Biff the unclean

I'm saying that to point out how erroneous, and sometimes dangerous, it is to assume that the default position is to assume a claim is true. If this were not the case, we would be forced to believe everything anyone told us unless we could prove otherwise.

In other words, you are innocent until you are proven guilty. Innocent is the default position.

JubalsCall

May be there is a burden of proof on the atheist? There is big difference between the IPU and a god(s)? One is just out there not really effecting anything and the other effects the whole world. If the description of God is who Christians or mostly anyother realigion says he/she/they are, then the belief totally changes your life.

Here is another question. I know it's a big strech and you'll have to imagine for a little bit. But what if you die and you meet(let's just us the Christian belief) God? What do you say to Him when he askes you "Why did you not believe in me?"

Would you say there was no convincing evidence?
That He never tried to make it ovious that He was out there?

This is pretty much just like the first question that started out on this thread, but now you have to answer God.
Why didn't you believe in Him? (Remember I know this is a big IF for you guys)

Tibbs

Anyother question: How can it seem so ovious to an athiest that there is no God and how can it seen so ovious there is a God to theist?

JubalsCall

There are many more logical explainations. You are asumming too many things to start with. I don't have time right now to say them, but I'll try to soon.

Tibbs

Ensign Steve

There is ONLY a burden of proof on an atheist if he is asserting something. If I want to convince you that I have 1000 pairs of shoes, and you don't believe me, I have to prove that I have 1000 pairs of shoes. You do not have to prove that I don't. How could I come up to you and say "Tibbs, you prove to me that I don't have 1000 pairs of shoes. You can't prove it. Therefore, you should believe that I do." How does that make any sense?

Quote:

There is big difference between the IPU and a god(s)? One is just out there not really effecting anything and the other effects the whole world. If the description of God is who Christians or mostly anyother realigion says he/she/they are, then the belief totally changes your life.

It is the belief in god that is affecting the whole world, not god itself. In the last 2000 years, at least, god hasn't done one single thing more than the IPU has done.

Quote:

Here is another question. I know it's a big strech and you'll have to imagine for a little bit. But what if you die and you meet(let's just us the Christian belief) God? What do you say to Him when he askes you "Why did you not believe in me?" Would you say there was no convincing evidence?

Yep.



Not only that, but he gave us so many clues that he didn't exist.

I would give him the same answer that I gave you. If god came on this board and asked, or asked me to my face, I would tell him the exact same things I have posted to this board in answer to your question the first time you asked it. Because it is the truth.

Quote:

Anyother question: How can it seem so ovious to an athiest that there is no God and how can it seen so ovious there is a God to theist?

I can't speak for a theist, but I will venture a guess that it has been 2000+ years of dogma that has made it seem so obvious that there is a God.

And it is empirical evidence, the actual nature of the universe, and the scientific method that have made it seem so obvious to me that there isn't.

Jen

Jamie_L

As mentioned by others, belief in God effects the world. Belief in some God's used to impact the world (Zues, Ra, Odin, etc.), but now pretty much everyone (except good ole OJuice) believe they are nothing but myth. Widespread or influential belief doesn't necessarily mean something is true.

Many beliefs, including such wacky things as Scientology, Branch Davidianism (or whatever), Conspiracy Paranoia, etc. totally change people's lives. These also don't make the beliefs more likely to be true.

Easy:
I honestly sought the truth as best I could using the tools you gave me to observe the world you made. Clearly I was mistaken.

I would not be ashamed of that. I did the best with the cards I was dealt. Maybe if God had dealt me better cards...

As I've said in other threads, if God exists, God is omnipotent, and God made everything, I can only conclude that either a) God isn't concerned with the fact that I am an atheist or b) God wants me to be an atheist. If God wanted me to be a theist, I imagine I darn well would be.

Human nature's funny. How can it be so obvious to some people that you can't go to heaven without being baptized, and so obvious to others that you can? How can it be so obvious to some people that Allah is the path to paradise, and to others it's so obvious that Buddha teaches the way to enlightenment? How could it have been so obvious to the Branch Davidians that David Koresh was the messiah, and so obvioius to everyone else that he was a whacko?

People's beliefs often do not reflect reality.

Mageth

Vorhis the Wolf:

Well, according to the bible god created the world, so it cant be millions of years old. Also, "Adam" and "Eve' were gods first 2 creations. Here is the part of Genesis that deals with it:

<snip>

Now if god made the earth and everything on it, and people were on the earth from the begining of time then shouldnt there be some mention of dinosars?? Logicaly there is only 3 explanations.

<snip>

Umm, I'm intimately familiar with the Genesis account, as I'm sure most others here are. As others have mentioned, there are many other possible explanations than you have listed; Lobstrosity mentioned a common one. Others that have actually been proposed include that god (or alternatively Satan) created the fossils to fool us (not a very satisfactory one, and thus not widely held), and that the dinosaurs represent a previous creation of God's which he (or some disaster) wiped clean before the creation account in Genesis (some say this all occurred between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2). Yet another explanation, accepted by the Catholic Church (among others), is that God kick-started life and let it evolve (including the rise and fall of the dinosaurs) and, at some point in the relatively recent past, either specially created Homo Sapiens or endowed H. Sapiens with "spirit" (e.g. Adam and Eve).

The lack of dinosaurs isnt limited to christianity though. Not a single religion since the dawn of time has realy mentioned dinosaurs, but all of them claim that their god is the one who created the earth and everything on it and that humanity was one of gods first creations. If we were one of the first then why didnt we see dinosaurs? Either we werent the first or there isnt a god.

As explained above, theologians have dreamed up several explanations to get around the problem of dinosaurs. (And the problem isn't just with dinosaurs, BTW. There were many many other species, families, genuses, etc. that flourished and vanished in the distant past). Some of these explanations do with at least some success allow them to escape the evidence of the flora and fauna evident in the fossil record but absent from their religious texts. The most successful explanations claim that we weren't the first, that dinosaurs et al flourished and vanished long before we came along (and thus are in agreement with the fossil record), and thus escape your either/or reasoning.

In conclusion, the lack of mention of dinosaurs in holy texts is, in my opinion, a weak reason for not believing in god(s). There are much better reasons (the favorite perhaps being the simple "lack of evidence" cited by myself and others on this thread, which lobs the ball into the theist's court), and you'd be wise to familiarize yourself with them.

Biff the unclean

Can there be any plainer evidence that this is a con game? 'What if you die and…' there are no "ands." You're dead.

Nothing can hurt you because there is no you, you have died. You're over, finished, gone, croaked.

After you die if anyone asks you any question you aren't going to answer them.

If someone threatens you it doesn't matter. In fact your own loved ones are going to take you, stick you in a box and bury you in the ground! Or maybe they will set you on fire and burn you 'til you are nothing but ash and then toss the ashes to the wind.
These would be terrible and horrendous things to do to a person, except if that person were already dead.

The "pay off" to the God con comes after you are dead so no one who is a victim of it can complain that they have been gypped. There is no pay off; there is no eternal life, no mansions in the sky. You'll be D E A D as a doornail.

Mageth

May be there is a burden of proof on the atheist? There is big difference between the IPU and a god(s)?

Is there? Not so much as you think.

One is just out there not really effecting anything and the other effects the whole world.

OK, prove that the "other" is affecting the world and that the IPU isn't. And as you said "god(s)" in the first sentence, how does this apply if you substitute Odin, or Zeus, or Allah, or Vishnu for the IPU when compared to the Christian god? How do you know that the IPU doesn't really exist, and has chosen this rather odd, humorous way to reveal herself to humanity?

If the description of God is who Christians or mostly anyother realigion says he/she/they are, then the belief totally changes your life.

Well, not totally. Most christians live very similar lives when compared with me and other atheists, as far as I've seen. It's a good bet that the only major difference in yours and my life is that I see no reason to "humble myself" before an undetectable deity in order to gain paradise and escape the supposedly rather unpleasant alternative.

Further, what if the IPU, in the decades or centuries to come, becomes accepted as a real deity, and a religion develops around her? I would imagine it's possible that belief in the IPU, under those conditions, could change people's lives in much the same way as belief in the God of Abraham.

Here is another question. I know it's a big strech and you'll have to imagine for a little bit. But what if you die and you meet(let's just us the Christian belief) God? What do you say to Him when he askes you "Why did you not believe in me?"

Would you say there was no convincing evidence?
That He never tried to make it ovious that He was out there?

This is pretty much just like the first question that started out on this thread, but now you have to answer God.
Why didn't you believe in Him? (Remember I know this is a big IF for you guys)

I'm sorry, but honestly, even in my wildest imagination I can't see that scenario happening.

One reason I feel that way is that I believe that, if a god exists, it would have a higher moral standard than the god you imagine. It would not decide the eternal destiny of its creations on simply whether or not, given the scant to non-existent evidence we have, they believed in a particular one of the thousands of different concepts of god that we've come up with.

In other words, if god exists, I believe it's a better god than the derivation of the tribal war-god that you believe in.

Anyother question: How can it seem so ovious to an athiest that there is no God and how can it seen so ovious there is a God to theist?

Twisting the definition of "atheist" again, I see, with your "ovious (sic) to an athiest (sic) that there is no God." Once again, for most atheists it's not obvious that there is a god.

As to why, as others have said, all kinds of things are "obvious" to one group of people and not obvious to another group. As additional examples to the ones already given, look at conspiracy theorists, or John Edward/channeling, or UFOs/alien abductions, or reincarnation, etc.

darkfrog

Mageth,

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. My life has been pretty crazy lately and it's hard to find time to get online to do anything but work lately.

Okay, I really appreciate that response, it is very insightful and though provoking. It's made me realize that the ONLY way that First Cause is a valid argument is on the premise that God exists. I had never really looked at it from the other perspective so I definitely agree that without God then First Cause is self refuting. The reason I say that God as First Cause can prove this is because I believe that God is the creator of the "rules" by which our world has been created and is thus the only "one" outside of them. I say then, that God is the first cause and the attributes defined by the God of the Bible say that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. This is to say that He alone was never created or will never cease to exist. He is a perpetual being. He is the Creator of these rules by which we understand our world but is above those rules himself.

I am a programmer. That is what I make a living at and I think I can best describe it in those terms. If I write a program that has a defined set of logic that make up the system the program operates under as a programmer anything I write is not going to be a full implementation of what I am capable as a programmer to do. There will always be more outside of those defined implementations that "can" be there, but I define those rules for which the program I am developing is necessary to have and to operate properly. How much more can we say of a perfect and complete being who never makes mistakes and whos purpose will always be fulfilled? I make mistakes as a programmer, but He designed everything to His perfect will. We can only believe in the existence of God if we throw everything else aside and realize first that logic dictates that it must be so! We must realize that there is far too much in the effect for there to be anything less in the cause. The cause MUST be sentient. The cause MUST be sustaining. The cause MUST be providential. The cause MUST be good.

Thoughts?

-darkfrog

Mageth

darkfrog:

Thanks for the kudos for my post. If I strain really hard, sometimes I can actually make sense.

Okay, I really appreciate that response, it is very insightful and though provoking. It's made me realize that the ONLY way that First Cause is a valid argument is on the premise that God exists. I had never really looked at it from the other perspective so I definitely agree that without God then First Cause is self refuting. The reason I say that God as First Cause can prove this is because I believe that God is the creator of the "rules" by which our world has been created and is thus the only "one" outside of them. I say then, that God is the first cause and the attributes defined by the God of the Bible say that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. This is to say that He alone was never created or will never cease to exist. He is a perpetual being. He is the Creator of these rules by which we understand our world but is above those rules himself.

I think you're saying that if you accept a priori that a god exists, this automatically makes god the first cause of our universe.

You still have a problem, however. Logically, the one doesn't necessarily follow from the other. It is possible to conceive of an god existent in a uberuniverse, and a universe popping into existence from a singularity without that god (or any god) being the cause "within" that uberuniverse. Such an event could be a "natural" occurrence in the uberuniverse that that god inhabits for such to occur. A god could have discovered this universe rather than creating it. Your argument only works if you narrowly define a god in such a way that things can only come into existence through that god. That argument has been made (as you indicated, using bible verses), but in truth it is only an assumption, a narrow definition, and is not supportable by any evidence. One has to accept god to believe the bible, and by this argument one has to accept the bible to believe god. You end up chasing your tail.

We can only believe in the existence of God if we throw everything else aside and realize first that logic dictates that it must be so!

If you throw everything else aside, then you've thrown logic aside. Logic would then be useless to dictate anything.

What you're saying here is that we must believe in god to believe in god. In other words, you're saying nothing.

We must realize that there is far too much in the effect for there to be anything less in the cause.

That might be true, but then again might not. As previously stated, we simply don't know if such rules apply before a certain point in the early history of the universe.

Granting, for the sake of argument, that there's nothing less in the "cause", still does nothing to tell us what the "cause" is.

The cause MUST be sentient. The cause MUST be sustaining. The cause MUST be providential. The cause MUST be good.

Why, why, why and why? All of these are merely (as of yet) unsupported assumptions, or presumptions, on your part, and I suspect none of them can be succesfully defended.

You're overly fond of the use of the word MUST, which is a non-argument. MUST generally detracts, not adds, to argument (especially when capitalized), and should be used judiciously. So rather than telling me what MUST be so, tell me why you think it's so.

A big problem I have with the "first cause" argument for god, and one that you've illustrated here, is that it posits something greater (e.g. more complex) than the universe as an explanation for the universe, and then, to avoid the "what caused god" question, has to claim that god is uncaused/eternal (making god even more complex than the universe). If you argue that god is uncauses, then I can argue that the universe is uncaused. Parsimony recommends to us to chuck the "greater" cause as unnecessary and allows us to assume that the universe, in so many words, contains its own cause, or is uncaused.