Eager-reader

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  1. I have not found a way to contact Nick P yet. Far as I could see, there was no email to reach him at. I was going for a quick attack on Nick P; merely an adequate one. I could have gone into more detail but I wanted to be as brief as possible. I doubt Nick P would ever see this as I have no way to contact him and I doubt George would read it. Does he even post here? I do not know as I just arrived. Tektonics seems fairly important to me in the Chirstian world though not as much as say William Craig. I also once saw tektonics smear Ingersoll and call him a bigot so I had the impression that they were big boys given that they were trying to throw punches that big. The overall context, is that I am a new poster who was looking for information about George's upcoming book HAPPINESS IN A GODLESS WORLD, who loves his work, owns his book, and will defend them come what may. If anyone wishes to add any comments to Nick P's or even my own - such as mentioning other arguments I could have made or pointing out a weakness in one, etc - they are welcome. Just recently, I came across a criticism of Smith's first book by Anthony Flood on the internet. It was quite long and I will get to responding to it and posting this response in a few days. I may also send it off to him if he has a contact email available.
  2. "Creating time" is a contradiction. And I thought you were big on logic. But if a greater thing such as God does not need a designer, then why not a less complex thing? By reverting back to God, you just prove Smith's point about how appealing to complexity and God's complexity gets you nowhere. WHAT JESUS CHRIST SAYS ABOUT HELL! "fire" Matt 7:19, 13:40, 25:41 "everlasting fire" Matt 18:8, 25:41 "eternal damnation" Mark 3:29 "hell fire" Matt 5:22, 18:9, Mark 9:47 "damnation" Matt 23:14, Mark 12:40, Luke 20:47 "damnation of hell" Matt 23:33 "resurrection of damnation" John 5:29 "furnace of fire" Matt 13:42, 50 "the fire that never shall be quenched" Mark 9:43, 45 "the fire is not quenched" Mark 9:44, 46, 48 "Where their worm dieth not" Mark 9:44, 46, 48 "wailing and gnashing of teeth" Matt 13:42, 50 "weeping and gnashing of teeth" Matt 8:12, 22:13, 25:30 "torments" Luke 16:23 "tormented in this flame" Luke 16:24 "place of torment" Luke 16:28 "outer darkness" Matt 8:12, 22:13 "everlasting punishment" Matt 25:46 It must be hard to try to live knowing that your belief in a metaphorical fire is wrong. So you do admit it? Cool. Would an all good God allow a 28 year old woman and her two kids to die in a fire just because they forgot to extinguish a candle before going to bed? This happened in my city a couple years ago. So now you can hurt God? I thought he was omnipotent? I don't have enough faith to be a theist in light of your "refutations" of Smith.
  3. Your personal lack of anti-reason does not explain away what Smith wrote on page 166. "Acceptance by faith is a virtuous act. 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe,' and as Paul warns, 'whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.'" Well obviously, some objects that are composed of matter can reason and gain knowledge; and those would be humans. Yeah a plant for example is matter and can't reason but so what? What's with the stupid questions? Matter is irrational? What in the world does that mean? When something is irrational, for me, usually that means that a person is uttering a contradiction for example. Some things that aren't human but are matter just exists and does certain things. Yeah your case was sealed alright. You sure proved God with that question there. Your view is irrelevent to Smith's critique of faith as Hebrews describes it: the conviction of things unseen. Congratulations on "forgetting" about the rest on page 212: "An unknowable power must be responsible." But this explains nothing. One cannot answer the question, "How is it possible?" with the response, "An unknowable being using unknowable means did it...Since the positing of a god explains nothing, one cannto infer the existence of a god from an unusual event as a causal explanation...it is never rational to jump from the statement, 'x is unexplained' to the statement, 'Therefore, a supernatural power must have caused x...to posit the supernatural as an explanation is to posit the unknowable as an explanation, and this is nothing more than an exercise in futility." Then there is this from page 229: "An explanation builds a conceptual bridge from the known to the unknown, linking the unexplained to the context of one's knowledge...The process of explanation consists essentially of integrating a new idea or concept within the context of one's present knowledge...An explanation must provide understanding, and one cannot understand something that lies beyond one's conceptual frame of reference...one cannot explain the unknown with reference to the unknowable." No testimony is sufficient to establish a past occurence of a miracle. Read above the quotes from 212 and 229. Naturalism is the only possible way of explaining things. If we bring in the unknowable, we understand nothing and everything collapses. It's not a straw man. It's just an older version. And the fact you guys have to use a new one just proves his point about the now older version being wrong back when he wrote the book. But kalam isn't that much better either. Dan Barker with insights from Michael Martin showed this about Kalam in Barker's Cosmological Kalamity.
  4. How could he possibly know them then? Oh right. Automatic, unverified knowledge. But that contradicts knowledge as we know it and thus your omniscience attribute plunges us into agnosticism. A point Smith made in his book which you "forgot." on matter for it's existence."p.67 But the weatherman knows what will happen because of laws that are pre-determining. The path of the clouds is not free. But humans are. So you still haven't explained anything. Nice try but no cigar. An example is implied when Smith talks about God letting natural disasters harm innocent people. And he calls that evil. As well, since the Midianites' happiness was destroyed, Smith's ethics hasn't left them out in the cold. So tell me why a good god would allow isolated incidents of sacrifices that he did not endorse to take place at all. And you neglected to mention that God hardened the heart of Pharoah so that he couldn't let the people go. God even bragged about doing it so that he could show off his power. That's because the definition of it in Hebrews, which Smith quotes, bothers you. That it's the hope of things unseen. Seems like a blind faith totally devoid of evidence and good reasons for believing. This is nonsense and he knows it deep down. And Stein answered that the immaterial laws of logic is not the same thing as an immaterial being (whatever that means). So Bahnsen was in error. 1. Speaking of straw men...Smith says that we preceive sensory things. However, since we have the power of reflection, we know things about ourselves. What we call thoughts refer to chemical changes in the brain. Chemicals and brains are physical and preceived by the senses. Horray for Smith. Boo for you. 2. Nice try but Smith already takled the existence of immaterial things. "The theologian may object here, pointing out that many words - such as 'justice'...do not signify material objects...While it is true that 'justice' does not designate material beings, the theist must remember that they do not refer to immaterial beings either. 'Justice' is a moral abstraction derived from various aspects of man's nature and social interactions. 'Justice'...depends on matter for it's existence."p.67
  5. I focus on the Addenum. http://www.tektonics.org/qt/smithg01.html Wow. Brilliant. The truth of the Christian world view is built into everyone. I don't need to respond for you to see how fucking stupid that question is. You don't know what you're talking about but you do. Boy are you swift. Smith means that if we comprehend something we know what it means and can basically "get" what we preceive and recite it back to others. Guess you can't do that with God. So you're really an agnostic. You believe in some magical something. Uh, didn't the word "God" in the title of his book clue you in to that it was primarily against Christianity. Oh I know. You forgot to read the introduction whereby he further stipulated (like he did by virtue of his title) that he was attacking the Christian concept of God. And not to worry about Islam or Hinduism. The arguments against natural religion in the third part of the book will work for that. So God is not a creature and yet you call him a he. Great move genius. :notworthy Nice try but Smith knew you'd pull this so he was ready to criticize the attribute of omnipotence and render it to the point of not being understandable. Not understandable=not in understanding=can't be meaningfully talked about. This is cute. More linguistic trickery from the theist. Smith's point is only that whatever the Christian is talking about can not be meaningfully and satisfactoraily described and to that extent, he is not describable. There. Finished. Try picking your battles more carefully Nick P. So you believe that God is not all powerful then. Fine. But then he is not omnipotent. You have to accept that omnipotence means all powerful. You can't just ignore years of Christian theology just because it may get uncomfotable for you at some philosophical instance. And don't worry. Smith will agree with you and Aquinas that not being able to do a logical contradiction does not limit God. There is a difference between impossible and really difficult.
  6. I remember seeing this on some other website years ago. I've done some looking around on the internet for the latter book and this is what I could find. http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...?showtopic=2261 http://www.rationalists.org/resources/debates/smith.php http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearc...isbn=1591020387 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Happiness-Godless-...h/dp/1591020387 http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/registry...id=AMM7RVBW1CFE http://www.firstandsecond.com/store/books/...tSearch=2153220 This book can not be found on the Prometheus Books website although I do recall seeing a book cover and a description of it a long time ago. So did it ever make it to print or not? I'm pretty sure that books show up on sites like amazon with isbn numbers long before you can actually purchase them. So I have to wonder if Smith scrapped that project for good, or just for a bit. What, if anything, has anyone heard about this book?