And why did "he" only populate one planet in the entire universe with life.

While we are asking questions.. =)

You mean screaming at a wall?!

And how do you know if it has even shown itself to humans?

I always love hearing Minor Threat. Punk rock at some of it's finest!

Here's another that I think some people will like, and MANY will not. Oh well, that's life.

http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/l/leftover_crack/atheist_anthem.html

And yes, I know they use some religious symbols, it's all for shock factor.

"Hey man, you know they're ain't no such thing as leftover crack!" Them, sound clip at end of song. Good shit.

Oh, so we agree then that god is meaningless.  Good.

 I really do commend you folks for trying to engage Paisley in real discussion.  For at least a year now, I've found myself utterly incapable of arguing with a theist.  

I do have a question for the group, though.  Honestly, which of these do you think describes Paisley most accurately:

1) Too uneducated/unintelligent to understand his mistakes

2) Too stubborn/egocentric to admit his mistakes to himself

3) Too brainwashed/indoctrinated to see his mistakes

4) Legitimately clinically insane

I mean, it's been months and months, and Paisley has put forward the exact same argument over and over and over, and gotten the full range of articulate, well reasoned, and logically sound responses.  Clearly, something is gumming up the works, but what do you armchair psychologists think it is?

I'm not asking this question flippantly.  I've spent several months reading about the psychology of belief and trying to remember what I felt like when I was a believer.  It seems to me that it's crucially important for us -- humans, that is -- to understand the mechanics of stubbornly ingrained irrational beliefs.  If the issue is one of emotion, then we're barking up the wrong tree by pummeling the believer with facts.  If it's indoctrination, then something akin to psychotherapy is in order.  If it's bat-shit insanity, then you stamp a warning label on him and ask that sane people please not worry too much about what he says.

In fact, it seems to me that the only time facts and education work is when the believer wants to learn, and that's not very often.

The second one most definetly and possibly the first one thrown in.

I say this because I also got caught up in the "why something rather than nothing" and I wasn't uneducated and I'm [arguably] intelligent.

What broke me out of that line of though is my study of psychology, not physics.

Through the study of psychology I learned that I was rationalizing, falling to cognitive bias and that broke it better than any counter argument/evidence because I would just rationalize the counter evidence away. 

But then again I don't know Paisley's educational backround and will hazard a guess that it isn't spectacular. The second one could stop him from doing the first one, because the more "studying" he does, the more he'll re-enforce his bias because he'll just pick whatever data is convient and disregard the data that isn't.

Doing something over and over and expecting a different result = insanity.

Considering I have met well educated theists, whom outside the issue of god belief, I like, I'd say it is more along the lines of falling for the basic appeal to emotion, then back pedaling to prop up what one "feels" to be real.

It isn't one thing but a combo of many things that go into a person clinging to the patently absurd. The only way these people can be freed from this is the willingness of self introspection where they allow others outside their own bias, with no horse in the race, to kick the tires.

Instead what most people do is go with unproven "feelings" and "tradition" "appeal to popularity".

2) plus one too many courses in philosophy, too early in the morning before coffee after working the night shift at Mc'Ds

What jobs do philosopy majors usually find after college?

Doesn't matter. An educated fry cook is better than a redneck CEO who only knows how to make money and knows nothing about history or life.

Making money is one aspect of life, but it it is not the only aspect or the most important aspect in all contexts.

My boss(not the son, but the father) is a nice guy. But all he is good at is making money. I wouldn't trade places with him if it meant not knowing what infinite regress was.

I would not trade my education as poor as I am for the knowledge I have just to live in a mansion.

Labels mean nothing. Some people get lucky and some people don't. I don't fault people who have more than me. But I do fault them for thinking material things are more important than education.

I would argue that you need to be educated to be a CEO.  Not necessarily formally, but you don't just 'happen' into a position as a CEO.  It requires a skill set like any other job, but for the most part is considerably more demanding.  I would also think 'redneck CEO' is an oxymoron.

What follows is Paisley's painful struggle to weasel out of a trap that he initially sets up for himself. His response amounts to nothing more than unintelligible babbling. It is truly pathetic.

Off hand, and perhaps wrongly, I would say options 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 are all variations on self-justification.  I include 1 as self-justification, because the ignorance is almost always deliberate.  "Don't teach me anything that will poke a hole in my beliefs!"  Likewise, indoctrination often contains a dollop of self-delusion so as to better fit in with the group.

Paisley, to my mind, is "all of the above" including insane.  If I had to pick the most likely, "4. Legitimately clinically insane".  Someone really needs to adjust his meds.

I became a network engineer.

I never stated that I reject evolution. Where is that coming form?

It is emotionally satisfying to "get it." That's what it's all about. I'm sorry you never experienced an "aha" moment in your life. I feel your pain.

i "got it" plenty of times when i was younger.  i "got it" the first time i ever read the bible, then again the first time i read the quran, then again when i read meister eckhart, then again when i read chuang tzu, then again when i read shankara, then again when i read thomas merton, then again when i listened to astral weeks for the first time, ditto veedon fleece.  look at all that mess of gobbledy gook--none of it agrees with the other unless we reduce all of them to utter shadows of themselves (ok, we can leave van morrison intact).

then i REALLY got it the day i finally realised, "hey...this is all very poetic stuff...and funny how i always 'get it' when the weather's really pretty, or i just saw a beautiful woman, or i had a second or third beer, or a really stout water pipe."  i always "got it" because i was feeling really fucking good, which made it very easy for me to ignore troublesome things, like contradictions or ugly stuff in the bible when i was a hardcore christian, or glaring discrepancies between the religious traditions when i was in my pluralistic phase.  i found that the grunt of the rhenish mystics, the atman, wu-wei, etc., etc., were all nothing more than the delicious tripping of my own biochemicals.  i say "nothing more" only from the religious perspective, because in reality that for me was the most beautiful of all possibilities.

as a matter of fact, i'm "getting it" now as i'm reading rumi and the hasidic legends.  except now i'm equipped to know what "it" is: myself, without any mumbo-jumbo other than that incredible and perpetually unfolding mystery that biology gives us.  i honestly can't understand why that's not good enough for some people.

Interesting.  I said there were times I thought I had "gotten it" but been wrong.  I didn't even address whether or not I had ever thought I "got it" and been right.  It seems like you might have a problem with basic comprehension skills.

If Hamby's response means he's going ballistic, your responses to us must mean you've left the solar system

It is hard to believe that you "get it" given how often you backtrack, obfuscate and dodge.

If you actually "get it" this time around, perhaps you'd care to answer the question.

...or *did* I?  Dun-Dun-DUUUUNNN!!!

For those who don't understand Paisley's wonderful answer, here I have translated it point by point:

What Paisley Said:         God    is   ...we cease to speak...    ...for in that knowledge....

What it actually means:  God   =  -Blank, no answer given-      ( I really have no clue)

Impeccable logic!

you know, paisley, i have more than a passing familiarity with the phenomenon of mysticism myself.  i did my senior thesis work on the possible connections between rhenish mysticism as typified by eckhart, tauler, suso, et al. and the parzival of von eschenbach.  as a theist, i aspired to be a mystic (i never would have had the temerity to call myself one), and ultimately perhaps it was mysticism that led me to atheism.  (please don't start underlining, just listen; i don't give a damn if there's some parallel you can draw with denett here.  honestly, i've never read any of his work and i'd never even heard of the man until you mentioned him.  i've never read dawkins either.  or hitchens.  probably never will.  i don't like pop authors.)

anyway, what i'm driving at is that i've never read of a single committed mystic in any tradition who enjoyed ideological nitpicking, and certainly i've never read of one who actually sought out such trivial debates in order to stroke their egos.  true, there have been prophets (and it's debatable whether one can automatically identify prophets with mystics, by nm) who confronted authorities, particularly religious authorities, with revelations, but all you seem to be doing is quibbling over semantics in an effort to flex your intellectual muscles.  every mystic i've ever encountered--eckhart, tauler, julian of norwich, rumi, omar khayyam, chuang tzu, basho, shankara, sri ramakrishna, ramana maharshi, swedenborg, the baal shem tov, nahman of bratslav, francis of assisi, takuan soho, abraham miguel cardozo, etc., etc.--would have avoided such intellectual sparring like the plague, perhaps even to the point of fleeing it (or, in the case of zen monks like takuan, slapping you in the face).

i don't know what your idea of mysticism is, nor do i care, but i highly doubt you're studying under any guide or master or guru or spiritual director, because i'd be willing to bet they'd put a stop to this if they knew about it.  i recall one of leonard cohen's poems where he talks about roshi, his zen master, finding some correspondence between cohen and a famous rabbi discussing spiritual matters (not necessarily even debating, mind you, just discussing).  roshi immediately ordered cohen to break off the correspondence and write a letter apologizing to the rabbi for showing off.  i just think there's quite a discrepancy here, that's all.

anyway, as far as i'm concerned, i've only met one real mystic in my entire life, and it was in this forum.  it was the late (and dearly missed) i am god as you, and despite all his theistic euphemisms, he was by his own admission a committed atheist.

Yeah, your own personal brain fart. 

The terminally deluded, who just know their mind is infallibly able to know when they are perceiving direct truth...

Such hubris. Such over-weening pride in their ability to access true truth, and know that their direct perception is the 'real thing'.