Conflicts for Atheism- something to think about

Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
Conflicts for Atheism- something to think about

Maybe you can "sticky" this too for the Atheist, seeing that you have anti-Theism and anti-Christian posts along the same lines...maybe even it out a little; if you acknowledge freedom of speech and promotion of thought anyway...

Keep in mind, I'm not trying to convert anyone. I am not trying to argue. I am not even stating my own beliefs. I am simply giving you some things to think about.

Some Problems with Atheism:

The term G-D.

Atheism= greek: A=no Thesim=god; therefore Atheism is No-G-D, not just No-christian G-D, or No-Islam G-D, etc... it is clearly NO-G-D.

G-D=One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed. (American Heritage Dictionary)
So G-D is NOT JUST a creator, and NOT JUST a saviour, G-D is anything you worship, idealize, or follow- if you follow this thing you must also trust it or be submissive to it.

If G-D is anything you worship or follow (submit to or trust) then nobody is an Atheist because everyone follows something. Maybe you obey social laws, therefore social laws are your god.
Maybe you worship Dawkins, then Dawkins is your god, or at the very bottom of the spectrum, maybe you worship or only follow yourself; that means you are your own god, and if you are your own god one thing is clear, you are NOT an Atheist.

You can not simply assume all gods are the same or even supernatural, etc... To do so is to ignore the full context. Maybe you don't believe in a creator, but a creator is not the only type of god.

The Problem of Absolute Knowledge:

In order to be an Atheist or atleast believe there is no Biblical concept of G-D, you must either A) Know there is No-G-D or B) Have faith in atheism.

However this is the oldest argument in the book.

In order to Know without a doubt there is no G-D you would have to know absolutely everything about the entire universe, BUT if you knew everything about the entire universe you would have to be omniscient. If you are omniscient you have now takin on one of the very characteristics you have sought to disprove, therefore contradicting your orignal question.
OR
If you admit it is just a faith, well then how can you criticize a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, etc... for having faith in a G-D, you have the same type of faith, just in the opposite direction. Therefore to call them stupid for having faith is to call yourself stupidf or having faith. You are both only believing by faith.

The Kalam Argument:

The Big Bang Theory is the top held scientific concept for the Universes Origin.

The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was CREATED sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions.
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html

Kalam:

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe must have a cause.

Then one must ask, "What causes an act?" Obviously an agent does. Well then, what causes an agent to act? Even more so in this situation, where did the agent come from? As Norman Geisler noted " To suppose something can pop into existence out of nothing goes against all scientific observance and rationality." The Kalam argument and Big Bang Theory leave us wondering about the initial cause, what agent was there and where did it come from?

The Problem of Purpose:

What purpose does Atheism leave us with? Atheism infact leaves us to look towards nihilism. With no purpose, how does one discern between good & bad, right and wrong? Nothing would be the greater good, but all would be equally meaningless. If everything is equally meaningless, then why even live (nihilism). To continue to live would be in contradiction to your own belief. If you believe that truth is relative then you have an another problem. If truth is relative then everything is right and wrong at any given time. Therefore Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Atheism are all correct and there is no point to say any Theist is wrong. Besides, to hold that truth is relative would mean that the statement that truth is itself relative and therefore sometimes truth is absolute. Otherwise, the statement that truth is relative is an absolute showing again truth is absolute. However, if there are absolutes, then purposeless atheism leaves us without a way to define good and bad, right and wrong.

One may claim that Atheism leaves us with the purpose to evolve. Well how do we know humanity is good? Where does the human get its value? Maybe humanity shouldn't be continued. Perhaps we could take the Nietzschean outlook on it and practice a sort of "Social Darwinism." However, Hitler put this theory into practice and look at how Hitler was responded to and is now viewed. Perhaps one could claim that we are to live for ourselves and do what is good for us, but perhaps for me it is good to kill as many people as I can, but how would this be good for them? What gives me right to kill them and take away their rights? What gives them the right not to be killed and take away my right to kill?

You get the point- Atheism leaves us without Purpose and Ethics...

The Metaphysical Problem:

Nihilism: A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.

Science can not answer metaphysical questions. Atheism gives no answers to metaphysical problems other than to be the leading path to nihilism. In short, this leads to the end of
free-thinking, because Atheism concludes that there is no after-life (which can't be scientifically proven either way). Atheism concludes there is no G-D (which also can't be scientifically proven either way). Atheism leads to a lack of purpose, so why even continue to think, it is meaningless to find answers anyway. Relativity of truth or skepticism also leads to the hault of thinking:

Philosophy-from Greek philosophiā, from philosophos, lover of wisdom.

Wisdom-accumulated knowledge or erudition or enlightenment

Knowledge- acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition.

(All American Heritage Dictionary)

The Point: If one believes there to be no absolute truth or no way of knowing if there even is truth; then one can know this for sure, he is not a philosopher. To be a philosopher is to love wisdom, which is knowledge, which is truth. Therefore to be a philosopher you must assume a truth can be reached meaning anyone who is agnostic of truth can not a philosopher because their assumption is that one can not know.

Atheism is unlivable:

True Atheism is unlivable because it leads to nihilism which basically leads to meaninglessness. Why then would we communicate, no truth will ever be found. Why would we attempt to love, love is not even there. Why think, no answers will be found. Why even live, life is simply a meaningless pursuit to nothing that will never mean anything.

Think now: Do you live life this way? If so, how do you make decisions, nothing you can do can be of greater benefit even to yourself, all is meaningless. Why are you reading this, it is pointless anyway... Why do you communicate, isn't communication to get across points and ideas, but if those points and ideas are meaningless, why even bother? You can't say its fun, because what is fun anyway? If fun is whats good and we can't define good, there is no way to define fun... You aren't learning, everything means nothing so you are simply learning nothing.

Atheism is intellectual suicide.

A final quote to think upon:
But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy 1909

I will also explain my name, since I am sure you have jumped to a million conclusions by now.

A Fool Curses G-D.
If you don't believe in G-D and you curse Him, you look foolish for cursing what you don't think is there, and yet if you believe G-D is there cursing Him is equally as foolish, because to curse G-D is to curse your very idea of means to a good life.

I'm not claiming these are all the conflicts or even the worst conflicts; but they are some to think about.


MrRage
Posts: 892
Joined: 2006-12-22
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
In order to Know without a doubt there is no G-D you would have to know absolutely everything about the entire universe

*sigh* I know you're new here, but if you read around the site a bit, arguments like this have already been discussed. I, and most of the people here, DO NOT claim to know beyond a doubt that there is no god.

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:

Atheism= greek: A=no Thesim=god

I don't know much greek, but Theos=god. Theism is a BELIEF in a god or gods. Atheist = no belief in a god or gods. This is the common usage of atheism around here.

Peace.


Gauche
atheist
Gauche's picture
Posts: 1565
Joined: 2007-01-18
User is offlineOffline
Not only do you not know

Not only do you not know what an atheist is, you don't even know what a god is. According to your definition you're a fool for not believing in Richard Dawkins since he is a god to some people. Or are you going to ignore the full context?

Quote:
True Atheism is unlivable because it leads to nihilism which basically leads to meaninglessness.

Actually your position leads naturally to nihilism. If god is omnipotent he can change the value of anything at any time so everything must be subjective and you have no basis for knowing anything including whether or not god exists. So your life must be meaningless and completely devoid of all value and utterly hopeless because even if you wanted to know anything the existence of god would preclude that knowledge. 

There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft


MrRage
Posts: 892
Joined: 2006-12-22
User is offlineOffline
Another thing, A Fool Curses

Another thing, A Fool Curses G-D. You claim that atheism leads to a meaningless life, a life without purpose, a life not worth living. Well I have some questions for you.

As a theist what do you say the purpose of life is? How would one learn this purpose? If there's no cosmic, god-given purpose for our lives, why do our lives automatically become not worth living? Why can't we give purpose and meaning to our own lives?

I'd really like to know. I'm serious.


KSMB
Scientist
KSMB's picture
Posts: 702
Joined: 2006-08-03
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
I am not even stating my own beliefs..

What are your own beliefs?

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
The term G-D.

Why do you write it like that? Why not God? or god? or any other permutation of capital letters?


Vessel
Vessel's picture
Posts: 646
Joined: 2006-03-31
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
Maybe you can "sticky" this too for the Atheist, seeing that you have anti-Theism and anti-Christian posts along the same lines...maybe even it out a little; if you acknowledge freedom of speech and promotion of thought anyway... Keep in mind, I'm not trying to convert anyone. I am not trying to argue. I am not even stating my own beliefs. I am simply giving you some things to think about.

I would hazard a guess that most, if not every, atheist who posts regularly on this site has seen these objections before and found them to be completely lacking in substance. If I had a dime for everytime someone tried to save my soul with bad logic and anti-humanist rhetoric I'd have a house made entirely of dimes.

G-D wrote:
Some Problems with Atheism: The term G-D. Atheism= greek: A=no Thesim=god; therefore Atheism is No-G-D, not just No-christian G-D, or No-Islam G-D, etc... it is clearly NO-G-D. G-D=One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed. (American Heritage Dictionary) So G-D is NOT JUST a creator, and NOT JUST a saviour, G-D is anything you worship, idealize, or follow- if you follow this thing you must also trust it or be submissive to it. If G-D is anything you worship or follow (submit to or trust) then nobody is an Atheist because everyone follows something. Maybe you obey social laws, therefore social laws are your god. Maybe you worship Dawkins, then Dawkins is your god, or at the very bottom of the spectrum, maybe you worship or only follow yourself; that means you are your own god, and if you are your own god one thing is clear, you are NOT an Atheist. You can not simply assume all gods are the same or even supernatural, etc... To do so is to ignore the full context. Maybe you don't believe in a creator, but a creator is not the only type of god.

That is just utter crap. No one uses god in this context. Come on, try to stay within reason. It is undeserving of response.

G-D wrote:
The Problem of Absolute Knowledge: In order to be an Atheist or atleast believe there is no Biblical concept of G-D, you must either A) Know there is No-G-D or B) Have faith in atheism. However this is the oldest argument in the book. In order to Know without a doubt there is no G-D you would have to know absolutely everything about the entire universe, BUT if you knew everything about the entire universe you would have to be omniscient. If you are omniscient you have now takin on one of the very characteristics you have sought to disprove, therefore contradicting your orignal question. OR If you admit it is just a faith, well then how can you criticize a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, etc... for having faith in a G-D, you have the same type of faith, just in the opposite direction. Therefore to call them stupid for having faith is to call yourself stupidf or having faith. You are both only believing by faith.

In this case, it requires faith to not believe that we are all actually dolphins who have been brainwashed by Volkswagon Bugs to think that we are humans and that humans are dolphins, and in reality, Volkswagon Bugs are the most intelligent form of life. Now, since we are non-omniscient this and an infinite number of other things are equally possible and all require faith to not believe. Wow, how could I have missed such a reasoned conclusion?

G-d wrote:
The Kalam Argument: The Big Bang Theory is the top held scientific concept for the Universes Origin. The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was CREATED sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions.

The big bang is not an explosion. It is an exspansion. There is a difference.

G-d wrote:
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html Kalam: Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause. Then one must ask, "What causes an act?" Obviously an agent does. Well then, what causes an agent to act? Even more so in this situation, where did the agent come from? As Norman Geisler noted " To suppose something can pop into existence out of nothing goes against all scientific observance and rationality." The Kalam argument and Big Bang Theory leave us wondering about the initial cause, what agent was there and where did it come from?

The big bang says nothing about where the universe in singularity form came from only about the expansion of it into what we observe as the universe today. For all anybody knows the universe has always existed. At the very least, since the universe contains all of space and all of time we can say the is everything that has ever existed for all time. We really can't say anything else with any accuracy.

Leaving that aside, can you show me something else that began to exist in the way the universe exists on which we can base the statement that everything that begins to exist must have a cause? Since the universe is everything, I kind of doubt you can and therefor have no reason to take the statement 'everything that begins to exist must have a cause' as a true statement.

G-d wrote:
The Problem of Purpose: What purpose does Atheism leave us with? Atheism infact leaves us to look towards nihilism.

It doesn't lead me towards nihilism. Purpose is in the eye of the beholder.

G-d wrote:
With no purpose, how does one discern between good & bad, right and wrong?

The only way any human can. With their human understanding of the benefits of altruism and selfishness as measured with their natural evolutionary moral compass.

G-d wrote:
Nothing would be the greater good, but all would be equally meaningless.

No. Survival is for the greater good. Enjoyment is for the greater good. Happiness is for the greater good. Love is for the greater good. These things we as humans consider good because it is natural for us to do so. There is plenty of meaning in it as far as we humans are concerned and that is the only meaning that can be of any meaning to us as humans.

G-d wrote:
If everything is equally meaningless, then why even live (nihilism).

Everything is not meaningless.

G-d wrote:
To continue to live would be in contradiction to your own belief.

Even if someone thought everything was meaningless it still wouldn't follow that it would be a contradiction of their belief to live. They could believe everything was meaningless and still desire to live without meaning. Meaning is by no means necessary for life. I doubt sponges find meaning.

G-d wrote:
If you believe that truth is relative then you have an another problem.

Truth isn't relative.

G-D wrote:
If truth is relative then everything is right and wrong at any given time.

Even if everything was relative this assumptiuon wouldn't follow. If everything is relative the only person who can understand a given concept is the person who possesses it. Therefor, everything can be only what the possessor thinks it to be at any given time. It can still never be two contradictory things at once. Who's making this crap up?

G-d wrote:
Therefore Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Atheism are all correct and there is no point to say any Theist is wrong.

Sure there would be. In fact, from the relativist's perspective it would be absolute truth that the theist was wrong.

G-d wrote:
Besides, to hold that truth is relative would mean that the statement that truth is itself relative and therefore sometimes truth is absolute.

Even if truth was relative and the statement that truth is relative was relative that would only mean everything was relative. Not impossible, only highly awkward. However, since atheism in no way requires relativism, it is hardly a pertinent matter.

G-d wrote:
One may claim that Atheism leaves us with the purpose to evolve. Well how do we know humanity is good? Where does the human get its value? Maybe humanity shouldn't be continued.

If you are a human then for humanity to exist is necessarily good. If not, humanity would not exist. Humans get there value from other humans because they are human. What other value is needed?

G-d wrote:
Perhaps we could take the Nietzschean outlook on it and practice a sort of "Social Darwinism." However, Hitler put this theory into practice and look at how Hitler was responded to and is now viewed.

Yes. See what society had to say about Hitler? That is proof that Hitler was not good as viewed by us humans and therefor anyone who acts like Hitler has much less chance of living their life, and enjoyingit, and loving, and being happy, and producing offspring. Yeah, secular objective natural evolutionary morals! You passed the test!

G-d wrote:
Perhaps one could claim that we are to live for ourselves and do what is good for us, but perhaps for me it is good to kill as many people as I can, but how would this be good for them?

It wouldn't be good for them or you. If you doubt me, try it. You will end up dead from retaliation or imprisoned by society. Yeah, secular objective natural evolutionary morals! You did it again!

G-d wrote:
What gives me right to kill them and take away their rights? What gives them the right not to be killed and take away my right to kill?

Secular, objective, natural, evolutionary morals. It is part of being human and living as a social animal.

G-d wrote:
You get the point- Atheism leaves us without Purpose and Ethics...

Apparently not. Does anyone ever fall for that line of shit?

G-d wrote:
The Metaphysical Problem: Nihilism: A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. Science can not answer metaphysical questions. Atheism gives no answers to metaphysical problems other than to be the leading path to nihilism. In short, this leads to the end of free-thinking, because Atheism concludes that there is no after-life (which can't be scientifically proven either way). Atheism concludes there is no G-D (which also can't be scientifically proven either way). Atheism leads to a lack of purpose, so why even continue to think, it is meaningless to find answers anyway. Relativity of truth or skepticism also leads to the hault of thinking: Philosophy-from Greek philosophiā, from philosophos, lover of wisdom. Wisdom-accumulated knowledge or erudition or enlightenment Knowledge- acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition. (All American Heritage Dictionary) The Point: If one believes there to be no absolute truth or no way of knowing if there even is truth; then one can know this for sure, he is not a philosopher. To be a philosopher is to love wisdom, which is knowledge, which is truth. Therefore to be a philosopher you must assume a truth can be reached meaning anyone who is agnostic of truth can not a philosopher because their assumption is that one can not know. Atheism is unlivable: True Atheism is unlivable because it leads to nihilism which basically leads to meaninglessness. Why then would we communicate, no truth will ever be found. Why would we attempt to love, love is not even there. Why think, no answers will be found. Why even live, life is simply a meaningless pursuit to nothing that will never mean anything. Think now: Do you live life this way? If so, how do you make decisions, nothing you can do can be of greater benefit even to yourself, all is meaningless. Why are you reading this, it is pointless anyway... Why do you communicate, isn't communication to get across points and ideas, but if those points and ideas are meaningless, why even bother? You can't say its fun, because what is fun anyway? If fun is whats good and we can't define good, there is no way to define fun... You aren't learning, everything means nothing so you are simply learning nothing. Atheism is intellectual suicide. A final quote to think upon: But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy 1909 I will also explain my name, since I am sure you have jumped to a million conclusions by now. A Fool Curses G-D. If you don't believe in G-D and you curse Him, you look foolish for cursing what you don't think is there, and yet if you believe G-D is there cursing Him is equally as foolish, because to curse G-D is to curse your very idea of means to a good life. I'm not claiming these are all the conflicts or even the worst conflicts; but they are some to think about.

The rest of this crap seems to be simply repeating points that were already made which failed miserably. If you have any other questions or baseless assumptions or ill supported logic or whatever, just dump it here and we'll clean it up for you. Its like being a mental garbage man.

“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek" -- Tom Robbins


Eggplant
Eggplant's picture
Posts: 18
Joined: 2007-01-13
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
G-D=One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed. (American Heritage Dictionary) So G-D is NOT JUST a creator, and NOT JUST a saviour, G-D is anything you worship, idealize, or follow- if you follow this thing you must also trust it or be submissive to it.

You've just demonstrated a problem with language: a single word can have multiple, disparate meanings. Just because the English word "god" has multiple meanings -- six noted in the American Heritage Dictionary (and your choice being the fourth most common, as those numbers do mean something) -- does not mean that the Greek origins of the word "atheist" and "theist" follow to refer to all of the six meanings or even more than just one.

They don't.

While I am not a Greek scholar by any means, "theist" specifically refers to the definition in the American Heritage Dictionary expressed by the first two: a supernatural being "conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions", "the force, effect, or a manifestation or aspect of this being", and "A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality." That is the god meant by the Greek word "theos;" it does not follow that the additional definitions of the word added under English are also meant by the Greek word, just as how just because cleave can mean "to join together" and "to divide" does not mean that joining together and dividing are the same thing.

Your logic is faulty and your cherry-picking of definitions to try to put forth a baseless claim of meaning is morally repulsive to me. Learn the intended denotations of words before you attempt to use them in argument.


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
My bad on the theism and not

My bad on the theism and not theos, i mistyped it...thanks for pointing it out to me.

 

However, my statement was to either know for sure or at least not believe in the Biblical G-D... so I wasn't assuming you claimed to know anything, but if someone did claim they knew absolutely that would be addressed to them. If you don't believe in the Biblical G-D, the question still applies to you but leaves you with either claiming you don't know for sure about the Bible G-D or that you do know everything and thus contradict yourself.

 

"Not only do you not know what an atheist is, you don't even know what a god is. According to your definition you're a fool for not believing in Richard Dawkins since he is a god to some people. Or are you going to ignore the full context? "

First of all you have assumed my beliefs.

Secondly, you have merely made my point about defining gods. You are assuming that I am trying to say that anything meeting my criteria of a god is automatically a TRUE god. That is rediculous. All I did was show that ANYTHING can be a god if YOU elevate it to that level. However, I did NOT claim all these ideas of gods are correct.

 

Actually your position leads naturally to nihilism. If god is omnipotent he can change the value of anything at any time so everything must be subjective and you have no basis for knowing anything including whether or not god exists. So your life must be meaningless and completely devoid of all value and utterly hopeless because even if you wanted to know anything the existence of god would preclude that knowledge. 

We dont KNOW whether or not G-D exists right now so you have shown me nothing new here. You are also assuming that G-D wants to hide himself and truth from people, but if this were so, why would G-D even create man...just to hide himself and truth from man?

Finally, how could you ever claim truth is subjective if it was subjective, that statement of truth being sebjective would itself be subjective and therefore not always true. Atheism leads to subjectivity, Theism leads to absolutes, this is why atheism doesn't work.

In reality now, we can know there are Absolutes. We know that the law of non-contradiction does work within reality as we know it and we can test things in different ways to reach our beliefs. My Argument stands...your hypothetical situation does not.

 


Strafio
Strafio's picture
Posts: 1346
Joined: 2006-09-11
User is offlineOffline
Perhaps we could sticky a

Perhaps we could sticky a replied version?
"Common objections to atheism" for example?
Perhaps "Common misconceptions about atheism" would be more accurate! Smiling

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
Keep in mind, I'm not trying to convert anyone. I am not trying to argue. I am not even stating my own beliefs. I am simply giving you some things to think about.

Fire away! Smiling

Quote:
Some Problems with Atheism:
The term G-D. Atheism= greek: A=no Thesim=god; therefore Atheism is No-G-D, not just No-christian G-D, or No-Islam G-D, etc... it is clearly NO-G-D. G-D=One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed.

Slight mistake there:
Theism = Supernatural God.
Pantheists, for example, call nature 'God' as what is worshipped/idealised. They are still atheist though because they reject the supernatural God.

Quote:
The Problem of Absolute Knowledge: In order to be an Atheist or atleast believe there is no Biblical concept of G-D, you must either A) Know there is No-G-D or B) Have faith in atheism. However this is the oldest argument in the book. In order to Know without a doubt there is no G-D you would have to know absolutely everything about the entire universe, BUT if you knew everything about the entire universe you would have to be omniscient. If you are omniscient you have now takin on one of the very characteristics you have sought to disprove, therefore contradicting your orignal question.

Nice try! There are a couple of points that your argument hasn't considered:
Weak atheists admit that God is possible but see no reason to believe in him. So they disbelieve in God the same way they disbelieve in unicorns. Somewhere out in the universe there could possible be a unicorn but we have no reason to believe there actually is. This atheist doesn't need to be omniscient for their disbelief.

Strong Atheists say that there is no God.
This also doesn't require omniscience.
I can quite clearly state that there is no such thing as a "square circle" or a "married bachelor". This is because they are self contradictory concepts and are therefore incoherent and do not refer to anything. Strong atheists declare that God is an incoherent word that doesn't mean anything. Whether the concept of God is incoherent is debatable but the fact remains that the Strong Atheist does not need to be omniscient to rule 'God' as impossible.

Quote:
The Kalam Argument: The Big Bang Theory is the top held scientific concept for the Universes Origin. The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was CREATED sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions. http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html Kalam: Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause.

There are several refutations of the Kalam argument.
One of our forums members ShaunPhilly did a more detailed one.
Here I will offer a briefer argument.

The Kalam argument claims that the Universe (i.e. time itself) had a cause. There is a problem with this. A cause is a temporal concept. It is a relation between two events in time.
The cause must come before the effect. (before being a temporal relation)
To say something 'caused' time is to talk of something 'before' time.
You see the problem here?
If time has a beginning then it makes no sense to talk of what came 'before'. If something came 'before' then there was a time before time started. A contradiction.

So how do atheists see the big bang?
Some see it as the limit of how far back we can look.
There are also theories offered by physicists that it might not be the very beginning altogether. Infact, many physicists reject that the Big Bang requires the universe to have a beginning. (see this article.)

Quote:
Then one must ask, "What causes an act?" Obviously an agent does.

Can you define what you mean by agent?
All the definitions I've come across are of entities in time
How do you define an agent outside of time?
You say it is a 'cause' of things but causes are temporal concepts.

Quote:
To suppose something can pop into existence out of nothing goes against all scientific observance and rationality.

To suppose that something can pop into existence out of empty space might be. All our observations of this kind are of empty space. Pre-big bang doesn't mean "pre-matter before space" it means pre-space itself. All our observations of nothing popping out of existence out of empty space do not apply to non-space.

Quote:
The Problem of Purpose: What purpose does Atheism leave us with? Atheism infact leaves us to look towards nihilism. With no purpose, how does one discern between good & bad, right and wrong? Nothing would be the greater good, but all would be equally meaningless.

So what you're claiming is that in order to have truth, values and morality then we need some sort of God? You did not back up this claim. The rest of your argument seemed to assume this and then spell out the consequences.
What makes you think that a God is necessary for us to have truth, values or morality?
A more detailed analysis of this claim and why it is false can be found in this article.

Here's a quick look at the concepts in question:
Truth
To have a concept of truth we need a logical method for distinguishing 'truth' from 'falsity'. To have such a logical method we just need a language. (the rules of logic follow from the rules of the language.)
Anyone who speaks the same language as us will follow the same linguistic rules and therefore be bound by the same logical methods.
What difference would a God make?

Values
Why do we need God for life to have a meaning?
We all have our values that lead us to having our own personal goals. What difference would a God make?

Morality
Morality is about what we 'should' do.
It's a set of values that is required for us to live in society with others. Some people seem to think we need a God to adopt these values but there is a problem with that argument:
Why do we adopt the values that God says we must adopt?
It will come down to a basic value that we must start with.
If we have such a basic value, then it could just as easily lead us to a set of ethical values without God as the 'middleman'.
God makes no difference to ethics.


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
MrRage- As a theist, I

MrRage- As a theist, I believe there is a truth to be reached. This means life can be lived with the purpose of pursuing knowledge/truth, pursuing G-D, pursuing love, and communicating because communication is meaningful.

 

Whoever asked about my beliefs: I am a follower of Yeshua.

About the G-D definition: If you would like to look into some more concepts of this I'd suggest reading Ravi Zacharias and some ancient Philosophy too. Unfortunately, most concepts of G-D are erroneously attributed to the Monothestic religions and the other concepts of G-D are defined as idolatry...so check out the term of idolatry too and you'll understand better,

 

Vessel: Thanks for your opinions, but you contributed nothing. Did you know Hitler was an Atheist? By your own logic then, atheism is seen as bad by your morals. And where exactly did your morals stem from anyway? What initially gave human life worth? What is the measuring bar standard for good and bad? Is it humans themselves? Well then, which human is the ideal human? Who decided they were the ideal human?


Gauche
atheist
Gauche's picture
Posts: 1565
Joined: 2007-01-18
User is offlineOffline
Quote: First of all you

Quote:
First of all you have assumed my beliefs.

Actually you stated your beliefs so I didn't have to assume anything.

 

Quote:
Secondly, you have merely made my point about defining gods. You are assuming that I am trying to say that anything meeting my criteria of a god is automatically a TRUE god. That is rediculous. All I did was show that ANYTHING can be a god if YOU elevate it to that level. However, I did NOT claim all these ideas of gods are correct.

This is the first I'm hearing about truth but even if you want to go that route you are elevating your god to the level of a true god based on the same thing that everyone else is elevating their god with. NOTHING. just your own belief. which is equal to all other beliefs because they're all baseless. So the point stands you are a fool for not believing in Richard Dawkins as a god.  

Quote:

In reality now, we can know there are Absolutes. We know that the law of non-contradiction does work within reality as we know it and we can test things in different ways to reach our beliefs. My Argument stands...your hypothetical situation does not.

 

You missed the entire point. If god is omnipotent then the law of non-contradiction does not work in reality because reality is defined by god and he can change it any way he wants. If god can't create logical contradictions then he did not create logic so he's not the creator of everything and he's not omnipotent because he doesn't have the power to do everything.That means he is not even god. And if he can then you can't use logic to come to any definite conclusion because logical contradictions can exist so your conclusion that god exists is meaningless, it was based on logic. Face it you're one step away from being a nihilist. 

 

 

There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft


Eggplant
Eggplant's picture
Posts: 18
Joined: 2007-01-13
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
Did you know Hitler was an Atheist?

Actually, Fool, did you know that Hitler was not an atheist? While I'd like to claim Thomas Jefferson as an atheist, I cannot because he was not. Similarly, I am glad not to be able to do the same for Hitler for the exact same reasons. Please stop being disingenous.


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
Strafio wrote: Slight

Strafio wrote:


Slight mistake there:
Theism = Supernatural God.
Pantheists, for example, call nature 'God' as what is worshipped/idealised. They are still atheist though because they reject the supernatural God.

Supernatural acts are still merely a part of what makes a god a god. Idolatry and as you have shown, panthesim have different definitions. All I am saying is that you can not simply claim to be an atheist for disagreeing with the Judeo-Christian and Islamic concepts of G-D. You are not an atheist, just not a Jew, Christian, or Muslim.

Nice try! There are a couple of points that your argument hasn't considered:
Weak atheists admit that God is possible but see no reason to believe in him. So they disbelieve in God the same way they disbelieve in unicorns. Somewhere out in the universe there could possible be a unicorn but we have no reason to believe there actually is. This atheist doesn't need to be omniscient for their disbelief.

I understand this, but thats all I was claiming, was that it is a FAITH based belief just as much as any G-D beliving idea. Plus you are overlooking evidence for things such as the resurrection of Yeshua, and all
pro-G-D science/philosophy. As Ravi Zacharias said when talking of gnosticism and Theism "There are intellectual monsters on both ends of the spectrum."

Strong Atheists say that there is no God.
This also doesn't require omniscience.
I can quite clearly state that there is no such thing as a "square circle" or a "married bachelor". This is because they are self contradictory concepts and are therefore incoherent and do not refer to anything. Strong atheists declare that God is an incoherent word that doesn't mean anything. Whether the concept of God is incoherent is debatable but the fact remains that the Strong Atheist does not need to be omniscient to rule 'God' as impossible.

 Ok I agree with your rationality about the square-circle and such, but where is your proof of this kind about G-D? What proof do you have that G-D is not there?


Quote:
Then one must ask, "What causes an act?" Obviously an agent does.

Can you define what you mean by agent?
All the definitions I've come across are of entities in time
How do you define an agent outside of time?
You say it is a 'cause' of things but causes are temporal concepts.

An agent outside of time= G-D

Values
Why do we need God for life to have a meaning?
We all have our values that lead us to having our own personal goals. What difference would a God make?

Morality
Morality is about what we 'should' do.
It's a set of values that is required for us to live in society with others. Some people seem to think we need a God to adopt these values but there is a problem with that argument:
Why do we adopt the values that God says we must adopt?
It will come down to a basic value that we must start with.
If we have such a basic value, then it could just as easily lead us to a set of ethical values without God as the 'middleman'.
God makes no difference to ethics.

 

The question is still the same. Without
G-D, who sets the bars? WHat makes their decisions right? What makes human life valuable other than personal feelings? How do feelings justify a way of life? Sometimes people feel like killing, is it right then? If Humans set the standards, what humans get to set the standard, which humans are the standard, and what gave humans the initial right to make the standard?

 

I'm just talking and hoping people think...I appreciate all ideas.


Vessel
Vessel's picture
Posts: 646
Joined: 2006-03-31
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
Vessel: Thanks for your opinions, but you contributed nothing.

Now I see your problem with the Kalam argument. You obviously work from a flawed definition of nothing. (I find your comment rude and will therefor treat you as the idiot you seem to be without my normal attempt at being cordial for the remainder of the conversation)

G-D wrote:
Did you know Hitler was an Atheist?

This is an assertion you need to prove. Show me proof Hitler was an atheist. Even if he was, the statement Hitler was an atheist does not imply atheists are Hitlers. Did you have a point in stating this?

G-d wrote:
By your own logic then, atheism is seen as bad by your morals.

Now I see the problem. Even if Hitler was an atheist the fact that Hitler was bad does not lead to the conclusion that atheism is bad. Are you really that incapable of coming to rational conclusions from the statements that are made?

G-d wrote:
And where exactly did your morals stem from anyway?

Did you read what I wrote and not comprehend it, or did you not read it? Morals are social constructs built from hardwired senses of altruism and selfisheness within the human animal.

G-d wrote:
What initially gave human life worth?

The fact that we are human. As humans we must see human life as having worth. If not, there would be no humans. Its really not that hard to follow. Put on your thinking cap. If you are looking for why human life has worth to a non-human, you would have to ask a non-human. Good luck with that.

g-d wrote:
What is the measuring bar standard for good and bad?

What we as humans consider good and bad is the measuring bar. It is the only measuring bar we can or need to possess. You must be thinking that there needs to be something out there called "good" that floats around and people hold their idea of good up to it and say "look they are similar, so my good must be real good." or"my good measures a three on the good meter so it is true good". Sorry, but that is idiocy. God as a concept of good is idiocy. Good is a concept found naturally in humans that is a means by which we help to ensure our own survival (the gene, the individual, the species) which by the nature of being human, makes it good.

G-d wrote:
Is it humans themselves?

If it wasn't humans how could this good possibly have any meaning to humans? Is this the remedial class?

G-d wrote:
Well then, which human is the ideal human?

There doesn't need to be an ideal human. By what would we know ideal? Ideal, or perfection, is a concept with no practical application.

G-d wrote:
Who decided they were the ideal human?

No one.

Now, put on your learning shoes and read it a couple of times until you start to undertand. Its not that hard for most people. They usually seem to catch on fairly quickly.

 

“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek" -- Tom Robbins


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
    You missed the

 

 

You missed the entire point. If god is omnipotent then the law of non-contradiction does not work in reality because reality is defined by god and he can change it any way he wants. If god can't create logical contradictions then he did not create logic so he's not the creator of everything and he's not omnipotent because he doesn't have the power to do everything.That means he is not even god. And if he can then you can't use logic to come to any definite conclusion because logical contradictions can exist so your conclusion that god exists is meaningless, it was based on logic. Face it you're one step away from being a nihilist. 

 

 

 

All I see is this

If G-D exists, G-D can't exist.

You have to assume G-D exists in the first place in order to get to the goal you want to reach, so without G-D's existence this fails, you can't assume the existence of what your are trying to prove is non-existent in order to make your claim that being is non-existent. Circular logic and it fails.


Gauche
atheist
Gauche's picture
Posts: 1565
Joined: 2007-01-18
User is offlineOffline
I didn't sat that if god

I didn't sat that if god exists then god doesn't exist. I said that if god did exists then you couldn't use logic or inductive reasoning or anything else to prove it because they would be subjective and the conclusion would be meaningless. So if you belive in god you must be a nihilist because you can't believe in value or that anything is knowable.

There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft


Ophios
Ophios's picture
Posts: 905
Joined: 2006-09-19
User is offlineOffline
Quote: In order to Know

Quote:
In order to Know without a doubt there is no G-D you would have to know absolutely everything about the entire universe

 

So in order to know that Brian doesn't have a purple snarfwidget  in his garage you would have to know everything?

 

In order to know that all THE OTHER GODS that man has made are not real you would have to know everything? So you admit you just think that your god is the real one. 

 Even the teapot going around Pluto? Do you have to know everything to know it's not there.

 

Quote:
And where exactly did your morals stem from anyway?

And another theist admits that other people and/or jail time mean little to nothing for Him/Her.

 It's called the social contract.

AImboden wrote:
I'm not going to PM my agreement just because one tucan has pms.


Gauche
atheist
Gauche's picture
Posts: 1565
Joined: 2007-01-18
User is offlineOffline
Quote: It's called the

Quote:

It's called the social contract.

Social contract theory can't define your duties to beings that are not able to participate in the contract like animals and babies.

There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft


Ophios
Ophios's picture
Posts: 905
Joined: 2006-09-19
User is offlineOffline
Gauche wrote: Social

Gauche wrote:
Social contract theory can't define your duties to beings that are not able to participate in the contract like animals and babies.

 

Hmm....

 Really?

Oh well.

I got this though.

AImboden wrote:
I'm not going to PM my agreement just because one tucan has pms.


MrRage
Posts: 892
Joined: 2006-12-22
User is offlineOffline
A Fool Curses G-D

A Fool Curses G-D wrote:

As a theist, I believe there is a truth to be reached. This means life can be lived with the purpose of pursuing knowledge/truth, pursuing G-D, pursuing love, and communicating because communication is meaningful.

I accept as purposes pursuing knowledge/truth, because I have a love of learning, and love & and communication, because we're social animals. These, to me, do not need the supernatural.

But why does god want us to pursue him? How is that done? And why would no god-based purpose for life mean life is not worth living?


Gauche
atheist
Gauche's picture
Posts: 1565
Joined: 2007-01-18
User is offlineOffline
Ophios   Why are jumping

Ophios

 

Why are jumping down my throat it's true isn't it? 


Strafio
Strafio's picture
Posts: 1346
Joined: 2006-09-11
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
Supernatural acts are still merely a part of what makes a god a god. Idolatry and as you have shown, panthesim have different definitions. All I am saying is that you can not simply claim to be an atheist for disagreeing with the Judeo-Christian and Islamic concepts of G-D. You are not an atheist, just not a Jew, Christian, or Muslim.

Atheism means rejection of the supernatural.
Atleast that's what we mean when we call ourselves atheists.

 

Quote:
I understand this, but thats all I was claiming, was that it is a FAITH based belief just as much as any G-D beliving idea.

It's nothing to do with faith.
You don't need faith to believe that an elephant won't fall on your house tomorrow. It's logically possible but you have no reason to believe that it'll actually happen. Weak atheists are like that.

Quote:
Plus you are overlooking evidence for things such as the resurrection of Yeshua, and all
pro-G-D science/philosophy. As Ravi Zacharias said when talking of gnosticism and Theism "There are intellectual monsters on both ends of the spectrum."

Nothing has been forgotten.
We have looked at these arguments and found them to be flawed.
If you think we are wrong in this decision then perhaps you can argue for them in another thread. (we'll keep this thread to the issues at hand! Smiling)

Quote:
Ok I agree with your rationality about the square-circle and such, but where is your proof of this kind about G-D? What proof do you have that G-D is not there?

The argument is complex and I personally don't agree with it.
(I'm an agnostic atheist.)
My point is, strong atheists don't have to be omniscient for their claim to be right. (that answers your original objection)


Quote:
The question is still the same. Without
G-D, who sets the bars? WHat makes their decisions right? What makes human life valuable other than personal feelings? How do feelings justify a way of life? Sometimes people feel like killing, is it right then? If Humans set the standards, what humans get to set the standard, which humans are the standard, and what gave humans the initial right to make the standard?

Okay. So we agree that morality includes a standard of values that we should all subscribe to. I have to prove to you that:
a) People with their individual values have reason abide by this moral standard.
b) God has no bearing on the matter.

a) As we're all humans, we all share values based on our biological needs as humans. Some of these are obvious like food when we're hungry. These values mean that we recognise that our lives will be better if we can trust and co-operate with the people around us. In order to ensure this co-operation and trust we adopt these moral values. I'm sure you have noticed that moral communities and nicer to be in than immoral ones. We encourage people to also adopt these moral values and discourage those who don't. (you probably notice that we are naturally nice to nice people and nasty to nasty people)

Some of our other natural values aren't so obvious. We have instincts that make us value the wellbeing of other people around us. (it has been mathematically shown that altruistic communities survive better than selfish ones so we have evolved to have a degree of natural altruism.)
That is how we can naturally have a moral standard.

b)You say that God says what is good and what is bad.
An action is good because God says it
To try and prove that this is wrong I'll give you this example:
If God said to you "I want you to eat babies" would you think it was good? You will probably reply; "God would never ask me to do something like that!"
"How do you know he wouldn't?"
"Because eating babies is nasty and God is good!"

If this is the case then you have an independent idea of 'good' and 'bad' regardless of what God says. You know what God will and won't say because you know what is right and what is wrong. So you can rule out the possibility of God saying something evil and expect that God will say something good. This means that we have an independent idea of right and wrong that is seperate from any belief in God.

Quote:
I'm just talking and hoping people think...I appreciate all ideas.

Likewise. Smiling


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
None of you have put an

None of you have put an initial reason for the value of humanity or life that is based off anything beside your own opinion/feelings yet.

Social Contract: Where did the social contract concept come from? Who started it? Why does it have authority? Why should I obide by it? If my feelings/beliefs contradict the social contract, am I wrong or is the social contract? Why? Why can't I make my own social contract? What makes my social contract more or less valuable than the one presently in place? Is the contract changeable? What is the primary goal it is meant to accomplish? Why is this goal of any value & what makes this goal right? Who decided this to be the right thing? If none of these questions are valid, why can't the social contract be questioned?

Vessel: "The fact that we are human. As humans we must see human life as having worth. If not, there would be no humans. Its really not that hard to follow. Put on your thinking cap. If you are looking for why human life has worth to a non-human, you would have to ask a non-human. Good luck with that."

Does everything that exists have value? What about AIDS or Cancer, they also exist, are they valuable? Why or why not? Do other living things have value too or only humans? If other living things have value, how do we have the right to kill them for food? If they kill us for food is it wrong? Who differentiates this value difference? If somethings worth  is defined by its own existence (as you say with humans), then to cause harm against anything existing is to negate its worth. Is the worth of these things only to serve humans? If so, how did this world law become authoratative and right? How do you know this is how it became right?

 .........................................

Ophios: "So in order to know that Brian doesn't have a purple snarfwidget  in his garage you would have to know everything?

In order to know that all THE OTHER GODS that man has made are not real you would have to know everything? So you admit you just think that your god is the real one. 

 Even the teapot going around Pluto? Do you have to know everything to know it's not there. "

To know that I am sitting in front of a computer right now I only need to know one thing-namely that I am sitting in front of a computer right now. To know an object is in your friends garage, all you have to know is about your friends garage and the object in his garage.

To know about objects in the universe, you only have to know about those objects. (And perhaps other necessary relations and ideas related to the understanding of these objects.) However, G-D is not an object in this universe.The entire universe was created from G-D and G-D is above the universe itself. So if you don't know about everything within the universe you know how everything in the universe came to be and how it functions and therefore you would be able to begin to comprehend G-D. (If one should happen to exist.) Knowing something beyond the universe is not the same as knowing somethin in the universe.

In response to knowing about the True G-D, I never claimed to KNOW that my G-D is the true G-D, it is a belief, just like you have a belief He is not the true G-D. However, I can use the knowledge of core doctrines among religions to compare the ideas of G-D with reality, logic, historical evidence, and etc... which allows me to have a very good reason for my belief. So I do not know my G-D is the true one, but based on the evidence at hand I can reasonably put faith there and continue to pursue the idea.

Faith is not belief despite the evidence but belief goes beyond the evidence in the same direction the evidence points.

 MrRage- Can you prove your love of these things to me?

Different Faiths have different reasons to your questions about why G-D wants us to pursue Him and How. However, a life without G-D leaves us with the initial question of where do we get worth? (See above) Without worth, we are never working towards anything worthy and therefore we have no purpose. G-D gives worth to humans and therfore purpose.

 

 


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
Atheism means rejection of

Atheism means rejection of the supernatural.
Atleast that's what we mean when we call ourselves atheists.

Just because thats how YOU think of it does not make it correct. Just because I think I am a turtle does that make it true? Atheism is the idea of No-G-D. Not No-Supernatural G-D or No-Bible G-D, it is simply No-G-D. Yes it is misused, but does this make it correct to adopt the misuse...no. If all my friends rape a girl does that mean it is right for me to do it too?


It's nothing to do with faith.
You don't need faith to believe that an elephant won't fall on your house tomorrow. It's logically possible but you have no reason to believe that it'll actually happen. Weak atheists are like that.

It's everything to do with faith. Anything you don't KNOW ABSOLUTELY is a matter of belief or faith. To absolutely know about
G-D you do need to be all knowing because G-D is the cause and agent of all. If there is one thing you can't explain, it leads to speculation about G-D.

If you don't know, you have a faith/belief that what your subscribing to is accurate.


The argument is complex and I personally don't agree with it.
(I'm an agnostic atheist.)
My point is, strong atheists don't have to be omniscient for their claim to be right. (that answers your original objection)

Why don't they have to be omiscient? Is it because they are being FAITHFUL to the idea of atheism? If they are being faithful, why diss Theist for having Faith?


Okay. So we agree that morality includes a standard of values that we should all subscribe to. I have to prove to you that:
a) People with their individual values have reason abide by this moral standard.
b) God has no bearing on the matter.

a) As we're all humans, we all share values based on our biological needs as humans.Some of these are obvious like food when we're hungry. These values mean that we recognise that our lives will be better if we can trust and co-operate with the people around us.

 Not all peoples needs are the same. What if someone is in a coma, they need a lot of care but are helping none and potentially using resources others could use too. Should we help the person in the coma? Why or why not? What makes something better?

In order to ensure this co-operation and trust we adopt these moral values. I'm sure you have noticed that moral communities and nicer to be in than immoral ones.

 What makes these morals right? What makes each person of equal value? What makes something nicer? Perhaps my idea of nice is killing off all lazy people because they slow down the growth of the community. I would feel that would be beneficial for th community and therefore nice. Is this wrong?

We encourage people to also adopt these moral values and discourage those who don't. (you probably notice that we are naturally nice to nice people and nasty to nasty people)

 But what makes these values the best at hand? How do we know they truly are making things better? What if others don't adopt these morals? Are they wrong? What if they have better morals than ours, should we adopt theirs? Just because someone is mean to me, is it right to be mean to them. If I treat others how they treat me, would it be right for me to not help some? What about the one in the coma, he hasn't helped me any, why should I help him?


Some of our other natural values aren't so obvious. We have instincts that make us value the wellbeing of other people around us. (it has been mathematically shown that altruistic communities survive better than selfish ones so we have evolved to have a degree of natural altruism.)
That is how we can naturally have a moral standard.

Not all people share this same value for the well-being of others, if they did, there would never be murders and killings. There would never be rapes, never be stealing, etc... How do you cope with the evil in the world based n this view? How do you ever stop the problem of evil? Is there even evil at all?Who decides whats evil? Who punishes the evil? If I steal and another man kills, should we punished the same? Who decides the levels of punishments? What if I accidentally kill someone, should I still be punished? Who judges the motives? How do they know whats in others hearts/minds?

b)You say that God says what is good and what is bad.
An action is good because God says it
To try and prove that this is wrong I'll give you this example:
If God said to you "I want you to eat babies" would you think it was good? You will probably reply; "God would never ask me to do something like that!"
"How do you know he wouldn't?"
"Because eating babies is nasty and God is good!"

The G-D I believe in doesn't ask me to do this.

If your best friend new you couldn't swim and pushed you into a lake, would you grab for the extended hand they offered you?

 

I enjoy the thoughts you've given. As an agnostic, I hope you continue your search as thoroughly as possible. I can recommend some excellent books if you would like... 



 


todangst
atheistRational VIP!
todangst's picture
Posts: 2843
Joined: 2006-03-10
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
Some Problems with Atheism: The term G-D. Atheism= greek: A=no Thesim=god; therefore Atheism is No-G-D, not just No-christian G-D, or No-Islam G-D, etc... it is clearly NO-G-D.

Nope, you've got that wrong. Just look at your error.

A = not

theism - belief in god - that's where you go wrong. "Theism" doesn't mean "god", it means belief in god.

An atheist is therefore someone without belief in a god.

At any rate, you have to be a pretty concrete thinker that you can defeat atheism with a word game. 

 The rest of your post is just a tip off that you really don't have much knowledge about atheism, or even theism. Nor do you seem to really grasp that arguments you've cited. Strafio has helped point out the key mistakes. 

Finally, here's a response to your Chesterson quote:

 

If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why hould we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue im with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he ill punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, hat reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? f he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT ONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?


-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Necessity of Atheism

 

"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'


todangst
atheistRational VIP!
todangst's picture
Posts: 2843
Joined: 2006-03-10
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:

Atheism means rejection of the supernatural.
Atleast that's what we mean when we call ourselves atheists.

Just because thats how YOU think of it does not make it correct.

He's not just saying that he thinks that way, he's giving you a reason why your claim is false.

If you're unable to even recognize that he's giving you an argument, what point is there in your posting on our site? The same goes for all your responses.. just how old are you?

 

As for suggesting books, you seem to be the least informed person in the thread concerning both atheism AND theism. Yet you seem to be oblivious to this fact.

"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'


Gauche
atheist
Gauche's picture
Posts: 1565
Joined: 2007-01-18
User is offlineOffline
Social contract theory

Social contract theory comes from the writing of Thomas Hobbes, he was a 17th century philosopher. It's based on the idea that people benefit more by cooperating and pursuing collective interests than by pursuing their own self interests. The argument for this is that if all people stop cooperating and only pursue their individual interest the world will be difficult if not impossible to live in. This is because people have similar needs and abilities so if you're placed in a situation where you have to compete with everyone for everything it's not likely that you'll always succeed. It's actually a pretty sound moral theory and it has authority because it works despite not being based on absolutes. Religious moral theories on the other hand are all flawed they're what most people would call "bad" moral theories. Take natural law theory for example. Natural law theory is based on the idea that things in nature are made made by god with a specific purpose and from the knowledge of that purpose one can derive a moral judgement.In addition to being exactly the kind of philosophy that hinders inventiveness and ingenuity this theory is not logically sound. Drawing conclusions from the way things are about the way they should be is a confusion of "is" and "ought". Natural law theory ignores that the laws of nature are descriptive not proscriptive, that things may have unknown purposes and that bad things happen as naturally as good ones. And it's not impartial people get devalued arbitrarily by this kind of idea. It fails every criteria for being a good moral theory despite being religious in nature.

 


There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft


ImmaculateDeception
ImmaculateDeception's picture
Posts: 280
Joined: 2006-11-08
User is offlineOffline
Quote: The Problem of

Quote:
The Problem of Absolute Knowledge:

You do realize that you can apply the 'you don't have absolute knowledge' to theism, right?

Quote:

The Problem of Purpose:

What purpose does Atheism leave us with? Atheism infact leaves us to look towards nihilism. With no purpose, how does one discern between good & bad, right and wrong? Nothing would be the greater good, but all would be equally meaningless. If everything is equally meaningless, then why even live (nihilism). To continue to live would be in contradiction to your own belief. If you believe that truth is relative then you have an another problem. If truth is relative then everything is right and wrong at any given time. Therefore Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Atheism are all correct and there is no point to say any Theist is wrong. Besides, to hold that truth is relative would mean that the statement that truth is itself relative and therefore sometimes truth is absolute. Otherwise, the statement that truth is relative is an absolute showing again truth is absolute. However, if there are absolutes, then purposeless atheism leaves us without a way to define good and bad, right and wrong.

The very existance of this site negates this entire argument. Obviously, the atheists here have not descended into nhilism. If they had, why would they bother coming here to debate?

Here's something for you to think about. In every religion, scripture is presented to its followers. This scripture lays out the blue print for human ethics and purpose. Seems like a good idea, right? Here's why it isn't.

Ethical development as it relates to civilization is a proccess of constant reevaluation. Yesterday's rules are re-examined.  If they do not mesh with our current system of ethics, they are discarded. This is the essence of progress, that humanity continues to question itself and it's purpose with the goal of achieving a suitable enviroment for everyone.

Scripture is a static take on ethics. A piece of scripture that was witten two thousand years ago that has been adopted by a religion essentially stays the same for two thousand years. Naturally, their is much resistance to altering this scripture for fear that it's "true meaning" shall be lost. Scripture as a blue print for ethics provides a unchageable morality and does not allow for ethical development.

If the entirety of civilization accepted the christian bible (I am making no assumptions about your personal beliefs here, just citing an example.) as the undeniable how to book on morality, we would still have slaves, women would still be second-class citizens and you could potentially be executed for questioning your parents. That's because the bible is based off a system of ethics that is centuries in age. Much ethical development has occured since then; slavery is considered morally repungnent and illegal throughout most of the world, there have been signifigant strides made towards gender equality and while many people would agree that disrespecting your parents is bad, we would never kill anyone for it.

So, to close, ethical development is the core of ethics and a secular phenemonom. Religion simply does not allow for it; in fact, it discourages it. A great example of this is Saudi Arabia and it's modern day beheadings.

Quote:
One may claim that Atheism leaves us with the purpose to evolve. Well how do we know humanity is good? Where does the human get its value? Maybe humanity shouldn't be continued. Perhaps we could take the Nietzschean outlook on it and practice a sort of "Social Darwinism." However, Hitler put this theory into practice and look at how Hitler was responded to and is now viewed. Perhaps one could claim that we are to live for ourselves and do what is good for us, but perhaps for me it is good to kill as many people as I can, but how would this be good for them? What gives me right to kill them and take away their rights? What gives them the right not to be killed and take away my right to kill?

This argument is relevant when the world is approached with a child's logic. An inherant sense of compassion stops us from simply killing for the sake of it.

 

Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine


Strafio
Strafio's picture
Posts: 1346
Joined: 2006-09-11
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
Just because thats how YOU think of it does not make it correct. Just because I think I am a turtle does that make it true? Atheism is the idea of No-G-D. Not No-Supernatural G-D or No-Bible G-D, it is simply No-G-D.

This really is what atheism means.
Anyone in history who has been described as an atheist is someone who rejected the supernatural gods. If atheist was as you say then no one would be an atheist.


Quote:
It's everything to do with faith. Anything you don't KNOW ABSOLUTELY is a matter of belief or faith. To absolutely know about
G-D you do need to be all knowing because G-D is the cause and agent of all. If there is one thing you can't explain, it leads to speculation about G-D.

Nothing is known absolutely.
The distinction between a belief on faith and a belief on reason is whether you have reason to believe it. Surely you can see the difference between using reason to make a close estimate and making a random guess.

I don't think you have necessarily made a random guess with your theism. You have brought up philosophical arguments (like Kalam) to support your position so you are atleast looking at reason.
The clincher is this:
If you found out that all your reasons for believing in God were flawed, would you still believe?
If you did still believe then you would be ignoring reason and just believing in 'God' as a random guess. Many theists don't bother with reason at all and are happy to just believe on "faith". They are  basing their most important beliefs on a random guess. Atheists find this very silly indeed! Smiling

Quote:
Why don't they have to be omiscient? Is it because they are being FAITHFUL to the idea of atheism? If they are being faithful, why diss Theist for having Faith?

No. We went over this in the post before.
It's because their method for ruling out God (showing that God is an incoherent concept like "square circle&quotEye-wink doesn't require omniscience. They have a rational method for arriving at their belief. Faith isn't required.

Quote:
Not all peoples needs are the same. What if someone is in a coma, they need a lot of care but are helping none and potentially using resources others could use too. Should we help the person in the coma? Why or why not? What makes something better?

I said that we subscribe to a set of values.
This is different than making rules to suit our individual values.
e.g.
A set of rules to suit our individual values
In a house of 4 people, no one likes to wash up so they take it in turns and set up a system to punish those who don't follow. This way, everyone does their fair share and the kitchen stays clean.

Subscribing to a set of values
All 4 people recognise that a dirty kitchen will make their lives miserable and that they all have a part to play. They subscribe to the value of a clean kitchen and naturally look out for it, not worrying about whose turn it is.

In the case of the coma person, the moral value we have subscribed to is to care unconditionally, so we look after them even when they aren't contributing to society or "there's nothing in it for us".
We recognise that a society where people subscribe to moral values is 'better' than one where they don't. This 'better' is a reflection of our natural human values. Some of these natural human values are selfish, recognising we'll be looked after in a moral community while some of our instincts are genuinely altruistic and like the fact that people are being treated well.

Obviously, some people don't subscribe to these moral values. After all, not everyone sees the benefit. Because of this we have other ways of encouraging people to subscribe. For minor immorality we might show disapproval. For major immorality we use laws to prevent people causing serious harm. Luckily, most people in society do subscribe to a good standard of moral values so only a minority need be dealt by the law.

To sum up:
1) Our natural human values generally recognise conditions under which life is nice to live.
2) Societies that subscribe to moral values (e.g. to care unconditionally etc.) give conditions for such a life.
3) That is why we mostly subscribe to these moral values.

It is obviously a lot more complex than that, but you can atleast see how morality is possible without God?

Quote:
b)You say that God says what is good and what is bad.
An action is good because God says it
To try and prove that this is wrong I'll give you this example:
If God said to you "I want you to eat babies" would you think it was good? You will probably reply; "God would never ask me to do something like that!"
"How do you know he wouldn't?"
"Because eating babies is nasty and God is good!"

The G-D I believe in doesn't ask me to do this.


But you also know that he will never ask you to do this.
Because you recognise 'good' and 'bad' independently of what God says. If someone said "God told me to do <bad thing>" then you'd know they'd made a mistake because God would never tell them to do something bad. And you knew this thing was bad because you subscribe to these moral values I was talking about earlier. Your morality is separate from your belief in God.

 

Quote:
I enjoy the thoughts you've given. As an agnostic, I hope you continue your search as thoroughly as possible. I can recommend some excellent books if you would like...

I should explain what I mean by agnostic.
Agnostic means that I believe that if there is was a God they'd be unknowable, so anything that is true about God could only be a random guess rather than known. It doesn't mean 'not sure'. Smiling
However, we're all open minded in that we'd change our minds in light of good reasons/evidence. Which books did you have in mind? They might be worth a look. Smiling

Can I recommend one as well?
The Case Against God - It is a difficult book and you probably won't agree with what he says but if you are interested in understanding the atheists' position then it is a good one to go for.
After all, you need to understand what we believe before you can know where we've gone wrong. Smiling

Another book I've heard good things about is:
Natural Atheism - I've only read the introduction and reader reviews but it looks quite good. It also seems to have a 'friendler tone' than the other book and is meant to be easier to follow.


Vastet
atheistBloggerSuperfan
Vastet's picture
Posts: 13234
Joined: 2006-12-25
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:

The term G-D.

Atheism= greek: A=no Thesim=god; therefore Atheism is No-G-D, not just No-christian G-D, or No-Islam G-D, etc... it is clearly NO-G-D.

G-D=One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed. (American Heritage Dictionary)
So G-D is NOT JUST a creator, and NOT JUST a saviour, G-D is anything you worship, idealize, or follow- if you follow this thing you must also trust it or be submissive to it.

If G-D is anything you worship or follow (submit to or trust) then nobody is an Atheist because everyone follows something. Maybe you obey social laws, therefore social laws are your god.

That's a fallible argument. Your suggestion would apply to theists as well, meaning noone worshipped a god.

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:

Maybe you worship Dawkins, then Dawkins is your god, or at the very bottom of the spectrum, maybe you worship or only follow yourself; that means you are your own god, and if you are your own god one thing is clear, you are NOT an Atheist.

You're making invalid assumptions. You assume everyone worships something. I don't.

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
You can not simply assume all gods are the same or even supernatural, etc... To do so is to ignore the full context. Maybe you don't believe in a creator, but a creator is not the only type of god.

It's the prevalent one. They all revolve around the supernatural however.

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:

The Problem of Absolute Knowledge:

In order to be an Atheist or atleast believe there is no Biblical concept of G-D, you must either A) Know there is No-G-D or B) Have faith in atheism.

False assumtion. Atheism is disbelief. Not belief.

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
However this is the oldest argument in the book.

In order to Know without a doubt there is no G-D you would have to know absolutely everything about the entire universe, BUT if you knew everything about the entire universe you would have to be omniscient. If you are omniscient you have now takin on one of the very characteristics you have sought to disprove, therefore contradicting your orignal question.

Only if you claim there is one. If noone claims there is a god, then there's simply no god. All is well.

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
If you admit it is just a faith, well then how can you criticize a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, etc... for having faith in a G-D, you have the same type of faith, just in the opposite direction. Therefore to call them stupid for having faith is to call yourself stupidf or having faith. You are both only believing by faith.

I don't have faith. And this is looking like a repetition of common theist misconceptions. I don't need to continue refuting things that were refuted even before I was born.

Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.


Sybarite
Posts: 20
Joined: 2006-12-10
User is offlineOffline
It seems as though this

It seems as though this entire argument is based around atheism is equal to absolute certainty that there is no God, whereas it isn't. It is a lack of belief in a God.

 I think that most atheists here would convert if they saw sufficient proof of a God.

I think what you are really confusing is atheism and agnosticism. Agnosticism is.... Damn. Where did I put that graph?

Here.

 

You also believe that theists (you being the majority of the people making this silly argument) only slightly believe in God, whereas atheists are absolutely certain of no God. This is not the case, as I have seen with most my friends. Most of my friends are absolutely certain of the existence of God, whereas I dabble in religions here and there (so people can't say "You haven't experienced it, you don't know!&quotEye-wink


Ophios
Ophios's picture
Posts: 905
Joined: 2006-09-19
User is offlineOffline
Gauche

Gauche wrote:

Ophios

 

Why are jumping down my throat it's true isn't it?

 

Wait... what? What are we talking about here? I wasn't jumping down your throat over the "Contract" bit. I just was a bit suprised by something I didn't know.

 

Then I just posted a picture.

 

 

Quote:
Atheism means rejection of the supernatural.
 

What? HAHAHAHA!!

Atheism just has to do with gods. Saying that is like saying, you reject other gods therefore, you are an atheist to those gods therefore you reject the supernatural.

Rejecting the supernatural would make you an Asupernaturalist. or something like that. 

AImboden wrote:
I'm not going to PM my agreement just because one tucan has pms.


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
  I will check out the

 

I will check out the books. You should also look into some writings by truly atheistic writers.

Huxley & Niezsche for instance.

 

It seems you all just haven't thought very far into this to understand the logical problems you are leaving all over the place. You can't just say "Thats the way it is" as you are trying to do with the concept of Human Value and Equality. Why is it just that way? Who made it that way? People? What people? Were those people biased against animals? Where did the original value ever come from?

Not all people have the same values, some think its right to kill. Are they wrong or are we wrong for thinking its wrong to kill? Who decides? WHo decided punishments? Should there be punishment? Who decides that? Who gives them the right to decide? If you truly think about this, the way other philosophic atheist have, you will understand why the idea of moral relativity came about. But moral relativity has not fixed the problem, only made it more clear.

 A few of you pointed out that Absolute Kowledge is not possible with Theism either. Thanks for restating what I said. The entire point of my argument was that YOU HAVE FAITH JUST AS MUCH AS ANY THEIST!

Sofio- You still haven't shown me how as an atheist you do not need faith. A square-circle is not a good way to use because this can be physically seen and mathematically proved. Whether or not G-D exist is beyond mathematics and visuals (even the senses can decieve us, but you probably know that). Remember this to, G-D belief goes BEYOND mathematics and visuals, not in-spite of mathematics and visuals. You can mathematically and with experience realize certain things, but whether or not G-D exists is not something you can prove in this way, just like Love or Morality or Human Value.

Nietzsche says in Zarthustra that now that we have "Killed G-D" we ourselves will have to become G-D. This is the most accurate description of Atheism there is. Now that you have removed G-D, you are your own G-D, but in essence to be your own G-D is not to be an atheist. The docrtine is No-G-D, check the definition, the only thing close to purely anti-supernaturalism is denial of supreme beings, and this is not entirely pure anti-supernaturalism. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheism

So as you said yourself, if this definition of Atheism is true, there are no Atheist.

 

One must also recognize that Atheism is NOT lack of belief in G-D. As the definitions show as well, Atheism is disbelief or negative-belief, not neutral belief. So when you claim to be an Atheist, you are believing in a negative aspect where as a Theist would be believing in a positive aspect. But YOU ARE BOTH BELIEVING!

 -1,0,1

Atheism, Pure Agnosticism, Theism

 Agnostics don't know (A-No, Gnosis-Knowledge), Theist believe there is a G-D +1, Atheist believe there is No G-D -1.

So ATheism has to prove itself just as much as Theism, if you don't recognize this, I'm sorry you don't understand your own belief.

 

I've read much on Atheism and it seems many of you have not. The definitions of people on Websites and Blogs are not binding definitions. As I said, read some Huxley who said something along the lines of...

"I became an Atheist, not because I believed it to have harder evidence, but because it freed me to my own erotic pleasures." Something along that lines... So is your reason that the evidence truly is on your side, or is it that you feel that it frees you?

Also, about my trusting G-D if he said something about eating babies. I answered your question, just with my own question.

If your best friend pushed you in a lake knowing you couldn't swim, would you grab for the extended hand they offered you?

Some Books:

Niezsche- Geneology of Morals, Zarathustra

Plato- The Republic

Michael Behe- Darwin's Black Box

Ravi Zacharias- The Real Face of Atheism, Can Man Live Without G-D?

Lee Strobel- The Case for a Creator

Alister McGrath- The Dawkins Delusion (Which sin't out til March but I heard him speak on its content and it sounds like it should be good)

C.S. Lewis- The ABolition of Man

 

Just a couple that you'll enjoy.


Vessel
Vessel's picture
Posts: 646
Joined: 2006-03-31
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
Does everything that exists have value? What about AIDS or Cancer, they also exist, are they valuable?

They obviously value their own existence, not in a sentient way of course, but being as that they exist it is a necessary truth that they value their own existence. All living organisms must do 'something' in order to survive. If they did not, they would not be alive. This is what we can call them 'valuing their existence', the action they take/task they perform to be alive (as a population, an individual, what have you, depending on the given environment for which the life has evolved).

As far as I am concerned however, since from what we can tell such things as aids and cancer affect humans in a purely negative way, they have no value. In this situation there is what I consider to be a legitimate justification for wiping them out completely, since being human, from my perspective, this species is only a negative thing.

G-d wrote:
Do other living things have value too or only humans?

Everything must value its own existence.

G-d wrote:
If other living things have value, how do we have the right to kill them for food?

Yes, because it is good for our survival. It makes us happy and healthy to eat other living organisms. It is in fact a necessity for us to re4ach our valued goal of remaining as life.

G-d wrote:
If they kill us for food is it wrong?

We would certainly think so. I would imagine to the best of my reasoning a tiger doesn't consider it wrong to kill a human. A tiger would most likely consider it good, as it would aid in its survival. Being as that we are humans and we have to look at it from a human context however, yes, it is wrong. Ever notice how we as humans don't allow tigers to roam our city streets?

G-d wrote:
Who differentiates this value difference?

We do, as a matter of perspective. Since we are humans we can only know right, and wrong, and value of life, as humans and therefor we must be the ones to differentiate these values, from our human perspective.

G-d wrote:
If somethings worth is defined by its own existence (as you say with humans), then to cause harm against anything existing is to negate its worth. Is the worth of these things only to serve humans?

Yes something that is dead is by its nature of being dead no longer useful to its own existence as a life form. It is therefor worthless as a living thing, though it can still be of worth to other living things.

Serve? I wouldn't phrase it that way. As a human though, the only way anything can have worth to you is as it has worth to a human. There is no other way you can find worth in anything. There is no worth meter. Where is this so confusing?

G-d wrote:
If so, how did this world law become authoratative and right?

It is only necessarilly right or wrong from the human perspective, but that is the only way that right and wrong can poissibly make sense to a human. There is no great floating measuring stick of right and wrong. There is no super right and super wrong by which to form a scale. Human morals are objective from the human perspective only. They are not absolute nor are they objective from the universes perspective.

G-d wrote:
How do you know this is how it became right?

Because I am human and view things from a human's perspective.

“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek" -- Tom Robbins


Gauche
atheist
Gauche's picture
Posts: 1565
Joined: 2007-01-18
User is offlineOffline
Quote: One must also

Quote:
One must also recognize that Atheism is NOT lack of belief in G-D. As the definitions show as well, Atheism is disbelief or negative-belief, not neutral belief. So when you claim to be an Atheist, you are believing in a negative aspect where as a Theist would be believing in a positive aspect. But YOU ARE BOTH BELIEVING!

Lack of belief and disbelief are the the same thing.

disbelieve

One entry found for disbelieve.
 
Main Entry: dis·be·lieve "> Pronunciation: -'lEv
Function: verb
transitive verb : to hold not worthy of belief : not believe
intransitive verb : to withhold or reject belief
- dis·be·liev·er noun What is the point of having a discussion if you're just going to ignore every point that other people make and declare yourself to be right anyway?

 

There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft


Vessel
Vessel's picture
Posts: 646
Joined: 2006-03-31
User is offlineOffline
Trash pick up.

Trash pick up.

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
It seems you all just haven't thought very far into this to understand the logical problems you are leaving all over the place. You can't just say "Thats the way it is" as you are trying to do with the concept of Human Value and Equality. Why is it just that way? Who made it that way? People? What people? Were those people biased against animals? Where did the original value ever come from?

I answered all these questions.

g-d wrote:
Not all people have the same values, some think its right to kill.

You mean people can use their minds to make justifications? No! Really? Well, jeepers, I'm stumped. Of course this fits perfectly with morals being a natural part of human society. If I justify it in my mind that the best way to survive is to kill others then I will begin to think this behavior is right. The truth of the matter will soon come forth however when I find that my own survival is put in jeopardy by this behavior.

G-d wrote:
Are they wrong or are we wrong for thinking its wrong to kill?

They obviously are. If everyone thought it was right to kill, humans would not exist. It is the obvious unavoidable result of such a moral system.

G-d wrote:
Who decides?

Nature decided that life should not enjoy killing itself for the sake of killing since that would negate the possibility of life existing. If life is to exist it must necessarily be a form of life that values its existence. There is no way around this.

G-d wrote:
WHo decided punishments?

Societies.

G-D wrote:
Should there be punishment?

That's a question socities must answer and it seems to have worked fairly well so far. Certainly better than just letting those who justify wanting to kill, kill all they want.

G-d wrote:
Who decides that?

Socities.

G-d wrote:
Who gives them the right to decide?

Humans.

G-d wrote:
If you truly think about this, the way other philosophic atheist have, you will understand why the idea of moral relativity came about. But moral relativity has not fixed the problem, only made it more clear.

No, sorry, but you have shown no such thing. As a matter of fact, you have shown nothing. You have only asked simple idiotic questions that you could have found the answer to yourself had you used the mind nature gave you for something aside from stroking your gods ego.

G-d wrote:
A few of you pointed out that Absolute Kowledge is not possible with Theism either. Thanks for restating what I said. The entire point of my argument was that YOU HAVE FAITH JUST AS MUCH AS ANY THEIST!

There is a difference between not having absolute knowledge and believing something without reason. Surely you aren't so foolish you can not see that. I also find it comical that you admit to theists having this 'faith' thing which you obviously know is ridiculous since you try your best to brand atheists with the same idiot badge as if it would show them to be just as irrational as the theists.

G-d wrote:
Nietzsche says in Zarthustra that now that we have "Killed G-D" we ourselves will have to become G-D.

This is exactly why you should have to have a lisence to use a brain. What Nietzsche meant was that when we realize there is no god humanity will have to start taking responsibility for itself instead of falling back on this ridiculous crutch of a supreme being. It has nothing to do with worshipping ourselves. God in that sense is being used metaphorically. he didn't actually think we had killed a supreme being and then had to become the supreme being.

G-d wrote:
This is the most accurate description of Atheism there is. Now that you have removed G-D, you are your own G-D, but in essence to be your own G-D is not to be an atheist.

No. Now that we have seen through the ridiculously irrational concept of god there is no thing which we refer to as god.;no belief in any supreme entity, therefor we are atheists.


G-d wrote:
So as you said yourself, if this definition of Atheism is true, there are no Atheist.

Yes, there are atheists. I am one because I have no god belief.

 

G-d wrote:
One must also recognize that Atheism is NOT lack of belief in G-D. As the definitions show as well, Atheism is disbelief or negative-belief, not neutral belief.

There is no such thing as neutral belief. If I don't have a belief in a god, I am an atheist. If I do have a belief in a god, I am irrational.

G-d wrote:
So when you claim to be an Atheist, you are believing in a negative aspect where as a Theist would be believing in a positive aspect. But YOU ARE BOTH BELIEVING!

NO! When you claim to be an atheist you are saying you do not possess a belief in a god or gods. Nothing more. If I don't have any money this does not mean I have negative money, it simply means I am without money.

G-d wrote:
Atheism, Pure Agnosticism, Theism

Agnostics don't know (A-No, Gnosis-Knowledge), Theist believe there is a G-D +1, Atheist believe there is No G-D -1.

You are confusing categories. Where would you put a gnostic in this category scale? It doesn't fit.

Theism equals at least 1 in the god belief category, atheism equals 0 in the god belief category. Gnosticism equals at least 1 in the knowledge category, agnosticism equals 0 in the knowledge category.

G-d wrote:
So ATheism has to prove itself just as much as Theism, if you don't recognize this, I'm sorry you don't understand your own belief.

You are wrong yet again. Amazing. Probablities would seem to suggest you would have made at least one correct assertion by this point in the thread. You defy the odds, sir.

G-d wrote:
I've read much on Atheism and it seems many of you have not.

Too bad reading does not necessarily include comprehending.

G-d wrote:
"I became an Atheist, not because I believed it to have harder evidence, but because it freed me to my own erotic pleasures." Something along that lines...

So, Huxley is an idiot as well. Was there a point?

G-d wrote:
So is your reason that the evidence truly is on your side, or is it that you feel that it frees you?

I was born an atheist, have never had a belief in a god, and have as of yet seen no evidence which should lead me to have a belief. Is that so hard to comprehend? Are you sure that your not a theist just because you wish for there to be an afterlife where you get paradise and those you disagree with go to hell?

“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek" -- Tom Robbins


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
Vessel wrote: G-d

Vessel wrote:

G-d wrote:
Who decides?

Nature decided that life should not enjoy killing itself for the sake of killing since that would negate the possibility of life existing. If life is to exist it must necessarily be a form of life that values its existence. There is no way around this.

So morals/values have been around since the creation of life? (ex: if it values its life it thinks it is wrong to kill, this is a moral) How then did society create values/morals if they already were here? If society did create them, how did life exist before morals?(based on your argument) - What was it that gave us the initial value to value life...wouldn't it first have to be learned that death is bad? Plus, as you said, for life to exist it is NECESSARY to value life, what made sure that living beings were equipped with this value of life? If morals/values evolved, how did we not go extinct before the value of life was created?

G-d wrote:
WHo decided punishments?

Societies.

Before societies were created, who made punishments? If there were no punishment before society, how was life and the value of life preserved until the creation of socities without some sort of "negative aspect" for rebelling aginst the value of life? Was each creature instilled with this value? WHy aren't all people now instilled with this value? WHo/what makes sure all humans/beings are instilled with this value?

 If I don't have a belief in a god, I am an atheist. If I do have a belief in a god, I am irrational.

And you acted as if I was narrow minded... Earlier you said you BELIEVE there is no G-D...belief is having faith. So if you have faith and a theist has faith, how are they more irrational than you? Both of you are simply having faith in something you can not prove scientifically because it is a metaphysical question. It is irrational to think you can know whether or not G-D exists, and you said you didn't claim this, but to not admit you have faith is to say you know, to say you know is irrational.

NO! When you claim to be an atheist you are saying you do not possess a belief in a god or gods.

 Not having a belief and not beliving are two different things...not having a belief means you aren't decided either way as to whether there is or is not a G-D. To say you believe there is No G-D is atheism, which is a faith statement affirming a No G-D which only FAITH can justify.

Agnostics don't know (A-No, Gnosis-Knowledge), Theist believe there is a G-D +1, Atheist believe there is No G-D -1.

You are confusing categories. Where would you put a gnostic in this category scale? It doesn't fit.

A gnostic would not fit, they don't have faith, they KNOW...So since we do not know whether or not G-D exists for sure, none of us are gnostics, atleast pertaining to G-D.

G-d wrote:
So ATheism has to prove itself just as much as Theism, if you don't recognize this, I'm sorry you don't understand your own belief.

You are wrong yet again. Amazing. Probablities would seem to suggest you would have made at least one correct assertion by this point in the thread. You defy the odds, sir.

Please explain how one does not have to prove Atheism-

And Please- I still have this question you wont answer...

If your best friend pushes you into a lake knowing you can't swim, would you grab for the extended hand they offered?


theotherguy
theotherguy's picture
Posts: 294
Joined: 2007-01-07
User is offlineOffline
 You are wrong yet again.

Quote:

You are wrong yet again. Amazing. Probablities would seem to suggest you would have made at least one correct assertion by this point in the thread. You defy the odds, sir.

Please explain how one does not have to prove Atheism-

And Please- I still have this question you wont answer...

If your best friend pushes you into a lake knowing you can't swim, would you grab for the extended hand they offered?

One does not have to prove atheism because it is impossible to prove a negative. I cannot prove my atheism because I would have to disprove every conceivable god or gods, which is simply impossible.

The burden of proof lies in the theist to prove his or her god, because its entirely impossible to an atheist to disprove all conceivable gods.

 And yes, I would grab the hand of the friend, because he may have made a mistake. And if he's my friend it would be reasonable to assume that. However, this has nothing to do with god.


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
  One does not have to

 

One does not have to prove atheism because it is impossible to prove a negative. I cannot prove my atheism because I would have to disprove every conceivable god or gods, which is simply impossible.

The burden of proof lies in the theist to prove his or her god, because its entirely impossible to an atheist to disprove all conceivable gods.

I don't know if your atheist or a theist, but I would agree with this idea... it is impossible to prove all gods are false because one can not KNOW everything...

but when a person wont admit atheism is a faith; then they must prove why it is not a faith, which is all I'm asking since whoever said that atheism is not a faith and therefore must not have to be proven; (which still is logically incoherant, if atheism is a truth, it still must be provable and if it is not provable it is not a truth and therefore a faith).

If one recognizes they don't KNOW and are purely agnostic, I agree, a Theist has the burden of support...but if it is a theist and an atheist in a debate, each has the burden of proof, they both hold opposing faiths that must be weighed against eachother.


theotherguy
theotherguy's picture
Posts: 294
Joined: 2007-01-07
User is offlineOffline
Of course, technically one

Of course, technically one must remain purely agnostic, but that is a formality, a play on words.

I do not consider my atheism "faith" because it is based on a reasoned weighing of scientific evidence. There is absolutley no evidence supporting the existence of a god, neither mathematical nor expermimental. I do not believe in a god because there is no evidence that presses me to beleive in a god, any more than there is evidence of phlogisten, fairys or teapots orbiting the sun. Surely I must remain agnostic about all of these too, but when there is no evidence at all for something's existence we must assume that the probability of its existence is so miniscule as to be declared zero.

 Of course, that changes with evidence...and if there is any evidence that comes up that supports the existence of a god or gods I would change my mind.

Faith, however, is another issue. Faith would compel me to maintain my belief in spite of or contrary to evidence. Because there is no evidence to contradict, it is not out of faith but reason that I disbeleive in a god.

 I have no more reason to prove my disbelief in god as I have of proving my disbeleif in santa claus or the grim reaper or microscopic elephants. But if someone came up to me and told me of santa claus, the grim reaper or microscopic elephants, he had better prove it.


Edger
Posts: 104
Joined: 2007-01-14
User is offlineOffline
Only a fool, you're still

Only a fool, you're still confused on the term. I also was. Don't feel bad.

http://www.rationalresponders.com/am_i_agnostic_or_atheist

But I did my research. An atheist doesn't believe. That's all. Some may actively and positively disbelieve, some may simply deny your justification for belief. There is a difference. The common thread is a simple lack of belief. I've read the posts and it's already been brought up. 

 How can you tell someone who doesn't believe in "something" that isn't testable or falsifiable through prediction or observation to prove that what they don't believe in doesn't exist? It trumps common sense. The scientific method works exactly opposite. Only a falsifiable contention can be effectively addressed by a reasonable doubter.

When you make a contention you're in no way, shape, or form establishing it's validity. You think if your god cannot be proven non-existant that it somehow makes him/it real? Save yourself some time and do the short math on that one. Can you prove Scooby Doo doesn't exist? How about Odin or Thor?

This world would be a lot crazier if your brand of "logic" held true. We'd have cartoon characters, super heros, unicorns, trolls, vampires, etc. running amuck. Sounds kinda fun though. Too bad.


triften
atheist
triften's picture
Posts: 591
Joined: 2007-01-01
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:

It seems you all just haven't thought very far into this to understand the logical problems you are leaving all over the place. You can't just say "Thats the way it is" as you are trying to do with the concept of Human Value and Equality. Why is it just that way? Who made it that way? People? What people? Were those people biased against animals? Where did the original value ever come from?

Thought experiment time! (Yay!)

Imagine two groups societies/countries of people: Country A believes that the sick and indigent should be killed and each man should be strong on his own, Country B believes in taking care of the sick and working together. Time passes and eventually the countries come in conflict as they compete for resources and during the ensuing conflict, the people of Country B work together and easily defeat the "barbarian hordes" of Country A because of teamwork and possibly because they care for their sick and wait for them to get better. Eventually, the people of Country B push back and crowd out the people of Country A and now the law of the land is that of Country B. Yay!

So the morals and values are those that work best. We can see the results in our world today. Groups that work together have built up and up and groups of people that decide to kill each other over say, clan rivalries, aren't doing so well.

-Triften


Edger
Posts: 104
Joined: 2007-01-14
User is offlineOffline
Ah...morals. I guess if

Ah...morals.

I guess if someone needs to believe in a higher power to keep from killing others or raping children, I'm glad they have faith (though it seems to fail much of the time). But I've no desire to commit these heinous acts, thus no need for a "god". Doesn't that make me, an atheist, more morally grounded than any "god" fearing individual touting faith as his/her motivation to be good? 


Vessel
Vessel's picture
Posts: 646
Joined: 2006-03-31
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:
So morals/values have been around since the creation of life?

A given life-form's value of its own life has certainly been around since the first life form. It would be impossible for life to exist were this not a natural part of the life-forms existence.  

G-d wrote:
(ex: if it values its life it thinks it is wrong to kill, this is a moral) How then did society create values/morals if they already were here?

There are basic things that are going to be what we as humans consider evil which by their nature make life within a society (by society I mean group of social animals), or life in general, more difficult for all, or even in the case of the enjoyment of indiscriminate killing, impossible. Surely you can see how this behavior would be detrimental to the society as a whole and detrimental to each individual. Also, as a social animal morals that make life in a society possible are going to necessarily evolve in the individual members of the group, or the society. Our natural altruism is the main source of many of these morals. 

G-d wrote:
If society did create them, how did life exist before morals?

Society didn't create them, morals and societies evolved together. 

 

G-d wrote:
(based on your argument) - What was it that gave us the initial value to value life...wouldn't it first have to be learned that death is bad? Plus, as you said, for life to exist it is NECESSARY to value life, what made sure that living beings were equipped with this value of life? If morals/values evolved, how did we not go extinct before the value of life was created?

I will explain this one more time because I think you are honestly having trouble grasping the concept. 

 Let's imagine the first life form pops into existence (just imagine it to avoid getting sidetracked with an abiogenesis discussion). Now this life form has two possibilities, it can value its own life (again, this does not mean to value life in any sentient way, merely that it works i.e. feeds, breathes, reproduces, self-replicates, what have you) or it can not value its own life (do nothing to continue its existence). What would happen to a life form that naturally does not value its life in this manner? It would of course cease to exist. Since life exists, we have no choice but to conclude that it is in the nature of the life form to value its life. This applies to every life form. Its very existence makes this a necessity.

The other questions can wait until you grasp this concept, otherwise quotes and rteplies get too long.

I will however go ahead and answer this: 

G-d wrote:
]If your best friend pushes you into a lake knowing you can't swim, would you grab for the extended hand they offered?

If it seemed as if they had just been pulling a prank, yes. If it seemed as if they were intent on killing me, no. Then again if I couldn't swim my best friend would not push me in a lake. If he/she did he/she would no longer be my best friend. 

“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek" -- Tom Robbins


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
Edger wrote: But I did my

Edger wrote:

But I did my research. An atheist doesn't believe. That's all. Some may actively and positively disbelieve, some may simply deny your justification for belief. There is a difference. The common thread is a simple lack of belief.

An ATHEIST poses a DISBELIEF, an agnostic has lack of belief. Agnostics lack of belief goes in both directions because they simply do not know either way to form an opinion.

These are the ways different people would answer the question "Do you believe in G-D?"

Theist- Yes
      Atheist- No
     Agnostic- I don't know

So as you can see, an Atheist has A lack of belief IN or disbelief IN G-D. Not a lack of belief at all. By having a lack of belief IN G-D you are affirming the assumption that there is No G-D, thus atheism, No G-D. Agnostics simply have not formed a belief either way to affirm. They simply do not know either way if they think G-D is or isn't there, they've formed no assumption and therefore they have NO BELIEF AT ALL. They would not believe it right to say there is no- G-D but they also would not think it right to say there is a G-D. Please go look up the definition of atheism and you will see it to say "disbelief" or "the doctrine of no- G-D." It may say "a lack f belief IN G-D" but it will not say a lack of any belief.

Edger wrote:

 How can you tell someone who doesn't believe in "something" that isn't testable or falsifiable through prediction or observation to prove that what they don't believe in doesn't exist? It trumps common sense. The scientific method works exactly opposite. 

I agree with this completely and it is the point. You CAN NOT PROVE OR DISPROVE G-D! No matter what view you hold on it, you are believing you are correct because you simply can not know. I don't get why you can understand this for theist and not atheist.

Edger wrote:

When you make a contention you're in no way, shape, or form establishing it's validity. You think if your god cannot be proven non-existant that it somehow makes him/it real?

Save yourself some time and do the short math on that one. Can you prove Scooby Doo doesn't exist? How about Odin or Thor? 

Answer this for me....

Can you show me proof that Socratese existed? What about Paul Revere, can you prove he existed? Can you prove he really said "The British are comming" or that he rode a horse around while yelling this?

(Please tell me what kind of proof there is and how you know it to be trust worthy)

 


triften
atheist
triften's picture
Posts: 591
Joined: 2007-01-01
User is offlineOffline
Only a Fool Curses G-D

Only a Fool Curses G-D wrote:

An ATHEIST poses a DISBELIEF, an agnostic has lack of belief. Agnostics lack of belief goes in both directions because they simply do not know either way to form an opinion.

These are the ways different people would answer the question "Do you believe in G-D?"

Theist- Yes
Atheist- No
Agnostic- I don't know

So as you can see, an Atheist has A lack of belief IN or disbelief IN G-D. Not a lack of belief at all. By having a lack of belief IN G-D you are affirming the assumption that there is No G-D, thus atheism, No G-D. Agnostics simply have not formed a belief either way to affirm. They simply do not know either way if they think G-D is or isn't there, they've formed no assumption and therefore they have NO BELIEF AT ALL. They would not believe it right to say there is no- G-D but they also would not think it right to say there is a G-D. Please go look up the definition of atheism and you will see it to say "disbelief" or "the doctrine of no- G-D." It may say "a lack f belief IN G-D" but it will not say a lack of any belief.

Ah, semantics. How fun. Have you read this? http://www.rationalresponders.com/am_i_agnostic_or_atheist

Agnostic is a quality, not a mid-point between atheist and theist.

(And now, instead of arguing about holy books, we can argue about dictionaries. Sigh.)

Just because you capitalize disbelief doesn't mean it isn't the same thing as a lack of belief. Granted, there are "strong" atheists who say "There is no god".

You are trying to argue your stance based on your definition of atheism, hence the confusion. Perhaps we should clear this up before trying to get anywhere.

---------- 

Let's see, Socrates wrote books, and other people who met him personally wrote books about him, and even people who didn't like Socrates wrote about him when he was alive.

Paul Revere was written about by contemporaries. He was a smith and his company (Revere Copper Works) exist to this day.

I would think that if all these miracles were happening, a Roman or two would have written about it at the time.

-Triften


Ophios
Ophios's picture
Posts: 905
Joined: 2006-09-19
User is offlineOffline
Only a fool, I'm an Atheist

Only a fool, I'm an Atheist Agnostic.

 

Can you please get over this Agnostic "only says I don't know"?

An agnostic can say "I lack belief." Atheist agnostic. Or "I believe in a god, but I'm not too sure of the details." Theist agnostic, or a deist.

 

It always gets me when I ask someone what they believe, and they say "Agnostic". I always tighten up, hold my frustration in, and tell them "That's good, but I want to know what you BELIEVE, not KNOW!"

AImboden wrote:
I'm not going to PM my agreement just because one tucan has pms.


Vessel
Vessel's picture
Posts: 646
Joined: 2006-03-31
User is offlineOffline
Sybarite wrote:

Sybarite wrote:

It seems as though this entire argument is based around atheism is equal to absolute certainty that there is no God, whereas it isn't. It is a lack of belief in a God.

I think that most atheists here would convert if they saw sufficient proof of a God.

I think what you are really confusing is atheism and agnosticism. Agnosticism is.... Damn. Where did I put that graph?

Here.

I think you could go ahead and kick that atheist dot up there until it is about 99% of the way up that gnostic line there. I mean, I don't know many atheists claiming to be 100% positive about the non-existent of all possible forces that could be classified as a god, but let's be honest here. Most of us are as certain of the lack of any god of which we are aware of the definition, by reason of lack of any evidence, logical contradiction, and undefinable properties, as we are that there is not a hippo at the center of Jupiter.

*edit: I am not insane (at least not in this sense). The post I was replying to existed at the time I replied. I am almost certain of it. 

“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek" -- Tom Robbins


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
  Thought experiment

 

Thought experiment time! (Yay!)

Imagine two groups societies/countries of people: Country A believes that the sick and indigent should be killed and each man should be strong on his own, Country B believes in taking care of the sick and working together. Time passes and eventually the countries come in conflict as they compete for resources and during the ensuing conflict, the people of Country B work together and easily defeat the "barbarian hordes" of Country A because of teamwork and possibly because they care for their sick and wait for them to get better. Eventually, the people of Country B push back and crowd out the people of Country A and now the law of the land is that of Country B. Yay!

-Triften

 

So clearly from what you have said, since country B was stronger and defeated weaker country A, stronger B's morals must now be followed. Survival of the fittest...

I am guessing that you think that AMericas government is pretty good, since the government rules the country and the country is strong. You must think Russia has good morals too though, since they are a world power as well. China too... Some of the morals of AMerica, Russia, and China conflict though, which groups morals are better? How do we know they are better? DO we need to go to war to figure out whose morals are better? Does this mean war is good because it shows us which set of morals are the best?

 

Answer this:

One country has a value for life and tries its best not to take a life unless completely necessary. (Country 1)

Another country values life a little less and thinks you should destroy an enemy country before they become a threat. (Country 2)

These 2 countries get in a fight and Country 2 bombs Country 1  and destroys it at the beginning of the fight. Does this mean that Country 2 had better morals since they had less value on life and destroyed the enemy before they became to much of a threat?

If not, does this mean your idea for where morals come from may not always work out? If it doesn't always work out, how do we know it is working right now? Or could we not know until we go to war?

 

 


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
Ophios wrote: It always

Ophios wrote:

It always gets me when I ask someone what they believe, and they say "Agnostic". I always tighten up, hold my frustration in, and tell them "That's good, but I want to know what you BELIEVE, not KNOW!"

I agree, you can not believe in agnostic, you simply are agnostic...I never said you can believe in agnostic I merely said that to be agnostic is not to know, or to lack belief in either direction...read what i said again.

 Dictionary Definitions:


The Unabridged Dictionary=

1.the doctrine or belief that there is no God.

2.

disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.

The American Heritage Dictionary

  1. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
  2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.

WordNet

1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God [ant: theism
2. 

a lack of belief IN the existence of God or gods 

American Heritage Cultural Dictionary

Denial that there is a God. (Compare agnosticism.)

None of them hold the idea you are saying atheism portrays. The closest one is the one that says "A lack of belief IN the existence."

However, anybody should be able to know that lack of belief and lack of belief in something are 2 totally different ideas.

Ex:

Is cereal good?

Lack of belief:

I don't believe cereal to be good but I don't believe it to be bad. OR
I lack belief IN the goodness of cereal AND I lack belief IN the badness of cereal. (To Be Agnostic)

I believe Cereal to be Good. OR
 I lack the belief in cereals badness but I do not lack belief in cereals goodness.Theist)

I don't believe cereal to be good. OR I have a lack of belief IN the goodness of cereal but I do not have a lack of belief in the badness of cereal. (Atheist)

 

So when you say you lack belief in
G-D, do you also lack belief that there is No G-D? If you do, you are not an atheist, you are agnostic. If you lack belief in G-D but DO NOT lack belief in the absence of G-D, you are an athiest and you have a belief G-D is not there.

 

This is simple...If you can't understand that atheism is NOT only lack of belief in G-D but also belief in the absence of G-D then perhaps I am sorry you are blindly claiming something you dont understand.

 


Only a Fool Cur...
Theist
Posts: 20
Joined: 2007-01-23
User is offlineOffline
  Ok since ATHEISM is 99%

 

Ok since ATHEISM is 99% sure of its correctness, please, show me this proof, I want to be proven wrong., but by simply denying G-D and denying me you are not proving anything. Show me the proof. Lack of proof is not a disproof.