Atheism

reply to post by sirnex


The Universe is not random, therefore if restarted 100 times it would produce the same exact result, what is that indicative of do you think?

Originally posted by EarthCitizen07
reply to post by ButterCookie

 

If there is no reward for doing good, then there is no incentive for being good.

Man -- that kind of attitude pisses me off.

Animals have extensive/complex societies - - - and they never read the damn bible.

Originally posted by confreak
reply to post by sirnex

 

The Universe is not random, therefore if restarted 100 times it would produce the same exact result, what is that indicative of do you think?

Prove your statement.

You've presented it as fact - - - not personal belief.

Originally posted by Annee

Originally posted by EarthCitizen07
reply to post by ButterCookie

 

If there is no reward for doing good, then there is no incentive for being good.

Man -- that kind of attitude pisses me off.

Animals have extensive/complex societies - - - and they never read the damn bible.

I was not speaking of the bible. I was speaking of common sense!

Originally posted by traditionaldrummer

Originally posted by confreak
argumentum ad ignorantiam
I've stated that this is evidence, and I provided the definition of evidence in my first post. I'm not making a logical statement, I'm posting evidence.

You haven't posted evidence for the creation of the universe, you've merely asserted it. And your argument is indeed a fallacy. You state that because X is false, Y is therefore true. This is fallacious and not a valid method to substantiate the truth of anything.

Don't even reply if you are not gonna take in to consideration any thing I said, instead continuously get lost in your own ignorance towards logic and evidence.

reply to post by Annee


Prove what?

Originally posted by confreak
reply to post by Annee

 

Prove what?

This is stupid.

You made a statement post. Not an I believe post.

reply to post by Annee


If you are talking about "The Universe is not random", then I really don't need to prove it, science has already proved it.

Originally posted by confreak
reply to post by Annee

 

If you are talking about "The Universe is not random", then I really don't need to prove it, science has already proved it.

Evasion.

reply to post by Annee


What a waste of time, why do you even bother posting when you don't even know what random is?

Originally posted by confreak
reply to post by Annee

 

What a waste of time, why do you even bother posting when you don't even know what random is?

Answer the question.

reply to post by Annee


Never thought I would see an Atheist hit so low out of desperosity against a creationist, then again, it is always good to see something new.

"There is clear and convincing evidence of order. E=MC2. In a right triangle a2+b2=c2. Pi is a mathematical constant that is used to figure out the ratio of every circle’s circumference to its diameter. Phi is the golden ratio. 2+2=4. For every force, there is an equal and opposite force. All of these things are indisputably true and indisputably not random."

All of the above are facts, and those facts prove non-random, now you provide one fact which is random. The above is science by the way, hence "science proved it".

Originally posted by Leahn
reply to post by TheWalkingFox

 

Atheism is not a position of skepticism. Agnosticism is a position of skeptcism. The skeptic position is to wait until evidence is conclusive for either position. Atheism is a negative position, which incurs burden of proof in the same way that a positive one does, and tried to defend itself by using an argumen from ignorance.

Incorrect. See, we're not looking at a gradient of possible answers here. It's binary.

Either
A) there is a deity
or
B) there is no deity.

Therefor the onus falls on the positive claim - that there is a deity - to bring forth evidence that backs up that position. In the lack of such evidence, B is the default - skeptical - position. "Maybe" is a useless position when you only have two options, after all.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox

 

That's because you guys believe in some pretty funny stuff.

And that translates in you being justified to be a jerk exactly how?

The Greeks believed that Zeus, in the form of a swan, had sexual intercourse with Leda, daughter of King Thestius, and wife of the Spartan King Tyndareus. She gave birth to two children from her Husband - Castor and Clytemnestra - at the same time that she laid two eggs, from which hatched Zeus' children - Helen and Polydeuces.

So the primary god seduced a woman while shapeshifted as a waterfowl. She laid two eggs while giving birth to her husband's children. Both of those eggs hatched into humans, one of whom went on to be involved in some debacle involving apples and Brad Pitt.

Do you find the notion that people took this story seriously to be amusing at all? i sure as hell do. it's not because I'm a jerk, it's because the story is ridiculous.

Well, when someone is trying to tell everyone that the sky is lime green and full of angry wasps, one should be a good citizen and try to allay their fears.

You bring me the evidence that you possess that God doesn't exist, and I will accept your rationalization.

As I keep saying, the onus falls on you to first define whatever "god" is, and then present evidence of this thing. I understand that you are completely and wholly unable to do either, so I also understand why you keep trying to change the rules of logic here.

Do you believe in invisible pink unocorns? No? PROVE they don't exist!

Until then, comparing the belief in God to the belief that the sky is lime green is both offensive and ridiculous,

Actually the comparison is very valid. The sky is not lime green and filled with angry hornets. Similarly, there is no singular driving force that takes a personal interest in us personally - or whatever concept of "god" you want to use. Now, okay, perhaps to your perceptions, the sky is lime green and filled with hornets. I'll be honest, I don't know what the hell you see. But it may just be that you ate some bad clams.

As for it being offensive, why is it offensive? I find it offensive that I should respect your hallucination and give it equal weight to the contradicting evidence at hand. On the basis of many, many, many observers, the sky is probably not lime green, and it is a demonstrable fact that it's not swarming with angry hornets at all. If I say to you ,"no, the sky is a shade of blue, and the hornets are not real" why should you take offense? if you've decided to hinge your entire life on the existence of the hornets, that's not my problem. My problem is you freaking out on the street because of bees that only you can see.

which only serves to prove my point that many atheists share a very easily recognizable worldview, despite their claims that "there is no similarity between two atheists except their lack of believe in God".

You're taking that phrase a bit too literally. It's a broad, but light brush. See, there are no "requirements" for atheism. See, to be an atheist, you do not need to mutilate your sexual organs, genuflect in a particular direction, give your money to a certain foundation, divorce your friends and family, be of a certain political leaning or ethnicity, or any of the many other things often required by the various religions of the earth.

That most atheists come to share an evidence-based worldview is not because of doctrine. It's not because we're atheists. In fact we tend to be atheists because we have an evidence-based worldview. Show me a dude who's a Muslim because he just happened to kneel facing the southeast five times a day anyway.

Well, that IS exactly what the god of many religions is - invisible daddy who lives in the sky and does magic. There's no reason to take such beliefs seriously, or to elevate them above myths of leprechauns and werewolves.

QED.

I wasn't trying to prove you wrong. I was explaining to you why this is

You're not really helping your cause, don't you know that?

I don't actually have a cause here. Except perhaps to explain reality to people who are very resistant to the concept, preferring to reject it and substitute their own. Reality is not a popularity contest; it's just reality.

There is absolutely no justification for a human being to be derrogative towards another human being, specially when doing so consciously and intentionally.

How is "sky fairy" derogatory? You DO believe in fairies, don't you? After all, you HAVE to believe, since you don't have any proof they don't exist. Surely, then these fairies are every bit as real as your god. Fairies can do anything I say they can, and your god can do anything you say he can. Plus your book puts him in the sky. Ergo, he's a fairy that lives in the sky. Would you prefer he be a genie? A magic invisible rock? David Spade?

If I were to call you a sniveling idiot for believing in a sky fairy, THAT would be derogatory towards you. Saying you're wrong isn't being derogatory. And since one cannot be derogatory towards a thing that does not exist (your flying rhinoceros is SOOOO UGLY!) i'm not even being derogatory towards your god. Besides, I hear he smites people for that sort of thing. Sometimes with bears. Haven't had any problems with that.

Evil is hard to quantify. But as a source of harm, yes. Religion induces its believers to act in demonstrably harmful ways, both to themselves and each other.

No, tribalism does. I do not expect people to have studied the dynamics of tribalism and intra and inter hostilities, but there is very little that can be said about religion that can't be also said about any other variation of tribalism. On the other hand, there is a very important thing to be said about religion that cannot be said about other variations of tribalism.

Sort of like arguing how "guns don't kill people, high-velocity lead pellets kill people." Yes, tribalism is a factor, and as you point out yourself, religion creates tribalism. If you take the tribe out of religion, then you don't really even have religion, you just have some vague sentiment, as is seen in many fantasy or science-fiction media ("The force" for example, is one such generic thing. "The Light" from the Warcraft universe is another) So you can't really draw a line between the two in this case. While you can have tribalism without religion, one simply cannot have religion without tribalism.

so we're back to my starting point; religion induces its followers into harmful behavior both for themselves and others.

Religion reduces intra-hostilities to near zero.

Uh... What? Okay, maybe in some sanitized, mythical example, where everyone everywhere follows only one religion with absolutely no doctrinal variance, they probably won't divide over religion. But of course, religion doesn't actually work that way. Someone's always a heretic.

Europe and the Middle East are on the line; they'd like to have a word.

None of those wars were religious in nature. The wars on Europe were political in nature, and the wars on Middle East are nationalistic in nature.

Religion is certainly a factor in many of them, In fact the wars between protestant and Catholic in europe were purely religious. Ireland had a religious civil war - no, not Catholics vs. Protestants, but Catholic monks vs. Catholic monks - they were killing each other over the proper tonsure form (the Roman-trained monks liked the bald crown, the native Irish preferred to shave the pate). Ever heard of the Ismailis? Or, for that matter, have you studied the history of Buddhism? Man, there's a bloody little religion; forget the westernized, Richard Gere Buddhism, those bastards killed LOTS of people.

No, actually this is the claim of the theists, and it's sort of like the skinny chess nerd who's claiming he can take on the entire wrestling team.

No, it isn't. It is a fact of history that science owes far too much to religion for religious people to believe in some sort of schism. Up to the beginning of the 20th century, science was basically a religious endeavor.

Well, this is primarily due to the fact that at the time the best way to get the time and resources needed for scientific study was to become a member of the clergy. otherwise, you were busting your butt tilling the land or hammering horseshoes or something. So what you actually mean is that science got its start with grants and resources from assorted religious organizations. Religion itself provided nothing; perhaps a few springboards that, ultimately, proved the religion to be wrong (Early geologists spent a lot of time looking for evidence of the flood; they found none. Instead they found lots of evidence that the "created 7,000 years ago" stuff was dead wrong)

Also even in these early days, religion and science had a hostile relationship- well, mostly religion was hostile to science. Ask Galileo or Copernicus. Or the hundreds of alchemists who, while not exactly "scientists" as we understand it, were at least in the neighborhood sometimes.

Well, they are actually the best we have. They certainly generate far better results than previous systems. Maybe in the future we'll come up with an even better way of examining hte world around us, but so far "collect data, run tests, draw conclusions, collect more data, run more tests, revise conclusions" seems to work really, really well.

No, it isn't. Science is good for explaining the physical world when hard data is attainable and verifiable. It is woefully incapable of dealing with other kinds of truth.

To quote my favorite pantheist, "The truth is the truth." There is only one truth, I hate to tell you. you don't get to invent new categories in order to justify stuff you've made up.

Never heard of prayer preventing polio. Vaccination, however?

It may surprise you, but there are no studies proving the efficacy of vaccination. There has never been any form of double-blind tests proving that it can prevent anything. It is simply assumed to work since when the idea of vaccination appeared, there was no habit of making double-blind studies to verify efficacy of things like that, and scientists have far too much on their hands to worry about "backlog".

Really, now?

Huh. I suppose smallpox just went away all on its own, then?

Well, that's how logic works. Sorry if that's inconveniant for you.

No, that's not how logic works. That's how some people who are not trained in logic like to pretend that it works.

Actually that is how logic works. It's called "burden of proof." In legalese, onus probandi.

The reason for this is actually pretty simple. If I were to claim that I banged your mom last night, and you could not prove I didn't (and if she's dead, well, maybe I'm freaky like that) then would you be forced to accept my claim, despite my own lack of evidence? No. You are not required to disprove; I am required to prove.

But it's not the priests of Huitzolipotchli who are today trying to start nuclear wars in the middle east while striving to control the uteruses of my countrywomen, is it?

Actually, there is no one trying to start nuclear wars in the middle east, as far as I know.

Fair enough, mild hyperbole on my part; plenty of conventional war getting stirred up though. when John McCain sang "Bomb, Bomb iran" I don't think he was doing so as an Aztec Sun-Worshipper, though.

And as per the uteruses of your countrywomen, you should worry less about Christians and worry more about MGTOW and MRA.

Haven't seen any men's rights activists gunning down the doctors who perform abortions, nor writing the legislation that makes the procedure illegal even in case of rape and incest.

Only when religion is already involved in the discussion.

No, not really. Not on my experience, at least. I've seen people engage in a whole diatribe about how God doesn't exist because someone said "God bless you" when another person sneezed.

I thought we were talking about ATS posts. Where do you guys buy these mobile goalposts?

Originally posted by EarthCitizen07
reply to post by ButterCookie

 

If there is no reward for doing good, then there is no incentive for being good.

If there is no punishment for doing bad, then there is no discentive for being bad.

Perhaps if you're a sociopath.

However if we take what you say at face value, the thing is, there doesn't need to be a god to deliver rewards and punishments. When a person murders another person, humans either lock him away for years and years, or they kill him in revenge. God doesn't do this; it's people punishing people. God is thus irrelevant to the situation.

Basically you believe in mediocracy by default.

Well, to be fair, you're the one saying you couldn't be assed to help an old lady pick up her spilled groceries unless there's a reward for doing so. Seems to me the apathy - and thus mediocrity - is your own.

I think aliens do play a part in our decision making process at a subconcious level through telepathy. Good aliens are called angels and bad aliens are called demons. God either rules the good angels or rules both and we all know satan/lucifer rules the bad aliens.

Okay. I'd like to meet one of these aliens. Also could you show me some sort of readout showing the messages being beamed into our brain? After all there's definitely some energy transfer there, it should be quite detectable. Also while you're at it, could you show me documentation of god and lucifer's reign over these alies? Some missives, board meeting notes, communiques of some sort? Thanks in advance.

The Cosmic Conflict series by branton. A must read but complicated if your new to ufology and alternative topics in general. Stan Deyo has written a book with a similar theme, but unlike branton, his work is highely priced and difficult to find.

I'm having a dickens of a time finding the Peter Straub / Stephen King collab, "The Talisman."

I honestly do not have answers to all the questions. Life could be an experiment, it could be that humans are caught up in a cosmic struggle or perhaps a little of both.

Or perhaps the hokey-pokey really is what it's all about.

Originally posted by confreak
reply to post by Annee

 

Never thought I would see an Atheist hit so low out of desperosity against a creationist, then again, it is always good to see something new.

More evasion.

reply to post by EarthCitizen07


Most of us feel good when we are doing things we consider good, and feel guilty when we do things we consider wrong. That is a reward and punishment, no need to imagine an all seeing judge looking over your shoulder 24/7 for that.

reply to post by Leahn

Originally posted by Leahn
reply to post by Titen-Sxull

 

Gays are being denied rights because some people are stupid. It has nothing to do with religion.

Wrong.

Leviticus18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

That's one book of the Bible quite clear on homosexuality being a no-no.

Let's read on in the New Testament:

1 Corinthians 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
6:10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

1 Timothy 1:10 For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

There has quite a bit to do with homosexuality in religion and it's all bad and intolerant.

reply to post by confreak

Originally posted by confreak
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

Mutation is not random, it is caused by different processes. You might perceive it as random, but that makes it pseudo random.

Mutation is entirely unpredictable, indeterminate. It's a result of flaws in a copying process. You're making a universal blanket statement that you cannot prove.

If true randomness doesn't exists, the universe was designed.

This is a non-sequitur, where are you arriving at that conclusion from? Why does determinism automatically mean designer?

If the Universe is restarted, the same exact Universe will be produced, nothing will be different.

I'm sorry, but where's your evidence of this? I don't think anyone could possibly make that statement with any degree of certainty because we have absolutely no idea exactly how the universe got started in the first place. We are unaware of what exactly things were like prior to the big bang.

Evidence that it was created as it is, and not formed randomly.

*facepalm* Nobody is saying that it was formed randomly. "As a consequence of natural forces" isn't the same as random. You're taking straw men and non-sequiturs and having a little orgy of ignorance here.

That being said, before bed time take some sleeping pills, you'll need it tonight.

I don't even know what that's supposed to mean...

reply to post by confreak


Ok, I just realized that you're not worth discussing when your response to an objection to an argument is to repeat a premise.

Again, how does the absence of randomness demonstrate a deity?

reply to post by babloyi


Randomness is a fuzzy word...it's a word that we use to describe something that we cannot predict. Now, there are elements of quantum physics, primarily vacuum particles, that make the idea of randomness come up again. It's not a significant level, but it's still something.

I just think the blanket statement "There is no randomness" is something that is epistemologically impossible to claim.

Of course, even if there is no randomness, it doesn't mean that there is a designer or a first cause that has intelligent agency. Hell, it doesn't even necessitate there being a first cause. For all we know, the universe is a perpetual motion machine of sorts.