Is this a blatant example of circular logic?

[Justin108]

[Replying to post 17 by Justin108]

Truth doesn't contradict truth; scientific truth is simply the correct understanding of the physical world. The bible is a book of truth and so by definition it won't contradict what is true. If therefore the bible touches on science (which it does rarely, but it does on occassion) but one interpretation contradicts what we know to be true about the physical world and the other doesn't, its not rocket science to know which interpretation is correct.

Logic,

JW

- Everything in the Bible is true
- If you find something in the Bible that is not true, it must mean that you interpreted it wrong
- How do we know you interpreted it wrong and that the Bible is not simply mistaken? Because everything in the Bible is true

[alexxcJRO]

Your fictional character has already changed his/her story. What was once 'the high energy being' has now become 'these beings'.
I suggest he/she goes away and gets his/her story sorted. Meantime, I will continue understanding that mine is the better one of the two.

I didn't changed the story. We still have energy beings. I just used only "beings" when referring to them.
It's not about who has the more better story. It's about who can show is speaking the truth, about who can substantiate the claims with evidence.

Care to provide some evidence.
In absence of evidence it's just he said she said scenario.

Because it stands up to reason and logic and so far there has been nothing which it has told me which I have since found to be false.
Not to say that it hasn't also used the occasional lie. But only in serving a purpose in revealing to me some irrational fears and belief systems which I had at the time. In those situations It was going along with my lies, which at the time I believed to be truth, in order to find opportunity to show me truth.

Like all relationships which evolve into solid sturdy ones, there is the need for trust in the initial stages and the trust evolves into an understanding that truthfulness is a necessary aspect of all solid relationship.

So I know because I have experienced it time and again. The Entity is who it tells me it is. Which is more than I have so far shared about that. It is even more than what I have so far shared about it. Smile

Are you able to give an answer to the same question on behalf of your fictional character ?
How does he/she know what the the high energy being conveys to him/her is the truth?

Will your answer be different or will it simply mirror my own?

Does the 'high energy being' consider itself to be the overall consciousness? If not, why not?

He/she too had a long relationship with these energy beings. They are who they say they are. They have been trustful in the past so he/she trust them to tell the truth now.

[William]

[Replying to post 100 by alexxcJRO]

I didn't changed the story. We still have energy beings. I just used only "beings" when referring to them.

You have changed your story. You started off with only one energy being and now there are, perhaps, trillions and trillions of them.

It's not about who has the more better story.

Yes, it is about the stories, and what inconsistencies are within the stories It is about good detective work. It is about amassing clues. It is about noticing when stories change. Stuff like that.
I have detected a change in your story and mentioned it. You have responded by denying there has been any change.

It's about who can show is speaking the truth, about who can substantiate the claims with evidence.

Oh the old 'demand for empirical evidence for theistic/philosophical claims' fallacy.

Care to provide some evidence.
In absence of evidence it's just he said she said scenario.

So good - we can downgrade the 'claim' category to being simple a 'someone shared a story' category. Sounds like a good option.

He/she too had a long relationship with these energy beings. They are who they say they are. They have been trustful in the past so he/she trust them to tell the truth now.

Riiiiight. How many of these energy being are there again?

[alexxcJRO]

You have changed your story. You started off with only one energy being and now there are, perhaps, trillions and trillions of them.
Yes, it is about the stories, and what inconsistencies are within the stories It is about good detective work. It is about amassing clues. It is about noticing when stories change. Stuff like that.
I have detected a change in your story and mentioned it. You have responded by denying there has been any change.
Riiiiight. How many of these energy being are there again?

There has been a misunderstanding.

Let's look to what I said:

"One can come and say too that he/she communicates with some high energy being trillions years old that created our universe and who told him/she that they live outside our universe as separate entities in other dimension. "
This is somehow in opposite to what you said."

I wrongly written "being" instead of "beings". I meant "beings". As you can see in the second sentence i use the "they", "entities" as in plural.
This mistake is in all posts for i copy paste things.
There is no change. Only a mistake in spelling.


The main argument is that some hypothetical someone comes to you and he/she says your world-view is wrong(no overall consciousness and other nonsense) for he/she is communicating with some energy beings responsible for the creation of the universe. He/she also points out
he/she too had a long relationship with these energy beings. They are who they say they are. They have been trustful in the past so he/she trust them to tell the truth now.

Oh the old 'demand for empirical evidence for theistic/philosophical claims' fallacy.

Q: Why are you straw-manning me again, huh?

I only said evidence.
Here is not the Theology, Doctrine and Dogma or Philosophy forum, is it?

The rules are clear:
5. Support your assertions/arguments with evidence. Do not persist in making a claim without supporting it. All unsupported claims can be challenged for supporting evidence.
viewtopic.php?t=6
5. Please avoid "preaching" and using the forum as simply a way to blast people with the gospel message. This is a debating forum, not a convenient place to overtly proselytize.
viewtopic.php?t=9741

Q: Do you not know how to read? Aren't these rules explicit enough?

[Justin108]

Oh the old 'demand for empirical evidence for theistic/philosophical claims' fallacy.

Making up fallacies now, are we? I'm not familiar with this one. Logical fallacies usually have catchier names.

[William]

[Replying to post 99 by Justin108]

Can you explain to me why you require a summary of the vast amounts of confirming and conflicting data I have sifted through?

So I can investigate whether or not your conclusion is rational.

Just to verify we are on the same page in regard to this:

My conclusion in regard to this is that I am in communication with a conscious self aware intelligent creative entity which inhabits the planet earth, using the form of the planet as a creative medium, and that this entity is responsible for the creation of biological life forms on the planet, through the process of what is called biological evolution, and divests an aspect of its consciousness into those forms, giving life to those forms through that process.

Is that the conclusion you are wanting the summery of, regarding the vast amounts of confirming and conflicting data I have sifted through and come to?

As you can see, the listing of various other explanations did not further Guy1's position. Regardless, does that make Guy2's position stronger? Is Guy1's inability to come up with alternate explanations justification for Guy2's belief that it was a vampire?

Your use of the analogy of unidentified noise and mythological critter in relation what I have thus far shared re the EE and my interactions with the EE are far too unaligned to be of any use, at least for how you are attempting to use them.

They are useful to me in understanding you as an individual and the position you hold.

You try to align through the analogy that my relationship and interactive communication over the decades with the EE is akin to 'hearing a strange noise' which I am also disturbed by and have sort the opinion of someone else about.

Your use of a mythological being from fiction is aligning the idea of GOD with mythological beings in that, GOD - like mythological beings - apparently cannot be proven to exist.

Your choice of mythological being is telling in itself as it shows that to you, the idea of GOD is like the idea of a bloodsucking fear inducing creature of the dark preying upon innocent victims.

From my own experience with the EE, such analogy cannot be any further from the truth.

Now I get that some people place the idea of GOD with mythological beings on the assumption that GOD apparently cannot prove to that individual that GOD exists. There are a few major reason why this is the case. For example:

1: The individual believes that GOD is a mythological concept but is not real therefore actually does not exist.
2: The individual has no interest in finding out for there self if that is actually the case.
3: The individual has an interest in finding out for there self if that is actually the case, but hasn't any idea how to go about finding out.
4: The individual vaguely thinks that if GOD were real, someone else should be able to show him/her that this is the case.

How do you know it's not simply your own thoughts?

I have already explained that. In the explanation it is obvious that my own thoughts are part of the process, and it is just like how someone else's thoughts can influence my own thoughts as interaction between the two entities happens, I can allow those thoughts to become part of my own thoughts - or not allow, as I choose.

"Time and again" implies repetition. So how is me asking your Earth Entity to read my mind a request to do something "time and again"? If this is its first time doing this, then complaining about doing it "time and again" makes no sense.

I will clarify. I was saying [in part] that time and again people expect to be able to use GOD as they choose, as if GOD were simply a tool of some kind, rather than a living, self aware, intelligent creative autonomous entity. Time and again this attitude about GOD proves to be futile.

"It's not that the Earth Entity doesn't want to do it... it just wouldn't like to do it"
- ok how is this any different?

See my reply above.

"I can predict the truth, but you'll just lie and say I'm wrong". Of course. More excuses.

1: You misrepresent me. I have not claimed to predict anything, truth or otherwise.
2: What I said wasn't an excuse. I was pointing out the holes in your rather poorly thought out way to scientifically test what you are calling my 'claim'.

[William]

[Replying to post 102 by alexxcJRO]

There has been a misunderstanding.

Let's look to what I said:

"One can come and say too that he/she communicates with some high energy being trillions years old that created our universe and who told him/she that they live outside our universe as separate entities in other dimension. "
This is somehow in opposite to what you said."

I wrongly written "being" instead of "beings". I meant "beings". As you can see in the second sentence i use the "they", "entities" as in plural.
This mistake is in all posts for i copy paste things.
There is no change. Only a mistake in spelling.

Great. Thanks for clarifying. There are these energy beings and in this case ONE of those beings has interacted with your fictional person and informed that person a few things.

Those things your fictional persona has been told by that energy being, conflict with what I have said about my interaction with the EE and what it has told me.

The main argument is that some hypothetical someone comes to you and he/she says your world-view is wrong(no overall consciousness and other nonsense) for he/she is communicating with some energy beings responsible for the creation of the universe. He/she also points out
he/she too had a long relationship with these energy beings. They are who they say they are. They have been trustful in the past so he/she trust them to tell the truth now.

The only problem I am having in relation to this, is that you admit your story is fiction whereas I am saying my story is truth.

You are not saying your story is truth, therefore I can reply correctly that your story is false.

Thus 'who's story is true' is that my story is true.

Do you agree that your story is false?

If so, there is no need to take this line of argument any further.

Not to say that I didn;t find your fictional story interesting. I am still interested in getting answers to these two questions.

1: How many of these 'energy beings' are there?

2: How do they know there is no overall consciousness?

3: Who created these beings?

Cheers

W

[alexxcJRO]

[Replying to post 102 by alexxcJRO]
The only problem I am having in relation to this, is that you admit your story is fiction whereas I am saying my story is truth.

You are not saying your story is truth, therefore I can reply correctly that your story is false.

Thus 'who's story is true' is that my story is true.

Do you agree that your story is false?
If so, there is no need to take this line of argument any further.

I assumed the he/she exists for the sake of argument.
Q: Wasnt that obvious? ](*,)


You dont want to argue, debate.
You dont want to present evidence for your claims even though it is explicit in the rules and guidelines:

5. Support your assertions/arguments with evidence. Do not persist in making a claim without supporting it. All unsupported claims can be challenged for supporting evidence.
viewtopic.php?t=6
5. Please avoid "preaching" and using the forum as simply a way to blast people with the gospel message. This is a debating forum, not a convenient place to overtly proselytize.
viewtopic.php?t=9741

Q: Why did you come to this specific debate forum if you just want to preach your made up nonsense?
Q: Why not go to Theology or Philosophy Forum?

[William]

[Replying to post 106 by alexxcJRO]

The only problem I am having in relation to this, is that you admit your story is fiction whereas I am saying my story is truth.

You are not saying your story is truth, therefore I can reply correctly that your story is false.

Thus 'who's story is true' is that my story is true.

Do you agree that your story is false?
If so, there is no need to take this line of argument any further.

I assumed the he/she exists for the sake of argument.
Q: Wasnt that obvious?

Just making sure. So then,there is no need to take this line of argument any further.

You dont want to argue, debate.

There doesn't seem to be any more reason to do so. You admit that you story is fabricated.

You dont want to present evidence for your claims even though it is explicit in the rules and guidelines:

I am quite happy to present evidence once it is established that my claims can be considered to actually be claims and can actually be scientifically tested. At the moment simple claiming something I shared is a 'claim which requires scientific evidence' is unsupported assumption.

5. Support your assertions/arguments with evidence. Do not persist in making a claim without supporting it. All unsupported claims can be challenged for supporting evidence.

As I have already pointed out, a number of questions were asked by Justin, inviting JW to answer.

The first question was:

"Can you perhaps describe how exactly God communicated with you?"

I replied: (Post 71)

I know your questions were to JW but I am always keen to answer such questions, so hope that you don't mind that I do.

I understand you were not directly involved in that process, but nonetheless, when invited to share ones perspective, and in doing so, one is then jumped on for 'not providing scientific evidence to support what is shared, that is called 'baiting' and can result in folk not wanting to share when asked to do so. Would you like to see that happen?

Also I have not 'persisted' in making any claim. As I said, there was an invitation, I chose to respond,- I shared and then the protesting began.

5. Please avoid "preaching" and using the forum as simply a way to blast people with the gospel message. This is a debating forum, not a convenient place to overtly proselytize.

Obviously I have not been preaching. I have been debating. I have not overtly mentioned anything outside the subject being debated.

In as much as my first mention of my relationship with GOD to do with the answering the questions that Justin asked in post 66 of this thread, i think it reasonable to be allowed to have answered those questions without it being called preaching, or without then having other demands for evidence to support my answers to those questions that I shared.

Also, in relation to the subject of GOD, "The existence of God can be discussed -- but is not assumed to be true -- or false.

However, it is not acceptable to request that God's existence be proved each time an issue about God is debated. In other words, 'First you have to prove God exists' is NOT an allowed rebuttal to any post. " Citation here


And finally,

16. Do not comment on any rule infractions made by others. Ignore any rule violations made by others and only respond by reporting it to the moderators.

Often people can overlook their own rule breaches whilst trying to argue that another has breached the rules. It happens. But I did say back in post 91:

I don't know what you are going on about quite frankly. I suggest that if you believe there has been a breach in the rules re my post that you report it to the mods.

Obviously you have chosen not to do so, and to continue making accusations that I am breaching forum rules.

I see no reason to carry on debating with you as you have demonstrated quite clearly that you quite easily overlook the obvious and come up short as a consequence.

Perhaps another time, we can try again.

Cheers

W

[Justin108]

So I can investigate whether or not your conclusion is rational.

Just to verify we are on the same page in regard to this:

My conclusion in regard to this is that I am in communication with a conscious self aware intelligent creative entity which inhabits the planet earth, using the form of the planet as a creative medium, and that this entity is responsible for the creation of biological life forms on the planet, through the process of what is called biological evolution, and divests an aspect of its consciousness into those forms, giving life to those forms through that process.

Is that the conclusion you are wanting the summery of, regarding the vast amounts of confirming and conflicting data I have sifted through and come to?

I don't want a summary of the conclusion, I want a summary of the evidence behind the conclusion.

Your use of the analogy of unidentified noise and mythological critter in relation what I have thus far shared re the EE and my interactions with the EE are far too unaligned to be of any use, at least for how you are attempting to use them.

What exactly are the flaws in my analogy?

You try to align through the analogy that my relationship and interactive communication over the decades with the EE is akin to 'hearing a strange noise' which I am also disturbed by and have sort the opinion of someone else about.

You do not understand the analogy. I am not comparing the experiences, I am illustrating that one can misinterpret an experience. As the man did in assuming it was a vampire, so is it possible that your assumption that your experience is the result of some sort of Earth Entity may also be a flawed interpretation of experience.

Your use of a mythological being from fiction is aligning the idea of GOD with mythological beings in that, GOD - like mythological beings - apparently cannot be proven to exist.

Are you claiming that God can be proven to exist?

Your choice of mythological being is telling in itself as it shows that to you, the idea of GOD is like the idea of a bloodsucking fear inducing creature of the dark preying upon innocent victims.

You are reading far too much into my analogy. If the idea of a vampire offends you, I will change my analogy and substitute the vampire with a pretty fairy. Is that better?

Once again, as with the challenge I issued before, you are avoiding addressing my rebuttals by making excuses. What the creature is (vampire, fairy, garden gnome) is utterly irrelevant. There is nothing wrong with my analogy. It illustrates my point perfectly. You just refuse to address it and instead use a myriad of excuses to avoid the question. This is quite telling.

How do you know it's not simply your own thoughts?

I have already explained that. In the explanation it is obvious that my own thoughts are part of the process

I asked how you know it is not simply your own thoughts? In other words, how do you know that all of your thoughts are not your own? Why do you assume some of your thoughts belong to some sort of external source?

and it is just like how someone else's thoughts can influence my own thoughts as interaction between the two entities happens, I can allow those thoughts to become part of my own thoughts - or not allow, as I choose.

Again, you are giving me conclusions instead of reasons. I ask how you come to this conclusion, and in response you preach to me about how you communicate with this entity. Are you finding difficulty in distinguishing rational argument from preaching?

I will clarify. I was saying [in part] that time and again people expect to be able to use GOD as they choose, as if GOD were simply a tool of some kind, rather than a living, self aware, intelligent creative autonomous entity. Time and again this attitude about GOD proves to be futile.

I see you trimmed over the part where I rephrased my request to you asking God to do it for you rather than using God.

"It's not that the Earth Entity doesn't want to do it... it just wouldn't like to do it"
- ok how is this any different?

See my reply above.

I did. Your argument still comes down to God not wanting to show itself.

"I can predict the truth, but you'll just lie and say I'm wrong". Of course. More excuses.

1: You misrepresent me. I have not claimed to predict anything, truth or otherwise.
2: What I said wasn't an excuse. I was pointing out the holes in your rather poorly thought out way to scientifically test what you are calling my 'claim'.

While I would not be able to replicate this experiment, it would be sufficient to confirm to myself whether or not your claims are true. But, again, your refusal is telling. Just like every other religion, you make grand claims without the ability to prove any of it.

[alexxcJRO]

Often people can overlook their own rule breaches whilst trying to argue that another has breached the rules. It happens. But I did say back in post 91:

Fair enough.
I have broke one of the rule.
It was not intentional.

I am quite happy to present evidence once it is established that my claims can be considered to actually be claims and can actually be scientifically tested. At the moment simple claiming something I shared is a 'claim which requires scientific evidence' is unsupported assumption.
As I have already pointed out, a number of questions were asked by Justin, inviting JW to answer.

The first question was:
I understand you were not directly involved in that process, but nonetheless, when invited to share ones perspective, and in doing so, one is then jumped on for 'not providing scientific evidence to support what is shared, that is called 'baiting' and can result in folk not wanting to share when asked to do so. Would you like to see that happen?

Also I have not 'persisted' in making any claim. As I said, there was an invitation, I chose to respond,- I shared and then the protesting began.

I dont care what you talk with other members.
And stop with the straw-man about me asking for scientific evidence.
I did no such thing.
I simply asked for evidence for your claims.

You have stated and asserted as being true that there are many entities(local GODS) part of an overall consciousness(overall GOD) through out the universe and that you communicate with one of these entities.

So please supply the evidence for your claims.