Family Man

One of the points made by the author is that we really have to take a lot of things on "faith", implying that we ought to take the notion on God on "faith" also. But these are qualitatively different things. When I sit in my chair in the morning, do I do so without fear because I take it on faith that it will hold my weight, or do I do so because it held my weight yesterday, and everyday since I bought it five years ago? The fact is that I have plenty of reason to believe that that chair would hold my weight. It is possible that the chair will fail me tomorrow, but I'd doubt that Magus would bet any significant money on it doing that.

Or take the Custer example. I recently watched a program on Discovery where historians went back to examine the battleground. They found so many artifacts (e.g. cartridges) that would have come from a battle that they were able to convincing reconstruct how the battle unfolded -- including how several soldiers were killed fleeing the battle. Throw in the testimony of the soldiers from the other detachments and Indians who participated in the battle, and newspaper and government accounts of the aftermath, it is clear there is plenty of evidence that a battle occurred where Custer and his entire command were killed.

In other words, the only "faith" required to believe in either of the above is that we don't live on a Matrixesque world where things aren't what they seem. (And even if we do, how would that establish the existence of any god?) On the question of God, however, where is the evidence that this entity exists? As far as I can tell, there isn't any.

Kassiana

Magus55:
What is the big dilemma with you all not being able to handle one God?

Kass:
Well, for one thing, Magus, I'm a POLYTHEIST. I could handle just one God, but then I wouldn't be a POLYTHEIST.

Magus:
If you have kids, do you expect them to weigh you as parents even though you created them and have them say hmm, im gonna search my options and become another set of parents child because i don't like your methods?

Kass:
If I hide from them, give them almost no evidence that I, over any other set of parents exist, and then punish them for making the wrong decision, I hope they do.

Magus:
And no don't give me the line, well parents wouldn't let their child spend their lives away from them.

Kass:
See above. I didn't.

Magus:
Since you don't even believe in God you can't question his methods when you don't even understand him.

Kass:
Magus, He Of Perfect Understanding of God, eh? Sounds a bit arrogant to me. Sure I can question. In fact, I can find Bible verses COMMANDING me to test the spirits and see if they are God. Sound familiar?

Magus:
As it says in that article, humans have 1 millionth of one percent knowledge of anything

Kass:
Seeing that I have no evidence that you're not a human, that includes you, dear.

Magus:
yet even if you had 1 percent knowledge of things ( which would make you an unprecedented genious) that still leaves 99% worth of knowledge you don't know of for God to exist in.

Kass:
Or my Gods. Or the Graeco-Roman Gods. Or aliens. Or spirits. Or spirit guides. Or ancestors. Or faeries, demons, trolls, goblins, gnolls, and veebos.

Magus:
You can say you don't believe in God, but you can never say i know he doesn't exist because thats completely illogical and blows your whole standing.

Kass:
Same goes for you. You can't say you know my Gods, or the Hindu Gods, or the Greek Gods, or African tribal Gods, or faeries, kobolds, unicorns, truly free parking, or Utopia don't exist either. What's the point to this? "You can't say it doesn't exist" doesn't lead to the proposition "therefore, it exists" by any rational standard.

lpetrich

(Magus55 using a parenting analogy...)

Let's see what one would say about parents who give their children instructions in the form of a long, rambling, obscure, ambiguous, and sometimes-contradictory tract, and then run off somewhere.

Magus55:
As it says in that article, humans have 1 millionth of one percent knowledge of anything ...

Which means that you can't rule out ghosts or goblins or elves or fairies or jinn or other such beings. Or deities of other religions -- Zeus, Odin, Amon-Ra, Marduk, Brahma, Amaterasu, Quetzalcoatl, ...

So convert to Hellenic paganism just in case it is King Minos who will judge you instead of Jesus Christ, and the same for other religions.

diana

Oh, man. What an article. It almost manages to incorporate all of the common beliefs Xns have about atheists, in one digestable tablet. That took skill.

Comments like this suggest you aren't here so much to communicate your beliefs and reason with us as you are here to mock us. But you do so at your peril.

Ray Comfort's book excepts follow:

Only? Please. Among other things, this is called the Either/Or Fallacy. How about "God is competent but doesn't care"? "The Greeks were right, and we are simply the pawns of a pantheon"?

Suggesting that the competition automatically sneers in something you believe in is called poisoning the well. I'd say that faith is only necessary when you have no means of checking the evidence.

I see the old "faith" equivocation on the horizon. Do you really think that your belief in the safety of eating cornflakes is on a par with your belief in the existence of a being you've never heard or seen and can produce no proof of? If so, how do you go about differentiating between the one true god and all those false gods out there?

I'll generalize and state that atheists generally consider faith [the biblical definition; not the common definition you're appealing to in your examples] irrational--not offensive.

Assertion. What spiritual realm?

Misinformation. Atheism is a lack of belief in gods.

This is a clever red herring, as it ignores the reason "Who made God?" even comes up in conversation. To wit: Xns insist all this had to come from somewhere. To which the logical response is: if all this had to come from somewhere, why would God be exempt from this requirement?

If he is exempt, then the premise of the Xn's argument (i.e., all this had to come from somewhere) is destroyed.

The fact that we can't measure the universe has nothing to do with the believer's assertion that a being who is forever is possible. Even using this as its own argument for the infinity of God, you're facing a non-sequitor.

I was just reading this morning, as a matter of fact, about how surgeons a century ago were quite likely to kill the patient, even in simple procedures, due to their disdain for cleanliness. It seems that, by and large, the people of that time didn't have much "faith" in them at all. Many (most?) chose to suffer with their illnesses, rather than face the life and death gamble with poor odds that surgery represented.

For this reason, I find the comment that we "trust" surgeons interesting. We still don't completely "trust" surgeons now. I wouldn't go under the knife of a surgeon who'd lost a malpractice suit, or who'd lost several patients, or who people even spoke poorly about. There are also other safeguards in place, including our legal system and the rigorous examinations and licencing required for surgeons to practice. We are aware that most people who are operated on now recover from their incisions and return to good health.

Our "trust" in anyone is based upon what we've learned about them and what we know about the system that regulates their actions.

How is this like "trust" in God?

I suppose this assertion would be supported with the necessary shifting of what it means to be "in the hands of God," so as to make it non-falsifiable. For example, it may be argued that all those people in the nightclub fire two days ago were sinning by being there, engaged in iniquity, and therefore "separated" from God--so that's why they died. Or you may decide that being "in the hands of God" refers to spiritual life, which of course is an unsupportable concept in itself, and therefore by its very nature non-falsifiable.

If the latter--and I suspect as much--then this assertion suffers from equivocation of the terms "die/perish." One refers to a physical death; the other to a spiritual one. Apples and oranges.

Atheism is a position on the belief/nonbelief continuum. Agnosticism is a position on the knowledge/lack of knowledge continuum. You do understand the difference, don't you?

If it helps, my position is agnostic atheist. I don't know there's a god (agnostic) and I don't believe in one (atheist). I usually leave the "agnostic" part off, as it is redundant with being human.

More jeering at the competition, suggesting we think we know everything. More poisoning of the well.

The ironic thing is, the only people I encounter who argue that they know things that are clearly unknowable, such as where the world came from, are believers. I'd say the people who come closer to the "think they know everything" nastiness are believers--not atheists.

And I thought the argument from ignorance had been done to death. Good to see it's alive and well and kicking.

It's possible there's undiscovered evidence to prove the existence of Kali, Osiris Buddha, and leprauchans, too. For some reason, though, I'm not disturbed by my inability to prove the non-existence of any of these, and am quite confident in my conclusion that they don't exist, except as figments of people's imaginations.

Why should I therefore be troubled that I can't disprove the existence of your god, too?

This is true. I am a pedant by nature, so I avoid making such statements for precisely this reason. However, most people don't give much thought to how they express ideas, and frequently state them so as to technically mean something other than what they intended. It has been my experience thus far that those who say, "There is no God" are simply being sloppy in expressing their position, as I've never met an atheist who claims to know everything.

Moreover, most people are prone to express their opinions as though they were fact. Your straw man argument here would go away completely if everyone would simply take the time to say, "I don't think there is a God."

Pretty much, yes. But I'm pedantic enough to state the latter part as "I don't believe there is a god," simply because I don't see how belief can be the opposite of belief; I think lack of belief is the opposite of belief.

So this author admits that he's just picking on people who aren't pedantic like him.

Word games. I could define "theist" as "one who believes in a power higher than himself." By that criteria, I could declare your God an atheist.

Ooooh, ad hominem. I say this because our connotations of the "Latin equivalent" are negative, and the Latin for a Greek word from which a present day English word was derived has no bearing on what it means now. The only reason this need be included in the article is to insult anyone claiming "agnosticism."

If you don't know something and admit as much (in present day English usage), you may be considered "ignorant in that subject"--which is no insult. Also in common usage, a person who claims knowledge of something but is unable to support his claim may be dubbed an "ignoramus," among other things.

If Mr. Comfort's etymology is accurate, it would appear that the connotations of "ignoramus" have flip-flopped.

:notworthy:

OK. Let me try it.

"God, if you are there, grant me eternal youth."

d

Jayhawker Soule

Digestable? There is a great deal about you that I greatly appreciate, but remind me not to drop by for dinner.

Magus55

I'm not trying to mock you diana, but since i started here trying to carry out a civil debate - everyone has been rude and insulted me.

Kass, im curious - what brought you to Polytheism? Where is the evidence for them that is more prevelant than evidence for God?

Magus55

Well no i can't rule out any of them but since i believe in the Bible as absolute truth and have faith in God - as well as having not even a tiny tiny tiny shred of evidence or claim that those gods exist - i don't plan on ever converting.

Mageth

Great post, diana.

For some reason, though, I'm not disturbed by my inability to prove the non-existence of any of these, and am quite confident in my conclusion that they don't exist, except as figments of people's imaginations.

An excellent point, and one that deserves stressing. If the evidence of a god's existence lies out there somewhere, outside of current human knowledge, then where do the ideas of a Christiain, and other gods, come from?

The obvious answer is from our imagination. Man created god(s), not the other way around.

Why should I therefore be troubled that I can't disprove the existence of your god, too?

Again stressing the point, the onus is not on the non-believer to provide evidence of or prove the non-existence of a particular god, but on the believer (or god) to provide evidence of/prove the existence of the god. Until such is done, non-belief is the only rational position. I'll be damned if I'll hold "faith" in an imaginary god just because I haven't counted the hairs on the back of a yak.

diana

I didn't mean me in particular, but atheists in general.

I have yet to read a post of yours that doesn't come loaded with imbedded insults, so I wonder what you see as a "civil" debate. Perhaps you started here in a different forum, and I simply haven't read your initial civil posts.

I offer a recommendation that if you wish to represent Xnty in a rational and convincing manner, that you walk the walk.

Jesus said turn the other cheek.

d

Kassiana

Kass:
My own reasoning from my own spiritual experiences, plus some reading I did. I never had an experience of God, for example, that was unloving, yet the God of the Bible is (by many actions of his) unloving. I could not believe in that God. And then I believe the Gods found me.