Are you mentally challenged. Let's swap the word god and put in tooth fairy, leprachaun, Zeus or unicorn. A negative cannot be proven. If you assert something exists then you, yes you, need to proove it. You can tell me you belive in anything you want but do not tell me it exists or it is the truth unless you can prove it.
No, but apparently you're grammatically challenged. Interesting how you assert that God does not exist yet claim a negative cannot be proven. This is what happens when you mistake science for belief.
I don't think you know what "can't prove a negative " means.... The assertion that god exists came first.....whoever asserted that has the responsibility to prove it if they want others to believe it to be true. . Those who didn't accept that as true do not have to prove anything because there is nothing for them to prove.
you used the word "beliefs". I believe Odin created the universe, and the Tooth Fairy helped him. Should that be considered? How about the FSM?
You are free to believe as you choose. Do you think others should dictate what you believe? If so, how do you plan to handle those who believe differently? "Re-education" camps? Mass executions? Something else?
Perhaps this Odin/Tooth Fairy religion should be legislated... Perhaps reference to it should be printed on our money and plastered on public buildings paid for with your tax dollars... Perhaps tenants of this should be taught as a viable alternative to scientific fact... Not so "normal" when it's not your faith... is it?
No one is denying you your freedom to believe as you choose. The problem comes when you want those who do not believe as you do,to believe as you do. Sounds to me like religions want to reeducate, mass executions etc.
oh really?? so you have confirmed the inner workings of the star around which our planet orbits? you have verified the existence of black holes and have observed the near infinite expanse of the universe? so much of what we consider scientific fact is little more than informed speculation and extrapolation, but still we are ready to accept as gospel most anything that comes from the mouths of these priests of the scientific age and we see nothing irrational about it. in fact, it is often considered highly irrational to doubt their profound declarations. just look at the furor over those who question global warming (oh, i'm sorry. they had to change that to climate change, didn't they). though all of the dire predictions have failed to materialize, their modeling has been shown to be flawed and outright fraud has been uncovered, even the slightest doubt is met with incredulity and ridicule. yes, it is illogical to deny something that is, by its very nature, unknowable, simply because you don't have the evidence at hand to prove its existence. of course, to be certain of a god's existence is also illogical. the only rational stance is uncertainty. if my hair is on fire i can find out for myself. the heat and flames would be my first clue that there was something amiss. i know the sun warms my flesh, but its mechanism is something i must take the word of others for. no one has ever visited the sun or traveled to a black hole or stood at the ends of the universe and measured its dimensions. all this and more we have extrapolated from our observations and our certainty as to the correctness of our conclusions is mere hubris. more people have claimed to have experienced proof of a god than have ever claimed to have witnessed proof of the existence of black holes, so why should i consider disbelieving them any less irrational than disbelieving someone who seeks to explain such physical mysteries of the universe? go ahead and believe i make this claim out of spite or sheer contrariness. why should i care? if it makes you feel better to believe that disbelief is a rational position, then go for it. just as with the believer who feels better knowing that there is a god watching over him, your brand of hubris and conceit is really no concern of mine.
I keep hearing a negative cannot be proven. Explain this to me. I say there is no dog in my bathroom. I open the door to see that there is indeed no dog there. Didn't I just prove there is no dog in my bathroom? I could have said, there is a dog in my bathroom(even if I knew I didn't own a dog) and then opened the door to see there was no dog in my bathroom. So, I say there is no god. I looked around and didn't see one. So I proved to myself at least there is no god. Or, I say there is a god. And I looked around and couldn't find him. Didn't I just prove at least to myself that there is no god? And was wrong in my belief? Looks to me like one can prove a negative as well as the positive. Anyone care to enlighten me?
What about this. I assert that matter at its smallest level doesn't have solids, but is waves of energy. And I say this in the 15th century. Someone asks me to prove it. But I don't have the technology or tools to prove it. Yet matter at this level is not solid, which is the fact. So, as far as the people of that time are concerned since I could not prove it, what I said doesn't exist. Yet what I said was fact.
You are playing a silly semantic game. I think you know darn well what it means to prove a negative. If I say You are a pedophile, is that just acceptable or do we need proof?if there is absolutely no proof of any such thing wouldn't Common sense tells us you are is not a pedophile?
Exactly my point. You make false accusations (lies) that I am doing this or advocating this. I am not. You are being dishonest as are many other atheists on this thread who have done the same.
some of them belittle theists to feel like they picked the winning team. Mostly the atheists that aren't vocal and angry don't really get seen here. They typically don't care enough to really talk to believers about their beliefs. The angry atheists aren't really atheists, they believe in God but they ate angry at him about something.
How silly. Let me use your logic ..Christians aren't really Christians, they don't believe in God and they are angry because they don't and want to - - - Updated - - - When I say believe as you do, I do not mean that you want me to believe in your God. But there are people and perhaps not you, who want prayer in school and who get all upset when religion is not imposed.
So, I say so and so is not a pedophile. It is within the realm of possibility that one can prove so and so is not a pedophile. So, am I proving a negative if so and so is indeed not a pedophile? I don't know what it means to prove a negative. So you say god does not exist, yet if I ask you to absolutely prove that, using limited scientific knowledge, you just respond by saying everyone knows you cannot prove a negative. How is this different from the monkeys in that Kipling novel that retorted, "we all say it is so, so it must be true"? Anyways, how can a limited knowledge ever prove anything, given the history of science? Knowledge has been turned upon its head, and discarded, even after being accepted as fact for a long time. My position has always been that whether god exists or not is unknowable. For if it does exist it necessarily has to be outside of time, space, matter. Being outside of time, how can that which is of time ever KNOW, that which is not of time? Yet the religious say they know, and the atheists, who try to use science, claim that they know. When in fact, neither actually know anything of the sort. Both are assuming, and both claim they are not assuming anything. I find it arrogantly dishonest to say the least. I personally do not know if god exists or not. This is intellectual honesty, which is direly lacking on both sides of this argument. For as soon as that which operates in time, declares statements about what necessarily must be outside of time, timeless if you will, that is one helluva incoherence. Unless you think the timeless can be included in time. Yet that would be a logical contradiction. All that I actually see is an exercise in egoism when it comes to this question of declaring god exists or he doesn't exist. Claiming to know something that is unknowable. I think it is basic insanity.
What about "wolves in sheeps clothing" of whom Jesus spoke. Would they not be or pretend to be Christians? And what about the "hell fire" crowd of Christianity? They can get real angry and weird too. Ironically, by being up front about it, Athiests are at least honest from that perspective. Agnostics, by reserving judgment, exhibit a large measure of resolve and fairness or wisdom. With them there is no foolery. I'm a Christian. But I can say that in many instances, I find that I have more in common with Athiests, Agnostics, Muslims, Witches, etc. than with many who call themselves Christians.
People have been put in mental hospitals for hearing voices and seeing unicorns, if you don't like proving something exists , then just use logic. How does your beief differ from a child who believes in Santa Claus? The child believes that Santa is watching him all year and if he is good he gets rewarded. For adults it is heaven for children it is toys or hell or coal in a stocking. In order to believe in God you have to believe in the supernatural and defy all logic. God is the supernatural and is used to explain what we do not understand. This is just what the Greek did , they did notunderstand how the sun traveled so they created a God who carried it across the sky in a chariot. They did not understand all of the woes in the world, so they created Pandora who released them from a box. You have the devil. To me it is all a need for people to believe in something to explainThe unknown and to assuage their fears of dying. If it gives you comfort I am glad for you.
So atheists are not really atheists, just angry theists? LOL. Atheists are by and large monumental egotists. They believe that they can know, what is unknowable. The theists are in the same boat, or rather the other side of one coin. They claim they know, when it fact they know nothing of the sort. The only sane manner in which to think on this issue is that it is impossible to KNOW the answer to this very old question. Yet what one can find out, and therefore to know, is the question of WHY do both sides feel a great, a tremendous need to SAY that they KNOW? That question does have an answer. But we hardly concern ourselves with questions that do have answers and would rather to ask those question that cannot have answers. And then we bicker over who is right. LOL. This sir, is utter insanity, utter incoherence. The sane, coherent view is rather simple. The fact of the matter is, we can never know if god exists or not. For if god does exist, it is necessarily so that this god be immeasurable, and timeless. For if he or she or it was of time, then certain proof would be there, and not hard to find. Proof would be everywhere. Yet if god does exist, being immeasurable, being timeless, thought, knowledge, the measurable, which is certainly of time could never touch that which is immeasurable, which is timeless. About all one can honestly say is that there is no way of knowing the answer, unless god is of time, of space, of matter. And clearly this has proven not to be the case. But that is all that has been actually proved. Many religions have held that god is indeed immeasurable, timeless, and then they got busy using what is of time, thought, to describe, to give characteristics to the timeless to what cannot be measured. And that is utterly irrational, illogical. What it seems that science does claim, is that the immeasurable, the timeless does not exist. Yet if it indeed does, they could never KNOW it. Being unable to know something, doesn't mean it does not exist. But if it does exist, there is nothing that can be said about it. For knowledge will always be limited to thought, to memory, both of which are things of time, not timelessness. So, personally I sense I can never know the answer, and I am fine with that. It is actually freedom, and you don't become a slave to something that one can never know. And you don't go around killing others because they don't believe in what your own imagination created. This might free man up to do the best we can on this earth, to be kind to others, to stop being selfish, to husband and protect our environment for it is all that we have and all that our future generations will have. It is a very sane manner in which to operate from.
I've stated several times in this thread and others that I am against mixing church and state, putting religion into public schools and other statements supportive of keeping our government secular yet, as you recently did, you continue to act as if everyone who believes there is something beyond the physical universe is your enemy. I retract my impression that you are rational because clearly you are not. This isn't the first time I've regretted that statement either.
The religious programming makes it seem "about sex," but it is about saving the Nation from falling down as a weak matriarchy that is full of fatherless bastards in the cities creating violent crimes, Welfare-supported single mothers raising kids who are Child Abused, and a need for millions of Abortions to hold down the Taxes on the working married young people.
There's truth in what you say, but that's an extreme example. It doesn't explain teaching Creationism in schools, being against age-appropriate sex education, making inexpensive (cost, not free) contraceptives available and other similar issues. In fact, many of the proposals I just mentioned go directly against reducing both teenage pregnancies, single mother issues and abortions.
This is a very important idea for us to remember when we read the Bible. The Bible could never have said that a species of humans lived for 950,000 years, but then went extinct. The writers could, apparently, say that Adam had lived for 950 "years," though. Once we see the limitations the Bible writers had, we can begin to explain the "flood" as a movement of Modern Homo sapiens over all the whole world, out-of-Africa and even to the heights of the mountain tops.
Personally when/if the UK has achieved the same separation of church and state that the US has I shall be a very happy atheist.On the other hand, I have to say that on the whole the kind of inclusive, laid back and most of the time quite reasonable Christian you get in the Church of England is worlds away from some of the Christians I see on this forum.
Theists, of any flavor, and atheists on forums such as these are usually the most vocal, oppressive and militant among their beliefs. - - - Updated - - - Because it was written by desert nomads who were giving their impressions from a time 4,000 to 2,000 years ago.
