Dark, I'm sure you'll get mountains of praise for these eloquent ramblings..but again...you have written so many words, but essentially said nothing at all. Of course, it is nigh on impossible that you could have responded any other way. all i ask for is a little, tiny bit of evidence to support your assertions...yet you cannot even grant me that. i accept your ramblings as an implicit surrender that your position is completely irrational no matter how much smart sounding sophistry you engage in.
ya ha ha hee hee hoo hoo deepok who? is he a new theoretical physicist doing some groundbreaking work on complexity theory? guess i should check in with the Santa Fe Institute ya whoo hoo ha ha urg blurk blah aaaack hmmm.
Well the debate might rage for a long time, but I guarantee you, any panel of independant judges will call the atheist victorious every time. Man, I've read dozens of these "heavy weight" debats - i'm telling you the atheist kicks butt every single time. (check out "Atheism:A Philosophical Justification, Michael Martin - kind of heavy going at times, but you could handle it) I'm not so much concerned with defending my position as I am with uncovering the truth. believe me, if you could provide me with evidence that suggests that god exists, i would certainly srcutinize it very carefully, and if it passes...guess what? i'll change my mind! der! that's how science works!
LOL!!!! now that is funnier than what Faster said! what i just presented to you is a quick and dirty example of how complexity theory can be applied to debate structures and belief systems...and why simple answers usually won't do for complex questions...and yet in a haughty finger snap you choose to write off as bunk the scientific findings of Nobel prize winning economists, physicists and biologists with a single post from your mighty and well informed hand.... http://www.exploratorium.edu/complexity/CompLexicon/santafe.html write these guys a letter: hey all you nobel prize winning idiots! your theories are a bunch of crap! LMAO u know less than one half of one percent of what you think you do Dan, and you just showed it embarrassingly well. it's cool though, i haven't laughed that hard in a few days. still laughing. sides hurting a little bit. whoooo.... peace all, good weekend
dark, you speak of "emergent properties" of a system that did not exist in the parts but that are found in the whole. Some say that emergent properties are but another name for vital essence. Furthermore there are examples of emergent properties that turned out to be perfectly predictable. Actually you are wrong when you speak in the absolute sense as if "emergence" were "stuff" in the system, rather than a a relationship between the system and observer. Properties "emerge" for a particular observer when he could not or did not predict their appearance. We can always find cases in which a property will be "emergent" to one observer and "predictable" to another. Demonstrations that a property could have been predicted have nothing to do with "emergence". By recognizing emergence as a relationship between the observer and what he observes, we understand that properties will "emerge" when we put together more and more complex systems.In other words, the property of "emergence" no longer emerges for us, though it surprises those who take an absolute view. They may demonstrate --afterwards--that they need not have been surprised: small consolation if the emergent property was an explosion. FPC
that was one forced laugh if i've ever heard one dark. so, it seems you're hiding behind complexity now. and how exactly does this add any weight to your argument that god exists? it doesn't. it's just useless fluff. if I only know one half of one percent of what I think I do, at least i have the advantage of having what i know grounded in solid logic. you on the other hand? smoke and mirrors..
dag, should have left. Faster: I really don't see the point of your clarification, except to demonstrate that you are a smart guy and got a grip on what I said. I know you are smart, you don't have to prove it to me (and sometimes you are even witty too! and i'll never forget you for bringing super greg into my life). Dan: I really did laugh, hard, because I was so surprised at how quickly you wrote off what I said as being worthless. My point was more to provide real world illustration as to why debating a deep concept on a message board is a waste of time (EXCEPT, I should add, for those in a position of true inquiry who want to learn new things from the debate). We are like racquetball players lobbing the ball back and forth. What is the point? You know that I can defend my position, and you know I have done so elsewhere on this board. What I am trying to say is more a backup of what other more neutral type parties have said: big questions are just not answered on message boards, period. Debating a highly contested point in an environment such as this is folly. Think about it, why does this stuff always devolve into little more than insults or point scoring? Why does it often start out that way even? For you to continually demand 'evidence' from me is little more than taunting, for reasons I have cited and given credence to. A highly contested belief structure cannot be validated by a handful of posts. Period. If it's your goal to win the board or get the last word on the thread, then fine. If you want to believe I don't have a case just because I don't want to trade posts with you until 2007, feel free to believe it. I just thought I would shed a little light on reality so that You can see why major issues are not solved on linear threads. If you don't want to see that and prefer verbal bloodsport for its own sake, that's your call.
He did not write it off as bunk. He simply pointed out the fact that you ONCE AGAIN failed to provide any evidence for your position. Instead, you ran off on a tangent and dodged the entire discussion. You commited several fallacies in your previous post, which I was about to address, but since it was nothing more than bait, Ill pass. I suspect you will continue to squirm and creatively dodge defending your position, like you just did. "u know less than one half of one percent of what you think you do Dan, and you just showed it embarrassingly well" Glad you think so. Dan, rightly, ignored your rant because it was just another way for you to squirm out of providing any evidence for your position. I think its funny that YOU think its funny. You havent made any progess with your weak position whatsoever. Still asking... WHERE'S THE BEEF DARK??? peace axeman
what bullshit. i have never ever conceded to you that you have successfully defended your position! never! i only stop cos you evade everything i throw at you by resorting to all these fancy theories of why you can't explain what you believe - you know, try to snow me with that sophisticated crap you spin. you know it's bs and i know it's bs. you know you can't rationally argue your position and i know it. i don't even TRY to convince YOU, i just write what i do cos you always bring up how 'right' you are, how you are 'absolutely certain'. i'm gonna call you on your bs every single time. simple as that.