Atheists who attack Christianity

If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Religion + Government = Problems

Yes!

Which forest?

I don't know, I can't see it for all the damn trees

Your "proof" is nothing of the sort, for two reasons.

One: You make false assumptions about what I believe. Several of them, in fact.

Two: You again try to use lack of proof as proof of lack.

Nothing in creation runs counter to my belief of God. I am not a creationist, I do not believe the world to be 6000 years old, etc. I was an agnostic for most of my life, I did not suddenly become stupid upon believing in God.

The rest of your post is nonsense as far as this discussion is concerned: I don't care what your children learn, nor am I trying to force the least bit of my faith on you or any other soul.

Yup I think you hit the nail on the head. (so to speak)

.

Your deity still does not exist.

You cannot assert that your deity, in fact, exists.

If you do, you will need to /prove/ it - and billions have tried, all have failed.

The mere fact that you believe in the deity of Abraham is due to the fact that millions upon millions sacrificed - willingly or unwillingly - to build an empire around that belief. They crushed, forced, oppressed and imposed a silly superstition, fighting all the while - such that you might have a seemingly innocuous belief today, which you have conveniently stripped of its' cultural baggage because you find such to be distasteful.

My assertion is proof. Your deity is a categorical impossibility. The fact that you don't believe in flat earths, burning bushes, or any of the rest of the ridiculousness - except, perhaps, the bit about killing one's own offspring in order to make a bargain with ones' self about the fate of one's own "creations" - doesn't mean your religion doesn't assert those same ridiculousnesses. Your belief in your deity fails to rescue it from the realm of Categorical Impossibility. By believing in the deity, you believe in magic, and regardless of what you pick and choose or leave behind from the cultural baggage - You believe in the deity of Abraham, the existence of which is a Categorical Impossibility.

Please try to address the actual argument, not restate your own position - I know it well enough, thanks.

I never have claimed that I have proof that he exists, only that I beleve as such.

As I've said, oh, a dozen times in the last week here.



I've actually not stripped anything of it's "cultural baggage", believe it or not. I believe what I believe.



Your assertation is your opinion. Nothing you have said in any way proves that God is impossible. By the very nature God, the impossibility of God is impossible.

Note that I'm not saying that it's impossible God does not exist - its certainly possible. But it's impossible for it to be impossible for him to exist, because He exists outside of logical boundries - the same existing outside of logical boundries that others on this thread cheerfully browbeat all Christians about.



Thankfully, it doesn't need me to rescue it.



No matter how many times you say it, you haven't established that God is impossible.



Actually, I'm reasonably certain you don't know my position. You've demonstrated not a shred of evidence that you do.

In any event, your "arguement" is based on a false assumption: That it is possible to prove God is impossible. By the very nature of God, it is not possible to prove him impossible, no matter if he exists in fact or not.

Incorrect.

For this exercise, I propose that "God" does exist and that the Bible was simply screwed up by the imperfection of human beings (who, after all, wrote the thing). God exists and created the universe, not in the silly creationist way, but actually in the way we now know the universe really developed over time.

Much of the Bible is just a lot of stories put together by people who, being all too human, either made translation mistakes, included deliberate fabrications, or else were misled somehow.

Nevertheless, this God DOES exist. Now, prove me wrong.

Ah, but I'm not even done yet. Now let's have some fun:



Your understanding is limited only to physical ravens. There are digital ravens, but you can't see them. Nevertheless, they are there.



Strawberry Shortcake actually exists in another dimension. The story writers, without even realizing it, were channeling the life of this entity into their "fictional" work. It's actually a biographical work, and she is real.

Ditto the Care Bears.



Sure. You can't actually disprove these, you know. Even the part about stopping the sun from revolving around a flat planet can be dismissed as either made up by one of those fallible humans who messed up parts of the Bible or else as presented to human beings in a way they could accept, since at the time the notion of a spherical Earth revolving around the sun was beyond them.



They don't have to. I will, simply because I dislike illogical, irrational arguments.



You made no actual statement here, just a generalized comment that we're apparently supposed to nod our heads dumbly and agree with. Further, I have to point out again that any errors can be either blamed on the failures of human or, for that matter, reconciled by the claim that God is omnipotent. If he's really omnipotent, does he have to make his world make sense? Is he so limited that scientific inquiry can thwart his ability to confuse said scientists? Don't be silly.



Here, we agree.

And moving on to your various angry remarks following ... we agree, again.

Where I take issue is with you trying to prove a negative. In the first place, it's simply illogical. In the second, it's a complete waste of your energy. Why focus on trying to prove something that can't be proven (for the same reason that any other silly, random proposed thing can't be proven not to exist somewhere somehow)? All that does is bog you down in an endless debate wherein, truth be told, you're as wrong as they are.

The real issue here, as far as what to believe and what not to believe, is not, or should not be, how to "prove" God doesn't exist. Rather, the focus should be on the fact that believing any given thing simply because it can't actually be proven not to be is positively insane.

I do understand your position. You're a Christian. You believe in the deity of Abraham - the same deity that Jesus of Nazareth believed in, as he was a Jewish Rabbi. The same deity described in the Old Testament, aka the Tanakh. The deity described therein, and the one believed in by Jesus of Nazareth - whom you believe is his offspring, and whose existence as an offspring and as divine you believe in / by definition/ since you are Christian.

That deity's existence requires the denial of verifiable history, biology, science, geology, paleonotology, physics - as well as requires the existence of magic.

That deity's existence requires the assertion of the parting of the Red Sea as a fact.
That deity's existence requires the assertion that all of humanity descended from an Adam and an Eve.

That deity's existence requires categorical impossibilities.

I am well-versed in your religion, and the requirements thereof. It is not my fault that you have chosen to strip the parts of your religion that you find distasteful, without thought to whether they were vital.
It is not my fault, nor is it discordant to my proof, that you claim to believe in the same deity that Jesus of Nazareth did, even while disclaiming the very core features of that deity.

So, if you don't believe in the deity of Abraham, (the one Jesus believed in, the one who Parted the Red Sea) - which one /do/ you believe in?

Actually, they got it all wrong.

But none of this has anything to do with my position.

That would be like saying you know my position because I'm gay.



Uhh... checking... checking... no, no it doesn't. Well, argueably the last point, but a very very loose definition of the word at best.



Actually, strictly speaking, no it doesn't.



Except that if you accept that God exists, neither of those would be even remotely impossible. Catch 22.



Evidently not. And frankly, given your absolute and utter lack of understanding of even the most basic concepts of logical debate, I frankly question that statement for a cople of other reasons.



Except that I haven't done anything of the sort.



Except that you have no proof.

Repeating: It is catagoricly impossible to prove a negative.



Question is based on a false assumption, so it's not really answerable.

"Translation mistakes"? The Parting of the Red Sea is a "Translation mistake"? People were misled somehow "The earth revolves around the sun" to "The sun revolves around the earth" - ?



You believe in a deity. The existence of deities requires the existence of magic. Magic is a categorical impossibility. Done.



I'm sorry, I don't argue the "fun" of your religion for the same reason I don't argue with Trekkies over whether Memory Prime ought to be canon and for the same reason I don't argue with Tolkien geeks over whether the Red Book of Westmarch actually existed - they're silly arguments that ignore the fact that /you're discussing fiction/.



And so off you go on your fantastical slippery slope. I am not responsible for your ignorance of the heritage of your own religion. Your deity is asserted by your religion to
A: Exist in fact
B: Have directly intervened in human history
C: Have caused events that turn out to be entirely fictitious.
D: Your deity is not digital, and while it may be /immaterial/, it has certain defining characteristics that are core and vital to it. Those defining characteristics are categorical impossibilities in this universe, your deity does not exist, Q.E.D. Please try to comprehend the plain English I write.




Your statement reveals that you do not, in fact, know what "proving a negative" actually is. I am not attempting to "prove a negative" - I am proving a positive assertion, that of the lack of ravens in my mailbox due to a categorical impossibility. I am further proving a positive assertion, that of the lack of an Abrahamic deity as independent entity (outside the imaginations of humans) due to a categorical impossibility. One does not need to search an entire scope to prove the lack. One merely need show that such an instance is a categorical impossibility. It is impossible to have the value "2.5" on a purely integer scale, and it is impossible for the Abrahamic deity to exist in this universe.

It is impossible to prove a negative assertion, which is a subtle difference - one which is caught up in jargon terms and which does not, I think, mean what you think it means, Vizzini.



And the history of the religions of the followers of the Abrahamic deity have fulfilled this observation billions of times over.

So totally saved to disk!

That's your interpretation. I won't insist you follow my interpretation.

As Jesus said many times, 'according to your faith, be it done unto you'.

If an all-power diety exists, "magic", as you call it, is easily possible.

Proof disproven.

That is not true. I still have the PM you sent to me on this, do I have your permission to post it here so that everyone can see what you really said to me?

To take that analogy - if you were to claim that you're "gay", I could reasonably assume that you are attracted to someone of the same gender as you are, sexually.

If you are Christian, then you believe in the Abrahamic deity - the same deity that Jesus of Nazareth believed in, and you believe that Jesus is divine, had the mind of that deity revealed to him, etc. The Jesus who was a Jewish Rabbi, who read the Tanakh, who I think would have said /something/ if it was in fact not the case that Moses parted the Red Sea. Your religion has a certain amount of cultural and mythological baggage, which is inescapable.



It isn't arguable. It's a flat-out fact - the existence of deities requires the existence of magic. Not the loosest definition, either - invisible sky fathers who hurl lightning bolts, part seas, speak through burning bushes and breathe life into clay sculptures - or even are omnipresent and omnipotent = magic.



The fact that I believe/accept as a fact the existence of a deity does not make it stop being a categorical impossibility.



You accuse /me/ of having an absolute and utter lack of understanding of even the most basic concepts of logical debate, while further down this post you yourself assert that it is categorically impossible to prove a negative? Hint: It is impossible to prove a negative assertion or a negative position or a negative claim - which means it is impossible to prove an empty claim. You claim that your deity exists. I claim it does not - this is a positive assertion, and I find it laughable that you are accusing me of having a basic ignorance of logic or debate when you yourself fail to realise that "your deity does not exist" is a positive claim, not a negative one.

That depends on how you define "sound".

I would say that no, it doesn't. (If by "no one" you mean no living creature at all.)

You have an extra-ordinary claim - that of magic, and of an all-powerful deity. The default position is not the extra-ordinary one - it is the ordinary one.

You should carefully decide what "ordinary" means, and research it if you have to. Hint: The existence of magic, deities, and other mythological beings is not in the ordinary. You might want to look up synonyms for "fact".

You may speculate ("if an X exists, Y is easily possible" all day long - you must actually /prove/ that speculation if you wish to use it as a disproof of a concrete, demonstrable proof. Speculation =/= disproof.

Thank you and have a nice day.

I'm betting Kevn ignores this post.


Briana Dawson

But that is, again, not my position.



Again, you're trying to claim something is my position - which you claim to know so well - which is in fact not my "position". You also continue to make mistargeted backhanded allegations of attempting to escape "baggage", of which I make no attempt.



Again, magic by the loosest sense of the word, I agree with. For someone who lectures on trying to escape baggage, I find it ironic that you ignore that words have baggage.



But it's not categoricaly impossible, so that's not really relevant.



Except that, once again, I have never claimed to have even the slightest proof that he exists: I am not trying to prove anything. You, however, are trying to prove that something does not exist - which is, again, not possible.

Why not?



That's ridiculous. Your argument is based on nothing other than your denial without reason. At one time, I could as easily have declared atoms a categorical impossibility, or even more likely, the weirdness of quantum physics. Guess what? They aren't.

Declaring anything like this to be a "categorical impossibility" -- what a ridiculous notion -- is directly counter to the spirit of scientific inquiry.



Amusingly, you seem to be so driven that you're apparently unaware that I'm what most people would term an "atheist" myself.



Not actually my deity, but ...



Don't patronize me. I understand you perfectly, but your concept of "categorical impossibility" is ludicrous. If people actually subscribed to it wholesale, we'd get nowhere with scientific inquiry because anything outside of what we already understand would be considered "categorically impossible." We would never even have made it into quantum theory.



You aren't attempting to prove that someone called God doesn't exist? Well then. You should perhaps state what you're attempting to prove next time. We could have saved a lot of time if you haven't led everyone to believe you were trying to prove that.



You sure love to use that term. Anytime anything gets in your way, it's a categorical impossibility. Who needs reason? You just pronounce two words and consider them to have dismissed all discussion, and off you go.



A positive assertion of a lack. News flash: "plus negative" is the same thing as "minus."

Although I'm sure you'll just declare that a categorical impossibility if it causes you too much trouble.



If you prove a given thing to be impossible (and there are some things that more or less can be, to the extent that we can safely say to "know" something, which now I'm getting into epistemology and digressing), you have proven that thing to be impossible. You haven't proven that someone called God doesn't exist, however. No. Sorry. That is a separate issue.



Claiming that you're making a positive assertion that something is not doesn't change the fact that it's a negative assertion. It's just a clever rearrangement of wording that says the same thing. I do hope that was an honest mistake and not deliberate intellectual dishonesty.

The sad thing here is that people who try to take the stance you're taking actually help the cause of organized religion. You muddy the waters, wasting time on something that is logically impossible, which both reduces the credibility of those arguing against religion and draws attention away from what really matters in the debate.

You have no concrete proof that either Magic or God does not exist. You have simply not proven that they do exist. You may believe that they do not, it may be the logical assumption that they do not, and they may in fact not exist, but that is not the same as having "concrete proof" that they do not exist.