Here is a thread for you to attack atheism and atheists.

Originally posted by Golden Boy
If A is defined as an object whose existence results in effect X, then we can know if A does not exist if X has not been effected.

That would be the answer to the question, the rest was fluff. I get where you are coming from now. [A] was not previously defined as such an object. If the very existence of A results in said actions, then this would be a direct causal relationship. If the described attributable action does not take place, then nothing can be attributed to A. What one can figure out is the that validity of X was in question from the beginning, which would likely be sourced within the individual perspectives being invalid empirically. I see that it is setup as "if [A causes an effect [X]], and X does not happen, then [A causes an effect [X]] = 0, but that seems to me is the definition of "throwing the baby out with the bath water." Though perhaps that is the intent, in a specific bid to invalidate certain God(s)? If such a thought process is followed through, then A only comes into existence during X. How does this "[A if and only if X]" reconcile that X is a derivative of A? This would point much more closely to the error in perception of X, or error in the perceived relationship between X and A, than invalidating A itself. this scenario is also bringing conscious action into the equation as well, and not simply ambient continuous effect. If A does not exist, then X will not exist, as a contained subsystem within a system, a derivative. However, how does proving X does not exist, as a contained subsystem within A, invalidate anything more than X? The red sea, for example, was supposedly allowed to return to its natural form, and was its natural form before the event. meaning, it was only temporarily parted. How does such a variable event factor into the equation? It would seem something like A "was" before the event, "is" during the event, and "will be" afterwards, but only if X = 1 (binary). If X = 0 then A "never was" before the event, "is not" during the event, and "will not be" afterwards? If the derivative event itself does not take place, how does this invalidate the notion of the existence of "A?"

Now, if during testing, one sees that frequently and consistently, when X=1 then A=1, then that would point to a causal relationship, but say nothing about the nature of A if such a relationship isnt perceived or observed to be present. If someone fired a gun [A], and someone was looking for X, how would one define X? If someone thought to ascribe cloud formation and rain to X, and there was a drought, does it invalidate the firing of the gun [A]? "The gun [A] that starts clouds in the sky [X] exists if and only if there are clouds in the sky? the only thing such a statement would insinuate is that if A does exist, it has not been used as X. Either that, or it defines X as being in a direct causal relationship with A, and in a non-derivative fashion (direct cause and effect, when X is not, A is not). i also have difficulty understanding how it wouldnt be more likely that X was misunderstood as being in a causal relationship with A in the first place, rather than saying anything about the "cause" because a specific "effect" was or was not observed.

Not observing an individual facet results in not observing an individual facet, and not necessarily anything to do with the containing system, or [A]. especially not when X is purely subjective. To determine whether or not [A] exists, it must take the place of X as the subject of query. I still struggle to see this causal relationship you think is so obvious, as i still see X being a derivative of A. please understand, this is not to debate or attack, so i suppose its off topic Just trying to understand your logic.

and sorry for being so "flawed"

Originally posted by ItsMeCB
I didn't read most of the replies cause there were so many. I just wanted to say I am Christian but do I hate or bash atheists? nah. I don't care about beliefs or unbeliefs of other religions either, I don't argue with people who say they don't believe what I do or make fun of the fact that yes I believe the bible as truth. I don't try to push my faith in other people faces which in my opinion is a huge turn off & I do get that some people have been put off by a bad experience or just don't care to hear anything about any religion.All I know is what I believe & if you have belief or rather unbelief about something why should you get mad when someone attacks it if you believe it as truth? I can respect atheism and expect the same, I don't make snide comments or make fun of it or other religions but am expected to defend myself when someone does it to me .Don't get me wrong I really don't care if someone makes fun, I'm open minded and can listen to others like an adult I wish I could say that about everyone including christians.

I said the same thing you just have, ItsMeCB, but the lack of any response or acknowledgement of my saying it was deafening! The atheists here want opposition, it makes them feel validated...
Vicky

reply to post by Vicky32


Can you please define your definition of untruth? Because sometimes, that is their truth, though it may differ from yours.

So what would be an example? I ask only so I may try to avoid confrontations of the aggressive kind later on.
It's much appreciated

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Let me put myself into paranoid delusional fundamentalist mode for a second:

Dirty rotten atheists! Did you know they pledge their allegiance to Satan himself? Its true! Why I saw one wearing a upside down pentagram at the library just the other day, of course I did what any good Bible believer would do and stoned him to death right then and there! He was reading a harry potter book too, probably trying to summon his familiar so they could find a virgin to sacrifice to Baal. A baby recently went missing from a nearby playground, everyone else seems to think it was a pedophile who took him, but I know better, it was those damned atheists, they eat babies, cook em up in cauldrons and make potions out of em!

Godless people are the reason for AIDS and Hurricane Katrina too, and pretty soon Iran is gonna nuke us if we don't turn our eyes back to Jesus. We especially need to stop these baby killing abortionists, everyone knows that if anyone is going to kill a kid it'd better be Yahweh, especially if the kid is rebelling against his parents, just like it says in Leviticus, stone the little bugger! Homosexuals too...

Alright that's enough, I couldn't hold it anymore. You may think its funny and I may think its funny but there are people out there who actually think like this... scary I know.

reply to post by Vicky32


I'm sorry? You actually claimed that we were spewing irrational hatred. You actively accused people of something without backing it up...

I said the same thing you just have, ItsMeCB, but the lack of any response or acknowledgement of my saying it was deafening!

Or we could have just not realized you posted it...hell, I didn't see it in my 'replies' box. The reply function actually has a use beyond some nice formatting.

The atheists here want opposition, it makes them feel validated...
Vicky

No, we don't. We want understanding. We want people with idiotic ideas like the one I'm replying to right now to not have such idiotic ideas.

reply to post by Vicky32

The atheists here want opposition, it makes them feel validated...

Nonsense. Atheists are the opposition to Theism, it's not a case of contrarianism, and you can't validate a lack of belief in an unfalsifiable hypotheis, and it's unwise to assert a belief in a claim on the basis of faith....You may be proved wrong some day. It's best to say "I don't know" and therefore do not believe in any man-made claims.

It's a conjuring trick...... can't prove God exists? "Meh, let's just let other men make stuff up about God" (Religion)

Atheism generally derives from agnosticism - Agnostic Atheism - There is no (current) evidence to assert a belief in a supernatural deity. God still may be true though, it's just religion is OBVIOUSLY false and man-made and un-verifiable.

Originally posted by awake_and_aware

Atheism generally derives from agnosticism - Agnostic Atheism - There is no (current) evidence to assert a belief in a supernatural deity. God still may be true though, it's just religion is OBVIOUSLY false and man-made and un-verifiable.

edit on 17/2/11 by awake_and_aware because: (no reason given)

Oh OBVIOUSLY!!!!
No, there's obviously nothing obvious about your assertion...If religion was as obviously false as ypu claim, then atheists would be the majority, not the minority.. and that would upset you very much, because you guys so love to be the very special clever majority!
Oh, and MIMS, I did use the reply box, my posting was the 3rd to the thread. You'd have had to have tried very hard to not see it!
Therefore I conclude that I am right, you desparetely didn't want to see a peaceful answer.
Vicky

Originally posted by sinohptik
That would be the answer to the question, the rest was fluff.

Fluff meant to explain it more clearly in case that bit didn't get across, but yes.

I get where you are coming from now.

Okay.

[A] was not previously defined as such an object.

Well, yes, it was. That was the point. Bob was defined as "the god who performed action X".

If the very existence of A results in said actions, then this would be a direct causal relationship. If the described attributable action does not take place, then nothing can be attributed to A. What one can figure out is the that validity of X was in question from the beginning, which would likely be sourced within the individual perspectives being invalid empirically. I see that it is setup as "if [A causes an effect [X]], and X does not happen, then [A causes an effect [X]] = 0, but that seems to me is the definition of "throwing the baby out with the bath water." Though perhaps that is the intent, in a specific bid to invalidate certain God(s)?

Essentially, yes. I'm not saying that "if X did not happen, no god even remotely close to A exists", but I am saying that "if X did not happen, A specifically does not exist". It disproves a very narrow line of gods, but it disproves them nonetheless. If X did not happen, that disproves all the gods which are defined as having performed action X.

If such a thought process is followed through, then A only comes into existence during X.

Essentially, yes. If I define Bob as "the god that murdered me this morning", no god is Bob unless I am murdered. If I am not murdered, no god is Bob, and thus Bob does not exist.

How does this "[A if and only if X]" reconcile that X is a derivative of A? This would point much more closely to the error in perception of X, or error in the perceived relationship between X and A, than invalidating A itself.

No, it invalidates A. It just doesn't invalidate anything other than A, which is the straw man that adjensen kept trying to construct. There might be another god entirely - let's call it "A-Prime" - which is defined identically to A except in that it did not perform action X, or performed it in such a way that we cannot know that X was performed. If X is false, A-Prime might still exist, but A does not.

this scenario is also bringing conscious action into the equation as well, and not simply ambient continuous effect. If A does not exist, then X will not exist, as a contained subsystem within a system, a derivative. However, how does proving X does not exist, as a contained subsystem within A, invalidate anything more than X?

Again, the law of identity. Object A is object A. If A requires X, and X is false, A is not true.

The red sea, for example, was supposedly allowed to return to its natural form, and was its natural form before the event. meaning, it was only temporarily parted. How does such a variable event factor into the equation?

Actions presumably leave evidence of their occurrence. Something like the parting of an ocean - and the drowning therein of the pursuing Egyptians - quite definitely leaves evidence. So if the evidence is not present, we know that X is false.

Of course, if another part of A is that none of its actions leave any evidence, then it can't be disproven, but that isn't the god that I'm talking about, and it doesn't change the fact that there quite definitely are gods defined as leaving evidence of their actions which can be proven not to exist.

Now, if during testing, one sees that frequently and consistently, when X=1 then A=1, then that would point to a causal relationship, but say nothing about the nature of A if such a relationship isnt perceived or observed to be present.

Which is irrelevant, as we already have a definition of A. We know that there is a relationship between X and A. We aren't looking for one, so this, while interesting, has nothing to do with the current discussion.

i also have difficulty understanding how it wouldnt be more likely that X was misunderstood as being in a causal relationship with A in the first place, rather than saying anything about the "cause" because a specific "effect" was or was not observed.

If it's misunderstood, then we're talking about different gods, because A is defined as having a causal relationship with X.

Not observing an individual facet results in not observing an individual facet, and not necessarily anything to do with the containing system, or [A]. especially not when X is purely subjective.

But X is not purely subjective. It is quite objective. If your X is different, we are talking about different gods.

To determine whether or not [A] exists, it must take the place of X as the subject of query.

Not necessarily, if A is defined as requiring X. If X is false, we know that A is false. If X is true, A may or may not be false.

I still struggle to see this causal relationship you think is so obvious, as i still see X being a derivative of A. please understand, this is not to debate or attack, so i suppose its off topic

Just trying to understand your logic.

and sorry for being so "flawed"

It's no problem. I don't mind explaining. But again, the reason that we can know if A does not exist by examining X is because A is defined as requiring X.

reply to post by Vicky32


You used the 'post reply' rather than the 'reply to'. Different boxes and the above formatting shows when you use the 'reply to' button. Now to get on to an actually fallacious argument:

No, there's obviously nothing obvious about your assertion...If religion was as obviously false as ypu claim, then atheists would be the majority, not the minority.. and that would upset you very much, because you guys so love to be the very special clever majority!

Off the bat: argumentum ad populum. Logical fallacy...and that's it. Population statistics and the acceptance of claims by a majority don't actually have anything to do with the validity of the claims. Reality isn't a democracy, it's a dictatorship of evidence.

Of course, I can also use this argument: But they all disagree with each other. All religions disagree with each other on some level, so there isn't even a majority there, just a lot of larger minorities. The biggest minorities make up ~33% of the population each....and those two groups severely disagree with each other and have disagreements within the group.

Then there's this one: Religions glorify the acceptance of religious convictions on faith, even in the face of evidence. In fact, the acceptance of a religious principle in opposition to evidence would be the greatest act of faith imaginable. Therefore, religious people don't really have a motivation to accept even the most obvious objections to their claims.

Demonstrably false claim has been demonstrated to be false.

reply to post by adjensen

a & a

...an unfalsifiable hypotheis... You may be proved wrong some
day...

It may be one or the other, but not both.

So far, I tend to favor the unfalsifiable hypothesis branch. If true, then that implies nothing except that the matter is unfit for scientific resolution, and then only if you follow Popper and don't worry much about Duhem.

It's hard to say whether your choice is "wise," speaking of an unfalsifiable hypothesis which seems entirely acceptable to you.

reply to post by Golden Boy


How does "A require X?" A, in this case, contains the cause and effect of X and is not dependent on X.. I still see it as saying something similar to "[the Golden Boy who parted the red sea], exists if and only if, the red sea was parted." If the red sea was not parted, it would be an assumption that X was invalid (but still open to speculation), and that there is still the possibility of Golden Boy being a valid subject of query.

Only when said as a statement does X invalidate A. The statement was invalid, but that doesnt invalidate all individual variables.

No conclusions can be made with lack of evidence, either way. "possibility" is a funny thing

Consequently, if one said [the God who parted the red sea], exists if and only if, the red sea was parted. And then evidence was found that the red sea was parted, i would similarly hesitate to make "A require X." In this case, it would still need to stand on its own merits. A greater possibility than proving the validity of A as part of an absolute statement would be that it was not the perceived "God" at all, it was some type of strange physics based anomaly that was retold as a story in their conceptual understanding of the universe. Do you see where i am coming from?

my question is how do attack a philosophical question with logic? with all the science we have on the brain we cannot with absolute certainty show the mechanic's of it. we can show you what it does, but we cannot tell you why or how it does it. our brains are more powerful than supercomputers. like big time.

how do you approach a philosophical book with physics or any other type of science? Socrates, and Plato were great minds with wonderful ideas of the spirit. temperament and the like. you could say they were "illuminated" but would you attack their philosophical theories with the scientific method? no of course you wouldn't.

the bible is a philosophical book. if you're going argue about it at least argue about the important part of it. the whole of the book is a book of ethics and philosophical theories. the stories they tell hold morals. there is a lesson to be learned in every single one of them.

the central message of the bible is that every person matters because every individual makes up the whole. unconditionally love your fellow man. honor, courage, love, and speak the truth, even unto death.

for the Jews, the bible was more of a history book, with the books of wisdom in the middle, and the ending of the old testament was grim to say the least, it can be used as a guide as to what happens when man falls away from God, and God is the whole. the greater good if you will. as in you give to charity cause you want to help the whole. it stated that the Jews had turned their back on God for the last time. he sent his Son, this man during his ministry, he, i guess you could say, was rivaled by the pharisee and these men were the high priests of the Jews, and because people put so much faith in the messenger of truth rather than the truth itself. the Jews were eventually after 3 1/2 years able to kill him, because of the laws they clung to.

This is God manifesting himself in the form of man. this is the key person in the bible. this guy is what it's all about. this is the main character if you will, and the Jewish official stance is that Jesus was not the messiah. so in essence the Jews have been cut off from the gift as the old testament said it would. because the bible is a very grim book without the new testament.

so by quoting all the horrible things in the old testament. these are the very things that killed the main character, but you see something amazing happened. in his short ministry he teaches us how we should live our lives. i'm not talking about your job or the necessities of life. i'm talking about in our interaction with others. it tells us what kind of person we should be. in his wisdom he told us in regards to rules and regulations it's pretty simple.

Love God(or the collective whole) with all your heart, mind, soul and strength
Love your neighbor as yourself.

when you love something you care for and protect it. you guard it with your life.

you can almost tell he kinda get the feeling he is dumbfounded that we don't understand love the way he does.

oh this guy he was a smart mouth too. He was healing people left and right he was raising people from the dead. there was no way you were gonna be able to execute this guy without starting a riot. so he would always tell the law keepers off. there were plenty of occasions where he made those who were seen as the "wise men" like complete fools, and these guys were hella powerful. they had the money, and cut deals with Rome.

this guy was a good man though and he taught us many valuable lessons, and the crazy part is that he never wrote it himself. this is just other people telling you what they either saw or heard from others. these accounts were made at 4 separate times and by 4 different people and pretty much the same story. just different writing styles thus different emphasis on different subjects or priorities.

he taught us to love unto death. it was the only real message he had. his many stern warnings, and his ultimate fate. all point to the fact that the only reward the world offers truth is pain suffering and death, and with that be said, always stand for truth.

i don't think enough emphasis can be pointed to the fact that the very thing that claimed to represent him was the thing that killed him. these were the churches. the high priests. etc.. etc...


the world thinks it knows better. the world likes to complicate things and make things more difficult. life is simple. live and laugh and love. that's all he did. he preached a way of life, a good way of life. to have faith in the impossible. follow love and you can never go wrong. work where you love. do what you love.

and the rest of the new testament is basically a broader description of what he taught. to understand the bible you must first understand the character of christ, because that is what it's all about. that's the point of the book

if you can find morale flaw in christ by all means. i can't. even when i don't want to agree i do. it's not easy to live this lifestyle, because in doing so i have to see my flaws for what they are. i have to be brutally honest with myself. and dude i can be a jerk. there are so many areas in my life that need work. i could be nicer in punishment of my kids. i coulda made things work with my ex wife, for the sake of the kids. i could work on my anger sometimes. i'm not perfect and i will never claim to be, but because i love i choose to better myself for the whole. because even if i just made the world a better place for one person. i still made the world a better place, and that is better than making it a worse place.

i can say that my walk through this life was done with a good heart mind and soul, and it feels great to be a good person.

madness

Off the bat: argumentum ad populum. Logical fallacy...and that's it.

No, madness. Read what she wrote again, then go back to those class notes of yours and compare argumentum ad populum.

In the passage you quote, Vicky is not addressing whether atheism is true, but rather, she is rebutting the claim that its truth is obvious.

It is perfectly appropriate rebuttal to argue: if this claim were true, then we would expect to see X. We do not see X, and we see something very different from X, and so we may reject the fact claim.

For a movement that throws around the term "falsifiability" so much, it is remarkable that so many of you seem unable to recognize falsification when you see it.

Rebuttal, then, is not to trot out Wikipedia-level truisms. You do best to argue, following Duhem, that every empricial investigation has assumptions. So, it is not the claim that implies X, but rather the conjunction of the claim and the assumptions.

Then, from

The claim and assumptions imply X.
X is false

The proper conclusion is,

"The claim and the assumptions" are not both true.

by De Morgan's law,

The claim or the assumptions are false.

From there, you defend the claim by arguing that one or more assumptions Vicky has made is false. Thus, you keep the claim as tenable in the light of contrary evidence.

Unfortunately, that only gets you as far as logic takes you. This is a contingent claim, not a necessary truth, so its truth will not be resolved by logic. Modern people look to the credal probability (or similar construct) of the claim being true, not its logical demonstrability, which is nil.

The only operational test for obviousness is the readiness of test subjects to see the light when the supposed-to-be-obvious thing is explained to them. Since the atheist view is widely publicized, lots of people have had it explained out to them. Yet, there are few atheists. Time and time again, right here on these boards, we see theists and agnostics having the view explained to them, and rejecting it outright.

That doesn't make atheism false, but it is strongly suggestive that its truth is not obvious. Since that was all Vicky claimed, and you offer no actual rebuttal, she's ahead on points just at the moment.

Originally posted by sinohptik
reply to post by Golden Boy

 

How does "A require X?"

I've explained this already. A is defined in such a way that it is impossible to be true if X is false. "The man who murdered me" again.

I still see it as saying something similar to "[the Golden Boy who parted the red sea], exists if and only if, the red sea was parted."

Because that's exactly what it is saying.

If the red sea was not parted, it would be an assumption that X was invalid (but still open to speculation), and that there is still the possibility of Golden Boy being a valid subject of query.

Exactly.

There is still the possibility that there is another Golden Boy out there who did not part the Red Sea. I have never argued against this. But the specific Golden Boy who parted the Red Sea does not exist. There is no Golden Boy which parted the Red Sea, so the Golden Boy who did that does not exist - his existence is disproven.

There quite definitely a Golden Boy that does exist - that'd be me - but that Golden Boy isn't the one responsible for the parting of the Red Sea. I can't disprove his existence, but adjensen's challenge was not that I disprove every possible version of some god. It was that I couldn't disprove any god at all.

You need to stop trying to make A bigger than it is. A represents one and only one possible god.

reply to post by eight bits


The claim wasn't that atheism was obvious but that there are obvious faults with religions (which are separate from the concept of theism). Claiming "if it's so obvious then majority would be atheists" not only fails to address the claim but is an argument from authority.

The validity of a claim rests not upon its acceptance by a majority. If I can provide an example of young children questioning the ideas of long held religious traditions then I can point to that as evidence that the objection is obvious (eg "How did Noah get kangaroos? How did he fit all the animals on the boat? How did he prevent the animals from eating each other?")

This was not a contention on atheism but a contention on the clear invalidity of religious claims that don't necessarily pertain to the existence of any deity. Were I to become a theist, I doubt it would be in any specific established religious tradition as they all contain some problems even at their basic levels (eg "Why did God have to sacrifice himself to himself to absolve us? Couldn't he have just poofed original sin away?"), but these objections don't speak to the existence or non-existence of deities, merely to the validity of their description of the deity in question which we can treat as if it were a literary character for the sake of discussion.

Originally posted by Golden Boy
adjensen's challenge was not that I disprove every possible version of some god. It was that I couldn't disprove any god at all.

A challenge which you have still failed to meet. You haven't proven that "Bob" is non-existent to yourself, because there are too many reasons that your proof of "he didn't show up" can be refuted, never mind the heavy lifting of proving his non-existence to me, which you haven't even started to do.

If your belief is that you can disprove the existence of something simply by finding a descriptive inconsistency, this is a fallacious belief, because description is a result of existence, not a cause of it. If God is not as he is described, that's our fault, not his, because we're the ones making the observations.

In other words, by showing that the parting of the Red Sea didn't happen (which you have not done, of course,) you don't demonstrate that God doesn't exist, you simply show that whoever wrote that was mistaken.

reply to post by stuncrazy

Originally posted by stuncrazy
my question is how do attack a philosophical question with logic?

Logic is a branch of philosophy. Learn to philosophy.

with all the science we have on the brain we cannot with absolute certainty show the mechanic's of it. we can show you what it does, but we cannot tell you why or how it does it.

But we're learning more and more every day. It's not like it's an unknowable question, it's merely one we haven't cracked yet. There is promising ongoing study into neurology that is slowly unraveling the mysteries of our brain.

our brains are more powerful than supercomputers. like big time.

Define 'powerful'. I've yet to meet a person who can compute algorithms at anywhere near the speed my laptop can. I've also yet to meet any individual who can draw each frame of an animated movie at a rate of 24 frames in a second whilst reciting all of the lines in direct synchronization with the action happening in these drawings.

how do you approach a philosophical book with physics or any other type of science?

You don't. Of course, you can approach them with a rational mindset, as philosophy is inherently based within human reason and must follow the rules of logic.

Socrates, and Plato were great minds with wonderful ideas of the spirit. temperament and the like. you could say they were "illuminated" but would you attack their philosophical theories with the scientific method? no of course you wouldn't.

Um...Plato and Socrates arrived at their conclusions through the exercise of reason, not through 'ideas of the spirit'. They weren't illuminated, they were practicing reason. To attack their claims I would use reason in turn (hell, I'm currently addressing Plato's philosophy of education in a paper for my class on the philosophy of education).

the bible is a philosophical book.

No, the Bible is a theological book. Theology =/= philosophy. Philosophical works rely on reason and argument to present their points, as found in any of Plato's works.

if you're going argue about it at least argue about the important part of it.

Which would be....?

the whole of the book is a book of ethics and philosophical theories.

Flawed and unreasoned ethics and commanded metaphysics do not philosophy make. I'd also like to ask how the lineages in the Bible relate to ethics? How about all of those songs?

the stories they tell hold morals. there is a lesson to be learned in every single one of them.

What's the story of the conquest of Canaan? What about the story of God's interference in the free will of Pharaoh?

the central message of the bible is that every person matters because every individual makes up the whole.

Please, back up this claim with some sort of argument, because I'd like to see how you derived this conclusion from the Biblical texts.

unconditionally love your fellow man. honor, courage, love, and speak the truth, even unto death.

You're right, fellow man, the Bible really has it in for women.

so by quoting all the horrible things in the old testament. these are the very things that killed the main character, but you see something amazing happened.

I can quote the letters of Paul for a lot of horrible things. Hell, the New Testament isn't all peaches and cream, I'd suggest actually bothering to read it.

in his short ministry he teaches us how we should live our lives.

Yes, he tells us that we should punish ourselves for our thoughts, for even the thought of sin is more dangerous than bodily disfigurement. He teaches us that ailments are caused by sin, setting medical science back for a while. Hell, even the good stuff is stuff that had already been floating about in the world for a few hundred years before he supposedly existed.

i'm not talking about your job or the necessities of life. i'm talking about in our interaction with others. it tells us what kind of person we should be. in his wisdom he told us in regards to rules and regulations it's pretty simple.

Love God(or the collective whole) with all your heart, mind, soul and strength

I'm sorry, but how is "God" the collective whole? God is a being represented as an actual thing, not a metaphorical thing.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Was already old hat in quite a few parts of the world at that time.

oh this guy he was a smart mouth too. He was healing people left and right he was raising people from the dead.

All with no sort of historical documentation beyond a few third hand accounts written a couple of decades after he supposedly existed....

Of course, you're just doing what Christians really love to do here, prosthelytize, so I'll continue jumping around.

this guy was a good man though and he taught us many valuable lessons, and the crazy part is that he never wrote it himself. this is just other people telling you what they either saw or heard from others. these accounts were made at 4 separate times and by 4 different people and pretty much the same story. just different writing styles thus different emphasis on different subjects or priorities.

And all of these accounts were made several decades after he supposedly existed. And they tell far from the same story, as the characters portrayed within the Gospels are portrayed differently in each one.

In fact, I won't take the account you're giving as factual unless you can support the existence of it with something outside of the text and contemporaneous with the events.

he taught us to love unto death. it was the only real message he had. his many stern warnings, and his ultimate fate. all point to the fact that the only reward the world offers truth is pain suffering and death, and with that be said, always stand for truth.

Except that the world doesn't reward truth with suffering and death unless there's a totalitarian dictatorship at hand. Right now the world rewards truth with change. That change can be in the form of positive accolades or it can be in the

the world thinks it knows better. the world likes to complicate things and make things more difficult. life is simple. live and laugh and love. that's all he did. he preached a way of life, a good way of life. to have faith in the impossible. follow love and you can never go wrong. work where you love. do what you love.

And with how "the world likes to complicate things" we've extended the average life span by 20 years since the 1930s.

and the rest of the new testament is basically a broader description of what he taught.

Subdue women, don't allow them to teach. Great message there.

to understand the bible you must first understand the character of christ, because that is what it's all about. that's the point of the book

No, that's the point of the second half of the book..

if you can find morale flaw in christ by all means.

Eternal punishment for finite crime
Punishment of thought crime

There, two flaws.

i can't.

I did.

 

Of course, even if all of the moral lessons of the Bible were true, it wouldn't speak to the validity of the claim of whether or not a deity exists.

The claim wasn't that atheism was obvious but that there are obvious faults with religions (which are separate from the concept of theism)

Yes, evidence is usually distinct from the hypothesis upon which it bears. Schematically, after a claim is made, then a testable prediction is formulated, and finally, the facts are checked to see whether the prediction is true. On that basis, the credibility of the claim is enhanced or diminished.

Did your course really not cover this?

The validity of a claim rests not upon its acceptance by a majority... etc.

That's the appeal of straw men, isn't it? Since you can't rebut what the poster actually argued, rebut something else and pretend that that was the argument she made.

That's why she's winning this round. You've defaulted, and haven't posted anything that is even marginally relevant to her rebuttal.

Nor will you. Your buddy overclaimed. Vicky called him on it. Smart play is to concede the mistakes and move on.

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by Golden Boy
adjensen's challenge was not that I disprove every possible version of some god. It was that I couldn't disprove any god at all.

A challenge which you have still failed to meet.

I very much have met it. That you still don't understand what I'm saying to you in no way changes that.

You haven't proven that "Bob" is non-existent to yourself, because there are too many reasons that your proof of "he didn't show up" can be refuted, never mind the heavy lifting of proving his non-existence to me, which you haven't even started to do.

Except that I already have disproven Bob. That you keep attempting to redefine Bob to say that I haven't disproven him doesn't change that. You're simply strawmanning.

If your belief is that you can disprove the existence of something simply by finding a descriptive inconsistency, this is a fallacious belief, because description is a result of existence, not a cause of it. If God is not as he is described, that's our fault, not his, because we're the ones making the observations.

And I never said otherwise. But if there are any gods that exist, they, by necessity, do not have Bob's flaw of being defined as performing an action which was never performed. But this does not change the fact that the falsity of X disproves all the gods which rely on X.

In other words, by showing that the parting of the Red Sea didn't happen (which you have not done, of course,) you don't demonstrate that God doesn't exist, you simply show that whoever wrote that was mistaken.

Correction: I do not demonstrate that no god exists. I do demonstrate that the god defined in that text does not exist. There may be another god, which is the one which the text is supposed to be describing, which does exist, but the one that the text actually describes does not.

If I define Bob as "the god which murdered me this morning", then Bob does not exist, because I was not murdered this morning. There may be another god which is identical to Bob in every way except that it did not murder me this morning which I did not disprove, but that isn't the god that I am talking about.

What part of this do you not understand?