talkmagic.co.uk

To the people of them places in Japan I dont belive in atmos.

To the people of them places in Japan I dont belive in atmos.

Seriously?

"But is what we believe to be a 'good' singing voice, mean anything. If an alien landed on our planet, they may have a totally different aesthetic point of view. And you will find a range of different singing voices on the earth, as you would expect. "

pffft...come on now...aliens ...you're happy to quote aliens as an "out" cos it fits the explanation you give, but you're dismissive of the religious stuff...

atheists always make the best preachers dont they...

If you don’t believe in god then to you he don’t exist. If you do then he dose. He don’t believe will tell he who dose there is no god . He who dose will tell he who don’t there is. The bible will be help up in proof
If I don’t think atoms are real the atomic bomb is held up in proof. You ever seen an atom?

TaR wrote: [ School ]'s important because it hacks away at the irrational things in people that are dangerous or insane.

That's dangerously close to crushing creativity and risk taking.

Cardza wrote:As for the Hard Problem of Consciousness... I don't think there'll ever be an answer.

On what theory do you base that?

Marvell wrote:

Cardza wrote:As for the Hard Problem of Consciousness... I don't think there'll ever be an answer.

On what theory do you base that?

Maybe his own

AndyRegs wrote:If I tossed a coin 100 times and iit landed on heads every time, that would be lucky. Yet it has an equal chance as every other combination.

Strictly speaking it has the same probability as any other permutation. It does not have the same probability as a combination of 50 heads and 50 tails.

This sort of thing is a matter of interpretation. It is true to say that if you got any prechosen permutation of heads and tails in a 100 fair tosses, you would be lucky.

Derren Brown has a very interesting section on this in Tricks of the Mind.

Marvell wrote:

Cardza wrote:As for the Hard Problem of Consciousness... I don't think there'll ever be an answer.

On what theory do you base that?

Notice how I said I don't think - to me, it's just not conceivable. I don't believe the human mind is capable of conceiving an answer. I've read a few very good propositions - but I've yet to read one which can answer how and why electrical signals in the brain translate to thoughts, to experiences.

Actually, perhaps I am being a tad presumptuous. I cannot say that there will never be an answer; certainly I don't think there will be one any time soon.

abraxus wrote:[ on natural affintity ]
thats something that cant really be explained scientifically surely?

It's something we can theorise about, but not prove, I suspect. But here goes a theory ...

You only need to be a little bit good at something to "get into it" and snowball. My dad was good at maths, and brought it into everyday life as I grew up. I was therefore a little better than most at maths when I got to school. I was then given harder problems to solve. I was therefore allowed to progress quicker and was much better at maths then most starting my next school.

Conversely, I am rubbish at sport, or so I think. My dad didn't play football with me, I was never picked for teams and my confidence was such that I didn't get into the sporty scene and therefore couldn't improve.

It may or may have been the case that if my dad did play football with me, I might have ended up a bit more of a sporto. I might have been a brilliant rugby player, but by the time rugby came along, I was already well behind.

It may or may not have been te case that if my dad had not "done maths" with me as a child, I might have been just as average as everyone else.

It's hard to know if it was natural ability or nurture in either case.

It's hard to know if the fact that you did a lot of real work with your hands (boxing, for instance) made it harder for you to perform delicate card manipulation. I, on the other hand, spend most of my time typing with my hands and they are quite delecate. I found the pass a bit easier than most maybe.

Since we've taken the original post from God, through Religion, Evolution, Conciousness and Luck, we might as well dip our toes into Nature vs Nurture and selective conditional experience.

ah but you learnt via your dad as you were growing, so its seems more natural that you'd be better at maths...

thats the thing though, i have quite delicate very dextrous hands...ah here's another thing, im right handed, yet i eat left handedly...dunno why..

anyway, my jobs have ranged from teaching the guitar, to typesetting the (semi) old fashioned way, to silk screen printing, to painting those little lead miniatures for kids, all intricate finicky jobs...i can touch type maybe 65 words a minute too...so my muscle memory and dexterity is fairly high..

yet when it comes to certain sleights - its all upside down for me...my pass was horrendous for quite a while...

i think some things are inate, sometimes (in my opinion) i think they make little or no sense inherently...but again, i like that...a little sense of mystery within yourself does you a lot of good i reckon...

let's not get into I.Q. scores, but i think my problem is i rate highly on visual/spatial memory so when i watch a magic dvd, i learn it in a mirror image kind of way, and perhaps my mind transposes left for right if that makes sense?! probably not..

i know we learn by doing, but i think we just...dunno..just are naturally disposed for no good reason towards certain things...at least, id like to think so...

I'm not saying anyone is doing this (they're aren't but some do) but it is dangerous to make the leap from, science cannot explain, to therefore it must be God. Not only is it dangerous as it is a leap of extraordinary missed logic but also for the religious it is a foolish statment due to the fact that if they attribute an unknown quantity to God then they argument will be completely deminished when science finds a theory that holds water.

Why do you think Galileo was put under house arrest for being a heretic?

Religious sorts do not seek truth as they believe they already have it and get very uncomfortable when science makes these beliefs less and less sturdy.

I wasnt meant to be getting involved anymore.....damn my argumentive side I blame Go.....Ooops

You blame the game of Go?

YES!!

All those white and black pebbles

Actually I did mean God and you knew it you little tinker.

Damn them all to hell! If it exists and of course it doesn't unless your under the delusions of a monotheist religion.

I'd just to throw my ideas into the mix for variation's sake amidst you hardline atheists... And perhaps address a few people's points along the way...

When I was at school, an inspirational and down right crazy biology teacher called Mr. Hurt used to write a hilariously long title for every experiment on the board, eg. "An Experiment to Investigate the Reaction of Lemon Drops with A Bicarbonate Solution, and Whether this is an Endothermic or Exothermic Reaction..." - he just went on and on, but it always started with "An Experiment to Investigate..."

Dawkins is a self-confessed God-basher. He is motivated by a desire to stop people believing in God. Hence, any experiment or theory he puts forward is designed to eliminate God from the picture... he is not attempting to investigate, he is digging his heels in and gathering as much "evidence" against the existence of God as he can around him. That is what distinguishes him from the pioneering scientists throughout history, who truly investigated, but did not rule out things that they knew to be too big for them. (Incidently, many of them believed in God). That is also why amongst truly scientific circles (even atheistic ones), Dawkins often receives not much more than a bemused smile... he is a Pop Scientist, a saint of the vengeful atheist. I am just waiting for a point at which he makes an outlandish or ridiculous statement that belies his prejudices... such as Francis Crick, the guy who discovered DNA, who proposed that life on earth was initiated by alien visitation (for which there is - need I say it - no evidence) because he was so desperate to rationalise the unbelievable coincidences and totally improbable chain of genetic events that he'd discovered without any input from a God.

I don't pretend to be able to prove the existence of God scientifically, nor to I pretend to be bias free, what I object to is others claiming that ground for themselves when it is not the case. But if God exists, then he is limitless and not able to be defined by our comparatively crude scientific methods. By analogy, it is like me saying "I believe the Eiffel Tower is 1000ft high", and you saying "no, it isn't, because I can't measure it with my tape measure." I can't measure it either, but neither of us are in a position to bring 100% proof to the table. What I *can* bring to the table is, by example, "my sister climbed to the top and she said it was about 1000ft", "I've got a notebook of this man who says that he went up when it was first built and he said it was 1000ft" - none of this will be enough to emperically prove to you that it is true, still, it is enough for me to make a personal decision to believe it to be so, and I don't feel that it makes me any less intelligent for it.


Again, for this reason whilst you may argue that theists are looking to crazy ideas or evidence-less theories, I would argue that atheists who champion "science" as their main player are looking no further than the end of their noses - again, something our great forefathers of science would frown upon greatly.

As for wars, suffice to ask "if there were no religion, would there still be war?" I think the answer speaks for itself. It's also worth mentioning that atheistic regimes have killed more people in the last 100 years than wars waged on religious grounds have in recorded history, but hey, never let the facts get in the way of a good generalisation.

I'd just loooove to get into "biblical contradictions and nastiness" but I shall stop there, if anyone is particularly interested they can PM me!