But would it not at the least be evidence of the existence of angels? Angels would be supportive evidence to the existence of God as commonly described by many religions. The atheist denies the possibility that your credible friend can see angels or God for that matter because by definition they are impossible to exist.
The atheists…aka represented by Jon in this forum do claim perfect knowledge. He claims that he knows positively that God or anything supporting evidence of the existence of God can not exist either.
And if millions of people have experienced something miraculous why are they by definition liars or lunatics?
Can’t you accept that some people have experienced things for which you have no answer and that doesn’t make them a liar or insane as is assumed by your atheist doctrine?
The atheist asks for evidence of God and then when evidence is provided claims it doesn’t matter what the evidence is because God can not logically exist.
No, it is evidence that he believes he saw something that fits his conception of an angel. It is NOT, in and of itself, evidence of the existence of angels as described in religious dogma, nor of any other entity with which said dogma associates them. People throughout the ages have seen things and grossly misinterpreted them. The sailors who saw manatees actually did see something. It was not, however, evidence of the existence of mermaids as they claimed; it was evidence of the existence of a previously unknown species of marine mammals. Nor are the drunken hallucinations of an alcoholic evidence for the existence of pink elephants, although I may accept his sincerity when he says he saw them. I simply reject any conclusions which are not logically derivable from the actual evidence, i.e. that pachyderms of a particular skin pigmentation exist in a state of tangible reality.
Furthermore, your argument relies very heavily on question-begging. You assert that the fact that people have claimed to see things that conform to biblical descriptions supports the conclusions posited by the Bible and other religious texts. What reason have we to believe that the biblical accounts themselves were not blindly speculated from the same sort of unexplained visions or experiences? You are implicitly accepting that the explanations given by religious dogma for phenomena are true and factual, and then arguing that the existence of the phenomena themselves constitutes evidence for the aforementioned interpretations of them. It’s circular logic, nothing more.
See, now we’re back to the attribution problem because I haven’t seen anyone make that claim.
So what you’re claiming is they are saying that since ‘god’ is self-contradictory any evidence that proves the existence of a self-contradictory entity can not exist?
You have two choices here,
- Something self-contradictory can exist therefore evidence can prove it exists
- Something self-contradictory can not exist therefore evidence can not prove it exists
You tell me which choice is irrational.
Either that, or some so called interpretations of QM, like the Copenhagen interpretation, are nonsense. It’s so funny. Some physicists think they can prove their metaphysical theories using physics…
Yes, that is what you’re saying. Please do NOT lie to us.
And we’re all still waiting for you to coherently define what god is. I realize that asking that absolutely annihilates your position, and that’s why it has been REPEATEDLY asked.
I obviously do.
Yes you have.
Do you reject the notion of a square circle before you hear someone talk about it?
Of course you do. And you know the reason why, don’t you? So why are you berating atheists for doing PRECISELY what you yourself do, hypocrite?
Now then: give us a coherent, non self-contradictory, non fallacy-laden, specific, concrete, objective definition for god. You see: asking for that annihilates your entire argument. And that’s why I quite REPEATEDLY ask for it. I know that god is nothing but a three-character string which neither denotes nor connotes anything real, just like “square circle”. And that fact destroys your entire claim.
Now go on and pout.
See? You’re saying that ALL atheists believe that. You didn’t make any qualification, so it’s universal.
And please tell us all how you do not rule out the possibility of a square circle. Let us all laugh at your hypocrisy.
Bull. Show us all a square circle, little one. If you say that you can’t because it’s self-contradictory, you have conceded the entire argument.
You’re stuck in a hole of your own digging, and no one is going to help you out. You’re either going to have to concede or no longer post in this thread–and no longer post about atheists, period. Those are your only options right now.
No it isn’t.
Again, you show your ignorant arrogance, stupidity, and willingness to troll. Please leave this board.
No, Jon only claims that entities bearing contradictory characteristics are not capable of existing, which is a logical point.
-Jon
I see people talking about the choice of believing in God. Still, if you want to hold that from a purely rational perspective, then you shouldn’t believe in God.
My point is as follows… since God’s existence as postulated is unfalsifiable, it follows that no proof could disprove it. Therefore, we can regard it as undecidable, which means we can choose equally well (as consistency is concerned) whether we believe in God or not. Unfalsifiability guarantees that no contradictions will arise. Therefore the existence of God is independent from other laws that make up the real world. (Correct me if the logical rationale is wrong.)
God’s existence, being a matter of choice, it can be compared to the no-God world. But when you actually make the comparison, the “God-enabled” world fails Occam’s Razor evidently, since one more independent assumption is made.
Therefore, a God-less world is more probable. And it is more rational to be an atheist.
If ML is going to complain that atheists unfairly dismiss the possibility of God as usually defined, he’s going to have to come to terms with the fact that that definition ascribes contradictory features to the being in question, which means it can be dismissed as logically inconsistent. He can say God is “beyond logic” &c. but that’s all the less reason to buy into what he is arguing.
-Jon
Yeah, I agree. Words like “X is beyond logic” are just that, empty words. Logics is not just another tool or theory. We didn’t invent it, it was already there and it’s not just another thing specific to our world.
Because all we see works logically. Further, we are machines that have work logically, so all we see and think is logical. I fear that if God is beyond logic, we won’t ever see him. (… sounds like empty words again, but heh, it sounded good :P)
Disturbingly enough, I used to buy into that nonsense when I was still a Christian. As well as the belief that if demons/angels exist, so must God &c., along with a dislike for logic and mathematics, precisely due to their universal character. That was when I was 15 or so.
-Jon
I don’t believe he’s lying; he’s just living proof of the well-known inverse correlation between intelligence and religion.
What are the logical contradictions in god that make the existence impossible?
Well alright, how do you propose to handle this common objection to the notion of omnipotence: if a being is omnipotent, it should be able to create a rock so heavy that it itself cannot lift it; yet, if it does this, it is no longer omnipotent (for obvious reasons.) If it can’t, again it isn’t omnipotent. I’d love to see you resolve that “tiny” problem. There’s also the matter of how something omniscient can also be omnipotent.
-Jon
Spend just a little time reading about quantum mechanics and the contradictions that still exist in various theories regarding gravity and other aspects of this field. The world is not nearly as defined as you would like to think it is. Part of quantum mechanics suggest something may be able to be in more than one place at a given moment. This would normally be a logical contradiction, much like your square circle.
So are you both making and not making that claim? Oh and by the way, are you claiming circles can be squares?
-Jon