Moderator: Alyrium Denryle
. Any other ideas?
Wikipedia wrote:Theism is the belief in one or more gods or goddesses. More specifically, it may also mean the belief in God, a god, or gods, who is/are actively involved in maintaining the Universe.
That help?Wikipedia wrote:Deism is belief in a God or first cause based on reason and experience rather than on faith or revelation, and thus a form of theism in opposition to fideism...Deists emphasize the exclusive application of reason and personal experience to religious questions. Deism is concerned with those truths which humans can discover through a process of reasoning, independent of any claimed divine revelation through scripture or prophets.
Um... I posted exactly 17mins after your post. Hardly that much of a difference if you'd already spent the afternoon chilling out on wiki.comDooku's Disciple wrote:You tell me this *after* I've spent a whole afternoon there looking things up at random? Yeesh...
.Stofks, you're on crack. Wikipedia is an excellent resource and starting point.Stofsk wrote:Yes, plenty. It's also a piece of shit resource, ok for lightweight needs but nothing important.
That's just great. Me, I'll use it for those little facts I never knew. Of course, only an idiot would use it to replace peer reviewed journals or a something like Britannica. It is useful for things that major works are hard to come by such as obscure books, games or local events.Alyeska wrote:Wikipedia can fucking die for all I care. If I could wipe its existance from the face of the planet, I would.
I fail to understand why science and religion must always mutually exclude one another. The arguement from complexity goes as follows. If I were to trip over a rock and say 'that rock has always been there' no-one would think anything of it. But if I were to up end over a pocket watch and claim the same, it would be absurd statement, for the watch has so many complex, precisesly measured interacting parts that it must have had a mind design it. 
Bullshit. Wikipedia is Truth By Democracy; a shitty methodology if I ever saw one. That deism definition is not a definition; it's a fucking advertisement.McC wrote:Stofks, you're on crack. Wikipedia is an excellent resource and starting point.Stofsk wrote:Yes, plenty. It's also a piece of shit resource, ok for lightweight needs but nothing important.
course, you realize in a couple months time most people are going to completely forget that this thread ever existed, right?Dooku's Disciple wrote:If I may, I would like to request some clarification. I believe in a higher power that set things into motion and ultimately facilitated the creation and ongoing development of the universe. However, I also believe that any human attempts to quantify or name that power (and create mythologies around it) are complete and utter nonsense.
You might have noticed that's rather a long winded explanation, and I'm sick of trotting it out every time somebody asks me what, if anything, I believe in. Much easier to say "I'm a... *insert word here*"
After reading my first paragraph, I'm inclined to fill in "pretentious windbag" but that doesn't quite cover it
DD
Because religion is based on faith and directly contravenes scientific method. Being a fundamentally different epistemology makes integration impossible while maintaining integrity of either.jasonicusuk wrote:trying to angle back towards the topic, and away from what a stinking pile of horse-shit Wikipedia is
Complexity is not what defines artificiality or design, it's that it doesn't fit with observed natural process and could only come about by mindful intervention. For instance, you cannot compare the example of a working machine that WE MADE and compare it to something that appears to be made from natural selective processes. It is even fundamentally more dumb to compare something we only know is designed by it's difference to nature, to nature itself, and then claiming nature is designed at large. It's about the same as saying the rock you tripped over was designed as much as a watch.The arguement from complexity goes as follows. If I were to trip over a rock and say 'that rock has always been there' no-one would think anything of it. But if I were to up end over a pocket watch and claim the same, it would be absurd statement, for the watch has so many complex, precisesly measured interacting parts that it must have had a mind design it.
The same can be said for science, and evolution. the human eye, the universe, etc etc. I have no doubt that God made the universe, but he made science too. And we can plumb the depth of that science. Understand it, model it and harnass it.
A better God would not make a system where you can only survive by hurting and killing competition and food.In regards to evolution; what makes for a better god? - one that makes a bunch of animals exactly as they are, or one that makes a bunch of animals that adapt and grow in order to better survive their environment.
Science is based upon observation yes, but there is a certain degree of faith also. We observe that the sun rose yesterday and that it rose again today, just as it has done since time immemorial. But until it rises again tommorrow, we have no defiante proof that it will. All we have is speculation based upon prior experience. A very, very educated guess.Because religion is based on faith and directly contravenes scientific method. Being a fundamentally different epistemology makes integration impossible while maintaining integrity of either.
Complexity is not what defines artificiality or design, it's that it doesn't fit with observed natural process
and could only come about by mindful intervention. For instance, you cannot compare the example of a working machine that WE MADE and compare it to something that appears to be made from natural selective processes.
It is even fundamentally more dumb to compare something we only know is designed by it's difference to nature, to nature itself, and then claiming nature is designed at large. It's about the same as saying the rock you tripped over was designed as much as a watch.
Sloppy language on my part. I didn't mean that god invented the discipline of science. I meant to say that he designed a universe that is observable, repeatable and understandable.God didn't make science. We did. It's a method of rationally inspecting and modelling the universe that is not detailed in any magically "revealed" texts anywhere.
I never claimed that he was a good god.A better God would not make a system where you can only survive by hurting and killing competition and food.
But unlike religion, we have a consistant pattern derived from long observation.jasonicusuk wrote:Science is based upon observation yes, but there is a certain degree of faith also. We observe that the sun rose yesterday and that it rose again today, just as it has done since time immemorial. But until it rises again tommorrow, we have no defiante proof that it will. All we have is speculation based upon prior experience. A very, very educated guess.
And we have a functional understanding of how each came to be. The human eye is the product of evolution, an activity that we have observed and recorded.Yes I can. I can point out that both the pocket watch and the human eye both have complex working parts that interact with each other and are all interdepensant on each other being the correct size and shape in order for the whole to function properly.
Evidence that it was designed by an outside agent, please.I didn't say that the watch was different from nature, I said that it was complex like nature. I said that they were akin. And yes, by my arguement the rock would also be designed, as it is part of the earths geology which is a complex structure.
It isn't based on faith at all. If, some day, we conclusively observe that, under certain conditions, Einstein's Theory of Relativity doesn't apply, then we won't dogmatically cling to our faith in Einstein's theory. Instead, we, as scientists, would formulate new theories which would attempt to predict our observations.jasonicusuk wrote:Science is based upon observation yes, but there is a certain degree of faith also. We observe that the sun rose yesterday and that it rose again today, just as it has done since time immemorial. But until it rises again tommorrow, we have no defiante proof that it will. All we have is speculation based upon prior experience. A very, very educated guess.Because religion is based on faith and directly contravenes scientific method. Being a fundamentally different epistemology makes integration impossible while maintaining integrity of either.
This is a blatant violation of logical parsimony. If you have an equation describing the natural world A + B + C + G = N and an equation A + B + C = N, where G is God designed the world through natural processes, one can immediately see that G contributes nothing to the equation . . . especially if both equations generate the same end-result. This means that we should reject the equation containing the G term in favor of the equation with no extraneous components. You can't logically argue for a designed world without immediately looking stupid.jasonicusuk wrote:Complexity is not what defines artificiality or design, it's that it doesn't fit with observed natural process
If I'm arguing that nature was designed, then its design is going to be in keeping with natural processes, isn't it. I never said that nature was atificial.
In terms of the Creationism in a Clown Suit vs. Reality debate, this is a red herring. And as Richard Dawkins said once, half an eye is better than 49% of an eye, which is better than 48% of an eye, and so on.jasonicusuk wrote:and could only come about by mindful intervention. For instance, you cannot compare the example of a working machine that WE MADE and compare it to something that appears to be made from natural selective processes.
Yes I can. I can point out that both the pocket watch and the human eye both have complex working parts that interact with each other and are all interdepensant on each other being the correct size and shape in order for the whole to function properly.
Yes, but you can demonstrate that the rock formed through basic chemistry, or mindless physical processes. And if you removed a specific chemical from the rock, you'd still have a rock, albeit a different one. Remove a part from the pocket watch, and it'll probably stop working.jasonicusuk wrote:It is even fundamentally more dumb to compare something we only know is designed by it's difference to nature, to nature itself, and then claiming nature is designed at large. It's about the same as saying the rock you tripped over was designed as much as a watch.
I didn't say that the watch was different from nature, I said that it was complex like nature. I said that they were akin. And yes, by my arguement the rock would also be designed, as it is part of the earths geology which is a complex structure.
Once again, why should we accept the equation A + B + C + G = N when the equation A + B + C = N works just as well without invoking the 'god' term?jasonicusuk wrote:Sloppy language on my part. I didn't mean that god invented the discipline of science. I meant to say that he designed a universe that is observable, repeatable and understandable.God didn't make science. We did. It's a method of rationally inspecting and modelling the universe that is not detailed in any magically "revealed" texts anywhere.
How is it a advertisement? Reading through the entire article in wikipedia, it seems like a fair, even handed explanation of the concept.Darth Wong wrote: Bullshit. Wikipedia is Truth By Democracy; a shitty methodology if I ever saw one. That deism definition is not a definition; it's a fucking advertisement.
They can coexist so long as it is admitted that religion is an irrational process. The difficulties arise when one tries to pervert fact and scientific method in an effort to support and sustain religion. That was the fatal flaw in your approach, one that is currently being utilized by the intellectually dishonest ID crowd.jasonicusuk wrote:I really can argue any further as I do not understand enough about physics to put together an even remotly competant sounding rebuttal. I could flail about in the dark, repeating myself over and over, but there's no fun in that.
The problem with the arguement is that there is no proof whatsoever for the existence of any god, let alone one all powerful that created the Universe.
All I was trying to do was create a hypothetical scenario that allowed for both religion and science. To that end, I hope I suceeded.
And yes. that was three lines of 'point conceeded.'
