Atheists who attack Christianity

I don't remember ever PMing anyone, but I forget after so many conversations. I have no reason to doubt you, and I may just have forgotten about the PM, please feel free to post whatever you please.

You caught that too, eh?

Mhmm. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: this is one reason I dislike being referred to as an "atheist." People tend to assume it means I waste all of my time trying to prove negatives.

prove it.

Don't let them hijack a perfectly good word by refusing to use it. It simply means "not a theist" and nothing else, and atheists who refuse to call themselves such due to the stereotyping of theists is something that deeply annoys me! (by the way, your posts rock).

Ack!

I give up. You win the thread.

Is it, or is it not, the case that you believe in "God"?
Is it, or is it not, the case that you believe in "Jesus"?
Is it, or is it not, the case that you claim to be a "Christian"?
If all three are true, then you are a follower of the deity of Abraham, and there are certain inescapable, unweasel-able requirements for the same. As you're a Christian, you follow the same deity Jesus of Nazareth did. You accept that the deity revealed in the Tanakh is the creator and father of all mankind, and that Jesus' death on the cross washes away the sins of mankind and open the heavenly realm to all who choose to accept this sacrifice. This deity performed several necessary actions as part and parcel of the course of the development of the religion and his relationship with mankind - denying the passage of these events is the same as denying that you believe in the same deity that Jesus of Nazareth believed in. I am not ignorant of the requirements of your religion, and if you continue to treat me as if I am, you will quickly be ashamed. If you claim you are Christian, there are numerous things I may - by definition - /know/ that you believe in, unless you are of course a liar or are merely ignorant of your religion.



Magic in even the loosest applicable sense of the word here, is still a categorical impossibility.


You have claimed it is not a categorical impossibility, but you have failed to /show/ how it is not a categorical impossibility. Let me explain how this works:

Someone makes a claim.
Someone demonstrates that claim.
People consider over whether or not that demonstration is sufficient for them to accept that claim.

I made a perfectly logical, ordinary, straightforward claim well within the rules of debate and of semantics and of the English language. You have simply nay-sayed it, and have used speculation and claimed it as a disproof, and have demonstrated through your course of actions that you are unwilling to accept a straightforward, logical proof. That is all you need to say. When you have an actual argument - preferably one that is logical and actually persuasive - then I would like to hear it.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_syllogism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogistic_fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_fallacy (your particular fallacy, your "disproof" is one)
You are accusing me of an Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_conclusion_from_a_negative_premise
Which is specifically untrue. I have two premises - one is that the universe does not allow certain actions and prerequisites (magic) and the second is that the existence of deities requires certain actions and prerequisites (magic) and therefore deities do not exist in this universe.

At any rate - when you have an argument, I will respond. As long as you merely naysay and laughably accuse /me/ of being ignorant of logic and debate (hah! You don't even know me! Talk about trying to assert a negative position!) - I will ignore you.

Thank you, have a nice day.

Mmmm ... I know, but clarity is important to me. I hate that people can get into arguments just because they each don't really understand what the other is really saying, and if I just call myself "atheist," it's unclear to most people what I really mean by that.

And like I've said before, I feel the term itself is unnecessary and in some small way legitimizes its opposite.

But thanks for the compliment.

here it is:



That is a brush off.

My point for asking about those verses was to show you that you can't use Bible verses to prove your point. Since the Bible is not infallible, as you admit, you can't use it as an absolute proof that what you are saying is true. The best you can do would be to say that you choose to believe that what you are saying it true based on those verses, even though you know that they may or may not be correct.

So if you are really trying to convince the people on this thread that what you are saying is true, then you will need to find a way other than the Bible to do it. Otherwise you are just wastering your time.

Frankly I think you are wasting you time no matter what. Spiritual beliefs are, by their very nature, unprovable. But as Carl Sagan, who was an agnostic btw, once said “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Atheists can't disprove the existence of God any more than you can prove it.
Atheists have just as much faith as you do.

Well in point of fact you do not ahve to prove a negative..unless you formed your literal interpretation of logic in the sadbox in first grade.

The affiramtive statement is that god exists. Thius is the funbadmental assertion of the christian. Absent this christian assertion, the world would be devoid of the christain god. If no person ever contended godexisted, then god would not exist. Thus it is up the person asserting that god existed to prove thier case. If the case is not proven one can safely say that god does not exist.

Of course one can also conceive of a metaphysical cosmology that does not account for the existence of a divine transcent being. Such a cosmology would have no room for anything outside what is, and a transcendent god, of necessity lies outside what is. Thus the very structure of a person's reality could have no room for god to exist.

Finally, one can offer all of the scientific theories, includign the unknonws and find explanations for most everything. Even the stuff which cannot be explained is like the result of insufficient knowledge and not the divien workings of a transcendent deity.

So when I couple the lack of evidence that god exists, with the full range of scientific thought, I find there is no need for a god in the unverse and no evidence, and well based on that I can say with certainty that goes does not exist. Yes I could be wrong, but that is not within the realm of remotest possibility. Of course find me a christian who beleives there could be no god, or that jesus might not be our savior...

You can play logic games all you want, but if X=y and there is no x, there can be no y, and thus a negative is proven.

the beauty is I do not need to justify my categorical denial of god to anyone-I am perfectly happy living my life in a world without god. I can concieve easily of many scenarios where those who beleive in god are simply misguided in thier beleifs. I can see Nietzsche's logic in man needing god to divert responsibility from man for the things mankind has done, and thus god strikes me as a useful fiction. But A fcition nonetheless. I know god is a fiction in exactl the same way I know gandalf was a fiction..the stories were both written by men, and subsequently edited and revised by men.

Show me somethign written directly in god's hand and you might have4 an argument. Hell I'd even settle for a glimpse of the eternal buring bush, and the booming voice. Have him meet me in McDonalds. But it ain't gonna happen. Christians will say its because i lack faith, and i will say its becase god does not exist.

I'm sorry- you seem to have a misunderstanding of exactly what negative assertions, and what positive assertions, really are.

The assertion that there are no ravens in my mailbox is a positive assertion - it is equivalent to the assertion that my mailbox is full of things that are-not-ravens - let's say, apples; Apples are clearly not ravens, and the mailbox is full of them, there is no more room in my mailbox for anything else - hence, zero ravens.
My mailbox is full of email - email composed of digital electronic signatures. Ravens /cannot/ exist purely as digital electronic signatures, hence the categorical impossibility.

Simply putting a "lack of", "does not exist", or "no" into a premise does not make it a negative premise. It makes it a positive premise of the /opposite/ of something, which is not a negative.

My premise is the /opposite/ of the existence of deities. Specifically, it is the /opposite/ of the existence of the deity of Abraham. That deity does not exist because where it has been claimed to have existed, /purely natural explanations/ exist - demonstrably. We are not playing "god of the gaps" here where the deity gets to be re-defined after every struck-down claim. We are not playing "deity might get to exist someplace in the universe" either. There are several necessary core requirements for this deity to actually exist as an independent entity, and those core requirements are demonstrably impossible.


The nature of exploration in science involves working out theories from observed events. Quantum theory asserts several observed behaviours that are categorical impossibilities /under other theories/ but which are clearly observed, and these same behaviours may eventually be reconciled under yet another theory.

Magic, of the order that is required for deities to exist, is neither observed nor observable - it is not in the realm of fact.

You're just repeating yourself now, which calls for me to repeat myself, and I'm not going to do it. I'm too tired. I already went through pages earlier in this thread debating with the theists.

So I have to refer you to Joy Honey. I've chosen her as my successor. Bye now.

Pardon me.
I do not believe in the Abrahamic deity. This is not from faith. This is from a complete lack of faith. Atheists, by definition, lack faith - atheists do not believe in the existence of deities.

If atheists have faith, then bald is a hair colour.

And if you think that the existence of the Abrahamic deity cannot be disproven, then I'd like to show you how there are no ravens in my mailbox (see recent threads).

I think it was excellent advice, you should seek counciling and guidence on spiritual matters from those you trust.

As for using the scripture to prove anything...

I only use scripture to argue scriptural points. For example, If I want to prove Jesus said He is the only way to God, I would post a verse in context that makes the point. You may not agree with the Bible, but if you want to argue what Jesus said in reference to Christianity you must use the Bible as a reference.

I don't use the Bible to prove God exists etc. I use the Bible as a reference when discussing scripture/interpretations. That's because in that type of discussion the Bible is the accepted authority.

I'm sorry that you're blind to the lesson. You claim that it is impossible to "prove a negative" - you are flat-out wrong, and I am sorry that you feel the need to re-iterate your false assertion.

If you can't prove there is no x, then there might be a y.




Your faith is in science. Your faith is in your belief that there is nothing in the Universe that you can't see or touch. A belief, btw, that science is starting to show might not be true. String theory is pretty weird.

You can't absolutely prove a negative and asserting that you can is irrational. You can, however, place odds on how likely or unlikely something is. I place the likelihood of the existance of gods somewhere in the vicinity of the likelihood that peanuts are actually pan-dimensional beings who could tell us the future if only we could hear their peanut to peanut communications. We're simply talking logic here, not probability.

I was with you (although you're being needlessly repetative, as you seem to think I've denyed any of that), but your last statement is wrong - I have no problem accepting that errors exist in the Bible. Divinely inspired or not, it's written by man.



Or, D, that you know nothing about me.



Unless, of course, there is an all-powerful diety to whom magic is in no way impossible.



I don't need you to explain logic to me, thanks.

By your own logic, you have not met the second requirement: You have in no way proven God does not exist. So we can't move on to





Again, no. A fallacy (IE, a logical fallacy) implies I am debating from a point of logic. I have said, repeatedly, and which you repeatedly ignore, that I make no claim that the existance of God is logical or proveable.

Incidently, if you're going to quote facts of syllogistic logic, you might be interested in knowing that it's outdated.



You're the only one making an arguement that he has yet to support, interestingly enough.

Description of Burden of Proof
Burden of Proof is a fallacy in which the burden of proof is placed on the wrong side. Another version occurs when a lack of evidence for side A is taken to be evidence for side B in cases in which the burden of proof actually rests on side B. A common name for this is an Appeal to Ignorance. This sort of reasoning typically has the following form:


Claim X is presented by side A and the burden of proof actually rests on side B.
Side B claims that X is false because there is no proof for X.
In many situations, one side has the burden of proof resting on it. This side is obligated to provide evidence for its position. The claim of the other side, the one that does not bear the burden of proof, is assumed to be true unless proven otherwise. The difficulty in such cases is determining which side, if any, the burden of proof rests on. In many cases, settling this issue can be a matter of significant debate. In some cases the burden of proof is set by the situation. For example, in American law a person is assumed to be innocent until proven guilty (hence the burden of proof is on the prosecution). As another example, in debate the burden of proof is placed on the affirmative team. As a final example, in most cases the burden of proof rests on those who claim something exists (such as Bigfoot, psychic powers, universals, and sense data).

Examples of Burden of Proof

1. Bill: "I think that we should invest more money in expanding the interstate system."
Jill: "I think that would be a bad idea, considering the state of the treasury."
Bill: "How can anyone be against highway improvements?"

2. Bill: "I think that some people have psychic powers."
Jill: "What is your proof?"
Bill: "No one has been able to prove that people do not have psychic powers."

3. "You cannot prove that God does not exist, so He does."

And I'm sorry that you're incapable of understanding that, in some cases, there simply isn't enough evidence to make any kind of positive statement at all. Have fun providing the theists with ammunition.

Now, argue with Joy for a change.

String theory is predicting that the Universe has many more dimensions to it than we can perceive. A being that existed in one of these higher dimensions could do things that would appear miraculous in our dimension. For all intents and purposes they would have God-like powers from out point of view. So it's logical to postulate that what people here call God could in fact simply be a being that has the ability to interact in higher dimensions. But we have no way to prove or disprove that.

So the only logical belief system to ascribe to would be agnostic.

I disagree. Are you agnostic about future predicting pan-dimensional peanut beings? If proof of such were ever discovered it would be illogical to deny it, but in the meantime agnosticism would be a gross over estimation of the probability of their existence, as it is with god.

I'm sorry, I wasn't very clear and you sort of missed what I was getting at, my fault.

How can you make an accurate probability prediction if you don't understand the nature of the Universe? The best we can say is that based on what we currently know about he Universe there is no evidence that God exists (a debatable point in and of itself), but since we really have only a basic understanding of the Universe we can't say for sure whether God exists or not.

Your probability “calculations” are based on assumptions, not facts.

Lets just say that when it comes to pan-dimensional peanut beings, I'm not agnostic... 'cause ya know, I've seen 'em.. here, in Florida, in the Tampa Triangle.

I do not have faith in science. I know it works - I eat food made possible by science, use a computer made possible by science, live a healthy life made possible by science and use medicines made possible by science, get to work in a vehicle made possible by science and do a job centered around scientific research. I have faith in none of this - it is all readily apparent to me and requires zero faith whatsoever.

I also do not have faith that "there is nothing in the universe I can't see or touch" - I am well aware of the limits of the scientific method, and I am well-versed in what String Theory asserts - String Theory is not a part of the currently accepted scientific model, but to use another thing that is: Normalisation of quantum wavefunctions. I don't have faith in that, either - it is a demonstrable, observed phenomenon and is necessary to quantum theory, but another theory may come along and improve upon quantum theory. I don't have faith in quantum theory; I see it as a good roadmap to how physics works. But I am well aware that there may be more things in this universe than are accessible to our methods and tools. The existence of the deity of Abraham is not among these things - again, not playing "god of the gaps" here. It's the deity of Abraham, and it doesn't get to hide in sub-quantum fluctuations.