[QUOTE=Raoul Duke]The power of the human mind is what is responsible for that smell thing, not god.[/QUOTE]

To make logical sense, please explain in deeper detail. For starters, what "power" are you talking about here?

I smell a heavy sense of speculation afoot (no pun intended)...

Self-awarness is one of the key biggest determinants of sentients. But since such debates tend to be oriented around the morality of killing such animals (oror in the case of abortion) AND I don't kill animals for fun, nor do I eat said animals in question, I find such a debate to be irrelevant (at least to me). Live and let live, I say...

*Note, abortion is a touchy subject and the answer is not cut and dry. My personal belief is that abortion is okay around certain circumstances AND it is early enough in the pregancy such that the fetus is not yet sentient.*

Where's the justice in being damned for an infinite amount of time based on your decisions in a finite amount of time? That's similar to sentencing a shoplifter to life in prison.. only.. infinitely more unjust.

The only god worth worshipping is a just god, and that means you can't be restricted to a condition for eternity.

You consider your belief in God to be logical, and yet your belief is based on a single experience of somewhat unusual sounds?... Even if you cannot explain something, simply assuming it then to be 'God' is by no means logical. Your 'personal experiences' are meaningless in a philosophical discussion, there's hundreds of ways we could explain the event without God (and by Occam's Razor, those with less assumed entities would be preferable) and no way we could verify anything. I have no more 'faith' in your hallucinations than I do in 'God'.



If Christianity is truth, will a Muslim or a Jew be accepted into heaven?

Even if that's a 'yes', there's still the hundreds of various polytheistic and animalistic religions of pre-Christian Europe, and the various druidic religions of Britain. And then there's the various polytheistic religions of India, for which Hinduism is largely an amalgamation of. And thousands of separate tribal religions of Africa.
Every single one of these may well be truth. Just because a religion is not commonly worshipped today it doesn't mean it is any less likely to be truth.



Perhaps not time-consuming, but you're spending your entire life, the only life you're ever going to have, 'believing' in something you know to be false just so that you might get a chance of impressing God in the afterlife. Living your life in preparation for an afterlife that doesn't exist - what sort of a life is that?



I'm not really aware of any good links exploring the arguments against God, though Wikipedia has a nice overview.

I usually like to open with the usual "If God is omnipotent, can he create a rock so heavy that he himself cannot lift it?". If the answer is either 'yes' or 'no', then God is unable to do something, and is not omnipotent. This is a nice little one that shows how a seemingly impressive statement is actually meaningless.
There's also the Problem of Evil, that's a popular one. There's a few like that, addressing the difference between what reality would be like if a God existed with these qualities and what reality actually is (like "If God is all-good and all-powerful, why do atheists exist?"). There's conflicts with free will, we've thoroughly exhausted that one in a previous thread not too long ago.

It is a shame that these arguments all exist as lots of seemingly unconnected arguments, I suppose the ultimate goal is grand unified atheism or something, a single argument outlining a fundemental conflict between all of them. It's what makes atheism interesting!
But these various arguments convince me that 'God' produces a whole lot of logical problems, all nicely avoided by the simple statement "There is no God".

I usually stay away from threads once they get into the deep philosiphical crap. But I just had to post this.

http://www.freewebs.com/oolon/SMOGGM.htm

It's arguments against the theory of God creating all species as opposed to evolution.

Well, it's not like you're not given plenty of enough warning a head of time. It's also not as if believing is a difficult task such that it excludes any body from being able to...

It seems to me that the only fair opposite to an eternal reward is an eternal punishment.



No, not believe. I believed in the exisitance of God well before this incident. The circumstances surrounding the event makes it far more then mearly coincidental. I was asking God for proof of existance and He gave it to me. It's logical because it follows a rational reasoning path. A claim that "personal experiences are meaningless in a philosophical discussion" tells me that you really don't understand what "philosophy" is. Everything you say, do, or think is based on personal experience. That's hardly meaningless.

If you really think there's hundreds of ways you can explain the event, I welcome you to take a shot at it. Considering how few things man made make higher-then-normal pitches and that it was certainly guided by an intellegence of some kind, will hold pretty solidly to 99% of any "explaination" you can think of (it's been 8 years, don't you think I would have found a way to explain it by now?). The statement that any explaination you come up with could not be "verified" is equally illogical in that if your explaination is meant to be logical, it could surely be varified through some simple experimenting.

As to the last sentence, I can assure you that I was fully aware and was certainly not 'hallucinating.' That's a great starter assumption, though...



Please re-read my post again. I, in no way shape or form, said that Christianity is the "truth", at least, no more so then any of the other religions. If anything, I said that Christianity is just as "right" for a Christian as Buddism is to a Buddist. So the question is wrong.



Again, the question was wrong to begin with which makes this quote pretty irrelevant. However, again, they were just as much "right" as the others. You can make your own religion and it be just as much "right" as long as you include the basic principles common in all religions (in fact, this is how most, if not all, religions were created).



How are you "spending your entire life" if you've admited that it's not time-consuming? Your not making any sense...

And, you don't "Believe" in something if you "know it's false." That's contridictive...

If a study was to be done (if it hasn't already) I'm sure it would find that strong religious followers live longer, happier, healthier, lives then the non-religious. There are deffenite imediate mental and health benifits to having a religion (such as less stress which has an effect on all three of the aforemetioned attributes).



1st - "If God is omnipotent, can he create a rock so heavy that he himself cannot lift it?" What a rediculous question if the only responds is "yes" or "no". What you've really asked is two questions in one sentence. The answer is "He could create a rock of any size or weight and still be able to lift it...He is omnipotent, after all..."

2nd - "If God is all-good and all-powerful, why do atheist exist?" Free will is the obvious answer, which goes back to faith. If you were an omnipotent God and could force your creations to love and adore you, would you? If the answer is "Yes" it shows exacty why your not qualified to be a god. :p If the answer is "No" then you understand why God allows us to have free will. He wants us to Love and Adore him because we want to, not because he made us to. If you saw a beautiful women. Would you want her to love you because you made her or because she wanted to?



If it weren't for the fact that I can shoot down any Atheist arguement presented. Atheist are young children, ignorant in the intrigate details of the world, the universe, and of God. But like young children, they take something very simple and turn it into something more difficult then it ever was in the first place.



Except that entire statement is flawed. God doesn't produce any logical problems. He created the universe logically and as such the solutions are logically available...you just have to look. Unfortunately, most Athiest are unwilling to look hard enough.

Do you know why the Athiest fail? They try to hard to disprove that God exists. That's illogical. They have no ground to start from, just a simple claim "We cannot prove God exists, thus he does not exist." The problem with that is None of them have tried to prove that God exists. They use the term We to describe the human race when it is they who have failed in a quest for proof. In truth, the blame lays with the lack of knowledge of the Human race. But this, in it self, is hardly grounds for making the claim that we can not prove that he exist. How can we "prove" anything does or doesn't exist unless we have all knowledge pertaining to it? For instance, Columbus believed that sailing West across the Atlantic would be a shortcut to India. However, the majority of people still believed the world was flat. So tell me, how then, is it justifiable for them to make the claim "there is no land across the Atlantic, because the world is flat and you'll sail right off the edge?" They offered their current scientific knowledge at the time as "proof" of this. We all know, however, that it was proven quite false...

A better statement for Athiest to make would be "We can not scientifically prove that God exists. This is not to say that we deny the possibility that he could exist beyond the relm of our scientific knowledge." Now THAT would be the statement I would expect from logical, rational, human beings...wouldn't you agree?

For me it's not just difficult but impossible to believe in God. I'd never believe in god without tangible evidence. Which isn't gonna happen due to the nature of faith.



Personal experiences do mean nothing in a debate. Just because you think something happend and then concluded that it must have been god means nothing. Especially when you were specifically looking for a sign. What if the sun had come out from behind a cloud? Would that also have been the sign. Anything could have been that sign. It's like when people connect their horoscopes with things that happen to them. Just because there's a vague connection means nothing and holds absolutely no weight in a debate.



Ringing in your ears? There are a lot of things that can cause it. Perhaps it was some kind of aircraft? Of course these explanations are way too simple.



What? You're making huge assumptions. If there was a study like this, whatever the result there are so many factors which can contribute to happyness, health and lifespan. Even if there was a fair study I can pretty much guarantee it will be even. Just because you cant cope without your god doesn't mean others can't.



You completley missed the point here.

By definition god can do 'anything' if so he can make a rock so heavy he cannot lift. However, if he does he cannot lift the rock and ceases to be able to do 'anything'. If he can still lift the rock he has failed in making a rock so heavy he cannot lift it and is not omniscient.



Except you haven't so far, you've just reworded the question and answered that.
Funny that you consider atheists to be like young children. I have the same feeling towards theists. Children believe in fairy tales blindly without questioning the truth of them. (Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, etc) so do theists.

Athiests aren't making things more difficult than they are. We're looking at the facts presented rather than beleving the first thing someone else tells us is true.




God creates a lot of logical flaws. Mort pointed a lot of them out in the last thread and people seemd to dispute most of them.
http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?t=34407&page=4#post519152



Because of Gods definition he cant be shown to exist. If God is shown to exist, god is no longer God because he no longer requires faith to believe in and so cannot exist if he's been shown to. (Theres a nice paradox for you.)

It's not "we dont believe in god therefore he does not exist." The claim is more like.. "We don't need God to explain anything anymore therefore he does not need to exist." although it's more elaborate than that. It's not possible to show that god does not exist. As you say, it's illogical. It is however possible to show that God is not needed and that if god were to exist the universe wouldn't be like it is. (See the link in deadmans post earlier in the thread for that type of arguement). Then thare are the logical arguements which we've discussed already.

The conculsion is there is no God. You say Atheists complicate things. If you try to explain that god exists but and the universe is like it is because... then you're complicating things by adding God and inventing reasoning for things that have no real reason.



That's an agnostic view. Not an athiest one.

He points out a lot logically flawed arguments.

You're confusing a priori arguments with a posteriori arguments. These arguments concerning the contradictions of qualities are only a priori (and so do not concern physical evidence).

But even if you did disprove all of them, we'd only be back at agnosticism. There's still the rather nagging question of "Why believe in God?" (beyond your Pascal's Wager reasoning).



I don't think you understood the argument.

"If God is all-powerful, can he create a rock so heavy that he himself cannot lift it?"
Obviously, the answer is either 'Yes' or 'No'.
If the answer is 'Yes', then he can create the rock but he cannot lift it, so he is not all-powerful.
If the answer is 'No', then he cannot create it, so he is not all-powerful.


There is a similar argument concerning omniscience.
If God is all-knowing, he knows everything. God knows that 2+2=4. But because God knows everything, he also knows that 2+2=5. He also knows that 2+2=6. And that 2+2=7. He knows an infinite number of statements that are false, and because he knows that 2+2=5 just as much as 2+2=4, he cannot discern them (if he could, he wouldn't know that 2+2=5, so wouldn't be all-knowing). So he doesn't really know anything at all (either that, or everything that God knows is entirely false, because there's an infinite number of false statements but only a finite number of true statements).


The purpose of these arguments is to outline that these qualities are meaningless unless they are bounded by logical constraints (like "God knows all that is true" or "God is all-powerful as long as he is not logically contradictory"). If so, it means that 'God' is not the highest power, logic is the highest power that bounds God (if it wasn't, then he wouldn't exist, because existance is a logical property).



Right, and I'm far more interested in why you believed in God.

This personal event may have been thoroughly significant to you, but it is meaningless to me.



...well, apart from those that live in miserable war-torn countries ravaged by religiously justified violence (see Africa), or those living under intolerant and oppressive regimes (see Saudi Arabia), or the millions and millions of people killed in religious conflicts throughout Europe over the last milennium.

One of the key reasons why Europe (and by extension America) has the living standards that it does is because of its value of secular rule.

Actually i just put omniscient when i meant omnipotent My post was right apart from that.

That is most unfortunate.



I disagree. Again, personal experience includes your entire knowledge for which you must use in a debate. Everything that has ever happend to you lends some significant direction in your way of thinking and thus the side you take in a debate.



No, I really wasn't expecting anything. If it had been anything else, I probably would have blown it off. As I've said before, I've been trying to disprove it for 8 years now. It has still held.



- To intellegent in musical design to be ringing in my ear. This would also eliminate an aircraft or any other machine that would construct consistant vibrations (sound waves).



You missed the point completely. It has nothing to do with living with or without god, but rather learning from what the Bible (and other religions) teach you. Stress (from worrying) is the most prominant self-lessons to be learned. See my reply to Mort's comment on this for more...



No I didn't. See below.



Religion isn't about Blind Faith. Those who truly have faith believe on a level far beyond "Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy." Words can not describe that level of faith. To that end, it doesn't even matter if there truly is a god or not (even though I know better).



Except that many Athiest follow other Athiest that are sevearly ignorant and misinformed...such as Mr. Wrong that Firefox adored so much.



Okay...so Mort thought he had found logical flaws that God creates, yet other people disputed them. How is this helping your side of the debate?



Erm, Gods definition?

I don't think you understand Who or What God is. The statement (paradox) you described doesn't even apply because it simply isn't so.

God could (and does) still exist even after showing himself to exist. In fact Jesus did just that. Visual, living proof that God exists. Beyond that, let's take Jesus back out of the picture. Why is it that you believe (in a very misinformed way) that God couldn't exist because he revealed himself to us? You're trying to tie "Faith" to the physical existance of a being? That makes no rational or logical sense...



Your attempting the establish that we 'created' God (or gods) to explain how things work. That's terribly misinformed of you. While God (or gods) have long since been used to "explain" occurences, it has never been documented as such (aside for maybe in Greek Mythology or in Indian Tribes who believe each god controls a different aspect of nature). We've already established that religous texts aren't meant to provide scientific answers. On the (assumed) point that we need God to exist, it's a bit rediculous. God plays a non "hands-on" role in the universe. We haven't needed God to exist since he started the Big Bang. So, your entire position on this point is flawed. Though I'm still interesed in you "showing" us how "if [a] god were to exist the universe wouldn't be like it is."



Do see how quickly your conclusion is reached? The second part of this quote is irrelevant due to my responds to the last quote.

[quoteThat's an agnostic view. Not an athiest one.[/QUOTE]

How do you figure?



I think your confusing yourself. It's irrelevant. My statement stands. If you don't understand how it applies, I'm sorry. I tried to simplify it for you the best I could.



The problem with Athiest is they ask this simple question and expect a simple answer. While the answer is simple, it begs a more complex answer to thoroughly answer it enough to satisfy an Athiest. This is when an Athiest decides to dismiss it because the answer was not simple enough.



The problem with that is that your attempting to "force" a finite quantity to an infinite being. It's a deliberate paradox and I could think up quite a few of them myself. This can be done in Math too, are going to refute the logic of Math as well?



Erm, that didn't even make sense. He knows that 2+2=4 is a true statement and 2+2=5 is a false statement. Again, the design of the question is flawed...even more so then the first. This time you're playing a wording 'paradox' and is no more logically sound no matter how you try to play it off.

I'll break these rediculous, ignorant, statements down if you absolutely need me to, but I'd rather let you "scape by" on this one and continue on before you demonstrate just how foolish your claims really are...



Except that our logic is yet bounded by our finite degree of knowledge and the logic surrounding the existance of God is bound by his infinite degree of knowledge, thus the logic surrounding the existance of God is infinitely greater then ours.



Because I could see the good works being done in His name all around the town I grew up in. At the time, rather or not he truly existed was irrelevant to me.



It wasn't suppose to have any significance to you...



Are you suggesting that these are the only people in the world that get stressed out? Are you saying you've never been stressed out over anything? A test perhaps? Location, Race, Age, Size...all are irrelevant.



Irrelevant. There are tribal members in Africa that live almost barbarically and yet have a longer life expatency then we do. These people live, breath, and (yes) eat their religion. Do you really think that their religion has no bearing on their health? Buddiest Monks, are another fine example of this.

Unfortunate? Yes. still invalidates your point too. I can tell you i'm not the only one who shares this view either.



No. Personal Experience has next to nothing to do with what you know. For example. I know the world is round. But not from a personal experience. Personal experiences are subjective and only matter to to the person in question. Objective arguements hold much more weight in debate because they're unbiased and rely on observations rather than experiences.



I fail to see how religion can relieve stress any more than any other relaxing activity. Tai Chi or yoga for example.



And people know they saw the loch ness monster or were abducted by aliens. Or those who just know the moon landings never happened. While religion isn't about blind faith, belief in God is and always will be. Whether you think you know there is a God or not has no bearing on whether God actually exists.



Sorry, worded that badly. While people disputed some, they diddnt even touch some of the arguements and none of them we're really shown to be wrong.



Once God shows himself to people he's taking away their free will to believe in him. (This is an arguement i've heard from christians explaining why God doesnt just show himself).




So what exactly is the point in God if he doesn't have any affect on the universe?



I was referring to creationsim and the fact that if we were designed then things would be more efficient.



However, the conclusion that God exists is never reached.



Because an Athiest believes there is no god. An agnostic believes there isn't enough evidence to decide either way.



So what is the simple answer? And what is the more complex answer? I've ytet to see either answered.



The problem here is that you're redefining the word logic. Try to answer the question without changing the question completley. If logic does not apply to God then there is no logical reason for God to create the universe.



Yet another subjective point.



They also live a healthier lifestyle than us. No McDonalds, regular excersise. Coincidence?

You're completely missing the point, Bevvil. If our existence is infinite, then in 500 quadrillion years, this life will be an insignificant speck (non-existent, really) to us then. Is it really fair to be punished forever for something that practically never happened?

Theres not such thing as infinite. When you die, you die.

Well, they can both be correct.

God creates an object too heavy to lift...but this is given God's current state. Objective 1 accomplished.

God in the current state can not lift the rock, therefore uses powers for a boost in strength enough to lift the rock. Objective 2 accomplished.

Still all-powerful.

My thought is, if you can't prove to God in this infinitesmally small "speck" of life that you deserve an eternity of happiness, why should He give it to you?

And perhaps you forget, your actions affect others... a few specks could potentially change the whole world. Thus, your speck of life would hold more weight on the events that follow.

Also, what we think is fair is not necessarily what God thinks is fair...

He gave you a chance -- this life. If you mess up, you go to purgatory for a "while" (if there's any sense of time in the afterlife). I like to think that God is quite generous (being all-loving), and that if you live a generally good life you will most likely go here and not hell.

Of course, for the people who really fork up, then yeah, probably hell for them.

[QUOTE=IRG SithLord]Well, they can both be correct.

God creates an object too heavy to lift...but this is given God's current state. Objective 1 accomplished.

God in the current state can not lift the rock, therefore uses powers for a boost in strength enough to lift the rock. Objective 2 accomplished.

Still all-powerful.[/QUOTE]


Except now the object isn't so heavy god cannot lift it.

Doesn't matter. It was at the time the problem was proposed.

Can God do something He can't do?

If I were to ask you to have sex with me, would your answer be the same as the answer to this question?

No, He cannot do something he cannot do.

I can continue in one of 2 ways....

1) But since there is nothing he cannot do to begin with, the second half of the question is invalid, void, nonexistent... it's like dividing by 0 -- it just doesnt work

2) Since He is all-good, God is not capable of evil; therefore, God is not capable of doing something that is evil. Thus, God can still exist and your question is answered with a solid answer


conclusion 1 can also be drawn for the rock argument -- there is no rock possible that God cannot lift, so how can God create something that is not even possible to begin with? Or put it this way, how is God supposed to contradict himself if he is free of error/flaw? (not to mention, as Bevvil said already, that you're placing a finite quality on an something infinite.... that's really the number 1 problem with the rock argument)

Those last 2 posts just confused the hell out of me.

...I'm sorry?
Actually, you're welcome :p

The power of the human mind is evident. Just look at placebo drugs...not only can they make a person feel better when the symptoms are in their mind, but taking a placebo has in some cases shown to actually PHYSICALLY HEAL the ailment compared to no placebo. The human mind is really an incredibilty powerful thing...and the sudden return of the smell thing is not surprising at all. Their could easily have been a momentary lapse in the brain where the person thought, or rather was SURE that they could smell again...but why do you automatically presume god? It's like in ancient times...anything strange happens it's "GOD DID IT"...Now we can explain all these things with science...they are not random miracles or events but rather logical events that occured due to the natural process of nature. Personally I would not trust personal experience on alot of things. A person is not an objective video camera on the world...they are a SUBJECTIVE being that is capable of manifesting detailed hallucinations, not just visual but in all senses. People are hardly reliable when it comes to things like this.

ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY WANT SOMETHING LIKE THAT TO HAPPEN SO BADLY. Every religious person is dying for some kind of personal miracle or sign from God...when someone wants something so badly, it's no mystery that they often find somekind of confusing event to attribute to the divine. Being in church and praying especially makes them 10x more vulnerable to something like the smell thing.

-True story: a woman in a concentration camp (Bergen-Belsen) took her newborn's loaf of bread from him, thus ensuring his death, and prolonging her own life for just a little while.

***Is this woman bad? Was this a sin? Was this honestly free will?

NO. It's obviously much more complicated than this - she's a biological organism, low on Maslow's hierarchy, who went into survival mode and took the damn bread. It's not like she didn't love her son, or that she was a bad person who 'chose' to do what she did. She just did. Absolute free will is an illusion. An entity who throws people in hell for eternity based on just that is not a good entity.

-A man with the bad luck of being born with a genetic predisposition towards homosexuality ****s another guy in the anus.

***Is this man bad? Was this a sin? Was this honestly free will?

NO. Certain people are born with a genetic predisposition to eating more. Why throw people into hell because they have a bigger craving for food? Absolute free will is an illusion. An entity who throws people in hell for eternity based on just that is not a good entity.

The notion of 'free will' and 'choice', etc... is extreme mental laziness. Psychology went through a period of acknowledging that different systems (different aspects of nature and nurture) have an effect on the end behavior, which psychologists called 'interactionism'.

Nowadays that notion is thrown away - nowadays psychologists acknowledge that the different systems not only have an effect or are in causal relationship with the end behavior, these systems also effect eachother in endlessly numerous and complex ways. ('transactionism')

Absolute free will DOES-NOT-EXIST. You were born in environment X, so with immense probability you accept religion Y. You were born in environment X, so through differential association you develop behaviors and cognitions adapted to that environment, social group, economic class, ... PERIOD. STATISTICALLY PROVEN DEBATE OVER. Absolute free will DOES-NOT-EXIST. What we call 'choice' is a choice we make within the frame set by genes, physiology (people with a symmetrical, attractive face for example elicit responses that drastically affect who you are. Choice ), etc, etc etc etc ad infinitum...

On the subject of rationality, just one question.

Certain apes put ther arms around the shoulder of an ape who had just been attacked by another ape. (interestingly, only the apes who are closest to us in evolutionary taxonomy )

These apes can recognize themselves in the mirror. They can use tools and can learn their children sign language.

Is this rationality? Why not?

We're not 'better' or 'above' animals. We are animals. It's not a binary distinction - the irrational - rational continuum is just that: a gradual non-discrete continuum.

Know what would be a sign of rationality and intellectual maturity? Realizing that we're animals, like all the rest, not better or worse, just differently adapted.

Excellent post! Just one little thing...


Surely 'non-discrete continuum' is redundant?

Yeah I know, just wanted to hammer it in so people got it for sure.

If you're mentally capable to make a choice, it is absolute free will.... she was impaired by hunger, so her choice was not absolute free will, because she was not able to reason; her reasoning ability was silenced by her instinct. That does not make it right for her to take her child's bread, however, but it is not necessarily a sin either, because she did not act of her absolute free will.


Nice copy/paste there.... And on the contrary, yes, this man DID have absolute free will -- there was nothing forcing him to screw the other guy (e.g. gun to the head).
And don't say his homosexuality played the role of overshadowing his mental process... there IS a thing as self control. If there weren't, we'd be raping girls left and right most likely.



So people in a drunken slum of a society cannot be college graduates, because they are influenced by their environment? I won't deny that your environemt doesn't influence your decision-making, but it doesn't DETERMINE it. Your environment doesn't take away your rationalizing ability, and thus does not take away your free will, your free choice, to excel at life, rather than get wasted and fall into a potato patch in your backyard at 4:00 in the morning (Foamy reference!!)

Also, if absolute free will does not exist, you cannot justify getting mad at me for posting what i think/have been taught because I don't have a choice to not post it -- I can't be held responsible for what I do because I have no control over it.


I wouldn't consider that good/strong rationality, because they are probably only mimicing the behavior of the humans who taught them.

Unless a wild ape learns how to use a screwdriver, without observing humans, I believe animals hold little-to-no rationality.

And besides that, you couldn't sign to an ape "build a chair" and expect him to pull it off, even if you allowed it to examine the final product. I'm talking about a very simple chair, too -- no finish, fancy architectural designs, etc, just wood and nails

Show me where I said humans were above animals, then you might have an argument.
No, we are not more perfect than animals... humans just have some different characteristics.

And realizing that we have a significantly greater brain capacity than animals would also be a rational thought... one of those aforementioned separating characteristics between humans and other animals

In Catholic moral teaching the standard is the human conscience. It is not a sin if the person does not believe it is a sin. This teaching is often downplayed because it is easy to misunderstand. A person's conscience can be wrong, meaning that your conscience doesn't determine reality, but it plays a role in whether an action is a sin or not.

It is the Catholic's duty to do one's best to have an informed conscience. As a child I may not know that stealing is wrong, but the pain it causes those around me, etc., should prove in my mind that it is wrong and shouldn't be done. Sin is often it's own punishment, as proof that it is wrong. Once a person realizes that something is wrong and does it anyway, that is a sin. He or she saw reality, and decided that he or she didn't care. Essentially a person must be true to his or her own sense of integrity.

There are many things that can impair this ability to determine right from wrong, but what matters is what goes on inside your head, and that is something only the individual and God know in Catholic Morality.

If you've ever heard of Christian Anarchism, it's Catholic form is heavily based on this principle.

A person from a drunken slum of a society who becomes a college graduate does so because they have a genetic predisposition to be more ambitious, and/or because they have some positive influence(s) in their life.
If we define free will as being the ability to make decisions based on one's own cognitive processes, you must keep in mind that cognitive processes are causal, and each thought and decision is caused by a previous thought, an outside influence, a genetic predisposition, etc. This flow of causation begins outside of one's mind.



http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/crow/ Is this good enough for you?

That crow thing is interesting... but it's going to be hard to disprove that humans are still uber-much higher on the rational scale, or else your dog could be going to college with you.

[QUOTE=Bounty Hunter 4 hire]stuff on conscience[/QUOTE]
Ooops... I forgot all about conscience...

Who's trying to disprove that? We are just trying to make it clear that although human's are much more intelligent, it's not hard at all to see how we could have develops through evolution from animals...which is exactly what happened..We aren't somehow "the chosen ones" or whatever..

Just an observation since I notice the concept of rational thought being equated with a 'soul,' how many other animals commit 'crimes' against members of their own species, so to speak?

What seems to separate humans from other animals, as I see it, is the concept of right and wrong. While we are shocked at a person who does not care about these things, we see nothing odd about an animal that fights another to the death over a mate. In the same way a human child does many things that would not be tolerated of an adult because it is understood that a child doesn't understand.

Animals don't seem to have a need for a system of 'justice' or prisons or anything of the like, because it would seem that animals don't really have aberrations in their societies, beyond those that occur from disease (like rabies) or other illness. In human societies there are many that don't follow the standards set by society. One would think this is because, for some reason, they don't have to.

While with other animals the one that goes against is the exception, in humans it's almost the rule. In Thomas Hobbes' writings on society, he notes that you can't count on people to do the 'right' thing or act out of general human interest, but you can always count on the darker human motives.

Of course that also implies that we know what animals think, which really isn't the case.

I don't know, when you look into interactions of social animals, you'll see that they have complex social structures. Lions will often kick out individuals from the pride for various reasons, which would probably constitute a 'justice' system. It isn't only humans that have realised the evolutionary benefits of living in social systems.

I think a better question is when did humans become 'Man'? Homo sapien? Homo neanderthalensis? Homo floresiensis? Homo georgicus? Of course all of these distinctions are fairly arbitrary, and it rather a continuous spectrum, so where do you draw the line between 'animal' and 'human'? When did humans become human?

As for animal societies, they certainly exist, and there are certainly aberrations, but I was just noting, perhaps incorrectly, the disproportionate scale on which human society seems to contain aberrations.

As for 'souls,' In reality if it's some inner working of the mind, you really don't know for sure. I don't know what's going on in a dog's head when it decides not to pee on the floor, and it might be standing right in front of me. When you start talking about when in the human evolutionary stage did a 'soul,' which is murkily defined, enter the equation, you wouldn't know unless you had a member of the species to observe, and even then we could probably have the same debate over it's 'soul' as we could over a dog's.

If you look at biblical creation as largely metaphorical and allegorical, the only way I think you could reasonable look at it, when in the evolutionary chain this soul occured doesn't seem to have been important enough to mention.

I also forgot to mention. I think it's also considered dogma that all humans must have descended from two, as it's the foundation of a lot concerning original sin. That's probably hardest to buy of the three.