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[brainfreez]

"It's not the job for atheists to prove that religion is wrong , it's job for theists to prove the religion is right" (quote from someone that i found on wikipedia  )

So if your religion is right the prove that with real proof not just "the god exists , if you won't believe to it then you will go to hell"

I guess most people are religious just because they are afraid to go to hell after death (you can really notice it when someone says that the end of the world is near and everyone instantly turn into christians (or whatever religion) and start praying god because they are afraid to go to hell)

Also , if you still believe to religion , grow up , open your mind and try to explain why things happen not just say that "Everything was created by god". It seems that people explain things that they cannot explain by saying that a god did it , its just so dumb ...

[10ebbor10]

"It's not the job for atheists to prove that religion is wrong , it's job for theists to prove the religion is right" (quote from someone that i found on wikipedia  )

I don't want to convert/convince you, so why should I want to prove my religion?

Thanks for playing the strawmen atheist btw. Let me guess, American?

[kaijyuu]

"It's not the job for atheists to prove that religion is wrong , it's job for theists to prove the religion is right" (quote from someone that i found on wikipedia  )

'Tis a silly quote. Burden of proof lies on whoever's making an assertion. If you claim any knowledge or belief, you have to back it up. Doesn't matter if it's "negative" or "positive" or whatever.

So, if someone's preaching to you, it's their job to prove to you their religion is correct.
And if you're trying to convince someone their religion is wrong, it's your job to prove to them.


Your strawman atheist douchebag goes up to a religious person unprovoked, insults them, and then says "I don't have to prove anything; that's your job!" despite being the one making assertions. Sorta like you just did

[Graknorke]

"It's not the job for atheists to prove that religion is wrong , it's job for theists to prove the religion is right" (quote from someone that i found on wikipedia  )

I don't want to convert/convince you, so why should I want to prove my religion?

Thanks for playing the strawmen atheist btw. Let me guess, American?

Can someone even be their own strawman? Does it work that way?
Anyway, for Christians, I'm pretty sure the Bible says that it is every Christian's duty to convert as many people as possible to save them from an infinite time of God's wrath.

[kaijyuu]

Can someone even be their own strawman? Does it work that way?

It's a stereotype that's often used as a strawman, is what he's saying.

[10ebbor10]

"It's not the job for atheists to prove that religion is wrong , it's job for theists to prove the religion is right" (quote from someone that i found on wikipedia  )

I don't want to convert/convince you, so why should I want to prove my religion?

Thanks for playing the strawmen atheist btw. Let me guess, American?

Can someone even be their own strawman? Does it work that way?
Anyway, for Christians anyway, I'm pretty sure the Bible says that it is every Christian's duty to convert as many people as possible to save them from an infinite time of God's wrath.

That's one intrepretation. (Besides, Aggresive conversion doesn't work). The thing I'm doing can be seen as conversion, though passive. Countering unjust accusitions and such.

Besides, if a person lives his life according to the ideals of Christianity(please don't take this too litteral), but don't calls himselfs as such, doesn't believe in God, or hasn't even heard of him, would he get into heaven? (If we assume that said thing exist as a real thing)
Adding on to that, the idea of doing good to avoid getting into Hell is not supported by Christianity. (Again, Hell and heaven are symbolics for idealisms for society. Which is why the Lord's prayers says: "They Kingdom come, they will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven". It's an symbol for a certain state of mind.)

[Starver]

[Ninjaed*5, with some points addressed]

While I'm definitely not as sceptical about the authority of Wikipedia as many people, I wouldn't use that as a guide in this issue.  (True, I think that the proof of burden is on those making the extraordinary claims.  Of course, some people think that the extraordinary claim is that there is no God.  And sometimes, closely tied, the claim that it's a different God.)

Pascallian Wagerers are damned both ways, in my opinion, while those are true to their doubts/non-belief and lead decent lives without putting themselves out on seemingly redundant religious doctrine of any particular shape or colour should find themselves without too much to fear under either circumstance.  (But who knows if God/Zeus/Gilgamesh/Whoever actually subscribes to that principle themselves?)  Obviously the truly (or truly-enough) religious observers are going to get personal fulfilment in life and a shot at the end-game reward.


I wouldn't presume to say that one cannot have the "hobby"[1] of worshipping Jehovah, or whatever.  If it feels good it probably does you good, regardless of whether it books you tickets to the nicer vacation destination.  (Plus, if heartfelt, probably won't cause too many problems when Odin finally casts his eye upon you.)  But I agree that letting it get in the way of dealing with the world in a way that benefits everyone would be a hard cross (or large effigy of any other kind) to bear.  This applies to hard-line atheism, too.  Don't be annoying about it to those that haven't got the 'right' idea (apart from anythging else, they might be right, and that'll mean a black mark in your books).


[1] Not actually the right word, but here used as a handy shortcut for something that takes time and effort to do, regardless of the progression of the rest of your life.  If you don't have anything else to do then there's something wrong, assuming you're not an actual prophet or something with an even higher pay-grade.

[Glowcat]

Besides, It's just as easy to abuse a scientific or other text as it is to abuse something else. If we'd follow your logic through, in that every intrepretation is equally valid, we'd have to accept social darwinism and all those other things.

Am I the only one who doesn't see what he's talking about here? I was pretty sure Leafsnail's point was that the Judeo-Christian religion was full of contradictions and too open to interpretation to mean anything. Not sure how he got from that to scientific papers and accepting social darwinism, which isn't even science so much as a social movement born out of terribad logic.

"It's not the job for atheists to prove that religion is wrong , it's job for theists to prove the religion is right" (quote from someone that i found on wikipedia  )

'Tis a silly quote. Burden of proof lies on whoever's making an assertion. If you claim any knowledge or belief, you have to back it up. Doesn't matter if it's "negative" or "positive" or whatever.

You really want to go over this again?

I'm pretty sure that even if somebody did something as outrageous as coming up to a random theist and telling them their religion is bunk, getting them to provide their belief system and poking holes in that to show the theist the unsoundness of their position would be an effective (though rude) means of argumentation. Most of what religion does is claim things which can't be supported by data anyway. Kinda hard to build an argument when the entire issue is that the theist's position is saying "2 + 2 = Banana, therefore sex in sinful". Sorta requires the theist to lay their entire system out there to find what in particular gives them reason to believe in their deity, especially given that not all theists have the same beliefs and many simply never seriously question what they've been told their entire life until they're older or are given reason to, such as encountering strawman atheists on the street to finally make them think about it.

P.S. on subject dug up from the grave: Invisible Pink Unicorns can exist. They'll be pink when they finally turn off their invisibility, duh.

[Fenrir]

They'll be pink when they finally turn off their invisibility, duh.

That’s one interpretation.

[Leafsnail]

I wasn't saying that all interpretations were equally valid, just that those two particular interpretations don't seem to have anything to recommend themselves over each other (they both require you to ignore or handwave a lot of the text).  The 19th century thing isn't remotely true as we've had a religiously based law against homosexuality since 1533 in England (and homophobia since way before then), and even if it were I don't see the relevance of time period to validity of an interpretation.

I don't expect the book to prove anything.  It's difficult to impossible to prove a theory.  However, if it's telling me about how the world is meant to be then I expect evidence.  An experiment, a study, an observation that implies this theory is better than the alternatives.  For instance, in the example you provide of On the Origin of Species, Darwin provides verifiable examples and observations to demonstrate why his ideas help explain the world (most famously his finches).  Thus while he has not by any means proved his theory correct, he has demonstrated that his theory at least fills current gaps in knowledge and is worth further investigation (said further investigation ended up uncovering a valid mechanism and revealing that his theory was broadly correct and worthwhile).  These things are all absent in the Bible, which is why I say it is without basis.

[GlyphGryph]

"It's not the job for atheists to prove that religion is wrong , it's job for theists to prove the religion is right" (quote from someone that i found on wikipedia  )

'Tis a silly quote. Burden of proof lies on whoever's making an assertion. If you claim any knowledge or belief, you have to back it up. Doesn't matter if it's "negative" or "positive" or whatever.

[/quote]


Of course, the atheist starts with evidence. (Absence of evidence is evidence of absence). It's not terribly strong evidence, of course, at least at the start of this conversation, but it's not the only piece that exists - when combined with the number of competing religions, he likelihood of any individual religion being correct (absent any other evidence) is fairly low... low enough that the absence of evidence provides a fairly strong initial position for the atheist. (This is assuming the atheist is arguing only in opposition to the particular religion, but works against each individually, and even holds to a lesser extent for arguments against all of them)

That the burden of proof lies on whoever is making the assertion is honestly more of an observation than a directive - the starting evidence, if you well, almost always lies in opposition to the assertion, if only because there are often multiple competing assertions, and it would be absurd to assume they are all true until proven otherwise. But with such an understanding, it's clear that the (standard) Atheist position is not truly an assertion in any meaningful way. He needs not explicitly say "all of these are wrong", simply that "there is insufficient evidence to believe in any of these claims over the others" and thus (in the absence of any evidence that at least one of the options MUST be correct) he can adopt the null position - namely, "I do not know what is right, but the starting evidence indicates that you, in particular, are wrong" in the case with each member of each religion.

The burden of proof, as it were, could easily be required of both parties, but the atheist has the benefit of starting from a stronger position, meaning that the supporter of religion must provide sufficient evidence of their own to warrant any further evidence from the atheist.

So, yes,
"It's not the job for atheists to prove that religion is wrong , it's job for theists to prove the religion is right"
may not be a great quote. Rather:
"An atheist need not provide evidence that any given religion is wrong - reality does that for him, meaning his lack of belief is de-facto rational. A theist, however, needs to provide evidence that his particular religion is correct (if they wish to be rationally justified in that belief), since the evidence against them is inherent in the question being asked."

My religion is true - that's a might powerful claim with a great amount of evidence against it and a lot of competitors. It is not JUST a claim about your religion, it is a claim that all other religions are false.
Your religion is not true - While this makes a claim, the claim is much weaker, and thus it is the default state. It makes fewer assumptions - it requires less evidence, and starts with more. After all, it is also a claim contained ENTIRELY within the claim of the theist. While it may not have proof, it's rational to choose this option over the one that requires adopting this hypothesis a thousand times over in addition to making another.

=======

Please, treat me like an idiot. I would like you to explain to me how our universe can create another universe.

Every time you create a world in dwarf fortress, or Conways Game of Life, or start up a game of Noctis, you are creating a Universe.

[Fenrir]

Every time you create a world in dwarf fortress, or Conways Game of Life, or start up a game of Noctis, you are creating a Universe.

The programs mentioned still operate upon the rules of the current universe, and their creation was the inexorable product of those same rules, and the substance of them is of this universe, so in what way are they different universes?

[Owlbread]

Every time you create a world in dwarf fortress, or Conways Game of Life, or start up a game of Noctis, you are creating a Universe.

The programs mentioned still operate upon the rules of the current universe, and their creation was the inexorable product of those same rules, and the substance of them is of this universe, so in what way is it a different universe?

We can also make universes in our heads. This sounds suspiciously like the ontological argument for the existence of God, which is quite horrible because you can will a lot of shit into existence that obviously doesn't.

[kaijyuu]

I agree with most of what you said glyph gryph with the exception of this:

(Absence of evidence is evidence of absence)

And the things you build upon that particular assertion.


Absence of evidence is absence of evidence. Drawing any conclusion whatsoever from no data is inherently fallacious. It's not like you can go over and check whether something beyond the empirical exists. There's an impenetrable wall between you and anything supernatural, so claiming you have any knowledge whatsoever about what exists there (or doesn't) doesn't make sense, and is definitely not rational.

Coming up with valid analogies is hard, because all of them concern empirical things, but I'll try: If you were born in a windowless room that you never left, would you assume nothing existed outside of it? All you know is what you can see, taste, touch, hear, and smell (and other senses, for you pedants out there), and what you can build a tool to sense for you. When you're barred from gaining any data on something, you can't make any assumption about it and call it logical.



I'm an agnostic, and I expect theories to be logically consistent with themselves and other assumptions we hold. As such, I don't believe most mainstream religions, because I believe empiricism and those religions often contradict that (not to mention themselves). However, if you were to tell me there's an intangible, invisible elephant next to me named Stampy that cannot be detected in any way known to man, then I feel the only rational response to the question of his existence is "I don't know." And added on to that, "it doesn't matter," as Stampy cannot do anything to affect me.

[Glowcat]

Absence of evidence is absence of evidence. Drawing any conclusion whatsoever from no data is inherently fallacious

Incorrect. Absence of evidence IS evidence of absence, just not proof of absence.

Here's an easy way to show it.

Assertion: There is a man-eating horrorterror clinging to the next ceiling you're under and it will immediately devour you.

If you walk under any ceiling and are not eaten, then my claim is false. If you're eaten then I don't have to plan a further response.

Assertion 2: There is a man-eating horrorterror clinging to the next ceiling you're under. It will devour you if you linger too long.

This claim is not as strongly disproven as the first, but if you don't see a horrorterror and wait quite a while you can be sure beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no horrorterror and I'm playing a mean prank on you. However, the time duration before herrorterror appears and eats you is nonspecific and you can never be absolutely sure that there isn't some invisible horrorterror preparing to do its horrorterror thing any second now.

Yet in both cases there is still EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE. Evidence lends support for a theory, it doesn't always provide absolute certainty and nobody needs absolute certainty to come to conclusions. Just try pulling those epistemological games in a court of law and see how long before everybody in the room is annoyed with you.