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[Askot Bokbondeler]

After all, I wouldn't like to be called a stupid Satan loving sinner, bound to go to hell to get raped by red hot metal rod by a fundamentalist Christian even through he think he's right too.

you'd feel offended by that?
not that i enjoy being raped by fundamentalist christians but it's hard to take a "you're a sinner and will go to hell" seriously.

[Sowelu]

No. Santa actually gave presents.

The hell he did! Socks != Presents.

Just for the record:  You must have been gifted insufficiently cozy socks.

[Argembarger]

We're a discussion on the internet, not the parliament. We're perfectly allowed to have intolerant, sweeping, destructive views and arguments, as long as they're right.

Let's all be the literal embodiment of the very group we seek to tear down by using the exact same logic they do to justify it.

Yes.

Edit:
Let's say you have an atheist and a theist, together in a room. Both of them have the exact same beliefs about absolutely everything except for whether or not god exists. The only thing they can possibly argue about is the one thing that is supposed to be unanswerable. Whether you believe that it was deliberately constructed to be unanswerable, or that it's due to the will of this god, it's irrelevant, the question is still unanswerable. If you don't believe that the argument itself is an utterly futile and pointless waste of time (which it is), how do you go about making any sort of coherent argument?

[Siquo]

If you don't believe that the argument itself is an utterly futile and pointless waste of time (which it is), how do you go about making any sort of coherent argument?

If you do believe that the argument is an utterly futile and pointless waste of time, what are you doing posting in this topic? Well, except for repeatedly pointing out how utterly futile and pointless the argument is, which can go straight to the "Unoriginals" in the OP.

Edit: Oh wait, it's already there.

[Argembarger]

Yes, I do believe the question of "does god exist?" is unanswerable, therefore much of this thread is pointless and futile.

I'm posting here to try to convince people of that very point, the act of doing so being fundamentally different than offering it as a slipshod defense of my own beliefs.

This is a thread revolving around convincing other people, is it not?

Edit:

This thread is not about just stating your own viewpoint. This thread is about making cogent arguments to convince others.

I offered a thought experiment in support of my viewpoint.

Also, I'm not saying anyone's stupid for posting here and that this thread will never get anywhere, which is what is in the Unoriginals post. What I'm saying is that the question is unanswerable, which is an entirely different thing to say, and it is also not in the unoriginals post. This thread could indeed progress towards a general consensus that, because the question is unanswerable that there's no point in arguing anymore, and reach a conclusion. This is not "not going anywhere", I would consider this "progress".

[Andir]

Calling idiots idiots is faster than explaining why the idiots' idiocy is idiotic.

Saying the word "airplane" is faster than building one, but it won't let you fly. Calling someone an idiot will never convince him that his current viewpoint might be idiotic. And before you counter that that's impossible: if it were impossible there'd be no atheists.

Hmm, I'd argue the opposite.  I think everyone is born an atheist and they are indoctrinated into specific belief.  (Whatever is culturally significant at the time.)

[Shades]

Saying the word "airplane" is faster than building one, but it won't let you fly. Calling someone an idiot will never convince him that his current viewpoint might be idiotic. And before you counter that that's impossible: if it were impossible there'd be no atheists.

Hmm, I'd argue the opposite.  I think everyone is born an atheist and they are indoctrinated into specific belief.  (Whatever is culturally significant at the time.)

Oh course they get born atheist, why else do you think so many religions indoctrinate kids at an age when they trust what they are told. Thankfully the conversion rate of adults from atheist to theist is orders of magnitude lower than the reverse so religion is a self solving problem given a long enough time span.

[Siquo]

Oh course they get born atheist, why else do you think so many religions indoctrinate kids at an age when they trust what they are told. Thankfully the conversion rate from atheist to theist is orders of magnitude lower than the reverse so religion is a self solving problem given a long enough time span.

Conversion exists, that was the point, so at least we agree on that.
However, if people are born atheist, then conversion rates from atheist to theist is many orders of magnitude greater than the reverse: We all start out atheists and there are more theists than atheists in the world.

[Shades]

Conversion exists, that was the point, so at least we agree on that.
However, if people are born atheist, then conversion rates from atheist to theist is many orders of magnitude greater than the reverse: We all start out atheists and there are more theists than atheists in the world.

Touche. Although I'd disagree with there are more statement. The only people who claim that seem to be the various churches, and frankly most people that would put down they are religion x but don't actually practice in any way probably shouldn't be counted which would reduce the theist count further.

I will reword my statement to conversion rates of adults.

[Siquo]

But what then is a theist?
You don't have to think about God 24/7 to be a theist. I don't think most theists think about God every day, but if you would ask them, they'd probably stop and think for a moment, and eventually say that they do believe in God, they just don't do anything with that knowledge.

[Andir]

Oh course they get born atheist, why else do you think so many religions indoctrinate kids at an age when they trust what they are told. Thankfully the conversion rate from atheist to theist is orders of magnitude lower than the reverse so religion is a self solving problem given a long enough time span.

Conversion exists, that was the point, so at least we agree on that.
However, if people are born atheist, then conversion rates from atheist to theist is many orders of magnitude greater than the reverse: We all start out atheists and there are more theists than atheists in the world.

(This is a guess... have no numbers) Well, Churchgoers have an advantage of social interaction leading to more marriages and likely kids, whom will be indoctrinated into the same church.  I know the US went through a phase of "baby boomers" where parents would give birth to several kids (I have 7 aunts and uncles on just one side, 9 on the other) so that's a return of investment of over 300-400% more kids indoctrinated.

Now, a number that would be interesting to me is the number of non-religious who get married vs. the religious and how many children they produce.

[Shades]

But what then is a theist?
You don't have to think about God 24/7 to be a theist. I don't think most theists think about God every day, but if you would ask them, they'd probably stop and think for a moment, and eventually say that they do believe in God, they just don't do anything with that knowledge.

I'd say most don't believe they just fill in the form when ask as that is what they have always done and have only ever thought about it when asked. More of an autoresponse than a belief. It is certainly true that the majority of 'christians' I know have never been to a church since they moved out from their parents place. Of course maybe I only have this view as a chunk of my family is religious and it's obvious they are from how they live.

[Leafsnail]

The red text was just my "This is my 'moderating the thread' statement" thing. Since I want to participate in the thread, I want to make it obvious whether I'm saying something as just somebody talking, or as somebody considering locking it to prevent a flamewar, and make sure that I'm not getting the roles confused in a sort of, "Fine, I'm leaving and taking my ball with me" sort of way. Probably should've been more explicit about that, in retrospect.

Add the Word of God (hehe) rule to the OP.

Conversion exists, that was the point, so at least we agree on that.
However, if people are born atheist, then conversion rates from atheist to theist is many orders of magnitude greater than the reverse: We all start out atheists and there are more theists than atheists in the world.

I think it's a kindof evolutionary thing.  Not evolution of organisms, but evolution of ideas (I would call them by the technical term, "memes", but that's taken on a much more stupid connotation).

Afterall, like genes, ideas are passed to your children.  The ideas that do best are the ones that promote their own propagation.

As such, texts like the bible, with clauses stopping itself from ever being modified and which explicitly tell you to pass them down to your children are preserved from generation to generation.  Atheism, which is far vaguer an idea that has no clauses to have itself passed to the next generation... less so.

Anyway, new idea:
If God exists, he doesn't want anyone to believe in him.

Think about it.  He promises a whole lot of stuff will happen if you pray to him, but... your chances of getting what you pray for are no better than chance.  He randomly sends natural disasters and inflicts terrible diseases.  He dishes out horrible events equally to good and bad people.

All of this was intended to build up an image of God in people's minds, and then knock it down.  Unfortunately, it seems He misjudged the mindset of people...

What do you think, everyone?

[Shades]

What do you think, everyone?

Based on the starting assumption that god exists it's one of the only two logical conclusions I know of. Although I don't like your reasoning to get to that conclusion, it's weak

[Leafsnail]

Mostly because it's a joke, but yeah.

Just that otherwise it's hard to explain why an omnipotent God would act the way he does (or doesn't).