Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Andir]

1) Argument against the Atheist religion.  It IS a religion, the only difference being that they believe there's nothing there, and can't prove it.

Quite wrong actually.  There's no point in believing it is there.  There's a very fine distinction.  If one day things started acting VERY odd my stance would change, but so far the universe has been predictable.

[Phmcw]

Andir You're assuming the picture exist and that's you're not actually a pink koala who dream of a picture of the sky. Aka reasonable assumption.

An non interventionist all powerful god without defined will is an assumption as unreasonable as you can have  : perfect unprovable, completely useless, ...
But using this example to protect religion is fallacious : Yaveh had trouble with iron chariot and needed complex ritual o invoque his miracle. Still does for a lo of poeple. Not exactly covered by your explanation.
Rather, you fall under the category :

except if you believe in an ethereal non interventionist god, or that god is actually the universe, or whatever other form of purposely unprovable god, that only have the name in common with any old belief.

[Andir]

Rather, you fall under the category :

except if you believe in an ethereal non interventionist god, or that god is actually the universe, or whatever other form of purposely unprovable god, that only have the name in common with any old belief.

Except that I do not.  I do not believe a god created, controls, defined, or does anything to this world.  I find that from the atomic level to the astronomic level things are explained very well.

[Siquo]

  I'm always amused by arguments about whether or not there is some sort of omnipotent being out there.

Those snob agnostics... Atheists and Theists unite! We must ally to crush all agnostics who refuse to choose sides!

@Andir: The universe is actually very unpredictable at some levels...

Also, you can have very valid science without assumptions.  Let's say I take photos of the night sky every 10 minutes and analyze the stars for oddities.  Sure you could say I'm assuming that there's an oddity to look for... but what if I'm just taking the pictures for an art exhibit and drawing lines between each dot as it moves through the sky.  What if I notice that one of the stars is moving at a different rate than the rest and I discover a plane that nobody else had seen...  The methodology required no assumptions.  It's purely measuring a phenomenon that happens in nature.  Like measuring the growth of a tree.

Okay: you assume that the photograph is an accurate measurement of light. You assume that independent light, matter, and time exists beyond your personal self. You're assuming that stars are objects (there's been people who believed they were holes in a cloth). You're assuming that "measuring" is accurate to some degree, and actually possible. You assume there's cause and effect. You assume there's consistency in the natural world.

[Farmerbob]

1) Argument against the Atheist religion.  It IS a religion, the only difference being that they believe there's nothing there, and can't prove it.

Quite wrong actually.  There's no point in believing it is there.  There's a very fine distinction.  If one day things started acting VERY odd my stance would change, but so far the universe has been predictable.

Actually there are quite a few unpredictable things left in this universe.  At least, we cannot predict or fully understand them yet.  High energy physics, astronomy and higher math are full of lots of unexplained quirks.  Every now and then we find a better description of the universe to explain them, but we most certainly do not have anything even remotely resembling a full understanding of our universe at this time.

[Shades]

  1) Argument against the Atheist religion.  It IS a religion, the only difference being that they believe there's nothing there, and can't prove it.

You don't need to prove the non-existence of things. The same way I don't need to prove santa doesn't exist. (In fact it may be impossible to do so)

Besides which atheism isn't a religion as there is no belief and no faith, if there was any evidence of the existence of any kind of higher power at all then there would be some validity in your statement and almost certainly a lot of atheists wouldn't be, if there was down right prove of the existence of a higher power, and existence is something you can prove, then I would hope there is no atheists. Until then it's just your belief that you need to prove such things that keeps you in the position your in.

Frankly those that claim to be agnostic are just deluding themselves.

[Darvi]

  I'm always amused by arguments about whether or not there is some sort of omnipotent being out there.

Those snob agnostics... Atheists and Theists unite! We must ally to crush all agnostics who refuse to choose sides!

But I'm always undecided!

Besides which atheism isn't a religion as there is no belief and no faith, if there was any evidence of the existence of any kind   of higher power at all then there would be some validity in your   statement and almost certainly a lot of atheists wouldn't be, if there   was down right prove of the existence of a higher power, and existence   is something you can prove, then I would hope there is no atheists.   Until then it's just your belief that you need to prove such things that   keeps you in the position your in.

Eh, depending on your definition the belief in the non-existence of gods can also be a religion.

Frankly those that claim to be agnostic are just deluding themselves.

Nope, I just don't give a damn.

[Shades]

Besides which atheism isn't a religion as there is no belief and no faith, if there was any evidence of the existence of any kind   of higher power at all then there would be some validity in your   statement and almost certainly a lot of atheists wouldn't be, if there   was down right prove of the existence of a higher power, and existence   is something you can prove, then I would hope there is no atheists.   Until then it's just your belief that you need to prove such things that   keeps you in the position your in.

Eh, depending on your definition the belief in the non-existence of gods can also be a religion.

+read post, there is no belief there.

[Darvi]

Ya I didn't mean belief as in having faith or something.

[Farmerbob]

  1) Argument against the Atheist religion.  It IS a religion, the only difference being that they believe there's nothing there, and can't prove it.

You don't need to prove the non-existence of things. The same way I don't need to prove santa doesn't exist. (In fact it may be impossible to do so)

Besides which atheism isn't a religion as there is no belief and no faith, if there was any evidence of the existence of any kind of higher power at all then there would be some validity in your statement and almost certainly a lot of atheists wouldn't be, if there was down right prove of the existence of a higher power, and existence is something you can prove, then I would hope there is no atheists. Until then it's just your belief that you need to prove such things that keeps you in the position your in.

Frankly those that claim to be agnostic are just deluding themselves.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.  Atheism is not supportable scientifically.  Especially when you consider that the hypothetical being which you are trying to disprove is omnicient and omnipotent.

Lots of people don't understand what omnicient and omnipotent might actually mean.  An omnipotent and omnicient deity would be capable of completely rewriting an entirely new universe and billions of years of history the very instant you manage to generate a way to prove that it exists, then change some tiny bit of how everything works in order to make your proof invalid.  The only reaction the new you would have is "Oh, that doesn't make sense."

 

[Shades]

Ya I didn't mean belief as in having faith or something.

Okay by the technical definition of belief, which includes the fact I believe I'm writing this post, then sure. But as we are discussing religion we are talking about false or delusional or faith belief. A religion requires that, some demand it against evidence to the contrary. Of course that depends on your definition of religion.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Of course not that would just be stupid.

Atheism is not supportable scientifically. 

You don't need to prove the non-existence of things. The same way I don't need to prove santa doesn't exist. (In fact it may be impossible to do so)

Is supported scientifically.

By the way, just because you put one sentence after the other doesn't make them related of in any way support each other, as was clearly the case with the two quoted ones.

[Darvi]

Ya I didn't mean belief as in having faith or something.

Okay by the technical definition of belief, which includes the fact I believe I'm writing this post, then sure. But as we are discussing religion we are talking about false or delusional or faith belief. A religion requires that, some demand it against evidence to the contrary. Of course that depends on your definition of religion.

Ya, pretty much this.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Of course not that would just be stupid.

People are stupid to a certain degree. QED.

Atheism is not supportable scientifically. 

Is supported scientifically.

How so?

You don't need to prove the non-existence of things. The same way I don't need to prove santa doesn't exist. (In fact it may be impossible to do so)

You don't need to, but the point is that people still want to.

[Farmerbob]

  1) Argument against the Atheist religion.  It IS a religion, the only difference being that they believe there's nothing there, and can't prove it.

You don't need to prove the non-existence of things. The same way I don't need to prove santa doesn't exist. (In fact it may be impossible to do so)

Besides which atheism isn't a religion as there is no belief and no faith, if there was any evidence of the existence of any kind of higher power at all then there would be some validity in your statement and almost certainly a lot of atheists wouldn't be, if there was down right prove of the existence of a higher power, and existence is something you can prove, then I would hope there is no atheists. Until then it's just your belief that you need to prove such things that keeps you in the position your in.

Frankly those that claim to be agnostic are just deluding themselves.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.  Atheism is not supportable scientifically.  Especially when you consider that the hypothetical being which you are trying to disprove is omnicient and omnipotent.

Lots of people don't understand what omnicient and omnipotent might actually mean.  An omnipotent and omnicient deity would be capable of completely rewriting an entirely new universe and billions of years of history the very instant you manage to generate a way to prove that it exists, then change some tiny bit of how everything works in order to make your proof invalid.  The only reaction the new you would have is "Oh, that doesn't make sense."

 

Lol @ responding to myself.

The more interesting point to make, I suppose, is that if a deity is omnicient, and omnipotent, AND didn't want humans to know for certain it exists, it would already know every possible way to prove it's own existence and would have designed the universe in such a way as to make proving it's existence impossible.

[Darvi]

  1) Argument against the Atheist religion.  It IS a religion, the only difference being that they believe there's nothing there, and can't prove it.

You don't need to prove the non-existence of things. The same way I don't need to prove santa doesn't exist. (In fact it may be impossible to do so)

Besides which atheism isn't a religion as there is no belief and no faith, if there was any evidence of the existence of any kind of higher power at all then there would be some validity in your statement and almost certainly a lot of atheists wouldn't be, if there was down right prove of the existence of a higher power, and existence is something you can prove, then I would hope there is no atheists. Until then it's just your belief that you need to prove such things that keeps you in the position your in.

Frankly those that claim to be agnostic are just deluding themselves.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.  Atheism is not supportable scientifically.  Especially when you consider that the hypothetical being which you are trying to disprove is omnicient and omnipotent.

Lots of people don't understand what omnicient and omnipotent might actually mean.  An omnipotent and omnicient deity would be capable of completely rewriting an entirely new universe and billions of years of history the very instant you manage to generate a way to prove that it exists, then change some tiny bit of how everything works in order to make your proof invalid.  The only reaction the new you would have is "Oh, that doesn't make sense."

 

Lol @ responding to myself.

The more interesting point to make, I suppose, is that if a deity is omnicient, and omnipotent, AND didn't want humans to know for certain it didn't exist, it would already know every possible way to prove it's own existence and would have designed the universe in such a way as to make proving it's existence impossible.

This does make me wonder though. What would motivate an omnipotent being to stay unknown?

[Phmcw]

Thus making it a meaningless statement. In the same vein, you can't prove you're not dreaming all this.
And in a last argument no religion worship a god that doesn't want to be known.
There is nowhere in the bible, the thorah, the coran, whatever books of the Romans, he Egyptian tablets or whatever indouhist holly books "god is hiding". It's all god is there for the man, the Atheist are deluded fools, he want to be worshiped by his followers through this precise ritual, and the infidels with by ****ed by his glory whenever the time will come.