spirit with them. By this definition the bible would say that animals are not governed by free will... is this interrupting, of course it is, the bible wasn't written in English, has gone through several revisions, and has different accounts from different people.
Again, I'm not arguing the methods of the bible to be right, I'm providing the passages that one might cite when confronted with Fry's reaction to God. Why a god could allow bad things to happen to good people or create suffering in the world, and why we would want to worship such a being that would cause us so much pain.
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