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Experience
the death of a productive argument!
Even
though a discussion may start out as a promising
intellectual exercise, there comes a point when one's
merciful compassion for the argument must be allowed to
overcome one's love of the argument. It isn't easy to watch
an argument be beat to death, when both sides have nothing
else to do but repeat what has already been said, ad
nauseam. Someone has to have the guts to pull the plug, even
if it means giving his opponent the last word.
WARNING!
The following is a graphic portrayal of such a death. It is
recommended that if you are under the age of 21, or
unmarried and not exposed to relentless arguing, that you
skip this section.
Jonathan's
quotes are in blue. In a subsequent email, he continues:
You
wrote:
I have figured out that you do
not understand my issue with the lack of grounding for your
logistics concerning this "objective" vs.
"subjective" purpose matter...
ASAJ wrote:
You think that I do not understand your position and I think
that you are not understanding my position. I guess we will
have to agree to disagree, since without understanding, we
can't correctly argue against each other's position.
You wrote:
Your base appears to be: God.
Even whenever I see it from your point of view - God to BOTH
you and me is a perception/projection of YOUR mind.
ASAJ
wrote:
What isn't a perception or projection of one's mind? Even
two solid objects that can be seen by our eyes are
interpreted by our mind to be as such. Any idea or concept
that involves inductive reasoning amounts to the same.
You wrote:
Given the ambiguous nature of
God (not being provable or disprovable) – leaves God to be
a subjective base for your reasoning. To pretend that god is
objective is asinine given the ambiguous circumstance.
ASAJ wrote:
I never dispute that God's existence cannot be provable, in
the deductive sense. However, a case can be made using
inductive reasoning and that reasoning is based on our
subjective preferences. As far as God being disprovable, how
would you go about disproving the existence of a tree?
You wrote:
On the other hand, on what
grounds do you make the extreme claim the life has no
objective purpose without a God? With or without a God the
obvious perceivable purpose of life is to live; just as the
obvious perceivable
purpose of death is to die. Is "to live" not an
objective purpose to life?
ASAJ wrote:
The obvious purpose of life is to live? Explain to me the
PURPOSE of living to live! A circular argument that uses the
verb form of a noun is still a circular argument. It is the
equivalent of asking, "What is the purpose of eating?
Well, the purpose of eating is to eat." That is a
circular argument. It might be proper to say that the
purpose of eating is to LIVE. That would not be a circular
argument.
Even if we define living to mean 'experiencing life', what
is the PURPOSE of experiencing life? You are not even
beginning to answer the question of life's MEANING if you
think the answer is simply living.
You wrote:
In addition, is this not also
inheritably objective? Is not the objective purpose of death
to die?
ASAJ wrote:
It's inherently circular.
You wrote:
From my judgment, it seems that
you're are trying to add something pretentious to the
"objective" purpose of life; and then proceeding
to attempt to link its only resource as your God.
ASAJ wrote:
The bottom line is that purpose & meaning, in the
philosophical sense, cannot result from random chance
(random mutations) and natural selection. Ever.
If a hat contains 100 slips of paper numbered 1-100, and 7
of those numbers accidentally spill onto a table, what is
the meaning and purpose of those 7 numbers? There can be
absolutely no meaning or purpose. But if you design a game,
whereby certain numbers are selected to represent a winning
hand, only then do the numbers have a purpose and meaning
when they are INTENTIONALLY spilled from the hat.
This is philosophy, not rocket science, but you sure are
making this hard.
You wrote:
From my view point – the
objective purpose of life is to live. And it is true that
anything extending beyond that objective is then subjective;
including anything concerning your God that you are
attempting to add to this. Just as I see the purpose of
death is to die. I see no other objective purpose of death
than to die. Do you see something extra in the
"objective"
purpose of death as well?
ASAJ wrote:
No, I only see more circular arguments.
You wrote:
Further more, your notion that
purpose is "futile" without God – which is an
interesting argument to come from somebody who is trying to
pretend that life without God has not purpose.
ASAJ wrote:
From my perspective, it is you who are trying to pretend
that life has purpose. If there is no designer, you are a
spilled slip of paper with a number on it pretending to have
a purpose.
You wrote:
Have you then redefined that
God is the purpose to life? Is this what you are really
trying to say and you make up this deceptive farce on your
website to support this irrational and illogical claim?
ASAJ wrote:
No, I said what I mean and I mean what I say. That is not
what I have said.
You wrote:
I do understand where you are
coming from on your site. When I was a Christian, I used to
tote the same dogma and pretend my life had
"special" meaning because I believed in God. I
find this is what you are appearing to do on your site, as
well.
ASAJ wrote:
'Special meaning?' As an atheist, I at least
accepted the fact that life has no meaning, or about as much
meaning as the life of a colony of bacteria. If you think
that viewpoint is illogical, then you should know that I am
not alone in this view. Read what atheist Princeton ethics
professor Peter Singer has to say about the matter:
When we reject belief in God we must give up the idea
that life on this planet has some preordained meaning. LIFE
AS A WHOLE HAS NO MEANING. Life began, as the best available
theories tell us, in a chance combination of gasses; it then
evolved through random mutation and natural selection. All
this just happened; it did not happen to any overall
purpose. Now that it has resulted in the existence of beings
who prefer some states of affairs to others, however, it may
be possible for PARTICULAR (but not all) lives to be
meaningful. In this sense SOME atheists can find meaning in
life.
While Singer has reached the same conclusion as I have, that
Life without God is meaningless, he then attempts to say
that SOME life can have meaning.
Do you agree with Singer that life's MEANING AND PURPOSE
come about ONLY if an individual is living 'preferably', in
other words 'happily'?
If you agree with him, are you aware of the ramifications of
such a belief? It would mean that the only lives that have
meaning and purpose are those that are being lived in a
state of fulfilled preference! This is why Singer can
justify killing off any life that interferes with
preferences being fulfilled or existing in a state of
'unhappiness'. Also, Singer fails to take into account the
meaningful lives of well fed cows. Since the cows would
prefer being well fed and not abused, wouldn't that mean
that every cow that was not abused and well fed has a
meaningful life? Conversely, wouldn't that indicate that
every person who is suffering from chemotherapy and living a
life that they would not prefer over living a life without
cancer is living a meaningless life? Let me help you on this
one - yes, indeed it would.
Singer recognizes that without God life has no meaning. It's
too bad that he can't accept this. Instead, he has to find
meaning for his own life and so he comes up with this
pretentious dogma that puts him in the small percentage of
worthy humans that have a meaningful life.
You wrote:
If you need to believe in God
to believe that life has purpose, so be it. But I fail to
recognize any logical grounding for your claim. By my
judgment, you are either ignoring reality, being
purposefully deceptive, or lack logical/reasonable support
for your claim – which, of course, is why I am writing to
you – is to get this support – because your site failed
to provide it.
ASAJ wrote:
I fail to recognize any logical grounding for your counter
arguments. But I don't believe that you are ignoring
reality, you are simply attempting to explain it. And
I don't think that you are being deceptive, because I find
that you are making your remarks with sincerity. However,
and I am not saying this to be caustic, I don't think that
you understand certain principles of logic that would at
least permit you to see the logic in what I am saying. The
reason why I say this is because you frequently argue in
parallels, but you don't directly address the arguments that
I give to you. Also, you should have known that you were
making a big circular argument earlier.
Note
to Reader: The
final, fatal symptoms usually include demands for
definitions, accusations of illiteracy, etc.. Read on, IF
YOU HAVE THE GUTS!
In
his last e-mail, which, out of my mercy for things dead and
dying, I did not respond to, Jonathan went on to write:
I
write to you collectively and in parallel because I am not
trying to debate/argue with you as much as I am attempting
to understand you.
I'm
still not sure if you are deliberately trying to be
deceptive, but I have figured out that you, apparently, do
not understand the words you are using.
I
had suspected this from the beginning, but was giving you
credit because you are able to present you point at
intelligible levels. However, in your last response you
seemed to use the words "purpose" and
"meaning" as if they were interchangeable – thus
lending me to know that you do not understand what words you
are using and/or you are trying to add special/extra meaning
to the words.
Your
original argument from your site is that life has no
objective purpose without a God. In your last response you
seemed to pretend that there is some sort of legitimacy in
pretending that God could be objective. God is not a
definitive material object or something that can be shown to
exist without extreme bias toward it. God IS a subjective
basis for your case. God is NOT and CANNOT be an
"objective" premise for ANYTHING. God can ONLY be
a subjective premise; as it is you (and believers) who
believe in this God based on your perception alone.
I also do not
think you quite understand the word "purpose". A
purpose is a goal, resolution, determination, intention,
etc. When you use the word "objective" preceding
the word this means something such as "actual
resolution". And thus the notion that a God is required
to have an "objective" purpose (to anything at
all, including life) is unfounded, extremely biased, and
asinine.
However,
the word "meaning" is considerably different. An
objective "meaning" of life would be something
such as "The interval of time between birth and
death". However, the meanings you are, apparently,
trying to attach to it are not objective
"meanings". They are subjective, as they are
definitions added by your mind and are not absolute.
So
– the only thing I am left with to understand what basis
you could possibly be coming from is not that you are trying
to claim there is no "objective" purpose without a
God, but rather there is no "predisposed" purpose
without a God; which I (mostly) agree with.
So
is this what you are trying to claim? That there is no
"predisposed" purpose? Or are you trying to say
that there is no answer to the question "why is there
life?" without a God? That I would disagree with. But
then again, any answer to that question (with or without a
God) is purely subjective.
I
am trying to understand you; but your arguments, analogies,
and reasons are not making sense, given (at least) your word
usage.
As
far as my "circular" arguments – they are not as
"circular" as they are "simple and to the
point". This also let me know that you do not
understand what words you are using.
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