FOLYKAZE:

Mr. . . . . You think you can hide behind lies and arrogance? So you think you would ignore me because you are exposed? This will not stop me from showing you who you're.

We have to redefine what atheism is. Going by what you have up there, atheism should be disbelieve in theistic God but believe in pantheistic, spinoza, panentheistic and other connception of God. . . .including social (admired person) or creative art (theatre gallery) definition of God.

If atheism is defined as that, it is then no more atheism but anti-theism. . ..

Now you know where you belong. . . .not really an atheist you claim to be but an anti-theist. . . .or probably hatheist who just love to hate everything theistic or God.

TheBigUrban2:

mazaje:

This man has lost it. . . . . .I thought I was the only one that could not make sent of his gibberish up there, not until i saw this. . .

MrAnony1: This is a good question but before I answer it, I must first clarify: Do you at least grant that specific and intelligible functioning order is evidence of design?

If the series of events continued to happen in the same way regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, then I don't see how it's order depends on your consciousness.

If you must hold that order depends on what you can understand, then you must necessarily hold that things you don't understand (e.g. Mandarin Chinese, Latin, neurology, aeronautic engineering or any subject you don't understand) must necessarily be chaotic. This is an odd position to hold.

I'm afraid that you've really said nothing here. "If all were blind, sight would not exist", "if all were deaf, hearing will not exist" if all did not eat meat, eating meat won't exist" e.t.c. these sort of statements actually lead us to nowhere.

How does knowing who designed the designer prove or disprove the designer in question? i.e: You believe that Seun is the creator of Nairaland.com. Did you need to know who designed Seun in order to come to this conclusion?

The question of "who designed the designer" is an irrelevant question employed to draw one away from the contested point into infinite regress. It is usually an indication that the person asking the question has no real intention of discussing the issue at hand.

mazaje:

Am tired of this endless back and forth. . .Just to make things clear when I say god you know exactly what I mean I clearly gave you the definition but you refused to accept it. . .When an atheist says he does not believe in god it means he does not believe in deities. . .

This is the definition of deity. . .

In religious belief, a deity (Listeni/ˈdiː.ɨti/ or Listeni/ˈdeɪ.ɨti/)[1] is a supernatural being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred. Some religions have one supreme deity, while others have multiple deities of various ranks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deity

You are just all over the place, firstly you started by defining god as energy, you even went as far as trying to claiming that the god of the bible is energy just to satisfy your ridiculous delusions. You tried to force the bible to agree with you that its god is a pantheist god which you called energy in your delusions . .When called out you jumped ship and claimed that god as just a label. . .I am not going to respond to you again. . .You have no definition for god. . .To you god means anything which is not what this topic is about, this topic is specifically about the theistic concept of god. . .If you want to discuss your energy god and stone god go create another topic pls and discuss it. . .I am not going to respond to you again. . .

krayzieklay:
I warned you,bro. Btw,my signature explains it all.

finofaya:
I agree that it could be interpreted as the work of a designer but I don't know that it is evidence for a designer. Calling it 'evidence' for a designer suggests that the only explanation for it is a designer, and that is not the case.

You're just not getting it. You said my position amounts to saying "if all men are blind, light does not exist". I clarified by saying "if all men are blind, light would exist, but not sight".

In your example, blind refers to consciousness, right? And light refers to order. This is wrong and that's why I clarified. Light refers to the series of events operating independently of any observer, and sight refers to the sense we make of the series, or in other words, order.

Any world that humans find themselves in is a world that they will find orderly. This is because for any world to exist at all, there are rules that it must follow. Once it follows rules, it becomes predictable.

What you call order, is something that cannot be done away with in any type of existing world. Things have to happen in turn, ie temporal order. There has to be cause and effect. (Or effect and cause). Any existing world must have these things. You cannot conceive of a world without such properties. Even God cannot do without temporal order. I think it is presumptuous to now turn around and say that it is because of God that we have what we call order.

There is no message in the universe. No design. These things just happen. When we can predict their behaviour, we say they are ordered.

The question who designed the designer has to be asked because the argument from design is based on the assumption that there can be no design without a designer. If this is true, then a designer must be designed itself, and we would like to know who did it, otherwise we would not have bothered asking in the first place how we got here. if the designer could come from nothing, then why not us?

Who designed nairaland is not a philosophical question. It is not in the same calibre as the question 'why anything?', for which the answer 'God did it' is insufficient.

mazaje:
How is it begging the question?. . .Seun has already made the claim. . .His trade mark is already on Nairaland. . .

He has answered already. . .

I really don't know what to make of this, all i said was that the universe has equal amount of order and chaos. . .I don't know where you got the universe works is not orderly part. . .

LOL!. . . .What am saying is that god can not be used to explain anything properly and objectively, god is nothing more than an assumption. . .People have used god to try to explain creation. . .The bible, koran, yoruba, greek, mayan, hindu etc religious scriptures all tried to use god to explain how the universe came about but failed. . .We see the sun and we assume it's god that created it, we see animals and plants then we assume that it was god that created them. . .We see the stars and assume its god. . .But the thing is you can not use god to explain how these things operate, you can only use god to make wild assumptions about things you do not know, if god created them, then god should also be used to explain how they operate. . .You can claim and assume that god created all living organism but you can not use god to explain specific details about the organism, you can not for example use god to explain to me why the DNA of some organisms mutate. . .You can only use god to assume that he created the stars but you can not use god to explain why super novas occur. ..God is just an assumption and the default position for "I don't know " for the theist, at lest that is what you guys have been able to show so far. . . .You want me to just accept that god created everything and set them in place( an assumption), but you don't want me to ask you about the specific mechanism he used to put those things in place if indeed he created them. . .

MrAnony1:
So basically it is true because Seun claimed it is true. I see

If you can't see your double standard by now, then I really can't help you

I'll repeat myself: You subscribe to a naturalist worldview and you reject anything which you believe goes contrary to the laws of physics, if half of the universe is chaotic as you claim, then you must hold that half of it obeys physical laws while the other half defies physical laws hence you would be contradicting your worldview by accepting some things that do not obey physical laws.

Unless you want to argue that the chaos in the universe works according to physical laws. Then I must ask you to explain exactly how it is chaotic if it functions according to the order dictated by physical laws?

Except that you have not used Seun to explain anything. You have merely claimed that he said he did it. How exactly are you different from the person who claims that God said that He did it?

It is really funny to see how oblivious you are to the fact that you are employing a double standard.

mazaje:
There is no double standard there. . .Seun made a claim and he has evidence to back up his claim. . .In fact he already had a handle here and can be contacted directly. Every body here knows that nairaland was created and is owned by Seun because of the many evidence that he has provided to support his claims.

Chaos is also part of the physical laws. . .Explosions are chaotic(of which there are countless amounts of them going on in the universe) but they are also obey the physical laws that govern the universe. . . .Both the orderliness and chaos that happen in equal amounts in the universe all obey the physical laws. . .The laws governing the universe support orderliness and chaos. .

If you want me to use Seun to explain to you where there is now a shared post button along side the mention button, like button or how images can be uploaded by copying their urls, Seun will be glad to explain all to me and i will explain it to you.

You on the other hand can never use god alone to explain to me why the DNA of some organisms mutate or why gaseous planets like Jupiter exist with 12 moons. . .

MrAnony1:
Lol really? Please provide some of these "many evidence"

By the way, having a handle here and the ability to be contacted directly does not prove that you or me or Seun or anyone else created nairaland. Try again.

Lol, so you believe that chaos can be subject to order. I see

And how do you know that Seun did not ask someone else to explain to him before he explained to you. For all I know, you might even be the creator of Nairaland since you are the one explaining Nairaland to me.

The point here is that having knowledge of how/why something works does not necessarily prove that you created it, it only proves that you know. Therefore this is an invalid point.

P/s: I also didn't fail to notice that you already assumed that it was Seun who is the creator and therefore the one you need to ask questions before even proceeding to find out anything, why didn't you ask logicboy or frosbel or any of the 1 million+ people on Nairaland?

It is so funny that you can't see that you are already assuming that Seun is the answer to the question before even trying to reason so as to find out if Nairaland has a creator or not. This is the fallacy known as petito principe a.k.a. begging the question.

I think I have said enough by now for you to recognize that the questions you are asking have nothing to do with the answers you are seeking.

mazaje:
Firstly, it is clearly stated on the website that it is being owned by him. People work for him and have interacted with him, all have attested to him being the owner and creator of nairaland. . .

Chaos subject to order?. .. where did i say that?. . .i said both the order and the chaos all follow physical laws. . .By the way the physical always do not all apply in all parts of the universe. . .

it means a lot, if i don't know how something functions here, i can contact Seun and he can explain it to me. . .You can't do that with god. . .You can't contact god and have him explain anything to you. . .

Seun has already claimed he is the owner of nairaland and his signature is found all over the website, he wants people to know he owns the website and has provided some evidence in form of his signature and copyright. . . that is enough evidence for me. . .God has provided no evidence at all to show that he created the universe, god's signature or name is not written in any part of the universe. . .

Nope, you haven't. . .The questions remain valid, claiming god means nothing. . You should also be able to use god to explain how things fuction. ..saying god created alone is nothing but an assumption and a default position for i don't know. . .

MrAnony1: To say that something is evidence of another doesn't necessarily amount to it being "the only explanation", however it means that it is the best explanation. What do I mean by this?

Here is what I mean; take for instance that i saw dog footprints on the sand. The footprints are evidence for the presence of a dog. This is the most rational explanation. A person may want to argue otherwise - he may might say for instance that it is a result of wind blowing the sand and by chance the grains of sand ended up arranged as dog footprints - but he will then have to bear a much greater burden of proof.

The same applies when we observe a specific complex yet intelligible functioning order such as is found in a piece of machinery or written language or the functioning of the universe, the most rationally consistent explanation is that it is a design. To argue that it is otherwise means that you will bear a greater burden of proof

You are welcome to put forward other possible explanations for specific and intelligible functioning order apart from design and why these explanations deserve more merit.

Not quite. Please try to understand the analogy. "Light" refers to order, "sight" refers to consciousness, "blindness"(lack of sight) refers to a lack of consciousness.
I don't think I got you wrong at all. You are of the opinion that it is our consciousness that makes sense of a series of events therefore imposes order upon it. I am saying that you are wrong, and that the true case is that your consciousness observes the order in a series of events and that this order exists independently from your consciousness.

This can be demonstrated by how your mind can tell the difference between an orderly series of events and a disorderly one. In fact your mind can understand things on a scale of less to more orderly/chaotic. If your consciousness was imposing this order, then you wouldn't be able to tell that anything was more chaotic than another because your consciousness would make all things orderly. Since we know of things that are more disorderly than others, then we must hold that your consciousness is observing order and not imposing it.

You are always welcome to disagree with the above by either denying that you observe things that are more chaotic/ordered than others or you can explain why your consciousness is so discriminatory such that it imposes more order on some things and less on others.

Bear in mind that for you to even be conscious, certain constituent parts need to work according to a very specific functioning order. If as you hold, consciousness makes order, then you will need to explain why the order that functions for your consciousness to work works independent from your consciousness.
If you argue that it is merely "a series of events", then you will need to explain how this series of events is any different from a "specific functioning order" since they both seem to work in exactly the same way and achieve exactly the same result i.e. your consciousness. If you fail to explain this, then we must take your "series of events" to be nothing more than a synonym for what I refer to as "order" and hence your argument will become nullified

The fact that humans have the ability to identify chaos shows that it is not true that humans will find any world they happen to be in orderly. Secondly, for humans to even exist at all let alone be conscious of the world around them, there must be a specified functioning order existing prior to the human being that makes it possible for him to exist.
Now that said, your second statement where you hold the existence of any world depends on certain defining rules is not exactly true and is very misleading because it is possible to have an utterly chaotic world where events happen randomly. You might argue that the rule operating in such a world is that it must be chaotic and therefore it is orderly in that sense but this will be begging the question...and that's why I said that your statement is misleading.

Again, you are mistaken here. The fact that things happen in turn does not necessarily equate to order. You can have a possible world of random numbers appearing at random intervals. It will be misleading to argue that such a world is not chaotic because the numbers don't all appear at once.

This is like saying that "there is no order in an automobile, no design, the interaction of it's constituent parts just happen and when we can predict their behaviour, we say they are ordered". If you don't hold the above statement to be true for a car, why would you deny the same conclusion for a universe which has a far more complex interaction of it's constituent parts?

Point of correction, no argument for design assumes that the designer is necessarily a design. We know that we humans didn't come from nothing because we are temporal beings.

I think this is where you try to evade the point. The question before us is not "why anything?". The question before us is "does the universe have a designer?" Therefore "does nairaland have a designer?" is very analogous to it since in both questions we explore a design/designer relationship.
Note that the question is not "who designed nairaland?" nor is it "who designed the universe?" because both already assume that the nairaland and the universe are designed. Though I believe it to be true, I do not want to make that assumption, rather I want us to explore if the universe shows evidence of design by comparing it to other things that you believe show evidence of design.

MrAnony1:


By the way, having a handle here and the ability to be contacted directly does not prove that you or me or Seun or anyone else created nairaland. Try again.

MrAnony1:
1. How exactly does a name written on something prove that it was created? There is no name written on the Egyptian pyramids does it mean that they were uncreated? The name of the Greek goddess Athena is written on her temple at the acropolis in Athens, does this mean that she created it?

2. How exactly does people claiming to work for and interact with Seun prove that Seun created Nairaland. A lot of people claim to work for interact with Allah, does this mean that Allah created the universe?

It is now clear that you don't know what you are talking about. What did you think you were saying when you said that chaos follows physical laws? Or are you suggesting that something following a specific set of laws is not disorderly?

How exactly does Seun explaining how Nairaland works prove that he or anyone created Nairaland. When your mechanic explains to you how your car works, does it prove that he created your car?

If someone to claims ownership and writes his name on something is enough evidence for you to believe that he/she created the thing, then you must also believe that Allah created the universe because he tends to write his name with the clouds and sand every now and again.

Why the double standard?

As I said to you, the questions you are asking have nothing to do with the answers you are seeking. If you want us to have a fruitful discussion, you need to start asking valid questions

finofaya:

Anyway, we know nairaland has a designer because nairaland does not occur in nature. There.

The only other things that show evidence of design are man made objects, which are modeled after the universe in the sense that they are merely a manipulation and redirection of physical laws or natural forces. They cannot help but share similarities with the universe. I don't think they make a good basis of comparison with the universe. That, in effect, would be comparing the entire universe to a part of itself in an attempt to determine the nature of the universe.

mazaje:

Thank you brother, the universe is not a human society and I wonder why he expects the universe as a whole to operate as a human society. . .

finofaya:


Me too oo

IamAuntyOnion:
but I think it's only human beings that occupy the universe. animals are out of the picture

Weah96:
I found out that the thing was in direct opposition to ordinary common sense. By the time I got to contemplate the story of how Mary was impregnated by nobody, for the umpteenth time, I had already passed the threshold for tolerance.

I will submit to you that after a hard day's work as a carpenter, no human man will come home and accept the fact that it wasn't the neighbor, but an invisible person who impregnated his wife. I even slapped myself for believing that story as a child, when I should have known better. I don't give a dam)n if he had a dream after or before. Joseph would have sent that girl back to her father's house.

Indaboski007:



My own point of view about Mary and Jesus.
If you look at the similarities between Horus and Jesus you would marvel at the Similarities infact it's like Christian's copied Egyptian myth


But there's something if you read the prophecy of Isiah he said a maiden would give birth to a child and he shall be called Emmanuel

Isiah did not say a virgin would give birth to a son the virgin word was brought by people who wanted to bring idolatry into the Bible.

The word Almah means maiden not really virgin funny enough if you read this Catholic Bible they wrote it clear that it's a mistranslation

So Joseph is the father of Jesus. That's the truth the ancient church don't want people to know so that their power would seem divine.

The virgin theory is absolutely wrong. That's why we can't really trust this Bible.

Jesus existed no doubt but so many stories about him are not true. My opinion

Empiree:
Okay now guys. I wont like to derail your thread but let me just input this before I commot. So, atheism simply means disbelieve in existence of God or deity according to mazaje and probably that's official definition of it. Good enough.

Now guys, including urban2 read this. Very soon I will be going for vacation in carrebean Island of Trinidad. I honestly dont mind inviting you guys and i will be responsible for costs. The flight will take us some hours to get there. I will come back to this thread a month before my vacation so that we could get ready. This is going to be private jet okay?.

However, when we board the plane, I have to instruct our pilot to cruise at 35,000 altitude over atlantic ocean. When we get to that altitude, I will instruct him to put the jet to dive (that's, crash it in the ocean). What will be your reaction at that point?. Sincere answer please.

CASE STUDY: I sponsored 2 atheists on the same trip 9 yrs ago. When we reach 30000 above sea level, pilot dived the jet to the ocean. These atheists guys sat not far from me.They notice something's wrong with the aircraft and looked through the window. What they saw was terrible. They started crying and creaming "oh God , Oh God Oh God" then i was wondering why they didnt shout "Oh nothing Oh science, Oh nothing, Oh science" ?. I was suprized. So pilot recorved from dive and everything was fine. Then i was like guys what just happened?. They said we thought something happed to the plane but thank "God" we are saved. I said oh I'd thought you guys dont believe in God?. They smiled.

So my question to you guys is dont you think you are deceving yourselves when you said you dont believe in God?. It doesnt matter what your concept of God is. At least for now God being Supreme Being. In other to proof this theory i just gave you, i will post a video of aircraft scheduled for testing with Atheists on board. Then, aircraft develpoed tech problems unknown to them and dived into the ocean. They screamed Oh God Oh God. I was wondering why they didnt say "Oh nothing", Oh science"

So guys, do you want me to invite you to Trinidad with condition attached (to dive the plane toward the ocean)?.