Dawkins

[God Delusion No.5628793]

I just started reading this book, and man am I wondering why this shit is considered 'GROUNDBRUUKING' - Dawkins literally (hypocritically) spends chapters on how theists try to claim Einstein as a fellow theist, just so he can end his argument by claiming that Einstein was an atheist. Other chapters are spent on:
>asking basic middle school questions "BUT THEN WHO CREATED GOD!?"

> "SANDMEN ARE VIOLENT BECAUSE RELIGION" (and has nothing to do with geopolitical, societal issues, etc)

>scientific jambalaya (as if the more science he jots down in his book, the more he 'debunks god')

srsly, only 'pseudo intellectuals' can be impressed by this guy.

[Anonymous No.5629055]

>>5628793
I agree, it was not that great. Many of his arguments seem valid but besides the point. The debate about whether famous men were atheists or otherwise has nothing to do with whether God exists. Its been a while since I read it, but I think that a few of his points are valid. Religious people come from a variety of denominations, and what determines that denomination is social background. Yet all these different religions believe that theirs is the 'one true God'; never questioning the apparent convenience of being born into the one true religion to which God approves.

If you are a christian it is because you were born into a particular social setting. One might even regard the possibility of a creative higher intelligence as a separate question altogether.

[Anonymous No.5629063]

>>5628793
>I wondering why this shit is considered 'GROUNDBRUUKING

It isn't, at least not by the serious philosophical community. There is no reason to be upset.

[Anonymous No.5629077]

>>5628793
his respected work is The Selfish Gene. I have not read either but I would read that one if I wanted to try to take him seriously (I don't though)

[None !!BJiYgff8zf2 No.5629110]

>read a theology textbook
>wonders why it's complete shit

golly gee whiz OP

[Anonymous No.5629115]

he has a PHD in a bazinga science and offers people the ability to feel superior to 90% of the human race if they accept that one big 'lie' (that any smart person such as yourself) should be able to see is the root of all evil.

how could that not be a success?

[Anonymous No.5629167]

>>5629115
>bazinga science
kek
I'm going to use this term too from now on

[Anonymous No.5629174]

>>5628793
it's theology discussed by a man who knows nothing about the subject.

[Anonymous No.5629181]

I have never (and never will) read his books, but based on his debates, lectures and articles this is really all that he has to offer.

He adds nothing to atheism, and like most new atheists there are many shortcomings on his readings of culture as they attribute everything to religion.

[Anonymous No.5629248]

>>5629181
He is not meant to contribute anything to atheism, he is just catering to the new american atheist culture.

You know, the kind of person who gets offended at the mere notion that god might exist.

People in countries where atheism is more establishd in society don't take his shit seriously, Dawkins is mostly used as beginner's lecture to help american neckbeard come out of their closet.

[Anonymous No.5629275]

>>5628793
Einstein was an atheist. He stated explicitly that he did not believe in a personal god.

To me, theists are people who believe in the practical implications of a god who exists. All people who deny the practical implications of god are atheist. If you think about it, you will realize this distinction is the only relevant one.

[Anonymous No.5629301]

>>5629055
Religious ontology is a primitive and stupid one.

If god can't be understood from sense data, then god must be understood through divine revelation. If a religious person asserts that divine revelations can be wrong, then they must account for the mechanism by which divine revelation can be wrong. Since all contact between humans relies on sense data, proving the accuracy of divine revelation relies on sense data, which is a contradiction.

Since all appeals to factual right or wrong depend on our senses, god himself must be evidenced by our senses. Since none of our senses give us evidence of god, then god can't be said to exist.

You never get to a point wherein religious people are right. Religion is an incoherent stance.

[Anonymous No.5629305]

>>5629115
There is no evil.

There is only one true emotion garnered from philosophical thought: a sense of disruption and darkness. If you philosophize and are content with the result, then you are arguing poorly.

[Anonymous No.5629320]

>>5629181
Sure he adds to atheism. I grew up in a physically abusive Christian household. Listening to speakers like Dawkins when I could alone at night helped me work through the lies and manipulation in religion and helped me gain a sense that there is more to life than a simplistic, nonsense ontology that thrives on cruelty.

Anyone who defends religion earnestly has probably never seen it's dark side first hand.

In any case, I agree with Dawkins that atheists being trusted on par with rapists is not just a problem we can overlook.

[Anonymous No.5629337]

>>5628793
Clearly, politics and societal issues are completely separate from religion in the middle east.

you fucking retard

[Anonymous No.5629349]

>>5629320
>physically abusive Christian household

OHHHH SAY CAN YOU SEEEEEEEEEE


Really, everything in your post screams USA

[Anonymous No.5629351]

>>5629349
Yeah, point being?

[Anonymous No.5629359]

>>5629351
My point is that Dawkins is only good for fedoric atheists from the USA who feel mistreated by the oh so bad Christian opressors.

And then they read the god delusion and finally come out of their closet with a load of euphoria behind them.

Did you already tip your hat to a lady today?

If not, go out and do it now, it's important.

[Anonymous No.5629365]

>>5629359
You're making religion look very bad right now.

[Anonymous No.5629367]

>>5629320
>Anyone who defends religion earnestly has probably never seen it's dark side first hand.

Pretty narrow minded blanket statement.

[Anonymous No.5629372]

>>5629365
Who cares, i'm not religious either.

But american self-proclaimed intellectual atheists who actually read Dawkins, and run around like their lack of belief is a big deal are annoying.

Really.

[Anonymous No.5629373]

>>5629365
>You're making religion look very bad right now.

There is nothing in that post linking it to defending or even that the poster them-self is 'religious'.

Dumb amerifatty - this is why your shit at arguements.

[Anonymous No.5629374]

Dawkins (and many atheists) are the byproduct of the "Aww, Christianity harmed me!!" completely neglecting that Christianity did not stay "true" to the teachings of Jesus and that the bible itself was edited countless of times.

Christianity does not represent Jesus. It is just a tool humans used for exploitation. (like they do in everything else)

Dawkins and similar atheists are just a bunch of 1 dimensional 'thinker's

[Anonymous No.5629384]

Smug agnosticism is the new New Atheism. It's the exact same phenomenon with a new antagonist to feel superior to.

[Anonymous No.5629400]

>>5629359
Atheism is still a recent thing that only really picked up among the masses within the last thirty years. It is still frowned upon. Anyone who wants to be elected must be a god loving and church going. It's still going to be a long ass time before we have an openly atheist president. Dawkins is writing for the lay public. He's introducing the ideas for a more scientific government and I welcome it. Don't just dismiss it because of the fedora wearing fanbase.

[Anonymous No.5629407]

>>5629400
>He's introducing the ideas for a more scientific government and I welcome it.
I can't wait for a staunch eugenics program to come back.

[Anonymous No.5629408]

>>5629400
Everything Dawkins does is being smug.

Teens who feel mistreated by their religious parents ("Mom, don't make me go to church, you are like Hitler!") like that, of course.

Finally someone who publicly says something against the big fat religious meanies!

No one should take him seriously, and no one should earn money solely by being smug.

[Anonymous No.5629411]

THis nigga hasnt produced something peer-rewieved for a long time and is no more than an ultra fag now.

Selfish Gene was the last time he did something interesting.

[Anonymous No.5629413]

>>5629372
It's not a big deal to me now, but it was at the time.

I don't care what you believe. Right now the atheist who doesn't like Dawkins is being strident and intolerable, what should that tell you?

[Anonymous No.5629415]

>>5629373
Then you're making "reasonable atheism" look very bad right now. In either case, the person who acted like a jackass isn't being convincing.

[Anonymous No.5629416]

>>5629374
There are no true teachings of Jesus, either historically or literally. All readings of the bible are subjective and proposing that any one is "right" is part of the problem.

[Anonymous No.5629419]

>>5629415
>>5629413
Go away kid, really.

Defending Dawkins shitty attempts at "literature" should be punishable by death.

>muh evul oppressors
That's all he talks about.

In an ideal society no one would even ask about your religion, and Dawkins kind of smugness would be frowned upon.

[Anonymous No.5629425]

>>5629384
You're definitely right about that. I'm starting to despise smug agnostics more than religious people simply because their game is being smug, not talking about the topics.

They think saying "I don't know" is somehow wisdom. No it's not. Advance your epistemology and talk about what we can know. Saying "we can't know" is just avoiding the topic, and shitposting that you're superior for literally being dumb is worse than religious earnestly.

[Anonymous No.5629431]

>>5629408
I'm not even going to question the truth of the first statement because it's so obviously false, rather I'm going to question why you're so stuck on hyperbole and hating Dawkins.

What does "proving Dawkins is stupid" or whatever do? If your position is basic agnosticism, then you're not improving on him. How about you write a long agnostic ontology instead of being a faggot on /lit/

[Anonymous No.5629435]

>>5629419
You look like a retard right now. You are 100x worse than Dawkins.

[Anonymous No.5629439]

:^)

[Anonymous No.5629443]

>>5629408
>>5629411
He's 73. People in science usually run out of good ideas and energy when they reach 60. At that point they start philosophizing. It's a reason why university don't like giving tenures anymore. It's really not their fault. At some point the brain is going to run out of space for new ideas to develop. That's one of the reason why anything revolutionary is done by people in the 25-35 age range.

[Anonymous No.5629445]

>>5629439
Well if it's such a stupid argument, anon, then argue against it. Go ahead. No more shitposting. You think that argument sucks, so knock it down. Put your money where your mouth is.

[Anonymous No.5629459]

>>5629439
Stop relying on mob mentality to feel that Dawkins can be ignored. I'm serious. If Dawkins is a hack, then obviously a serious thinker like you can destroy his arguments offhand. So DO IT. Stop the charade, and do the dirty work.

[Anonymous No.5629461]

>>5629445
Nah, I'm only a moderate /lit/ poster. Dick has taught me not to post at all, goodbye.

[Anonymous No.5629463]

>>5629439
Ridiculous argument.

> Believes in "Candy"

> Richard Dawkins Argument : "You believe in Candy, but not Diabetes. But why, why bother with Candy at all? Where's the plus?"

What's even worse is that people like you fall for such "rationale" - This is as erroneous an argument can get. He literally argued that Islam is ONLY extremist.

[Anonymous No.5629467]

>>5629461
Good riddance you shitposting, anti-intellectual moron.

[Anonymous No.5629473]

>>5629463
That's a total false analogy and you know it.

[Anonymous No.5629476]

>>5629459
Dawkins is a huge hack, you whiny faggot.

Just because he was the first author you read when your parents mistreated you for being atheist doesn't make him good.

He is not a philosopher, nor a scientist, only an atheist who happened to write a book about it.

Get fucking over it.

[Anonymous No.5629485]

>>5629473

Dawkins literally is saying that "you're not extremist, why be a Muslim at all"

Basically saying that there is no such thing as a 'moderate' Muslim.

He's basically saying that if you're not out there with ISIS beheading heads, you're not a Muslim.

Dawkins is arguing from his behind.

[Anonymous No.5629486]

>>5629467
>anti-intellectual
Ironic coming from a Dawkins defender

[Anonymous No.5629488]

>>5629055
Do you actually not realize how fucking retarded this cultural fallacy is?
>If you are a christian it is because you were born into a particular social setting.
And if you are an atheist you were born in a particular social setting. Is this an argument? What the hell.

[Anonymous No.5629490]

>>5629476
That's not an argument, anon, that's you being a strident, miserable asshole on the internet because someone isn't letting you bully a discussion.

Try it again. Demonstrate that he's a hack by showing his arguments self contradict. I've done it myself.

I'm not here to defend Dawkins, either. I'm here to show everyone that you're a pathetic jackass that needs to shut his mouth.

[Anonymous No.5629503]

>>5629490
How fucking mad can one person be?
I think you set the bar really high.


Who cares if he self-contradicts, he doesn't bring any new ideas to the discussion, only summarizes what rational people already know, and makes a fuckton of money with it.
That's what a hack is: no literary talent whatsoever, but he gets money for it.

And he even has his own small internet defense force, as you demonstrate quite efficiently.

And don't tell me you are not defending him, because you seriously do.

[Anonymous No.5629504]

>>5629485
No, that's not what he literally said. He did not literally make that argument. That is literally your interpretation of the argument, but that is not literally the argument.

Maybe what he's saying is, if you reject parts of a text by no consistent razor, then there is no measure by which to determine which parts of the text or right or wrong. He means that religious moderation is inconsistent, which it is if you read the text literally, but again, there is no consistent way to read a text aliterally.

In other words, you're not even looking at what problem he is addressing and you are missing the point entirely.

[Anonymous No.5629507]

>>5629486
What's ironic is your continued shitposting and lack of ability to do anything but insult.

[Anonymous No.5629511]

>>5629504
>moderate people don't bother with religion
Is what he tries to tell us, nothing more.

I can give you the definition of smugness, but you probably already know it by heart.

[Anonymous No.5629512]

>>5629488
Do you not realize how fucking retarded your understanding of the argument is?

What he means is, people often argue for "intuitions" of god. However, you can find entire people groups (such as the Chinese) which have never heard of the bible and the idea of god sounds completely foreign to them

It's an argument against intuitionism in theology, not against your retarded straw man.

[Anonymous No.5629519]

>>5629504

> "Maybe what he's saying" - Ah, so mr "Truth" cannot make a direct statement, it has "meanings behind it"? The same concept he dreads when a theist tells him the religious verse has "meanings behind it"?

C'mon san.

[Anonymous No.5629520]

>>5629503
No, I don't like Dawkins arguments. I'm not here, again, to defend the truth of Dawkins, I'm here to reveal your utter vapidity and your breathtaking ignorance. You've proven your lack of worth very well anon, thank you.

[Anonymous No.5629525]

>>5629511
Yes, he's saying that religion offers nothing of worth to people, which is true.

[Anonymous No.5629528]

The modern atheist movement is another result of American Protestantism on its steady path to ruin everything good about Christianity. Shitting over greek thought and philosophy, all that sola fide crap wasn't enough, now they also go against every scientific discovery that doesn't fit them and provoke rebellion and hate.
Combined with their endless splintering the whole thing is a complete joke. But the damage is already done.

Meanwhile in Catholic Europe the Church is coexisting with the sciences it helped create and not being retarded in its dialogue with modern culture.

Stay pleb, proddies.

[Anonymous No.5629529]

>>5629337
How's being 16?

The problem with trying to assert that Islam is a problem is that it isn't a solution. While an affluent Muslim middle east is something that could be attained, an impoverished secular one is unrealistic. The truth is, the west has propped up numerous ruling elites that oppress their populations in exchange for oil security. If the oil revenues were more evenly distributed throughout the societies of the nations they were found in, those societies would probably be wealthy today.

[Anonymous No.5629535]

>>5629519
"Meaning" is a vapid phrase, like swag. Everyone wants meaning and no one has it.

[Anonymous No.5629541]

>>5629525
Trolle af xB

[Anonymous No.5629543]

>>5629520
>>5629525
>Dat samefag
>Dat fedora-tipping

Either way, stop using such pretentious words to nsult me, it won't make you look any smarter, and i bet you don't even read my posts, because then you would know why Dawkins is such a hack.

If your really insist on shitposting, just call me a cunt and leave, other boards deserve shitposting more than we do.

[Anonymous No.5629544]

>>5629400
>Atheism is still a recent thing that only really picked up among the masses within the last thirty years.

Yeah right, it was widespread in Marxism before people went back to religion since overthrowing it didn't do a lot of good
See: Russia and east europe

[Anonymous No.5629554]

>>5629461
Krauss has the worst goatee.

[Anonymous No.5629555]

>>5629425
the worst is that in the end their answer will never be wrong because no matter how much we use philosophy or its subsets we won't have a definite answer, people should just be agnostic (not the one who starts a debate to show how great his opinion is, the one who doesn't fucking care about a debate that won't lead to definite answers) or apathetic that way we'll never have those useless debates again. Also being religious or anti theist might seem better because it shows some willpower but i don't think it actually has any worth, even over smug agnostics.

[Anonymous No.5629564]

>>5629543
I know exactly what to think of Dawkins. I'm defending him not out of defense my views on his views. I'm defending him because I'm tired of faggots like you spamming the most retarded bullshit day in and day out. You always post the same shit: "his works aren't interesting, he's a hack, his arguments suck". Stop recycling the same boring, aimless shit.

Either give examples and intelligent discussion on those examples or stop posting about Dawkins forever.

Again, the point isn't to defend Dawkins, it's to make you stop posting retarded, vapid shit about Dawkins. Stop being a fucking retard. That's why I'm here, is to fix YOU anon. Go look in a mirror. YOU are the problem I have.

[Anonymous No.5629569]

>>5629555
Well, if were going to find answers with meaning to life, they aren't going to come from the pulpit or the bible.

[Anonymous No.5629580]

>>5629564
>That's why I'm here, is to fix YOU anon. Go look in a mirror. YOU are the problem I have.
10/10, Fucking saved.

Best copypasta material in a while, thanks.

Oh, and by the way, your insults are really amusing, keep them up.

You seem to like complex adjectives, and your prose is pretty decent, but i noticed you haven't used the word "imbecile" yet.

Do it, the word fits your style of insulting me perfectly.

Call me imbecile faggot for example.

[Anonymous No.5629584]

>>5629580
FUCK OFF!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.5629592]

>>5629584
I'd like to stay, thanks.

Watching butthurt people defend their favorite shit author while simultaneously pretending to actually don't like him is fuckinh awesome, especially when they get told by the whole thread and have a meltdown.

Do keep up insulting me, my copypasta folder is oddly empty.

[Anonymous No.5629594]

>>5629564
>wasting your time arguing about low hanging fruit like Dawkins
Nah, bruh. Some people like to waste their time differently.

[Anonymous No.5629600]

>>5629592
ill fucking kill you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.5629605]

>>5629594
By shitposting about Dawkins, I see

[Anonymous No.5629608]

> "SANDMEN ARE VIOLENT BECAUSE RELIGION" (and has nothing to do with geopolitical, societal issues, etc)

It demonstrably has very little to do with what you mention, as similar radical groups pop up from Canada all the way to Malaysia.

Islam has an integrated political system centered around us-them dichotomy.

Most of the content of the Koran the ISra and the Hadith pertain the unbeliever (making it a latent hate movement).

Moral teachings are limited to dealings with other muslims.

Doctrine involves world-wide expansionism as well as condemnation of other religons dhimmis included (who perverted god's message, only Koran is 100% correct lel)

etc.

etc.

Honestly, it takes an arrogant cultural supremacist progressive in denial to assume individual doctrine isn't the main factor differentiating background beliefs of one's society with the others'. Prophetic religions in particular are known to risk their entire existance to stand by their dogmas (see: early christians denying divinity of the roman emperor) so there's relatively very little give aginst outer pressures, be it economic or cultural when compared to how other aspects of everyday life adjust to them.

[Anonymous No.5629610]

>>5629580
Flagellate yourself.

I'm signing off. Good bye, you can wallow in your own filth here on /lit/ forever.

[Anonymous No.5629619]

>>5629608
Have you perhaps considered that this might be a response to a century of western imperialism, as opposed to the natural result of the innate barbarism of their religion of choice?

[Anonymous No.5629628]

>baaaaaawwww why do you shit on muh feels baaaaawwwww

Looks like you got a severe case of hurt in the butt there, OP, and the only cure for a hurt in the butt is not being a gigantic faggot, so I guess you're just going to have to learn to live with your medical condition

My sympathies

[Anonymous No.5629634]

>>5629628
>>>/b/

[Anonymous No.5629640]

>>5629628

No feelings hurt, pleb. Simply indicating Dawkins' pseudo intellectualism that tickles the intellect of the masses, as if it was some groundbreaking concept.

[Anonymous No.5629644]

>>5629634

Anyway, there's zero evidence for any god, and the idea is completely unfalsifiable, making the concept itself completely meaningless

[Anonymous No.5629646]

>>5629644
>math is meaningless

[Anonymous No.5629651]

>>5629619

First of there's no element of choice, dear anon. You turn away from Islam, you die.Scripturally sanctioned.

Beyond that I already adressed your determinist notion in my previous post, repeating it won't make it any less presumptuous on your part. Religion A is not Religion B in a funny hat no matter how convenient it'd be from an ideological standpoint.

[Anonymous No.5629678]

>>5629651
Your argument consists of a series of examples with little to connect them to the larger picture. The politics of the region is a larger issue than religion. Also, as said before, the religion aspect isn't something that can be solved. The key rationale behind most Muslim extremists' actions is that they perceive the West as having declared a war on Islam. This mistaken impression probably stems from the West continually going to war against individual groups of Muslims in order to control Middle Eastern oil. That is what needs to be changed, not the faith of a billion people.

[Anonymous No.5629685]

>>5629644
>confusing falsifiability with meaning

read more

[Anonymous No.5629891]

>>5629678

>The key rationale behind most Muslim extremists' actions is that they perceive the West as having declared a war on Islam.

The West/USA is the main adversary and the interventions do catalize the miovements. But that's when you stop your observation. You're satisfied with that.

If you went deeper, you'd have to describe the movements fallowing a pattern laid out by the scripture and religious tradition (one of conquest and subjugation). The uniform attempts to instate Sharia, the attempts to establish the Caliphate with a de facto cassus belli on the whole world. There is a blueprint, one that isn't only expressed in the Middle East or Maghreb, but also in places untouched by oil interests like India or Indochina. Additionally their impression is not mistaken, they ARE in conflict with the Western world as well with the rest of dar al Harb. Because that's something to be subjugated.

In fact it's not the radicals, the religion itself is at war with the kaffir. The radicals are CORRECT, they are the ones fallowing the scripture, which unlike in most religions is precise and ironclad (leaves no room for tinkering, Moe is the perfect human being with a biography and a long-ass list of folksy wisdoms he spouted out during his life, Allah has an exact copy of the Koran in heaven and it's written in goddamn Arabic etc.), and will therefore always have a clear advantage over the moderates. Hence the ever so weak response to said radicals from the nominally-muslim. A mullah can go on stage in 2014 and argue for the practice of taking infidel sex slaves in wars and he will not get outed as a troglodite by the genral public.

Simply brushing off the news that MOST of the scripture quantitatively is about the infidel and fighting him is a great measure of how much you're uninterested with the characteristics of the religion.

[Anonymous No.5629893]

>>5629891


cont.

>That is what needs to be changed, not the faith of a billion people.

Because if it was that''d be all too uncomfortable for you--that's the basis of all this arguing. The battle for being able to comfortably compartmentalise Islam into the common "religion" module, to be used interchangeably with animism, buddhism etc. when trying to establish an easy fits-all way of dealing with them. Everything's a clone of [write christian denomination you know most about here], but with a funny ethnic hat.

Meanwhile religions, much like ideologies (which ultimately they're an extension of) can be graded in various spectrums. The edge of one of them is radicalism. People like you have no problem denouncing, say, nazism, but you fall short here because of various ideological complications of your own. Telling those sunday muslims their religion of origin's a shit would be very uncomfortable. It'd be "racist"/intolerant/neocolonial/whatever. If you live nearby, it'd be lethal as well, which is a double whammy since it'd both kill you AND prove you right, both very uncomfrotable.

You should be grateful that you have the luxury of picking and choosing reality of the situation thanks to the disparity in force between Islam and the rest of the world. You wouldn't have it if it's true believers had anything to say about it. Source: christians, buddhists, indians, animists etc. etc. that got wippedy-wiped out and keep getting wiped out to this day, sually unprovoked, in case of Lebanon, where they even saved them as refugees shortly before their own genocide, sure as hell didn't save 'em.

[fagve No.5629897]

>cutting off clits and honor killing because "societal issues"

liberals.

[Anonymous No.5629901]

Congratulations OP, you've taken on the opinion of 90% of 4chan's posters, and they've validated you. You can delete the thread now. In any case, Dawkins is indeed not the great thinker he'd like to think of himself, but that's fine. He's a decent enough biologist, and I guess the cause he's being vocal for is in some sense noble enough (not necessarily New Atheism, but just atheism generally).

[Anonymous No.5629902]

>>5629897
>implying FGM is an exclusively Muslim problem
>implying you see honor killings (or radical Islam) in any predominantly Muslim country with a functional economy and an actual middle class

get out of here, sam harris

[Anonymous No.5629906]

>>5629115

>root of all evil

[Anonymous No.5629916]

>>5629891
>>5629893

lel. All of this is utter horseshit. You have no clue what you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.5629922]

>>5629916
not him but explain further pls, this is interesting

[Anonymous No.5629943]

>>5629922

I don't even know where to begin. I studied the Middle East when I was in school, and just about every single thing written in those two posts is demonstrably false. I'd go through it point by point, but that would be incredibly tedious and it probably wouldn't make him any less of a dumbfuck. Maybe after dinner.

I'm just entering the conversation now, by the way. I don't want to give the impression that I'm some other poster.

[Anonymous No.5629949]

>>5629374

You obviously haven't read him then because I've read Dawkins argue plenty of times that the message of Jesus contains powerful and human moral teachings. He's never said Christianity represents Jesus' real lessons, in fact he explicitly argues the opposite.

[Anonymous No.5629982]

>>5629922
He's arguing that religion is why Muslim extremism is flaring up today, while I believe it's poverty, corruption, and oppression, which the West has had a substantial part in.

[Anonymous No.5630003]

>>5629608
>Islam has an integrated political system centered around us-them dichotomy.

But there is no consensus within the Muslim world over what form an Islamic government should take.

[Anonymous No.5630815]

>>5629949
If Christianity does not represent Jesus' real lessons, then there are no "real lessons", because Christianity is the only access to these lessons we can know.

[Anonymous No.5631044]

>>5629949
>>5630815
what the fuck is this conversation

what is this "Christianity" of which you speak? which of the fucking dozens of distinct and often contradictory sects of Christianity are you referring to with this blanket statement?

[Anonymous No.5631584]

Dawkins is necessary for average folk to get the truth.

Religion, specifically abrahmic religion, IS FUCKING STUPID. Christianity is the worst aspect of it entirely.

You can see this by looking at 'the good things from Christianity'. The best 'christian acts' and 'christian practitioners' were the ones that had the LEAST aspects of Christianity in it. Of the bad things about Christianity I will say, you may respond 'some denominations do so much less'. That is not because some denominations are 'good' and others 'not as good' but because some denomations are actives while others are defined more by in-action (a murderer who rarely kills is still a menace)

The Renaissance scientists, all coming out of a time period that was about the diminishing or weakness of their religion, that is when religion was becoming 'inactive'

Abrahamic religions put belief as their most important aspect (as opposed to Eastern religions which care more about practice: one can be Buddhist who denies all the magic and metaphysics ). Belief, that is a belief in something that has zero evidence. That's the ant-thesis of logic and science.

That is the chief goal of Abrahmic religions, to have followers that 'believe'. It is not humanitarianism, goodness, or any such thing.

Christianity is the most corrupt, foul, and life-threatening of them all because it gathers its followers by calling all great things, all passions, all that is necessary for life 'sins'. Even sex, the thing most important to survive as a species, is a sin and than offer 'forgiveness' for being human by conversion. It's stock-holm syndrome the religion, it's the abusive spouse who says 'you need me, I only hit you because you deserve it'.

[Anonymous No.5631598]

>>5629608
>Western capitalism has an integrated political system centered around us-them dichotomy.

[Anonymous No.5631611]

>>5631584

Where did you get this idea that Christians believe something without any evidence?

[Anonymous No.5631614]

>>5631584
>Christianity is the worst aspect of it entirely.
You mean Islam.

[Anonymous No.5631623]

>>5628793
>asking basic middle school questions "BUT THEN WHO CREATED GOD!?"
I always felt that that and similar questions ("Can God create an imageboard so repugnant he himself won't visit it?") are pretty lame to prove God doesn't exist. I mean, he's God, he can defy logic if he wants to. Theodicy is all you really need for atheism.

[Anonymous No.5631628]

>>5630003
>But there is no consensus within the Muslim world over what form an Islamic government should take.
Yes there is. It's literally spelled out in the Quran and the hadiths. Google 'caliphate'. What the disagree about are the technicalities of the royal succession process.

[Anonymous No.5631635]

>>5631044
>which of the fucking dozens of distinct and often contradictory sects of Christianity are you referring to with this blanket statement?
Orthodox and Catholic Christians, the rest are Christian-themed cults that historically are not related to Christ's twelve apostles.

[Anonymous No.5631639]

>>5631044
>sects
*denominations. Sects are a part of denominations.

[Anonymous No.5631642]

>>5631584
>Even sex, the thing most important to survive as a species
No, childbirth is important for our species' survival, not 'sex'. Once you graduate highschool you'll realize that the people who have kids aren't having sex, and vice versa -- those who have lots of sex are usually opposed to childbirth for practical and ideological reasons.

Having sex and having kids is usually inversely related.

[Anonymous No.5631657]

>>5629608

They're fucked even without Islam. The middle east has always been violent, even before the birth of Mohamed.

[Anonymous No.5631671]

>>5631584

Mad ex-protestant all over this post. Whether you think it's dumb or not, religion has served an extremely important purpose, almost a purpose par excellence to most societies on the planet for thousands and thousands of years. Even if you don't "believe" in Christianity (actually the notion that faith is the supremely important aspect of Christianity is really quite modern, for the majority of the history of Christianity the religion was primarily form of social organization and debates about the nature of belief in Christianity were irrelevant) your ancestors sure did - and if not that, some other religion. Why don't you?

Because industrial age and the few centuries of increasing economic growth leading up to it "killed God" in the European and Eurocolonial societies, the religious structuring of society became more and more outmoded, the religious groups got weaker and smaller than they had been (though by no means are all gone or going), the average person lost their sense of cosmic order, modernity sets in, and this process has continued right up to this day. And tension is natural between those who are in these religious structures still and those who aren't, because they are under attack from one another, they are different facets of culture espousing different and conflicting ethics, metaphysics, etc.

>one can be Buddhist who denies all the magic and metaphysics

If "one" is a retard, maybe.

>That is the chief goal of Judaism, to have followers that 'believe'

Retard.

[Anonymous No.5631686]

>>5631657

>always

Everywhere has always been violent, violence is a very very widespread practice among humans. Image of Islamic cultures as especially violent is more pointing to the extreme suppression of violence that the modern western societies have achieved - and they're especially violent because the western societies are busy suppressing them. The antique fertile crescent was violent as fuck, sure, but so was China. Civilizations fight all the damn time.

[Anonymous No.5631752]

>>5629503
> And don't tell me you are not defending him, because you seriously do
*are

You're welcome.

[Anonymous No.5631764]

>>5628793
His book title won him fame, not his arguments.

[Anonymous No.5631783]

>>5631611
There is no proof for an existance of a creating God. Even if you do argue for 'how was the universe formed' 'how fine tuned the universe is' or even 'i feel its true' it has nothing to do with Christianity. There are hundreds of religions and even if you accepted every common argument for a creation God it would not favor the jesus god over the Brahma, Zeus, or Ahura Mazda.

[Anonymous No.5631795]

>>5631623
once you have a god who is 'defying logic' you are literally argueing for the purest form of 'unfalsiable god'

Even if we discovered absolute 100% proof that there was no creator God you could still say "That doesn't mean anything because God isn't subject to logical things like proof"

[Anonymous No.5631807]

>>5631795
And the invisible sky buddy from the Bible doesn't qualify for that in the first place?

[Anonymous No.5631809]

>Hurr Dawkins is a idiot

Bantam Books offered Dawkins an 800k advance in late 2004 to write a deliberately controversial book about Christianity. Being the sensible Englishman he is, and like any sensible Englishman would, he not only accepted that offer, but milked that book for over $100 million.
>idiot
lel

[Anonymous No.5631866]

>>5629301

>Since all appeals to factual right or wrong depend on our senses.

How do you prove this statement through an appeal to our senses ? Without begging the question that is.

Oh and how do you account for math, logic, and that by being a pure empiricist you must be committed to the position that all you can really account for is what your senses give you, which are images and sensations created by your mind,and not necessarily anything beyond that.

>>5631783
Actually once you realize that we require metaphysical entities to account for the world ( see Plato's account of the Forms in The Republic, the whole tradition of Philosophy Of Mind, Heacaeity and the whole history of Western Philosophy) you need a first cause that is not solely physical, if you claim that the universe had no beginning but is just a series of temporal events you still need an explanation for the existence of the series. You need to explain why( not just give a probably description of what happened) we have the set of contingent laws in the universe that we do, and not other ones, and what sustains them.

>>5631584

Bacon was a Catholic priest, Newton believed that God was the first cause of the universe and spent more time on Bible Studies than he did Science, Boyle, Descartes and 90% of every educated person during the Renaissance and early Modern period who actually did the work in the scientific revolution believed in God and usually related their scientific practices to discovering of God's works in the natural world as a pious exploit for good Christians.

Fedora's need to actually learn the West's actual intellectual history. Our Western notions of science are not antithetical to Christianity, they are the direct result of a Christian culture.

[Anonymous No.5631876]

>>5631866
>Bacon was a Catholic priest, Newton believed that God...

They were conditioned by their environment. Both the slaves and the intellectuals of Ancient Egypt believed that the sun was pushed through the sky by a scarab beetle. They just inherited the idiocy of their fathers.

[Anonymous No.5631880]

>>5628793

The God Delusion is like the SUPER SHIT and childish version of The Curse of Ignorance by Arthur Findlay

[Anonymous No.5631950]

>>5631876
>>5631876

And yet God was never an add on to what they believed, God was always one of the main theses in all their work. They also saw the problems with trying to boil everything down to matter, motion and empirical contingencies hence why they were not willing to abandon God as part of their system, because it made more sense to have a God than not. Most of the modern atheists never actually got past these problems that their intellectual ancestors had, they just ignored the issues, continued advocating their worldview and claimed that all Religious people were dogmatic and unreasonable.

Actual scientists don't even think that science has objective answers at this point because we have such a huge rift between quantum mechanics and relativistic physics that we have little reason to think of science as anything but handy models and systems that we can manipulate practical results from, not objective truths. Heisenberg even claimed that science is limited by immense subjectivity and is at best a series of constructions with explicit limits. In fact you can never even derive a necessary truth from empirical data since it is dependent on an ongoing flux of experience, you can get some evidence and probabilities- but our traditions of metaphysics, logic and mathematics, that were largely advanced and in many cases formed by Christian Scholastics working off Greek sources, have more to do with "truth" than science can by it's very definition.

Nietzsche was at least a consistent atheist. People have faith in objective truth and the scientific method like Christians have faith in God. In fact, the whole possibility of a genuine truth- rather than subjective experiences- was the debate between Plato and Protagoras, Plato won the debate with his Philosophy, and the idea of the absolute Good which gave us all truth, generated everything and made things consistent and accessible for human reason. This conception is the root of both the Christian concept of God and the faith that objective truths can be found about the universe through scientific activity. God is an entity to provide consistency to the universe that could ground objective laws, give us reason to trust our senses, and give us all the things that could ground a scientific method as a plausible one, if we deny God then we are better off seeing the universe as a chaotic flux of contingencies- personal wills and subjective constructions- rather than a consistent, unified, and accessible playground for scientists.

[Anonymous No.5631966]

>>5628793

[Anonymous No.5632018]

>>5628793
just saying

[Anonymous No.5632019]

>>5628793
>why this shit is considered 'GROUNDBRUUKING'

I don't think anyone considers it groundbreaking in itself. Possibly as regards the 'cultural conversation' in terms of raising the profile of atheism, but that's separate from its content.

[Anonymous No.5632052]

>>5631866
>Actually once you realize that we require metaphysical entities to account for the world ( see Plato's account of the Forms in The Republic, the whole tradition of Philosophy Of Mind, Heacaeity and the whole history of Western Philosophy) you need a first cause that is not solely physical, if you claim that the universe had no beginning but is just a series of temporal events you still need an explanation for the existence of the series. You need to explain why( not just give a probably description of what happened) we have the set of contingent laws in the universe that we do, and not other ones, and what sustains them.

All of this is fine, but the solution is not to simply say "A solution exists and its name is God" or suchlike, which is how the vast majority of people get to theism from the position you're describing.

[Anonymous No.5632086]

>>5631809
>milked that book for over $100 million.
Jesus fucking Christ. Dawkins actually has milked the God Delusion for over $100 million.

[Anonymous No.5632097]

>>5628793
I don't get the idea that religion is "crazy"

>Instead just believe that giant lizards with tiny arms scavenged around for dinner and became birds

[Anonymous No.5632098]

>>5631866
>Descartes
>Christian

Debatable, seems more like the dude thought God was bullshit but didn't want to get on the establishment's bad side. He was even accused of this several times.

[Anonymous No.5632104]

>>5632098
>but didn't want to get on the establishment's bad side.
I don't think he was so much fearing that. Back then, if you sucked the churches cock, you were guaranteed clergical endorsement, publication and a huge readership. I think that's what he was up to.

[Anonymous No.5632131]

>>5631866
>90% of every educated person during the Renaissance and early Modern period who actually did the work in the scientific revolution believed in God.

No shit, so did virtually everyone else. The fact that this was BEFORE the scientific revolution doesn't exactly help your case. There was simply an absence of natural explanations for a lot of phenomena which was attributed to god.

[Anonymous No.5632141]

>>5632097
>We actually have fossils of dinosaurs
>Comparative anatomy strongly suggests modern birds developed from ornithiscia
>This information was compiled by thousands of people after the Enlightenment and scientific revolution
>Equivalent to believing a book written by some Jews in the desert 4000 years ago about shape shifting demons and shit.

[Anonymous No.5632143]

>>5632097
of course you don't. for the same reason that a fish has no concept of water being "wet"

[Anonymous No.5632153]

>>5632141
I'll take eye-witness accounts over "I read it in a book"

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5632154]

>>5632131
well that's simply bs
not only you don't realize why most of them believed in god, you don't even realize why you yourself don't believe in god, no it's not because you are so clever and got the natural explanations of some phenomena, it's simply due to society influence

[Anonymous No.5632159]

>>5632154
>it's simply due to society influence
Nah, it's because the *concept* of God is so flawed that even a 4channer managed to falsify it.

[Anonymous No.5632175]

>>5632153
>i'll take eyewitness accounts i read in a book over "i read it in a book"

[Anonymous No.5632211]

>>5632154
rubbish mr religanon. throughout the world there is a much higher societal influence towards "believing" (or at least professing to believe) than there is towards "not believing"

[Anonymous No.5632214]

>>5632154
>it's simply due to society influence

And "society influence" is what - a roulette wheel?

[Anonymous No.5632233]

>>5629077
He's one of the best evolutionary biologists alive, how can you not take him seriously?

[Anonymous No.5632242]

>>5632233
>He's one of the best evolutionary biologists alive, how can you not take him seriously?
Because I have my trusty hat meme to throw around whenever he's mentioned. Ya'll niggas know the hat meme refutes any argument an atheist makes about anything.

[Anonymous No.5632265]

>>5629181
I'm Christian and intend to read the God Delusion soon. /lit/ doesn't give it a great rap, although that might just be because it's popular.
>>5629320
>my parents were assholes and Christian=all Christians are assholes and abusive
>my dog rolls over on command=all dogs roll over on command
For crying out loud, Christianity makes a point of toleration and love all the time. Don't blame the religion because your parents missed the message. Sorry if I come across as rude.
I came from an abusive household too, and was mature enough to realise it an entire religion promoting peace and doing unto others wasn't the cause.
>>5629374
>the bible itself was edited countless of times
No, the Bible was copied countless times, not edited. Although for the reason you said I don't particularly trust the King James Bible. The thing is, we still have access to a lot of original accounts.

[Anonymous No.5632270]

>>5632265
>/lit/ doesn't give it a great rap, although that might just be because it's popular.

It depends what curve you're grading it on. As a popular apologia it's fine.

[Anonymous No.5632275]

I appreciate his contribution to evolutionary theory but I don't see much value in his polemical/ideological stuff. Even if I basically agree with him that 'religion iz pritty dum' that doesn't make the books worth reading.

Is The God Delusion the one where he talks about playing 'hunt the slipper' and nearly being molested? Because that's what I remember most about his non-biology texts.

[Anonymous No.5632276]

>>5632265
>Bible
>not edited

epic facepalm .jpg

[Anonymous No.5632277]

>>5632265
>No, the Bible was copied countless times, not edited.

Nah, the Bible was edited. There was like a whole council where they decided which books were in and which were apocrypha. There are also some later insertions (the most famous one I can remember is "Let he among you is without sin cast the first stone" - there exist early copies of that gospel which don't feature that line).

Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus is an excellent book on the subject. None of it actually conflicts with being a Christian, either, just an inerrantist.

[Anonymous No.5632278]

>>5632275
he does talk about being molested (while at school) in his autobiography

[Anonymous No.5632281]

>>5632278
I haven't read his autobiography but I have noticed he throws in bits of his biography into his other books.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5632285]

>>5632211
nope

>>5632214
in a sense

>>5632233
you mean one of the most known pop sci biologists

[Anonymous No.5632294]

>>5632285
kitty are u pretty? :3

[Anonymous No.5632302]

>>5632285
>in a sense

In what sense? Come on - does "societal influence" come from a vacuum? Or does it respond to events in history? And if it responds to events, don't you still have work to do to establish that the other guy is wrong to invoke the paucity of natural explanations for observed phenomena as a factor in widespread religiosity?

[Anonymous No.5632312]

>>5632302
I agree with kitty and I think she took that from me, actually. I once went through the demographics of belief/disbelief with reference to geography, history, etc. in an article (though I don't know what I did with it :( and it seems quite obvious honestly speaking that the largest part of it is culture.

[Anonymous No.5632330]

>>5632312

I'm not disagreeing that it is mostly if not all culture, I'm just asking, if we assume it is "culture", then whither culture?

Like, suppose that in ten years, "culture" has influenced people in some way that means most people think it's really good fun to go rock-climbing. Is that some imponderable brute fact? Is there no conceivable way of investigating or legitimately speculating about how it came to be that "culture" shaped itself such that it would influence people in that way?

[Anonymous No.5632340]

>>5632330
No, that's actually what I did in my article. Regardless though, the whole existence thing is a big pile of senselessness, so... Maybe I jumped the gun back kitty up. "Simply due to social influence" - meh.

[Anonymous No.5632355]

>>5629374
>bible itself was edited countless of times
You do know that every "official" translation comes from the original text, don't you?

[Anonymous No.5632358]

>>5632355

There is no "original text".

Oh, for every individual book there is presumably a first time it was written down, but that's different.

Again I would recommend Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus while again stressing that its only conflict is with inerrantism.

[Anonymous No.5632361]

>>5629400
I come from an 85% Catholic country and we've been having atheist, anti religion, pro-abortion, pro sodomy, anti-national traitors (actually known facts but not enough power to do anything about it) since 2000. Yeah, really, you have to be Christian to win an election and everyone hates atheists.

[Anonymous No.5632366]

>>5629416
It's the protestant way.
If there is no right interpretation of the Bible there is no right interpretation of any book.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5632371]

>>5632302

societal influence reflects the current leading philosophy

as for what that philosophy can be... one century they think that magic doesn't exist and the next they burn witches at a stake, like it was during medium ages, nowadays the leading philosophy it's positivism, so the rampant atheism is pretty obvious, if our society would be, for instance, more agnostic the level of atheism could be significantly lower

anyway it's not related what we told about, those scientists of 17th century believed in god not because they couldn't explain some phenomena, it's a silly idea, if anything there is a few scientists in 21 century who believe in god, religion doesn't contradict the science, it is pretty clear for like 200 years already if not more, so, they mostly believed in god because they were taught that way. like the modern fedora-bearers who would be vehement christians 200 years ago. most of people don't really explore those matters themselves but pick what society suggests them

[Anonymous No.5632373]

>>5629443
That is true if you've never actually learned anything about how science works today.

[Anonymous No.5632382]

>>5632285
> nope
yep

try looking beyond your own border for once

[Anonymous No.5632385]

> "SANDMEN ARE VIOLENT BECAUSE RELIGION" (and has nothing to do with geopolitical, societal issues, etc)
Mostly religion though.

[Anonymous No.5632395]

>>5631623
But theodicy is not a valid argument for atheism in terms of contemporary philosophy (see Platinga).

[Anonymous No.5632402]

>>5632371
>nowadays the leading philosophy it's positivism

No, it's really not. Like, not even in a formal academic sense. Popularly, in terms of the wider culture, psychism, spiritualism etc are massive. I have absolutely no idea where you are getting this from.

The rest of your post seems to be just saying the idea is silly, without offering any support.

I'm also curious why the 200-years-ago people "mostly believed in god because they were taught that way" unlike the "modern fedora-bearers" when most of these fedora-bearers, demographics very strongly suggest, would have been raised as theists.

[Anonymous No.5632405]

>>5631876
So we can conclude that you are an idiot, not by choice and lack of thought, but rather you inherited it from your father?

[Anonymous No.5632412]

>>5631623
>Theodicy is all you really need for atheism.
>>5632395
>But theodicy is not a valid argument for atheism in terms of contemporary philosophy (see Platinga).

It's a really minor piece of pedantry, but I'm pretty sure you guys are confusing 'theodicy' with the argument from evil. The argument from evil suggests that the existence of suffering etc are incompatible with an omnimax God. Theodicy is the discipline of refuting that claim.

[Anonymous No.5632417]

>>5632412
Ah I see. Thank you for the information.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5632434]

>>5632402

formal religion have little relevance there
people go to school were they are taught not the texts of the bible but physics, math, biology etc where the whole world is explained to them without any idea of the god. this is the real root of their atheism

[Anonymous No.5632455]

>>5632154
>why you yourself don't believe in god, no it's not because you are so clever and got the natural explanations of some phenomena
>>5632434
>people go to school were they are taught not the texts of the bible but physics, math, biology etc where the whole world is explained to them without any idea of the god. this is the real root of their atheism

Well that was quick.

[Anonymous No.5632466]

>>5629544
>muh soviet union argument against atheism

Fuck i hate the christian cesspool 4chan has become

[Anonymous No.5632469]

>>5629544
>east europe

Their rates of atheism are significantly higher than the rest of Europe on average. The 'abandonment' of religion in USSR-controlled countries is a murky subject and the 'going back to it' part may not be an actual thing.

[Anonymous No.5632474]

>>5632466
But the regular mention of the crusades is never a cesspool?

[Anonymous No.5632476]

>>5632474
Did I say that anywhere in my post? fucking dumbass

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5632477]

>>5632455
there is no contradiction there, people don't become atheists because they got some explanations of what they couldn't explain before, but because the school teaches them the 'correct' way to explain those things. i.e. it's not about explanations themselves but the way how they are done. the level of science (which was intended in the post i answered to) has no relevance there, it doesn't matter if science isn't sure yet about the natural explanations of lighting or black hole, you still can use the epistemology

[Anonymous No.5632485]

>>5632477
>there is no contradiction there

Yeah, there is.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5632496]

>>5632485
well, i explained why there isn't, now please show me how i was wrong and there is

[Anonymous No.5632504]

>>5632477
>the level of science has no relevance there
It does.

The answers in 1800's:
1 God did it
2 God did it
3 God did it

The answers in 1900's:
1 God did it
2 We have a decent empirical model to explain this.
3 God did it

The answers in 1900's:
1 We have a decent empirical model to explain this.
2 We have a decent empirical model to explain this.
3 We have a decent empirical model to explain this.

[Anonymous No.5632505]

>>5632496
>people don't become atheists because they got some explanations of what they couldn't explain before, but because the school teaches them the 'correct' way to explain those things

Even the 'explanation' is self-contradictory. They don't become atheists because naturalistic explanations are offered to them, no, they become atheists because of the nature of the explanations offered to them ie, naturalism.

I mean I'll read your reply but it's gonna have to be something special for me to keep the tab open.

[Anonymous No.5632547]

>>5632474
>knee-jerk defensive strawman argument

sigh

[Anonymous No.5632552]

>>5629525
That's a retarded statement. It's pure ideology, sniff.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5632557]

>>5632505
you think i'm interested to speak with you? it's you who lead this (stupid on your part) discussion

>They don't become atheists because naturalistic explanations are offered to them, no, they become atheists because of the nature of the explanations offered to them

did you intentionally omitted "of what they couldn't explain before" or what?

did you even see the post which i answered to initially?

>>There was simply an absence of natural explanations for a lot of phenomena which was attributed to god.

the relevance of the level of scientific knowledge, that is what i called bs
the level of scientific knowledge isn't important there at all. it doesn't matter if you explain the lighting as a giant spark or as a some combustible liquid stored in clouds or something, you can always find a natural explanation

[Anonymous No.5632559]

>>5630815
>>5631044


A poorly chosen term, a better one would have been "Contemporary organized Christian religions".

[Anonymous No.5632567]

>>5632557
>did you intentionally omitted "of what they couldn't explain before" or what?

So you think that people go to school already possessing comprehensive explanations of, for example, the tides?

I mean, you've run full sprint into a complete self-contradiction. Doesn't that worry you? Doesn't that give you pause?

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5632571]

>>5632567
dude, did you even read the rest of the post...

[Anonymous No.5632594]

>>5632571

I did, but it was so asinine I didn't see that it merited a response.

>you can always find a natural explanation

Let's say this is true (it probably isn't, but let's say it is). Can we not also always find a supernatural explanation? Can we not, in fact, quite trivially generate an infinite number of supernatural explanations? Obviously, yes.

So. Why would naturalistic explanations suddenly come to the fore? Might it be because individual naturalistic explanations had, in a short space of time, found ample empirical justification, leading to naturalistic explanations as a class being seen as more plausible?

And all of this is just obvious and the sort of thing you'd expect to occur to literally anyone who was thinking about the issue. This isn't heady bleeding-edge stuff, it's bog-standard reasoning and critical thinking.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5632631]

>>5632594
are you pretend to be retard in your exercises in rhetoric?

you think you simply can take my words out of context for your favor?

a) somebody said that the reason why educated persons during renaissance were christians it was "an absence of natural explanations for a lot of phenomena"
b) i said it's bs
c) i said that the spread of atheism is related to the positivism philosophy and how it affected the school education where pupils are given natural explanations of the world only
d) you said that b) and c) contradict each other (wtf?)
e) i tried to explain how they don't contradict because the scientific approach doesn't really depend on the current level of scientific knowledge and if you use the proper kind of philosophy (the ordinary occam razor is enough) you always can find some natural explanation
f) you pretend to be dumb and eventually went into the pure rhetoric

[Anonymous No.5632642]

>>5632631
>if i ignore what he says and repeat myself, i win!

G'bye.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.5632654]

>>5632642
what should i answer to?
>Why would naturalistic explanations suddenly come to the fore?
it's not related to the supposed 'contradiction' which you sniffed and somebody who repeatedly tried to take my words out of their context isn't somebody i would like to discuss it as a separate matter

[Anonymous No.5632861]

>>5631628

No, there isn't. There is no part of the Qur'an and no hadith that lays out a framework for "Islamic governance." There are some scattered references to consultation, how to conduct yourself as a leader, and so on, but absolutely nothing systematic. Hence the multitude of forms of 'Islamic governance' that have arisen over the ages.

[Anonymous No.5634403]

>>5629055
except if you were born muslim.
then its like having the latest upgrade on abrahamic religions.

[Anonymous No.5634412]

>>5629320
>physically abusive househol
'baaaaaaaaaaawwwww daddy hit me because I was a bratty shit yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!11!!!!! :'-[

[Anonymous No.5634510]

>>5628793
>only 'pseudo intellectuals' can be impressed by this guy.

Welcome to atheism

[Anonymous No.5634563]

>>5634510
You would have to put there the unreasonable believer, like the one who kills for God or something like that. It's a thing that cannot be missed.

[Anonymous No.5634587]

>>5632052

But why are we involving the masses in this ? Actual Philosophers have made good cases for why God or something like God ( something either with a super human intelligent, or something immaterial, all powerful, the prime source ect) is necessary for an explanation of the world and our experience. I have no problem with blowing up the traditional Christian conception or anything like that, but if guys like Dawkins and his followers want to claim that they are so much more intelligent than Christians then they should actually be having honest intellectual discourse with the intelligent Christians, not just blowing up the fantasies of illiterate hicks- they need those.

>>5632131
No, the scientific revolution was the 17th century , I am literally talking about guy's like Newton who were the ones actually carrying the revolution out. Lots of problems with the "natural Philosophy" which became Science still to this day have just as few answers as they did in Newton's time. Scientists have learnt to discover more things within the set system and account for natural phenomena in a pragmatic way that is beneficial to industry, but the actual underlining system of science is in a chaos, full of uncertainties, and has many avenues where intellectuals should be doubting entirely ignored at the moment. The original fathers of science would at best just laugh at an intellectual light weight like Dawkins.

>>5632504

Having a description of what happened is not the same as explaining it's cause. We're still waiting on answers to the same questions 17th century Philosophers put forwards like: how could something irreducible to mater ( our qualitative experience of consciousness and phenomena, which quantitative and empirical knowledge can only be abstracted from) be produced by mater? A being like God who is not material and has infinite power could grant the creativity and depth of experience, and unwordly quality that we still cannot produce with matter- and will never be able to because computing power has nothing to do with it, our AI has far more processing power than us but they still aren't conscious.

We are still waiting on an explanation to what maintains the consistencies in our universe and why we don't like in a complete chaotic flux, what binds the regularities together ? There is nothing inherent in matter that guarantees this, and to invoke "laws" or "forces" is only to abstract from contingently consistent phenomena and make up a theoretical model- we can't even find causality through sense perception alone, let alone gravity. All these "forces" and the like are occult and just as abstract and beyond sense perception as God is, and since these forces and laws work together we need an account of what regulates them- having an actual supreme will who chose that these specific contingencies be as they are and maintain it by choice ( because they need not be the way the are logically) is at least an explanation where Fedoras have none.

[Anonymous No.5634595]

>>5632233
Is he? I was under the impression that he was just the most popular.

[Anonymous No.5634636]

>>5634510
>implying agnosticism isn't just atheism for babbys
I bet you're one of these "But we'll never know, so I'll just assume it's a 50/50 split of likelihood!" fag.s

[Anonymous No.5635383]

>>5629115
>bazinga science

[Anonymous No.5637307]

>>5632469
As an eastern european, what the hell are you talking about?
We still have about 90% nominal Catholics. As for actual religious observance that can't really be measured but it's higher in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia than the rest of europe at any rate.

[Anonymous No.5637314]

>>5631866
Our Western notions of science are not antithetical to Christianity, they are the direct result of a Christian culture.

This.

[Anonymous No.5637422]

>>5637307

>According to Inglehart et al (2004), 61%
of Czechs do not believe in God.
According to Greeley (2003), 54% of Czechs
do not believe in God. According to
a 1999 Gallup International Poll, over 55%
of Czechs chose “none” as their
religion. Between 10% and 28% of those
in Slovakia do not believe in God
(Inglehart et al, 2004; Greeley, 2003; Gall, 1998).

https://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Ath-Chap-under-7000.pdf

I bet you're Polish?

[Anonymous No.5637424]

>>5637314

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, though. "Direct result of" is very weaselly phrasing.

[noko No.5637635]

It was socially significant. The New Atheist books made it more acceptable in the mainstream to be an atheist. (Possibly in part by being cocks about it - maybe people used to think all atheists were cocks, but now you can sound moderate by shunning Dawkins etc).

The main argument in God Delusion is similar to an old argument (but who created God?), but stresses different aspects - that the features God would have are those features that need designoid explanation. You can answer "who made God" by saying he's eternal, but you would need more to answer Dawkins. So it is an advance, although he could have fleshed it out more rigorously.

[Anonymous No.5637698]

>>5629476
My god, SJWs complaining about groups are some of the most twisted human beings alive.

[Anonymous No.5637707]

The concept of "before" & "after", ie, time-space was created by God. Such natural law does not apply to it's Creator.

God has no predecessor nor successor.

The "Who created God?" is a fallacious one.

[Anonymous No.5637716]

>>5637635
It only made atheism laughable and lowered it from something mostly held my more educated people to something composed of retards with 0 congnitive ability.

[Anonymous No.5637738]

>>5631657
Name one portion of the global that has not been violent.

[Anonymous No.5637847]

>>5637707

It's true that the naive iteration can be reduced to "What was the cause of the First Cause?" which is rather missing the point.

But all of the qualities this FC requires are subject to skeptical inquiry and interrogation, as is the insistence that they must be possessed ONLY by a FC, ie, eternity.

>>5637738

Antarctica. What do I win?

[Anonymous No.5637875]

>>5637635
>You can answer "who made God" by saying he's eternal

This is known as special pleading

[Anonymous No.5637888]

ITT: butthurt theists

[Anonymous No.5637893]

>>5637875

No its not.

[Anonymous No.5637906]

>>5637893

Yes it is. You make a special case for God, where the rules of your first cause/unmoved mover language game conveniently don't apply to your God, without any explanation whatsoever other than the fact that you've defined God as being able to cheat his way out of his own rules.

I'm going to ignore for a moment that just about all of this is asserted as true and never demonstrated to be true

[Anonymous No.5637910]

>>5637888
Don't anger /lit/s Christian Internet Defense League

[Anonymous No.5637929]

>>5637906

Define exactly what kind of explanation is necessary for it not to be special pleading.

[Anonymous No.5637937]

How?

[Anonymous No.5637940]

>>5637929

Why, one that confines the cause of the natural world to the mechanics of the natural world, of course.

I'm an atheist and good grief so many people are so fucking stupid and terrible at being atheists it hurts sometimes. I need to start some online Khan Academy style "How To Stop Being Really Shit At Being An Atheist" course.

[Anonymous No.5637946]

>>5637937

Book sales, speaker's fees etc.

[Anonymous No.5637956]

>>5637940

Now justify your definition.

[Anonymous No.5637968]

>>5637929

If you're going to ban uncaused entities, while asserting there's at least one, and if you're going to ban infinite entities, while also asserting there's at least one, I'm going to say that that's kind of a problem. So I guess it wouldn't be special pleading if you made a decision between the uncaused and infinite being possible or being impossible. If the uncaused is possible, we can assert the universe is uncaused. In fact that would be a more plausiblee answer than a god, because you don't have to explain the origin of God's conscious will.

If infinites and uncaused entities aren't possible, than I would say God isn't possible, although all of these are claims about something outside of reality, in which case I wonder how religious people figured out all of this 'knowledge' in the first place, if no one by definition has access to it

[Anonymous No.5637971]

>>5637937
dayum. dropping my apathy and becoming a radical atheist preacher

[Anonymous No.5637995]

>>5637956

I'm a different guy, dog. I'm agreeing with you that 'special pleading' isn't an objection there.

[Anonymous No.5638690]

>>5634636
>implying agnosticism and atheism are mutually exclusive

look up the difference between gnostic atheists and agnostic atheists, it will all become clear

[Anonymous No.5638829]

>>5629528
Underrated post

[Anonymous No.5638870]

>actually believing in magic sky men
>actually believing in supernatural miracles

jesus fucking christ

[B) No.5638881]

>>5638870
Anon you don't get it, they aren't christians themselves it's just that they can't have people making fun of christians because 1) UR BEIN EDGY and 2) But u cannot no nuffinz!

That's all it really is. They just want to disagree with atheists because there are less people who actually do nowadays.

[Anonymous No.5638924]

>>5628793
>"BUT THEN WHO CREATED GOD!?"
No matter if a common middle school student can come up with the question, it makes it no less a valid question.

[Anonymous No.5639051]

>>5634563

[Anonymous No.5639076]

>>5638924
Always existed. Treating time as universal is a fallacy

[Anonymous No.5639093]

>>5639051
>militant atheist

[Anonymous No.5639109]

>>5629555
what are your thoughts on hard agnosticism?
aka, maintaining that it's impossible to find evidence for or against god, but there's still room to find faith in either.

[Anonymous No.5639146]

>>5637968

Look at it like this: From what we can tell our universe follows a certain set of laws- causation being one of them, this seems to be embedded in the kind of stuff the universe is made out of. The universe also need not have existed, something that was uncaused would have necessary existence, as would all of its properties, yet logically we can conceive of many different ways the universe could be and the possibility that the universe was not created. Therefore it is likely that the universe needed to be caused as well ( maybe even out of another universe or something. who knows). Something cannot come from nothing, this means that there needs to be an un-caused staring point which was greater than the universe so to cause it ( the greater cannot come from lesser, 5 will not come from 3 without something added to it), AND we know that the stuff our universe is made out of tends to require causation, so we have reason to believe that this first cause is not limited to the same stuff the universe is made out of since it needs to be uncaused. Thus we get some sort of transcendent entity.

Now the universe is contingent, our universal laws are contingent, and the fact that the universe has consistency to it is contingent. not necessary. Therefore we need a reason why we have the laws we do, what sustains them and why there is something rather than nothing.The transcendent entity explained to us what could have done it, but now we need a reason to why we have consistency, and why have the set of contingencies we do in this universe instead of another set. But we also need to explain why we don't think that everything is mechanical and pre determined, a universe that only runs passively by laws would be a predetermined universe with no room for choice, and we would have little way to explain how something like the human will came about, or even exists. A God with a will of some sort could explain the consistency of the contingencies and also make more sense out of how something so alien from these consistent laws, the unpredictable human will, could be derived. Since the creator has will as well.

Now I think both Hindus, Buddhists, and even many Philosophers have had good and separate solutions to these problems, I'm more in line in believing that it is the points of similarities between the world religions that probably have it most right, but Theism is still one of the best contenders, and is certainly better than the crude materialism of a philistine like Dawkins.

[Anonymous No.5639208]

>>5639146

What I get from your post is the following

>we observe that causality is fairly common
>it's reasonable to assume that the universe needs a cause

A well and dandy, I'm not going to bother with the difference between the observable universe and the universe, the consequences of a flat or a spherical universe, etc.

>AND we know that the stuff our universe is made out of tends to require causation, so we have reason to believe that this first cause is not limited to the same stuff the universe is made out of since it needs to be uncaused. Thus we get some sort of transcendent entity.

And here's where your argument goes off the rails, because this is impossible to know. This is outside of reality, and we observe that we're unable to observe outside of reality, so from here on this argument is nothing but speculation

>A God with a will of some sort could explain the consistency of the contingencies and also make more sense out of how something so alien from these consistent laws, the unpredictable human will, could be derived.

And what explains the will? How did he acquire his consciousness? This doesn't resolve the issue, it raises even more questions

[Anonymous No.5639259]

>>5634510
thou shalt not take Carl Sagan's name in vain

[Anonymous No.5639455]

>>5629400
>Atheism is still a recent thing that only really picked up among the masses within the last thirty years

Are you retarded? Anti-religious movements defined the 20th century

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estado_Novo_(Portugal)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

[Anonymous No.5639463]

I watched some videos featuring him.

He's not even an atheist the way countless of retards have called themselves.

He's an anti-theist. In terms of God itself, he's agnostic, because he's at least not stupid enough to think that he most definitely knows a transcendental being exists.

[Anonymous No.5639489]

>>5639455

This. Atheism started being a force in the early 20th century, but it was only so because of the reds.

I wouldn't say that communism is an anti-religious movement specifically, it opposes religion in the same way that it opposes any other idealist ideology. Liberalism is no less a faith than that of the Roman whore.

As an aside, since Obabo is the king of liberals, can we call him the whore of Washington?

[Anonymous No.5639500]

>>5639463
*a transcendental being doesn't exist.

Same difference.

[Anonymous No.5639524]

>>5639208

How is it outside of reality ? Reality is just anything that is, why would you limit "reality" to the observable universe ? Why would you value empirical observation, something which is necessarily inexact, flawed, subjective, and can only give us approximations- over our logical intuition?, that which is the closest we can get to absolute certainties. Now you may want to say " but isn't that where we got causality from?, our observation"- but in this case our logical intuition really has nothing to say against the idea that the universe requires causality so I simply don't see a need to override it.

We know that our spatial temporal universe is observed to run on causation, so we apply the POSR( Principle Of Sufficient Reason) to the universe and things in the universe. We know that the universe needs a cause, but we have no reason to apply the POSR to that first cause so as long as it is not a purely spatial temporal entity like the universe, AND we know that there is something which is radically separate from what we generally see in the universe and seems to made of different stuff than it: our will/immaterial mind ect.

The will/mind/soul w/e you want to call it is not of the same stuff as the universe so we need not apply POSR to it, but the stuff that it is instantiated in and facilitates it does, so we need an explanation of how it is that the universe ended up gaining this property that did not come directly from it or something like it. What ever caused it( and what it was derived from) was not solely made of the same stuff as the universe, and we need not apply POSR to it.


"God" is the first cause, and therefore nothing that is could have come from something other than God, God's consciousness is a primary quality that is eternal with him.

Now you could be a Kantian or Skeptic and deny that our observation and logical intuition is something we have reason to trust as being a guarantor of truth, but this will do just as much damage to Atheistic Materialism as it will to a pro Theistic view.

[Anonymous No.5639538]

Fedoras are by far the most philosophically illiterate and incompetent demographic I have ever had to deal with.

>HURR DURR BUT U DONT NEED LE STUPID PHILOSOPHY JUST LE SCIENCE AND LOGIC DURR

What the fuck do they think logic is, anyway?

[Anonymous No.5639544]

>>5632233
>He's one of the best evolutionary biologists alive, how can you not take him seriously?
because even assuming this is true it would not make him one of the best philosophers alive? or whatever he's representing himself as these days. socio-political commentator

the career transition from specialized scientist -> popular intellectual has always been ludicrous and embarrassing

[Anonymous No.5639550]

>>5639538
my favorite is "utilitarians" who don't actually know math. you know, intuition utilitarians.
>would you kill one to save four? well, four is greater than one. if they're fungible, i guess. that's economics

[Anonymous No.5639551]

>>5639455
>Estado Novo
>anti-religious

You're retarded.

[Anonymous No.5639558]

Is the idea of religion as a memeplex a valid concept?

[Anonymous No.5639573]

>>5639489
>>5639455
Atheism in America.
Communism is state worship. Pol pot, Kim, Mao, Stalin, they set themselves up to be gods and the ultimate rulers. Atheism was a convenient tool to get rid of everything else so that the people worship the party rulers instead. Stop being a retard and associating dictatorship atrocities with atheism and communism.

[Anonymous No.5639574]

>>5639551
linked to the wrong articles by mistake

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_October_1910_revolution#Anticlericalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Portuguese_Republic

[Anonymous No.5639581]

>>5639093
This guy literally was a militant atheist killed by friendly fire and made out to be a national hero for being murdered by his own platoon.

[Anonymous No.5639584]

>>5639573
No, you ignorant faggot, atheism is literally the metaphysical foundation of Marxism. It wasn't just a tool pulled out of nowhere to prop up the ruling class.

[Anonymous No.5639589]

>>5639524
>Reality is just anything that is, why would you limit "reality" to the observable universe ?

Reality is governed by the laws of physics. We've never seen anything in reality break the laws of physics

>Why would you value empirical observation, something which is necessarily inexact, flawed, subjective, and can only give us approximations- over our logical intuition?,

Because empirical observation is connected to reality, whereas logic deals with concepts that exist mostly in our head as tools of description

> that which is the closest we can get to absolute certainties

Yes, and the reason why this is so is because it doesn't have to bother with the unknown. It can simply work by its own axioms, which don't have account for any unknowns.

>AND we know that there is something which is radically separate from what we generally see in the universe and seems to made of different stuff than it: our will/immaterial mind ect.

Uhm, what? Our mind isn't some supernatural entity, it's basically a biological computer. How this biological computer produces consciousness is unknown at this point, but that doesn't mean you just get to make shit up

>God's consciousness is a primary quality that is eternal with him.

But we know that consciousness isn't some intrinsic property of the universe. How many minds have you ever known that didn't have a brain with it?

[Anonymous No.5639603]

>>5639584
>atheism is literally the metaphysical foundation of Marxism

Yes, Marxism has absolutely nothing to do with immutable laws of economics that were supposedly discovered by Marx whatsoever, it was about religion all along.

[Anonymous No.5639640]

>>5639603
Dialectical materialism, you faggot. It's completely incompatible with any religion and demands atheism.

And if you don't like that, take it up with Lenin.

[Anonymous No.5639645]

>>5632504
>confirmed for not knowing shit about science

[Anonymous No.5639664]

>>5639640

Dialectic materialism has almost nothing to do with religion or lack thereof. It comes out of Hegelian philosophy, and was inspired by Heraclitus and Aristotle, and deals with the evolution of the natural world according to Marx and Engels.

[Anonymous No.5639673]

>>5639664
You're wrong.

Read some fucking Lenin.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm

[Anonymous No.5639676]

>>5638870
>>5638881
should've been /thread

[Anonymous No.5639678]

>>5629528

[Anonymous No.5639682]

>>5639640
In the beginning was the dialectics of the universe, and the dialectics of the universe was with God, and the dialectics of the universe was God.

[Anonymous No.5639690]

>>5639673

Why should I give a single fuck what Lenin thought? He doesn't speak in my name. This like saying a Christians are creationists, because Ken Ham believes it to be the case.

Basically, your whole argument is nothing but guild from association. If this is being philosophically sophisticated, then please let me stay completely ignorant of philosophy for the rest of my life, because that's some of the most fallacious bullshit reasoning I've ever heard

[Anonymous No.5639696]

>>5639690
>Why should I give a single fuck what Lenin thought?

Because he's the most influential Marxist theorist of the 20th century. This is how stupid you sound right now.

[Anonymous No.5639703]

>>5639682

kek

[Anonymous No.5639706]

>>5639696

And I'm not a Marxist, so I don't give a shit

>This is how stupid you sound right now.

[Anonymous No.5639709]

>>5639696
>>5639690
You both need to read dialectics of nature
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm

[Anonymous No.5639713]

>>5639709

Dialectic materialism and dialectics in general is unfalsifiable horseshit, so I'm not going to read any of that

[Anonymous No.5639720]

That book is written for retards. Dawkins is a democrat, so he thinks he can enlighten the Rabble. Good luck with that.

[Anonymous No.5639721]

>>5639713
How is it unfalsifiable? Tell me which claim Engel's makes in that that has no evidence backing it up?

[Anonymous No.5639732]

>>5639706
I don't give a shit. You're the one blabbering about how communist atheism was just a ruling class tool and has no philosophical foundation in Marxist thought. Anything wrong with the world cannot possibly be done to further atheism. That's why the Bolsheviks massacre clergy and monks.

[Anonymous No.5639738]

>>5639713
>muh unfalsifiable

[Piracy !!1zjmpE5cmno No.5639769]

How do we feel about Carl's version of it?

[Anonymous No.5639780]

>>5639721

It's impossible to come up with a case in which dialectic materialism certainly isn't true, making it meaningless

[Anonymous No.5639785]

>>5639780

what even is dialectical materialism?

[Anonymous No.5639803]

>>5639732

>Anything wrong with the world cannot possibly be done to further atheism

Is that why the Moscow Theological Academy was reopened under Stalin in 1945? Seems like a pretty shitty way to destroy religion

[Anonymous No.5639804]

>>5639780
It is impossible to come up with a case where the scientific method isn't true, making it meaningless.
The dialectical method is a methodology and materialism is it world view. And if you have have a problem with materialism you need a reality check.

[Anonymous No.5639811]

>>5639785
It is materialism with a methodology that predates the scientific method. Which does not hurt my case at all.

[Anonymous No.5639828]

>>5639804

>It is impossible to come up with a case where the scientific method isn't true, making it meaningless

If you can demonstrate that sense data isn't actually an accurate representation of reality, then you would have had a pretty good case that falsifies science

[Anonymous No.5639845]

>>5639828
Correct. People who are subjective idealists doubt our sense data not dialectical materialists.

[Anonymous No.5639856]

>>5639803
Stalin was a nationalist before he was a Marxist and actively worked against orthodox Marxists such as Trotsky. He legalized Russian Orthodoxy to promote national unity, not because he had any love for religion.

[Anonymous No.5639859]

>>5639811
>19th century predates the scientific method

[Anonymous No.5639861]

>>5639589

>Reality is governed by the laws of physics. We've never seen anything in reality break the laws of physics.

Having immaterial and unquantifiable minds breaks the laws of physics. Our experience of consciousness cannot be reduced down to mechanical figures and causes.

>Because empirical observation is connected to reality

No, empirical observation is just subjective sense perceptions, we have faith that they correspond to something outside of the mind( and we have good reason to believe that since we derive our minds from God that they probably do come to theories that correspond to how he actually made things) but we have no reason to believe that we experience "reality" as you call it from sense perceptions alone. All we get are subjective sensations that we abstract with reason to create theoretical explanations like physical laws, the existence of matter, ect.

>Yes, and the reason why this is so is because it doesn't have to bother with the unknown

No because we can't find anything in "reality" or our own mental phenomena that does not conform to logic. It is the best tool we have, and we need to use our mental faculties to order and make sense of our sense perceptions anyways, logic will always be superior to sense data.

>Uhm, what? Our mind isn't some supernatural entity, it's basically a biological computer.

There is no good reason to believe that, no matter how much processing power we get we cant make conscious machines. It's not "making shit up" to point out the incommensurability of matter and mind and point out that we need to use reason to ground things outside of material/spacial/temporal conditions because empiricism is a very limited sphere of knowledge.

>But we know that consciousness isn't some intrinsic property of the universe.

Exactly. God is beyond the universe and facilitates the interaction between mind and matter because both are derived from him- but not from each other. Mind cannot be derived from the universe itself because it does not have the same conditions as it.

[Piracy !!1zjmpE5cmno No.5639872]

>>5639861
Do you sincerely believe most of that? I'm curious

[Anonymous No.5639893]

>>5639872

I think it is the most probable explanation ( Nietzsche's more chaotic ontology based on Will To Power and a greater degree of subjectivity is also quite possible), there are holes in it ( especially since I'm typing on 4chan and not covering every avenue like I would in essay), but yes, it is a superior theory to scientific materialism.

[Piracy !!1zjmpE5cmno No.5639914]

>>5639893
That's pretty amazing

[Anonymous No.5640423]

>>5639603

To be fair, Marx was hugely influenced by Feuerbach. I mean the guy you're talking to is obviously a tard, but still.