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Post by hazelireland on Oct 28, 2008 10:43:42 GMT
I second that thank you.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 28, 2008 12:21:11 GMT
I agree - the purpose of this site is to help Catholics to understand their faith. Atheists and other non-Catholics can help achieve this if they state their case rationally and civilly (as all posters shoudl do). As I said in our debate with Redmond on geocentrism, reason is a divinely given faculty not confined to those who have faith.
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Post by hazelireland on Oct 28, 2008 13:33:26 GMT
Thanks but this is a log in for a different part of the site. forums.catholicexchange.com/bb-login.phpThis is the link for logging into the forums. It is a seperate log in and it is with this one that I am having the trouble. I cannot even GET to a log in screen with this.
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Post by hazelireland on Oct 29, 2008 8:08:46 GMT
Your short term memory needs work. We already got past this. My log in cannot be to blame as I have not yet been able to get a screen where a log in can be typed for the forum. Therefore the site does not know who I am.
In case your memory fails again we already covered IP addresses, unless entire networks of IP addresses are being blanket banned there is no possibility it is this either.
Also being able to log in here "proves" nothing as you suggest. Your standard of proof is low. Its a different site, on a different server, running completely different software. You may as well say that people liking apples proves to you they also like oranges.
No, the issue is clearly not security but a conflict between their software and something else, probabaly the latest versions of browsers or of java. I will indeed contact them on the number you suggest, thanks for the help.
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Post by hazelireland on Oct 30, 2008 8:43:52 GMT
Excuse me I did not ask you to believe me on anything. I requested anyone that might have information to provide same. You provided what you had and thats that.
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Post by hazelireland on Nov 1, 2008 10:41:58 GMT
Dear Hazelireland, If you did not ask me to believe you, then why did you dialog with me so many times or do you simply like to type on a keyboard? Why do you want to post on catholic exchange anyway? Why do atheists demonstrate an obsessive compulsive disorder about posting on Catholic websites? Firstly I responded to you because I asked a question, you provided a false answer, and I wanted to clarify why it was false so that anyone else who DID have helpful information would see my question was not yet answered and therefore would post their information. If I had let your false answer slide, someone with the information I need might have read the thread, seen I had accepted an answer, and assumed wrongly that I did not need further information. Secondly, no, I am not happy with my position. I am not happy with ANY of my positions on ANYTHING 100%. I go through life continuously questioning anything I believe and also questioning whether there is any reason to believe the things I do not yet believe. I do not go through life assuming I am right in all things or that my position on all things is correct. I do not hide solely on forums where people agree with me like you do and hide from contrasting view points. I constantly question. I constantly debate. I constantly seek. Alas you clearly do not do the same. You ask me therefore why I AM on sites like this? I can throw you the question back, why are you NOT on sites like atheist.ie? Is your position so weak or are you merely nervous? That is why I am on not just atheist sites where people would agree with everything I say, but also on Christian sites, Muslim sites, eastern philosophy sites and much more. Not just on the internet either but in real meatspace as well as cyberspace. If there is a god you can clearly agree with me that it would be the most important thing in anyone’s life to find out as soon as possible. So no I will not be complacent and sit back and just assume there is not one because I have seen no evidence that there is. I will seek out such information and the day it is provided to me I will change my position. So far.... in my long years of discussion on the subject.... not one person has provided me with one single piece of evidence AT ALL.... EVER.... to suggest there is. Maybe they are just hiding it?
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Post by hazelireland on Nov 3, 2008 8:35:06 GMT
Dear Hazelireland, I am not on the atheist website because I find atheism boring and useless. I also find atheists boring and argumentative. Then so be it, hide away here if you like. That is your choice and I respect that. However just because YOU want to keep the sites YOU agree with, you have no right to admonish others to do the same. None. I do not limit my search to just the catholic faith. I have asked in many many more. Also I have read the bible, many times. From school age to modern day. I have also read the central books of others faiths. You recommend the bible because your faith has already told you thats the right one and is "his word". I have no such luxury so I read the koran, the book of mormon, the books of krishna. Hell I have even read books by Rob Hubbard.
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Post by Inedifix II on Nov 3, 2008 12:14:16 GMT
Hell I have even read books by Rob Hubbard. Elron? Wow! He's nearly as crazy as Kent Hovind!
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Post by hazelireland on Nov 3, 2008 14:13:37 GMT
Dear Hazelireland, I do have the right anytime and anywhere to admonish anyone I please. No, you have the right to rant and whinge all you like. Unless this becomes your forum however you have no power to tell people who are on it that they can not be there. You cant ban them, you cant set rules, you can just whinge. You are powerless to stop people you do not agree with from coming to this site. As for "Searching is not a valuable means of finding the truth" you can say that all you want, I am not about to sit back, decide whats true and then just accept it like you have. Whatever searching may be, NOT searching is worse. In other words, you ask someone to pick a faith and settle into it. What a funny notion. You just _decide_ its true and then settle into it. You just put your feet up and stay ignorant. You simply pick up the things that seem to justify your choice and then disregard the rest. I have never heard faith so brilliantly defined before, well done. However it is not for me, you can do as you like. I will continue my searches for truth in life. I will consider all evidence for truth put before me. You... as I have said before... have provided me with no such evidence AT ALL nor have you tried. I can safely assume until shown otherwise that you have none to offer.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 4, 2008 0:54:50 GMT
Certainly they are here to spread error, but there are different ways of responding to them - namecalling and refusing to engage don't help. Let's try them with these questions: (1) Why is there something rather than nothing? (2) If rationality is simply the product of nonrational material processes why should we trust it? Why is it that human thought seems to have a purchase on reality?
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Post by hazelireland on Nov 4, 2008 9:19:13 GMT
Certainly they are here to spread error, but there are different ways of responding to them - namecalling and refusing to engage don't help. Let's try them with these questions: (1) Why is there something rather than nothing? (2) If rationality is simply the product of nonrational material processes why should we trust it? Why is it that human thought seems to have a purchase on reality? Thank you hibernicus, it is a shame the karma system is off on this board as I would +1 you for that. In a forum where some want to stifle debate and discussion it is a breath of fresh air when someone stands up and says "No, stop that, rational discourse IS the way to go here". I would pull you up on saying we are here to "spread error" however. You may think we are wrong... that is one thing... but these words indicate you think we KNOW we are wrong and we INTENTIONALLY want to spread this wrongness. This is a whole different level of accusation and one I doubt you have any evidence for. Maybe you phrased it badly but if you did not then I think this comment was beneath you. ========== (1) I cannot do this question justice because we simply do not know. This is the goal of human endeavours like science and exploration. For a long time a subjective definition of an educated person has been one who knows enough to know what one does not yet know. This is the wonderfully noble position of someone who can stand up and say “I do not know the answer to this question”. I think the problem many people without faith have with people of faith is their attitude to this position. I have heard many respond (Dinesh D’Souza being a prime example with) “Well the atheist has not the answer to this, they cannot account for this, but WE can”. The problem is the attitude that “An answer is the right answer if it’s the ONLY answer we have available”. This is clearly not the case. An answer does not become correct simply because it is the first one proposed. In fact quite the opposite is true. Ask yourself in the history of discourse between religions and sciences has there EVER been a scientific truth proposed for which now the BEST answer is a religious one? Clearly not, however if you ask the corollary question you find that we have a wealth of questions for which the first answer was religious but for which now the scientific answer is the best we had. The sun used to be a god to some people, disease used to be demonic possession; rain used to come because of the way we danced to the gods and thunder was the arguments between the Greek gods of old. So in short the answer to your question is “I do not know. You do not know. You have an idea which I respect you for, but you have to allow me to be unimpressed with it as it is devoid completely of evidence. ========== (2) Why is it that human thought seems to have a purchase on reality? This question is much easier. I can answer it with one word. “Context” The question is like “How does a puddle know how to fit into a hole?” It does not; it merely conforms to the context of its situation. It “knows” the correct shape not because it is massively intelligent but because its reaction to reality is constrained by the laws of that reality. It fits into the hole because the physical laws around it dictate that this is the only way it can be. We have no ability to rise above the context of the laws of reality that constrain us, therefore we evolve to match the world around us. To take Dinesh’s word the reality in our minds conforms to the reality outside them. What other way can it be? ========== In short they are good questions you ask. They are questions for which we have some answers and seek to have more. The problem with a lot of theistical thought is that it is based on uncertainty and the logical fallacy of Assertions from Uncertainty. A lot of theistical arguments do not stem from offering evidence but from asking a question one hopes the antagonist can not answer and then saying “There you go then!” as if their failure to provide an answer somehow negates the necessity for your answer to require evidence of any sort. Alas this leads to what we see in the US, a complete assault on science and rational thought. The premise being that if we can show group A to be wrong then group B is correct by default. This is a fallacy of the tallest order and one that American society is suffering from as they recently dropped several places in the international science rankings.
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Post by Harris on Nov 4, 2008 9:43:52 GMT
Certainly they are here to spread error, but there are different ways of responding to them - namecalling and refusing to engage don't help. hibernicus, well said sir.......
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Post by Inedifix II on Nov 6, 2008 3:42:27 GMT
Let's try them with these questions: Hi Hibernicus, not sure if you're still around, but here are my answers to your excellent questions. (1). Why is there something rather than nothing?This is really a rephrasing of the philosophical question: why are we here? And the only honest answer I or anyone else can give you is: I don't know. The only thing anyone can know with any degree of certainty or knowledge, is that there is something. (2) If rationality is simply the product of nonrational material processes why should we trust it?I think that's a false premise. I would say that rationality is the product of evolutionally successful material processes. Which is the very reason we can trust them. All of which should also be considered in light of the fact that humans are frequently irrational. (3) Why is it that human thought seems to have a purchase on reality?I would say that this is not confined to humans alone. All animal thought seems to have a purchase on reality, to a relative degree. This purchase enables us to negotiate our environments and is also the product of evolution. Successful methods of interpreting environments persist, while any flawed ones that may have arisen have long since fallen by the wayside. Of course, reality for a fly is very different to reality for a human, and clearly, because of the superior processing power of our brains, we have a considerably more profound purchase on the wider environment we both inhabit. But we should not assume that our knowledge, awareness, or appreciation of what we term 'reality' is anymore than a knowledge, awareness, or appreciation of our environment. The existence of curved or warped space-time has been proven mathematically, cosmologically and through quantum mechanics. However the sensory equipment we posses means we can no more appreciate or understand it, than a lion eating a gazelle can appreciate or understand the intricacies of the food chain. I
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Post by Inedifix II on Nov 9, 2008 23:21:24 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 11, 2008 19:24:47 GMT
Thank you for your questions. I have been busy with work for some time and will not be posting for about 10-14 days after tonight, so let me apologise in advance for my intermittent contributions to this debate. First, let me apologise for giving a false impression to hazelireland. When I say you are here to spread error I mean that you are acting in good faith but are mistaken, just as you believe that my beliefs are ultimately erroneous and are in fact a lot of fairytales. One or the other of us is wrong on this, but we should accept each other's sincerity if we are going to engage in recent dialogue at all. i should say by the way that I am not a trained philosopher or theologian; I have trained as a historian but in these other fields I am an amateur and autodidact and I may not uphold my side as well as other could do. Two other points which I remember from another of your posts also need to be addressed here. You said that atheists can tolerate the private beliefs of religious believers so long as they do not try to impose restrictions on you because of them. First of all, I would have thought the question of whether or not there is a God is worth discussing in its own right. Second, and this is where it hurts, your concession is only of limited value because how we see the world affects our sense of what is right and wrong, so that divergences in belief inevitably have real-world considerations. There should be lines drawn between the public and private spheres (I would say that Pope Pius IX transgressed those lines when he had the Jewish child Edgardo Mortara forcibly taken from his parents to be brought up as a Catholic, and that Richard Dawkins also transgresses them when he says parents who transmit religious faith to their children are worse than those who sexually abuse their children - a statement which if it means anything at all means one should be punished as severely as the other) but the question of where those lines should be drawn will always be determined by the beliefs of most people in a particular society.
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