Moderator and groupies all playing out exactly what I posted: name-calling, slander, and censorship.

-You have not been censored. You have been rebutted.
-You have not been slandered, you have been rebutted.

You have not been told to shut up either.

You HAVE been told to present your arguements. This is NOT censorship.

You are not presenting arguements. All you’re doing is preaching.

As to picking apart our arguements, you’ve done nothing of the kind. Religious arguements and claims however when subject to any sort of test have so far been consistantly falsified.

Playing the presecution card is an old tactic and aside from being extremely lame, it’s one that we are wise to. It’s not as if you’ve presented anything original here. Everything you’ve said, tried or claimed, we’ve heard before. It was bogus coming from others and just as bogus coming from you, so please be so kind as to give it a rest.

Ariel, You asked me to explain how we evolved to do what you call “processing spirirual phenmena”.  I kindly took the time and put some thought in my answer to you.  You didn’t respond to it.  It is post #45 under the topic about a Human Moral Creed.

I fear you are not open to reviewing any answers that don’t support your perspective and chosen dogma.

Your sole mission appears to be to repeatedly try to ramrod your belief system onto others.  And part of your tactic seems to be asserting how rational you are and how irrational others are who don’t accept your beliefs. This mission and your approach cannot be effective, thus there do seem to be some irrational aspects to your continuing along the same lines,

TimB - 24 November 2012 10:03 PM

I fear you are not open to reviewing any answers that don’t support your perspective and chosen dogma.

Your sole mission appears to be to repeatedly try to ramrod your belief system onto others. 

Yeah. And he calls himself spiritual...

TimB - 24 November 2012 10:03 PM

Ariel, You asked me to explain how we evolved to do what you call “processing spirirual phenmena”.  I kindly took the time and put some thought in my answer to you.  You didn’t respond to it.  It is post #45 under the topic about a Human Moral Creed.

I fear you are not open to reviewing any answers that don’t support your perspective and chosen dogma.

Your sole mission appears to be to repeatedly try to ramrod your belief system onto others.  And part of your tactic seems to be asserting how rational you are and how irrational others are who don’t accept your beliefs. This mission and your approach cannot be effective, thus there do seem to be some irrational aspects to your continuing along the same lines,

Sorry, Tim, you are right in that I didn’t respond to your post #45. And thank you for taking the time to think about the ramifications of what I am saying to atheists.

Here are your arguments for natural selection producing a human brain that registers and responds to spiritual stimulation:

Ok, I’ll give it a go.  If you have ever observed other mammals closely, you could note that they seem to behave in ways that suggest that they experience emotions similar to that of humans.

Couldn’t agree with you more on that one.

1) Thus I suggest that our emotional responses are a product of natural selection.

Apparently so.

2) Humans like other animals also have the capacity to learn from experiences, but humans are somewhat unique in their development of very complex verbal behavior
3) Verbal behavior, by definition, requires a listener.  The listener can often be one’s self.
4) In learning through experience, it happens that what is most relevant to attend to becomes established
5) Natural selection has also prepared us to attend more closely to some things than others
6) Natural selection and learning through experience provides us with the ability to recognize patterns
7) This however, is not a perfect ability.  We often mispercieve and misinterpret, due to factors such as percieving what our learning thus far has prepared us to see, or over-focusing on one aspect of our environment, and due to the limitations and idiosyncracies ot the perceptual abilities that natural selection has left us with.

You must always remember that any human behavioral trait that produces schizophrenic responses to environmental conditions would never in itself be allowed to reproduce as you can’t survive if you are responding to things and events that aren’t there. We are here which proves that whatever we humans did in the past we were not responding inappropriately to survival needs which weighs against schizophrenia in human spirituality considering the enormous percentage of time and energy expended in religious activities, a pattern at least 40,000 years old. And not limited to the homo sapiens either. And I think you may even agree with me that it is not limited to primates either. What makes wolves and coyotes howl at the moon?

8) Humans with their complex verbal behavior are capable of producing a narrative that interprets their complex interplay of emotional experiences, and perceptions, hence the sound of the wind blowing in the grass, might be interpreted as a possible lurking predator, or simply as the wind blowing in the grass, or as the voice of God sending a message.

“or as the voice of God”?? That’s an illogical jump, Tim. You’re going from natural phenomena to spiritual ones without any explanation how that occurs. You really have to give an explanation how human beings came up with these spiritual forces in the first place since responding to invisible forces that aren’t there is schizophrenia and without survival value.
9) The particular theme of one’s interpretive narrative depends greatly on one’s personal learning history.

That’s the best I can do, off of the top of my head, I hope that it is enlightening for you.

You’re going to have to do better than that as you see I have shot down your argument as illogical. I’m sorry that you and all atheists are stuck with a failed philosophy but really, it’s your own faults for rushing to judgment far too early and for thinking you know it all when you don’t. Science doesn’t and no human being, including yours truly, can precisely predict the future which as progressive science shows continues to reveal marvels to increase our knowledge of the universe and ourselves in that process. Now, once again I’ve produced the arguments that destroy the atheist position so please stop accusing me of not doing so and just coming here to pull your chains. They do need pulling but it takes a theist like me to accomplish it as most traditional religious theologies are like atheism, fundamentalist belief is necessary: for theists it is to swallow irrational stories taken as real events. For atheists it is reliance on fellow humans who are as spiritually disabled as themselves plus reliance on technology to validate spiritual phenomena which runs counter to miraculous occurrences, i.e. they wouldn’t be considered “miraculous” if they were ordinary events subject to ordinary forces. In short, it’s just like quantum mechanics; observing the subject matter changes the whole scenario.

[Edited to correct color, as per the rules. dougsmith—Admin]

arielmessenger - 25 November 2012 01:20 PM

You must always remember that any human behavioral trait that produces schizophrenic responses to environmental conditions would never in itself be allowed to reproduce as you can’t survive if you are responding to things and events that aren’t there. We are here which proves that whatever we humans did in the past we were not responding inappropriately to survival needs which weighs against schizophrenia in human spirituality ...

(You can’t, by rule, use the color blue, perhaps you can change it to another color)

I wasn’t talking about schizophrenia, but you are in error if you think that persons with schizophrenia or the genes to pass it on, cannot ever survive to reproduce.

One of the things that I was talking about is that our perceptions are influenced by experiential learning.  For example, we can tend to see what we have learned to see. (Note: Look into optical illusions.)

arielmessenger - 25 November 2012 01:20 PM

TimB: “...8) Humans with their complex verbal behavior are capable of producing a narrative that interprets their complex interplay of emotional experiences, and perceptions, hence the sound of the wind blowing in the grass, might be interpreted as a possible lurking predator, or simply as the wind blowing in the grass, or as the voice of God sending a message.”

“or as the voice of God”?? That’s an illogical jump, Tim. You’re going from natural phenomena to spiritual ones without any explanation how that occurs. You really have to give an explanation how human beings came up with these spiritual forces in the first place since responding to invisible forces that aren’t there is schizophrenia and without survival value.

In your paradigm, you consider that there is such a thing as “spiritual phenomena” that are not natural phenomena.  That, I think, is a fundamental mistake.  Your confusion regarding schizophrenia and the idiosyncracies of our perceptual abilities, is also a serious mistake.  Our abilities to percieve, and to process our perceptions, is not perfect, but it has clearly been good enough to lead to our survival to reproduction.  (One might wonder why a god would have given us such imperfect abilities, in this regard, but it is not difficult to understand how the process of natural selection would have done so.)

Again, when you say “responding to invisible forces that aren’t there is schizophrenia and without survival value.” That is a patently untrue statement.  We respond to invisible forces all of the time and, most of us, are not schizophrenic.  We respond to smells, sounds, tactile sensations, all of which are not visible.  Perhaps, more importantly, we respond according to our experiential history (which is also not visible).

arielmessenger - 25 November 2012 01:20 PM

...You’re going to have to do better than that as you see I have shot down your argument as illogical.  ...

You really haven’t shot down my argument at all.  But you are quick to jump to the conclusion that you have.

TimB - 25 November 2012 03:34 PM

arielmessenger - 25 November 2012 01:20 PM

...You’re going to have to do better than that as you see I have shot down your argument as illogical.  ...

You really haven’t shot down my argument at all.  But you are quick to jump to the conclusion that you have.

Tim, you’re going to have to come up with something more to defend your views than misreading me. I don’t know how or why you
are focusing on your strawman argument that I never stated about schizophrenics themselves not being able to reproduce. Of course they
can. Commons sense should have informed you that I meant schizophrenia as a human community response is a non-starter, a community
of schizophrenics would hardly have long term survival capability and that’s the point I made. \

As for “spiritual phenomena” by that I mean spiritual energy that is certainly detectable by the human being experiencing it and no, it is not
“natural” at all because what natural forces that you list and erroneously describe as “invisible” when they are easily physically registerable in their effects
on people, e.g. your “smells” and “tactile sensations”. And again no physical forces I know of produce a consistent religious pattern of thought in human
beings. I have experienced spiritual energy and Message myself enough to know that when it bears a powerful spiritual Message that it definitely can
produce physical affects on the receiver. I have shaken when waves of spiritual energy flowed through me with new revelations or visions. Like Muhammad
I have sweated profusely when in one of these periods of powerful spiritual reception. And why, if it were merely a physical force would it produce revelations brand new to me and others, that still are right in line with a 4000 year old spiritual tradition? How does that work that out of the blue an atheist gets converted to belief in God and produces revelations in line with an ancient religious tradition?

arielmessenger - 25 November 2012 09:48 PM

Tim, you’re going to have to come up with something more to defend your views than misreading me. I don’t know how or why you
are focusing on your strawman argument that I never stated about schizophrenics themselves not being able to reproduce. Of course they
can. Commons sense should have informed you that I meant schizophrenia as a human community response is a non-starter, a community
of schizophrenics would hardly have long term survival capability and that’s the point I made…

It was you, not I that brought up schizophrenic responses and schizophrenia.  So if there is a strawman, you constructed it, not I.  Let’s look again at what you actually said:

“You must always remember that any human behavioral trait that produces schizophrenic responses to environmental conditions would never in itself be allowed to reproduce as you can’t survive if you are responding to things and events that aren’t there. We are here which proves that whatever we humans did in the past we were not responding inappropriately to survival needs which weighs against schizophrenia in human spirituality ...”

The very 1st words of my response to that, was that I was not talking about schizophrenia.  Thus it was you that initially misread my point.  Don’t be so defensive about “spiritual phenomena” being schizophrenic responses, when I never suggested that in the 1st place. 

Though, since you brought it up, some schizophrenics obviously do build a narrative around their misperceptions and mis-processing those perceptions. e.g., hearing voices and interpreting those hallucinations to be voices from spiritual beings, or having such intense feelings that they construct into a narrative of being Christ themselves.

But that is not the point that I was originally making, or wanted to make.
It is not necessarily a syptom of schizophrenia for someone who doesn’t understand that the wind is caused by the unequal heating of the earth’s surface, to have the conjecture: “Could the wind be the breath of God? And if so, could the sound produced by swaying of the grass and trees, be a sound meant for me, from God, at this moment?”  Then following that self produced narrative, the person could conclude that he was experiencing a “spiritual phenomena”.

arielmessenger - 25 November 2012 09:48 PM

...As for “spiritual phenomena” by that I mean spiritual energy that is certainly detectable by the human being experiencing it and no, it is not
“natural” at all because what natural forces that you list and erroneously describe as “invisible” when they are easily physically registerable in their effects
on people, e.g. your “smells” and “tactile sensations”...

OK, granted, that you meant forces that are “indetectable” instead of invisible.  But I gave an example of a natural process that is virtually indetectable: one’s personal experiential history.  Certainly an outside observer cannot know all of the forces that have impacted on someone during the course of their life and learning.  And any given individual, cannot be fully aware of all of the experiences that they have had in their life that leads to the production of one particular thought or another.

Yet learning by having experiences is a natural process and a product of natural selection.

arielmessenger - 25 November 2012 09:48 PM

... no physical forces I know of produce a consistent religious pattern of thought in human beings…

Please, you are simply not looking for such naturally occurring forces or you are in denial and unwilling to consider all of the physical forces that can and do produce a consistent religious pattern of thought in some human beings.

I am getting tired or I would list some for you.  Not that you would register them, anyway.

arielmessenger - 25 November 2012 09:48 PM

... I have experienced spiritual energy and Message myself enough to know that when it bears a powerful spiritual Message that it definitely can produce physical affects on the receiver. I have shaken when waves of spiritual energy flowed through me with new revelations or visions. Like Muhammad I have sweated profusely when in one of these periods of powerful spiritual reception. And why, if it were merely a physical force would it produce revelations brand new to me and others, that still are right in line with a 4000 year old spiritual tradition? How does that work that out of the blue an atheist gets converted to belief in God and produces revelations in line with an ancient religious tradition?

Humans have evolved with the capacities to have powerful emotions, to have internal self-dialogue, to recognize and look for patterns, and to come up with narratives that explain or consolidate all of these internal experiences and to make them fit with what they percieve outside of themselves, also.  Sometimes the narrative fits quite well.  Sometimes not so well, but they don’t realize it.

So, Ariel, quit repeating your unfounded and rudely confident assertions that you have “shot down” all logical thought that is counter to your particular belief system.

BTW, Ariel.  I am not a self-proclaimed genius, as you are.  My IQ is only a bit above average.  Yet, you have not “shot down” any of my arguments.  How can this be?

But Tim, I have. You have yet to produce examples of your “naturally occurring forces that produce a specific religious pattern and storyline. Just show me one natural force that can do this. This “answer” you are so attached to has the same faulty logic as does the “scientific explanation” for near-death-experiences” as merely chemical hallucinations and give ketamine as an example. Same problem: ketamine or any chemically induced hallucination doesn’t produce a specific hallucination that gets reinforced with more of the same type of information. I am a full veteran of the ‘60’s psychedelic generation and have a bit more experience with psychoactive drugs than most people and yet not a single experience under hallucinogenic influence ever produced the same hallucinations or any ordered pattern of meaning and this goes for everyone I know who experimented with mind alteration drugs. You can get a religious mindset under such drugs as LSD (I never did) but again what one person experiences won’t be the same as another and certainly won’t produce a “follower” message system following a specific type of hallucination. We would have seen this happen in the ‘60’s and it didn’t. Individual hallucinations and visions are the norm yet spiritual “hallucinations” run along specific story lines, like the ones I’m following with my visions and revelations, albeit much farther advanced into our times because 2000 years have elapsed since one of us Jewish prophesy bearers was active in the Christian tradition (several in the Jewish tradition—all failed messiahs, btw,—I don’t claim that of course but do claim prophesy bearing status because that’s the truth: I get religious visions and time will tell if they are going to manifest a new spiritual consciousness in the world besides yours truly. But again not to brag so much (e.g. my IQ which doesn’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things) as to counter accusations of another looney tunes which I may very well be but still there’s this stuff happening:  I’ve already established a spiritual record now in the Holy Land and in Native America. As you will find out in my book, The Aquariana Key, over 500 Nazarean Christians in Nazareth, Israel, at the end of their annual Easter Procession through Narareth honored me and the spiritual Gift God told me to make and bring to them as a Sign, and now there’s a new sacred Bundle in the hands of a new Native American Keeper of another Sign of White Buffalo Calf Woman’s return, a Northern Cheyenne of the Littlewhiteman clan (Jewish—think Little Big Man story which is true) so things are moving along in some spiritual direction. I don’t mean to be mean but I am here to defend the theist p.o.v. as a religious visionary who came from the place most of you do—i.e. educated minds that without religious experience just find the whole idea impossible to accept—God? Spiritual reality? Huh? That was me until “out of nowhere”...and 33 years later nowhere near to ever going back to the “without God” lesser mentality. You don’t go backwards in acquisition of knowledge if you remain true to the Spirit that guides us all, even the ones asleep at the wheel who need their right-brain hemispheres kickstarted into full functionality because you can only go so far with that straight line thinking that really ends up where we started.

But Tim, I have.

No you haven’t.

Here are some resources for you, all of which I expect you to ignore just like you did the last time.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

http://www.durangobill.com/Creationism.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy.html