Reviewing Atheist 'Lack Belief' in Deities theory. <<MOD WARNING ISSUED>>

Do you have any proof that these so called miracles would have happened without medical intervention? Do you have any actual proof that these healings are a direct result of this god you claim not to believe in but give credit for these healings?

Have you even considered that these miracles happened without the intervention of this so called god?

 

If you claim to not know any Christians who are smug and condescending perhaps you should get out more, or even read these boards.

You ARE smug in your assumptions and claim the high ground with your condescending without a just reason.

 

I'm probably re-treading old ground, but aren't we all. Here is something helpful to understand athiesm. Do you believe the origin and meaning of the universe is harry potter? If you ever want to wonder what an athiest thinks about the bible or god, just replace "the bible" with "the harry potter series" or "god" with "harry potter". There is your answer, did you make a conscious decision to believe harry potter didn't create the universe? Can you prove that harry potter didn't?

 

Yes, simply by asking JK Rowling whether Harry Potter created the universe. She would say no, and there's the end of it. But if you asked the apostle Paul if God created the universe, he would say yes, so that's not the end of it.

As for what atheists think, we know the answer to that. The question is why do they think it.

 

That's not really the question, is it. You wanted "proof" God exists. I have offered it. That you don't find it convincing isn't relevant. Now I want "proof" God does not exist from you, even if I don't find it convincing. But you don't seem to have any. All you have is doubt, which proves nothing.

 

Of course asking people something has absolutely no value when it comes to proving anything. Maybe jk rowling was enchanted by harry to think she made it up, and harry also enchanted paul to think god created the universe. Or, they are both just lying, none of it is any evidence whatsoever. But we can get more abstract than that. Maybe the meaning and cause of the universe is a rubix cube. Again, you can't prove that it isn't. And if you want to know why an athiest doesn't believe in god, ask yourself why don't you believe in the almighty rubix cube? It's not really an active choice, and you can't be sure that when you die you won't spend eternity being ground between the internal gears of the galactic cube, but you have no reason to think so, there is no evidence for it, and there is an alternative explanation which, while not perfect or fully developed, is viable and evidence based.

 

The problem with atheists concocting these nonsensical explanations for the universe such as a Rubik's cube or a spaghetti monster or an invisible pink unicorn is that no one has ever offered these explanations in the past, so we have no reason to accept them now. God, on the other hand, has been offered as an explanation for thousands of years, and been accepted by people as real for thousands of years, so there's more reason to take the existence of God seriously. Atheists in general don't seem to grasp that, and I fail to understand why. If 90% of the population believes something, it isn't up to the 90% to prove their case, it's up to the 2% who deny it to prove theirs. As for the "alternative explanation", I presume you are referring to the Big Bang, which, while it offers a what, doesn't offer a why, leaving God as still a viable explanation for the universe's existence. God said, "Let there be light," *BANG* the universe happened. It's possible. It cannot be ruled out or proven false.

 

The answer is that belief is meaningless. Also, "why" is meaningless too. So, any explanation no matter how ridiculous is equally valid. Whereas the big bang and other scientific explanations have evidence, and make sense logically. An athiest doesn't need a vote on reality, or a reason (and in reality, neither do you).

 

Witches were thought to off existed for thousands of years but there are very few courts that would convict someone now, except for in Christian countries like Nigeria! The interesting point that throws another of your theories out the window is that the reason was witchcraft could not be proved, nothing to do with science but from the mid 1600s it became increasingly difficult to convict on the grounds of "so and so, said so". So even though the majority of people believed in witches with no evidence to support their claim the idea slowly died out. There is no reason that an atheist could be bothered to prove gods do not exist, it is as pointless as proving leprechauns do not exist, and off course most people think most gods are not worth even considering as YOU do. Most gods have died a natural death anyway as the cultures that supported them either died out or moved on. It is only that you had to ween yourself off your own god that you think it important. Just because millions of people believe in gods does not make them a viable explanation for the universe, and gods do not offer a answer to "why" anymore than science does, unless of course you are so arrogant as to think you could understand the reasoning of something that could create universes!

 

Oh, also, if there were an all-powerful infinite being, 'why' would they bother to create us?

 

lol, keep thinking of these. Anyway, when we concoct insane explanations, that is usually in response to the claim that god cannot be disproved. No matter how crazy a theory is, xenu, odin, god, spaghetti monster, rubix cube, harry potter. None of those can be disproved. For your god to be true, you have to disprove any of them that anyone offered and believed. Also, you would have to explain why only 1/3 of people at most believe in any particular god of explanation. You also have to disprove we aren't in a matrix-type simulation. Inability to disprove something people believe has no bearing on anything.

 

Negatives are impossible to prove. You should know better than to ask the question.

 

Most people don't find belief to be meaningless. If you want to be convincing, you have to do more than just dismiss people's beliefs as meaningless.

Two answers, my current one, he didn't, and what I might have answered as a believer, why not? We make crap all the time, both stuff we need and stuff we don't. Why do we create crap we don't need?

Again, I'll go back to the historical record. God's been around for 6,000 years or more, Xenu less than a hundred, Odin maybe 2,000. Believers have no responsibility to disprove things they don't believe, only a responsibility to prove things they do believe. You as a disbeliever have a responsibility to prove whatever it is you disbelieve in doesn't exist, in this case, God. If you were arguing with a scientologist, then you'd have to prove Xenu doesn't exist. (That's probably a lot easier.) Just saying that here's all these other things that don't exist doesn't prove your case any. I can show a hundred kinds of fish that disappeared millions of years ago, but that doesn't prove the coelacanth disappeared millions of years ago, and in fact, it didn't.

 

Got it, I should spend my life proving things I do not claim exist, do not exist, perfect sense!

 

We think it because we like provable truth and your theist gods have none.

 

Trying to change the playing field again and a refusal to even consider how wrong you are. You have offered no "proof" this god of yours exists, merely hope which does not count as proof in any situation. You have nothing. Which is exactly what this god of yours consists of. You claim that others have to provide proof, that you will accept, while not doing the same yourself.

It would seem that no matter what you will claim it as the design of this god, no matter how horrific it is and no matter how foolish it makes you look.

Personally, it does not matter to me what you believe. If it helps you not drown puppies and abuse babies I suppose it is doing some good.

As far as I am concerned, I don't care if there is a god or not. It has zero effect on my life and I have not seen any positive effect on those who believe.

 

Provable truth, eh? Mehehehehe... you do know that 90% of what you think you know is all hearsay, right? Have you ever seen a quark? Or a virus? Or a photon of light? How do you know any of those things exist? Provable truth? What if science is a vast conspiracy to hide the truth from you? How would you know that quarks aren't just an imaginary particle dreamed up by physicists to hide the real story? Even your own name and date of birth are hearsay evidence. You think you know what they are because your mother told you, but what if she was lying? How would you ever know? Math is about the only provable truth there is, and most people run far far away from math.

Eh, that would be you. You asked for proof, I provided it and asked for yours, and instead you barraged me with questions. Now you throw a bunch of deflection at me rather than offer any proof. And you haven't been following the thread if you think I'm a theist, because I'm not. As I suspected, you have absolutely zero basis for your belief that God does not exist, only faith. You cannot back it up with one scintilla of evidence, one logical argument, or one drop of proof.

I have seen plenty of positive effects of belief on those who believe, and there's plenty of historical evidence that Christian nations are better, morally and financially, than non-Christian nations.

 

You continue to claim to haqve provided proof of something that does not exist and act like you just won the school spelling bee when doing so. You make assumptions, claims of youor own and cast smears onto others while continuing to be false in your statements on religion.

You claim to be an agnostic While continually trying to defend this non-existent god you claim to doubt. It would seem your claiming to be an agnostic is just another way for your to say that yes, there is no proof of god, but you don't want to make a stand and say one way or the other on the subject. Cowards choice in reality.

You continue to try to apply terms that only apply to you onto others who have clearly and repeatedly dismissed them as false but that does not deter you. This type of action paints you as a theist while you continue to spew falsehoods claiming not to be.

When you grow a spine, continue this discussion. Until then you will continue to be, by me, considered phony.

 

So, your god is real and Allah not based on years proclaimed? How many other ancient gods to you believe in based on this yardstick? Do you deny Zues?

Did you see your god(any) say this and BANG here we are? The reality here is that multitudes of claims have been made concerning our existence, yet only science provides scrutinized evidence.

 

Using your argument we should respect the oldest longest practiced religion which was largely Animism the worship of nature and animals and plants and the natural forces adding in spirits of them this goes back to prehistory tens of thousands of years and is still practiced by primitive peoples today in various forms. So nature trumps God using this line of reasoning.

As for your evidence for god being 'miraculously' healed when medical treatment and interventions by the weapons of medical science heals people and I would argue as we got better at it this became far more common the latest targeting gene based cancer treatments are amazing feats of human genius so I would say if anyone worked a miracle it was those involved in medicine and its application. To prove a miracle one would need a broad study if say a few million, ruling out spontaneous healing in the final numbers with an adjustment then using the same medical issue with half the people getting medical care and the other no medical care by praying and such and do a statistical analysis and no reputable person would do that forgoing all medical treatment at all for a cancer patient. Unless you have hard proof of limbs growing back or dead people dead for a week coming back to life fully functional in enough numbers to count.

So lets keep this simple if there are deities its simple they need to show up and display their powers and communicate with us in a normal way and then we can consider this properly which should be simple for super powerful deities.

 

Looks to me that you appear to claim some kind of exclusivity for the rather silly notion of the christian god. I have never before seen an atheist allege that wealth should be some kind of proof of a gods existence and most atheists know morality is entirely subjective so to argue christian countries are morally "better" than other countries would again suggest that your atheism is only keyboard deep. Western civilisation on the other hand is certainly grounded in the Greco-Roman ideas and not as christians like to claim Judeo-Christian. Capitalism, democracy, freedom of the individual are not things we find much about in the bible,

 

122 pages now..........and atheism still means lack of belief in a god or gods.

 

Actually, "the and of a set of operands is true if and only if all of its operands are true" (source)
The operands to "I neither believe or disbelieve there is a god" is "I don't believe there is a god" and "I don't believe there is no god", and according to the statement above both of those must be true at the same time for the combined statement to be true. The fact that you or someone else might be confused and make untrue leaps of logic based on those statements is not the problem of the person of whom that is true.

Why would that not be equally true?

I hold that you sneak in an unnecessary context into the equation, one that does not belong to the statement, and which has no bearing on the statement's actual truth. I hold that that makes the example invalid. Here is an example which works along the same line, but which does not include the weird third party erroneous conclusions.

Consider the statement "1 does not equal 2 and 1 does not equal 3". It is a true statement. It can be broken down into "1 does not equal 2" and "1 does not equal 3". Consider "half" that statement, "1 does not equal 2". That statement is not a half truth, it is a full truth. Not only is it true, its truth follows directly from the statement "1 does not 2 or 3" (i.e. given that "1 does not equal 2 and 1 does not equal 3" is true, it is necessary that "1 does not equal 2").

If another person says "you claim that 1 does not equal 2, so you must believe that 1 equals 3, so you are wrong". That person has made an incorrect conclusion, and thus, his argument cannot be used to disprove the idea that 1 does not equal 2. The fact that a Peruvian would draw incorrect conclusions does not make the initial statement false.

In your example, most of the conclusions come not from the statements themselves, but from implications in the context. Your objections arise from stuff that third parties might assume, but given that that is highly subjective, depending on that third party, that's not a feature of the statement, but of the other person. Their conclusions may be reasonable, or they might not be, but regardless, it doesn't have anything to do with the truth or falsehood of the statement itself.

It follows necessarily from "1 does not equal 2 and 1 does not equal 3" that "1 does not equal 2". This seems to me pretty obvious, yet your logic is at odds with it.

Each "half" (as you call it, I would call it operand) of a logical conjunction are necessarily fully true if the conjunction is true.

I think you confuse yourself with some of the setup. What do you mean by "have"? How can anyone "have" "A and Not A"? "A and Not A" is simply false. For that to make sense, you would have to be specific with specifying beliefs, rather than just the interactions of the statements themselves.

 

You are confused with both your setup and choices.
as I said countless times the same thing, you cant split up a conjunctive phrase to create a different point not under evaluation which is what you are doing. (false dilemma fallacy)

Agnostic response to
Does God exist is: 'I dont know'

Same as your gumball instance.

The best way imo to set that up as a logic problem is to use as I said in another thread, electronic tristate gate analogy

1=+God=theist
0=indeterminate (which satisfies 'neither' believe nor disbelieve.=agnostic
-1=-God=atheist

this merely creates a second set of 'middles', all conditions are 'exclusive' and can be evaluated to true with no overlap like what you aer trying to accomplish.

which would look like this:

1=+God=theist
0=-God=atheist=you wiped out agnostic by illogically evaluating to an untrue condition
-1=-God=atheist

 

This is the problem right here. You have A and Not A, but you keep equating it to A and B, as if B is not the negative of A, but it IS. You are correct, A and Not A is simply false, but that is the position of agnostics. Either A or Not A is true and the other is false, but agnostics take no position. They subscribe (or don't subscribe) to both A and not A. You cannot ascribe either one to agnostics because then you are making them subscribe to either A or not A and not the other. Using your example, the statements would be "1 does not equal 2" and "1 does equal 2". Only one is true and the other is false. An agnostic (or someone who speaks a foreign language and does not know what "one" and "two" mean) takes no position on which is true and which is false. So he does not believe "1 does not equal 2" and/or "1 does equal 2". These are the two positions of atheism and theism. One is true and the other is false and agnostics don't know or won't say. You insist on making agnostics subscribe to one of them, but they don't.

By the way, before you go off on your tangent about changing definitions, consider that if you use your definition of atheist, you no longer have a statement that can be considered true or false, but simply a statement of a state of mind. And if atheism is not a claim to truth but simply a state of mind, then both theism and atheism can be true at the same time. But we already know only one can be right. Either God exists and theists are right or God doesn't exist and atheists are right. In both cases, agnostics end up being wrong, since they didn't take a stand. Which is what you get with not "A or Not A".