Friday, October 9, 2009

Atheists say the sweetest things

I will give credit where credit is due. His Lordship the Gun Toting Atheist said this over at Mak's site. "There is no such things as a soul. we are not souls inhabiting bodies. We are bodies".

If thats true we are no more important than some sewer rat eating fecies 20 feet below the streets of any large city. Unless you think your special for evolving to a more important species? Why are we better than rats? Because we can type and spell and put pants on?

Don't like cliches or those church signs out in front of churches with nifty little phrases like 7 days with out prayer make one weak. (So Lame) But I just can't help myself, this one applies here "Without Christ we have a hopeless end. With Christ we have endless hope". That doesn't prove that Atheists are wrong of course, but I like the idea that I am more special than a maggott or a rat. What, maggotts don't have families?

Dear Atheist, whether or not you care I think your wonderful and more important than any other species on Earth. And I love you,(not that there's anything wrong with that). Now get over your damn self and secure your soul.

Peace be with you, feeno

21 comments:

  1. Hi Feeno,

    "If thats true we are no more important than some sewer rat eating fecies 20 feet below the streets of any large city. Unless you think your special for evolving to a more important species? Why are we better than rats? Because we can type and spell and put pants on?"

    Well, the way I see it, we are all part of one big ecosystem. Rats have their place in it, and so do humans. I used to have pet rats, and they are actually quite smart and cuddly. Why are we better than rats? I don't know. Rats have been around for a long time. And if we humans destroy ourselves in a nuclear war, and the rats survive, maybe we are the dumb ones and rats have the edge. Regardless, I put more value on human life than the life of a rat, because I am human and that's where my loyalty is.

    I know I have a mind, I mean, I'm aware that I have thoughts and emotions. I just don't think I can call that a soul. And I know that I have a body. I only exist as this body. The way I see it, the mind cannot be separated from the body, because the mind is a byproduct of the neural activity inside the brain.

    What are your thoughts on this? Do you think there is such a thing as a soul? Can it exist without a body?

    Peace, enjoy tbe long weekend,

    HL

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  2. Lordship

    I'm sorry I can only give you answers that come from the bible. But when you refer to mind, thoughts or emotions I believe that is how we are created in God's image and what seperates us from animals. We can actually comminicate with God.

    As far as our Soul is concerned I actually think just the opposite as you. We are nothing but Souls, our bodies are just a shell for them. Granted some shells look better than others. But to a believer the Bible says to absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

    Ah yes, Columbus Day, but I still have to work Mon. But thanks, you have a great weekend as well.

    Dueces, feeno

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  3. Hey guys, I prefer the tone of the discussion that you started over here than on Dan's blog, it's more intimate and friendly ;)

    I'll give you my opinion on soul. Personally, I do think that we have a soul, but the thing is that my definition of a soul is this: Soul = Consciousness... I don't see any different between a soul and the fact that we are self-aware.

    Because of that, I do think that we are "better" than animals because I doubt that any animals are truly self-aware. But at the same time, animals do have feelings, instincts, social skills, communication skills, some sort of intelligence, etc..., so we are not that different, we are just much better.

    So, the real question in my opinion would be this: Do you believe in the primacy of consciousness, or primacy of existence?

    If you believe in an afterlife, you have to believe in the primacy of consciousness. Not believing in that myself, I believe in the primacy of existence.

    This simply means that I believe that my consciousness, my soul, is a consequence of existence, i.e., when my body dies, my soul dies. End of story.

    Happy Thanksgiving!
    err... Columbus day for you guys :)

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  4. Gun-toting atheist, do you think that there is no evidence that we have souls? Just curious.

    Hugo, several points were raised on my last post on the other thread here at Feeno's. Want to try and answer them?

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  5. @JD
    Hugo, several points were raised on my last post on the other thread here at Feeno's. Want to try and answer them?

    Well JD, it depends, because I did tell you already that I was done talking to you...

    I feel like it's pointless to discuss with people who give equal probability to a 6,00 year old earth and a 4.3G year old Earth.

    But, if you do want to try to present points and discuss them, I guess I'll answer. But are you open to the idea that you might be wrong?

    Personally I am always trying to prove myself wrong, because that's how we acquire new knowledge...

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  6. How about this one.... The underlying premise of Evolution by natural selection is logical rather than scientific. I don't have the answer myself. I have been looking into the subject a little lately. What do you think?

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  7. But I digress. This is Feeno's thread and he wanted to talk about the existance of souls, of which I found this link that offers up the following argument.

    Suppose a dark, gray cloud shoots out lightning that strikes down a heavy tree, which in turn falls down on Bob’s favorite car. Can Bob rightfully blame the tree for the destruction of his car? No, the tree didn’t have a choice in the matter. Its fall was simply caused by the lightning, which was caused static electricity, which resulted from the clouds, which came about by weather patterns etc. Unlike the tree, we humans have a special ability that can cause us to be responsible for our actions. Rather than being pipelines for chains of natural causation that go back before our birth, we can initiate our own causal chains. This ability is commonly called free will.

    ....and goes on to present examples as to why free will is a reason that souls exist. Link

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  8. "The underlying premise of Evolution by natural selection is logical rather than scientific"

    Sorry but I am not sure that I understand what you mean?

    Hypothesis are formulated using logic after looking at facts. They are then confirmed, or disproved, by experiments, observations, etc... so yes the Theory of Evolution was constructed and refined using both logic and scientific facts.

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  9. "But I digress."

    Ya we are polluting feeno's blog, lol

    Ok, let's drop evolution discussion from this comment section...

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  10. @JD

    Thanks for posting that link; that was a very interesting exercise of logic!

    The comment I have written here concerning the soul had already answered what I consider to be the flaws in the argument however. Let me explain...

    The problem is that you can simply read the whole argument, replace soul by consciousness, and it still "works".

    Look at #2 of his argument, he evens says it himself!
    The soul is the incorporeal essence of oneself (by definition).

    If that is his unique definition of a soul, he is clearly referring to the soul as being consciousness, nothing more, as this is by what we define ourselves.

    I think therefore I am.

    Because of this confusion, the author makes a mistake at the very start of his logical argument. This does not render the argument invalid; just useless:

    1. Free will exists (follows from direct perceptions).

    Direct perceptions are possible because we are conscious beings. Therefore, if we say that free will exists based on our perception, we have to conclude that free will is dependent upon consciousness. Since the whole argument is a way to prove that the soul exists, this leads nowhere, as the conclusion was already known prior to the argument, it is actually the base of the argument! And again, point 7 says the exact same thing:
    basis of free will is the self

    Therefore, the conclusion that The soul exists because free will exists is not completely false, because of course I agree that the soul exists, but the conclusion is backward.

    Free will exists because the soul exists...

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  11. To see my reply with a funny image on it:

    Click here

    I admit that the concept is not mine!

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  12. Feeno, the general response to arguments like this is, "Important to who?" If there's no god, we obviously aren't important to a god, but that doesn't stop us from being important to each other. Importance and significance don't have to be absolute in order to be real as far as we're concerned.

    JD, I'm interested in your conjecture on evolution, and I think I have the most obvious question: what is the underlying premise of evolution?

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  13. 'Sup LX

    Again good man, do rat's have important relationships? I'm not trying to be a smartlx but I just can't fathom I'm some accident that crawled out of some murky pond somewhere. And if I did, (I know this off the subject a little) but do you think that rats will be watching t.v. and using indoor plumbing in another billion years or so?

    Peace and hair grease, feeno

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  14. "do you think that rats will be watching t.v. and using indoor plumbing in another billion years or so? "

    lol, nice one

    I think they could actually, there's nothing impossible in thinking that other mammals could evolve into intelligent species as ours; but the problem is that they would not be called rats anymore... or if people still call them rats they will definitely not look the same!!

    Want to learn about speciation feeno?

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  15. Thankyou for realising my handle is a pun on smart-alec. Some people just think I'm boasting about my intelligence.

    Anyway, now you've switched topics completely, from intrinsic worth and importance to evolution. You're free to be incredulous about that, and I'm not surprised you are if you view the whole process as an accident. I wonder if you understand why evolutionists don't see it that way?

    Regardless, we're certainly more socially developed than rats. Humans probably consider other humans more important than rats consider other rats.

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  16. Re: Evolution, I was checking out the comments on this thread. I believe that this blogger will be coming out with a book on the subject in the next year or so. Like I stated, the comments here are really interesting.

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  17. @JD

    No JD, I find very little value in those comments.

    The theory of evolution is based on facts, it's not a matter of opinion.

    If you want to address evolution, discuss it as a scientific topic please.

    You should have tried to understand my reponses instead...

    What you are doing is EXACTLY what Luke wrote:

    ==================

    "I responded by quoting your assertions verbatim and then directly rebutting them with relevant evidence, argument, and examples. In your second letter, you again refused to support any of your claims about evolution, and instead resorted to empty hand-waving:

    If you do happen to investigate my points in the future you will discover that it isn’t even possible to credibly dispute them.

    [...]

    You are expected to back up your assertions

    [...]

    Instead of backing up your claims with argument and evidence, your tactics rely mostly on obscurantism and dismissal.

    ================

    So JD, anything to say about evolution?

    But it was not suppose to be on this comment page so perhaps we should switch to another one... I will quickly create an empty blog post on my blog.

    cheers

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  18. The examples will be forthcoming from that blogger, I assure you. I still havent see a single, credible example of species to species mutations. Did you see the Nat Geo article stating that it's possible that up to a third of all dinosaur fossils were miscatagorized and were actually juvenile dinos rather than completely different ones?

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  19. @JD
    "I still havent see a single, credible example of species to species mutations."

    I am afraid it means you don't understand what speciation is :(

    Want to learn?

    Again, I am not being a jackass or anything, it's just that people who say that there are no transitional fossils obviously wait for something like a croca-duck, that would be half duck, half crocodile... that's not how it works... you won't ever find that kind of "transitional fossil".

    I will give you a glimpse... actually, an analogy.

    Once upon a time, you were a baby, then a kid, then an adult. Every single day of your life, you could have compared yourself with what you looked like the day before, and you would not have seen any changes. But you did went from a baby to an adult... how come?

    When exactly did you stop being a baby? stopped being a child?

    Nice timing by the way, I just finished a post answering a comment feeno wrote on my blog, and I would like you to read it, as it explains why we have different worldviews, and especially why I don't intend to be insulting when pointing the errors in your arguments.

    Take care and good night!

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  20. @JD,
    "id you see the Nat Geo article stating that it's possible that up to a third of all dinosaur fossils were miscatagorized and were actually juvenile dinos rather than completely different ones?"

    that?

    It seems to be a great discovery! Thanks for sharing; you could have poste the link :P

    What's wrong with it?

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  21. JD said: "do you think that there is no evidence that we have souls? Just curious."

    I think there is evidence that we have thoughts, memories and feelings. But to call that a soul seems like jumping to conclusions a bit. Is the soul the mind? Is the soul your feelings? What is it?

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