It’s obvious isn’t it? To anyone who has faith that is. The Lizard People want to buy up Russia and that is why Russia halted trading before more Russian assets wound up in reptillian hands.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ff9306c-83f1-11dd-bf00-000077b07658.html
No. I’m saying atheists don’t define their position as “there can not be a god”. The prefix a- is the Greek equivelent of the Latinate prefix “non-” - an a-theist is someone who isn’t a “theist”. A theist is someone who asserts that there is a god; therefore an atheist is just someone who doesn’t assert that there is a god. It’s not a positive position but a negative one.
(It also depends how you define “God”, of course. If your definition of “God” is “the Universe” or something like that then God certainly exists!)
Exactly. The existence of (your) God is no different than the existence of anything else…like, say, the ancient Greek gods, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. About whom I have no doubt you are “atheist”.
To some extent, sure. But plenty of witnesses saw David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear - is that evidence that it really did vanish?
If god exists, and cares about whether we believe he exists, why doesn’t he show up and submit himself to rigorous scientific testing? It’d take an insignificant amount of time and effort on his behalf, and end a lot of arguing…and killing.
You keep misrepresenting people like this. Not “about God”, but “about a particular conception of God”. As others have pointed out above, there’s the whole “thou shalt not kill” thing, followed by orders to commit genocide. And God is supposed to be omniscient, yet regularly makes mistakes and changes his mind about things. Etc.
Pretty much all claims can be rejected out of hand, whether or not they are absurd. If you claim you just went to Africa, I can reject that until you provide some kind of proof. Even if you cannot provide any proof, that does not mean that you did not go to Africa, now does it?
Yet there’s no apriori reason to doubt it. There is, however, with the claim of “god”, since we can examine what is claimed that god is and understand that it can’t possibly be.
You ARE aware that disbelief has a passive connotation, RIGHT? That is, simply not believing. Remember: not believing != believing in not.
But the burden of proof would be on ME to prove that I went to Africa. It would not be on you to prove that I did not. But, at least we have a clear non-contradictory definition of what Africa is.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If a witness said that he saw Vladimir Putin (or why not, Jesus Christ) raped an old lady, then the court would dismiss that as loonacy and hold that person in contempt.
Similarily, personal statements that contradict hard evidence (such as the laws of physics) have to be ignored due to the Burden of Proof principle. Until people bring EVIDENCE about fairies/yeti/allah, then it is perfectly reasonable to doubt their existence.
1 person can spew out more nonsense than 1 million skeptics can invalidate, that’s why we have skepticism, burden of proof and the scientific method.
For some reason, I don’t think you’re a scholar of history and you don’t have a clue about multiple evidence sources that all back up a certain story.
In the Jesus/God story, there is just 1 “evidence” source: the Bible, and Bible-induced fanaticism. No one will experience the christian god if they were not previously indoctrinated in the christian faith.
If you really cared about the truth and reality, you should consider a literal interpretation of the bible to be FALSE, because certain concepts don’t make sense (such as: plants created before the sun, the diurne cycle existing before the sun was created) or are downright false (Adam & Eve story, 6000-year-old earth, Noah’s ark and global flood).
The NT is not excused from such examples: take for example the resurrection, which everyone considers to be literally true. If the resurrection is true, then so is the Jesus-flying-to-Heaven story. That story might make sense for a civilisation who thought the earth was flat and God lived right above the clouds, but in the Space Age it’s total nonsense. What did Jesus do after reaching orbit? Did he go hide in the dark side of the moon? Did he fly to the Black Hole in the center of the galaxy? Is he still floating in orbit around the Sun (Russel’s Teapot)? Or maybe he went on to preach to Xenu, the evil space lord?
Fact is, there is no serious evidence to prove the existence of ANY supernatural claim. James Randi has a $1000.000 prise out to give to anyone who can prove the existence of the supernatural in a scientific manner, under controlled conditions. If the supernatural was so obvious that every dummy knows it’s there, ever since humans started worshipping animals, then the prise should be easy to take.
You are not truthful. You use a straw-man definition of “atheist” and try to shift the burden of proof to US, making it seem like we try to deny what you haven’t even defined. You use a deceitful method of argumentation: anecdotal evidence (another fallacy).
Read all about it, and stop lying about what does constitute evidence and what doesn’t.
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/anecdotal.html
In certain situations, scientific evidence presented in court must also meet the legal requirements for evidence. For instance, in the United States, expert testimony of witnesses must meet the Daubert Standard.
Anecdotal evidence is often unscientific or pseudoscientific because various forms of cognitive bias may affect the collection or presentation of evidence. For instance, someone who claims to have had an encounter with a supernatural being or alien may present a very vivid story, but this is not falsifiable. This phenomenon can also happen to large groups of people through subjective validation.
No wonder you keep thinking you’re “winning” debates. You’re not even playing by the rules. You don’t care about the rules and you don’t care about truth. You have your own version of “truth” and you have a profound disrespect for logic and reason.
Interesting how this evolved from a ‘much deserved knock on the head’ into a red herring about trying to ‘prove’ there is or isn’t a god.
Max’s original argument;
If you accept that position then the alternative is also ‘reasonable’;
So it is reasonable to believe that a supernatural being exists based on witness testomony about questionable ‘acts of god’ but if someone doesn’t believe in this unseen, never directly witnessed being they are ‘irrational’.
And the whole BS argument ‘since you can’t prove that we don’t live in the Matrix it is irrational to believe that we don’t’. Feel free to substitute aliens, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, or any number of things where there are multiple eyewitness accounts of their existence.
Waiting patiently for my ‘much deserved knock on the head’…
Oh, and before I forget, still waiting for this alleged ‘atheistic doctrine’ to be revealed since according to Max’s very own argument it is quite reasonable for me to not believe in gods and devils and the little baby Jesus.
Argument to groupthink?
Mises was ostracized for his beliefs too. No, I’m not comparing Max to Mises, and no, I don’t agree with him on everything, this topic in particular, being alienated has happened to a lot of smart people. Plus it’s just an Ad Hom.
Max, I didn’t even read the whole thread, but I disagree with you on atheism and abortion. I do agree you kicked the astroturf out of the Agorists, but you’re badly positioned in the two positions in this thread. Positioned to fail.
Unless you just like arguing. I like arguing a lot. [:)]
The point of the thread was to illustrate that the belief in God is based on human experiences and observations. The atheist universal disregard for all human experience and observation as it relates to anything that can not be completely explained is not reasonable. We base a great deal of what we understand in the universe and understand about history on human observation. If we discount all human observation as by definition not reliable then nearly all that we accept now as knowledge is equally unreliable.
I have defined the atheist ideology as the position that God can not exist. Many atheists have said that in fact that is not their position which if true then this thread doesn’t apply to them.
If you accept human observation and experience as a form of evidence in one case then you have to consider it in others even if the observation is extreme. That doesn’t mean that all human observation or the interpertation of that evidence is perfectly accurate but it can not be universally disregarded. In the case of religion we literally have millions of stories of miracles and angels and supernatural events often attributed to religion. Simply not having other evidence of a supernatural event does not make everyone who witnessed or experienced the supernatural event unreliable.
So the assault of the atheists on religion is not logically founded because the atheist accepts human observation in one case but universally rejects in all cases regardless of circumstance related to the supernatural.
So it doesn’t apply to anybody? Then what’s the point?
“Literally millions”? You’re one of those who uses “literally” figuratively? Allow me to translate for you: “a few”. And if you insist on using these as evidence, then you have to take all of the evidence into account - i.e., stories of supernatural events from other cultures, which, if given equal weight, prove absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt that your religion is false (unless the God you believe in some kind of prankster god, I guess)
I don’t like arguments like this. You’re not proving your side, you’re seeking to prove inconsistency in your critics and then hold that up as victory.
Are you a Christian?
Oh that was fabulous! Thanks for the laugh!
the burden of proof is not on the atheist!
And the point you’re neglecting is that people used to observe lightning and think that it was caused by some lightning god.
Your strawman has been noted again and again. You are a fool for continuing to use it.
There is no such thing.
Then you must accept my observation that there is no god. QED.
Yeah, but if you have contradictory scientific evidence or single source evidence then the witness accounts become less than credible.
Why do you think people wanted to see your supposed evidence of god? I also suspect that the reason you never presented it is because it would invalidate your whole theory to have your evidence discredited by something more than ‘god can’t possibly exist so your evidence is wrong’ or whatever that BS argument was.
It’s like your Titanic example, they can send robot subs down or even recover the ship and do all sorts of tests to determine why it sunk but there is no way possible to determine if it sunk because of the ‘will of god’.
Well, short of god himself coming down and taking credit for it.
Darn, I’ve been missing some good stuff, and this thread has brought out some interesting points.
It is an interesting thread. Thanks for bumping it back up.