You know what dude, I think your Opening Post and all such posts on these topics are hysterical and painfully silly. I say that as a person who honestly believes both in God and that abortion is murder.
For what it is worth, I will present my anarchist position on coping with abortion.
Basically, I believe that if somebody wants an abortion or provide an abortion he should pay for it himself – that includes the security costs from potential threats of vigilanteism. I believe that if people paid the true cost of abortion, it would be prohibitively expensive. I might be wrong about that in which case, there really is nothing else I can do.
At the very least, anti-abortionists should be able to keep all of their own money with which they could decide to ostracize abortionists. Right now, the ability for one group to ostracize the other is being curtailed by the state.
There are lots of witnesses to God. The Bible, the Koran all have direct witnesses to God. It is ok to say you don’t believe these people but then you have to argue against the credibility of the witnesses. Also, there are lots of lesser known stories of people witnessing angels and visions and all kinds of things. If a person has an experience where they witness an angel or God why is this not evidence of God’s existence? This is what makes the atheist position illogical, they argue against the possibility of evidence that God exists.
If you profess to have no knowledge of something how can you say conclusively that you know it doesn’t exist. That is the contradiction of the atheist position.
As you can see in this thread the atheists haven’t presented their case or provided any objection to my original statement. All you see are personal attacks against me. The arguement still stands unchallenged.
Max, I am (we are ?) still waiting for you to produce the evidence. To claim “A is true” because some people say “A is true” is not a proof. Rather it’s a fallacy.
Yep, the only problem is that you are committing the false attribution fallacy in your attempt to prop up a strawman that proves your case.
Along with a whole list of other fallacious arguments but you chose to ignore that post.
What we need to know is who is the source of this atheistic dogma you universally attribute to ‘the atheists’ and perhaps provide links to their actual argument so we can see exactly what we are allegedly supporting and defending.
Saying that all the atheists share the same views as Ned, your third cousin-twice removed’s brother in law, who just so happens is the only non-believer you have ever talked to, is both intellectually dishonest and a strawman.
If we could ever get to a valid starting point then maybe this debate could actually proceed but unless you provide further information such as the definition of ‘god’ as others have asked, this ‘evidence’ you claim to have as others have asked and the source of the ‘atheistic doctrine’ you cite as I have asked then why bother trying to present a counter argument?
I personally have better things to do than go tilting after your strawmen like Don Quixote.
And as you can see my original prediction is coming to pass…
Most Atheists that I have read on this forum and elsewhere claim that the concept of God is irrational, not that they have “no knowledge” of God. For example, they might claim that an omnibenevolent being (Such as said God) who is also omnipotent, would be a contradiction, since bad things happen. One might also use Mises arguement (Which I don’t like) that a being such as God is incapable of action. Some proofs of God aren’t proofs at all, such as Pascals, which essentually says that it is in our best interests to believe in God. The arguement is even flawed at it’s attempt to prove what is rational for us to do. It does not account for the possability of an all forgiving god, or an all condemning one, or for one who does not base his judgement on faith, but on works, etc.
From what I have seen, your question will remain unanswered. You could cryogenically freeze yourself to see if he will answer it, or you could wait for the singularity, either way, you will be waiting for a long time.
Let’s use one of the most common reference for God which would be the description of God in the Old Testament of the Bible. Keeping in mind that the original point of the post was to illustrate that the atheist ideology is not logical because it claims absolute knowledge of something of which by their own admission they have no knowledge.
Is the fact that people claim the Titantic struck an iceberg a fallacy? The only direct evidence that indicated the Titantic struck an iceberg is testimonial, does that make it a fallacy?
Human observations are evidence.
Is everybody that is in prison because of human observation in prison because of a fallacy?
Clearly not. Like I said, you can say you don’t believe the millions of stories about God, which is ok, but to say definitively that God can not exist is absurd.
The fact that we have mass testimonials demonstrating the exact same thing, with no other evidence contradicting (That I know of) is why we accept that the Titanic sunk. Perhaps a giant sea monster attacked it, who knows. The atheist point is that where there is evidence on the contrary, testomony isn’t very useful. If I were to “see God” tonight, it would prove nothing. Perhaps I would become religous, or change religons, depending on several factors, but I would not nessesarity be logical in my belief. You seem to be supporting an Agnostic view rather than a deistic or theistic view of God at the end, which directly contradicts your earlier statements that seemed to be rather assured that God existed.
No, the source of the argument you attribute to ‘the atheists’ not the definition of atheism. Because, you know, contrary to popular belief I do know how to use a dictionary and ‘atheism’ wasn’t a contention.
There’s also the issue that the reason I don’t believe in your vengeful, jealous Old Testament god has nothing to do with the theory you cite as to why I’m an ungodly, wicked atheist.
Be kind of nice to rip your ‘evidence’ to shreads too but it’s starting to appear this so called proof will not be forthcoming.
Fine. An entity cannot have self-contradictory properties. The being described in the Old Testament as “I am that I am” does have self-contradictory properties. This being is described as Omnipotent, all knowing, all powerful etc. He is also described as just. In fact he laid down a document (or three different documents but that is another topic) called “The Ten Commandments". One of these commandments is “Thou Shalt Not Kill”. Yet, this same being orders, approves of and ignores horrendous acts of senseless violence and murder. Abraham in fact shows his obedience by his willingness to commit a ritual sacrifice of his son. God tells Moses to “vex and smite” a neighboring people called the Midianites. Moses and his army not only defeat the Midianites in a battle but apparently that wasn’t good enough. He kills every Midianite except virgin girls. Numbers 31:1-54. Sounds like a just deity to me, doesn’t it you? Not only that but some of God’s laws are contradictory. Like, despite the big “thou shalt not kill” there are times you MUST kill like when a child hits or curses his parents. Exodus 21:15, 17 I could give you many, many more but I will simply refer you to the Skeptics Annotated Bible to check it out for yourself if you want more information. http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
You know something very significant about an entity that does not exist. You know that it has no properties whatsoever.