Originally posted by jaywill
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Also, I don’t assume that thinking rationally WILL lead me to the truth regarding the big questions since I am unlikely to have sufficient data
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1.) Do you consider "Is there a God?" one of the big questions?
2.) Do you as an atheist think you have sufficient dat ...[text shortened]... I think that you have a perculiar stance that the effect of a cause is greater than the cause.[/b]
…Do you consider "Is there a God?" one of the big questions?.…
No. There being a god wouldn’t solve any mysteries.
…Do you as an atheist think you have sufficient data to announce that there cannot be a God? ..…
It is not the presence of data that contradicts the god hypothesis that tells me that there is no god but the absence of data that supports the god hypothesis that tells me that the probability of there being a god is, although not quite zero probability, is vanishingly small.
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Is this then an admission that you have just gone from being an Atheist to being an Agnostic? ..…
No -because although for I know, the nature of the universe may be such that it may in fact be impossible for any type of thinking (whether rational or irrational) to be able to actually lead us to knowing the truth about answers to ALL these big questions, logic can at least allow me to dismiss the probability of some proposed answers to these big questions of being true to be vanishingly small.
…I think KM is saying that if you believe that the tool factory (if you will) of the universe is not rational how can it produce reliably rational tools?
How did a chaotic and irrational universe furnish you with rational tools? .…
I have yet to see clarification from him of exactly what he (and you) means by “irrational” in this context but, as far as I can tell, I think I have already given a very full comprehensive answer to that: -carefully read my 29 Aug '08 14:13 post on page one of this thread.
…I think that you have a peculiar stance that the effect of a cause is greater than the cause.
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Why can’t an effect of a cause be “greater” than that cause?
I think you mean that “a cause cannot be greater than its effect”?
-But ether way, it would be wrong!
Why can’t a cause be greater than its effect?
Have you got any reason or evidence to backup this claim?
How would you define “greater” in this context? -the word has ambiguous meaning -it certainly has no scientific meaning!
A tiny noise can set of a huge avalanche -I have no idea how you would define “greater” but I presume this would be regarded by you to be an example of an effect being "greater" than its cause?