K

Wackyboy:

Do you really believe this? That is irrational to believe or disbelieve anything without 100% proof (which exists for nothing by the way).

the only truly philosophically or scientifically defensible position on the question of the existence of leprechauns is agnosticism.

the only truly philosophically or scientifically defensible position on the question of the existence of elves is agnosticism.

the only truly philosophically or scientifically defensible position on the question of the existence of dragons is agnosticism.

doodad

Give me examples of how the theists imposed their oppressive and nonsensical dogma into your personal life.

doodad

So it's not rational. Is it fatal or is the person dysfunctional? If someone is made to feel better because of his beliefs that sounds like a rational reason for doing so. You call it irrational, I call your conclusion academic and
frivolous. The practice of religion does not have to be rational in order for one to attain benefit from it.

K

doodad:

By that reasoning, it would be rational for a person to believe that they had power over the entire universe and life itself - if it made them feel good about themselves. Doesn't something have to have some grounds in reality to be rational?

Ronin

Certainly ~ I am the one of last vestiges of the Tsoyaha tribe now incorporated into the Creek Nation.

We were 'The Children of the Sun', but now we are sometimes known as the 'Tribe that Slumbers'.

My Great Grandfather chose to assimilate his remaining bloodline into the Roman Catholic religion many years ago ~ his only other option...complete annihilation of our people.

I was forced to attend Mass and Catholic school as a youth and, upon attaining legal age ~ left that oppressive world completely in search of that which was stolen from me, only to find it lost...crushed.

For many years I was apatheistic, despite the crimes committed against my cultural heritage. I chose the path of serving humanity at it darkest levels and became fully enmeshed there.

But, like any who yearn for companionship and respite, I soon met and married a wonderful woman while in my mid-twenties ~ in a mutually agreed upon civil ceremony.

After several years of complete happiness and normalcy ~ her mother and sisters began to intrude into our world.

You see, recent events in the U.S. have stirred a hornets nest of fundamentalism ~ and they are Southern Baptists.

My private home became more and more infested with proselytizing, ritual and theistic debate ~ no, more like insulting quizzes regarding faith and fate.

I merely countered their theistic nonsense systematically, resulting in what I thought would never occur ~ the ultimatum.

Apparently there is quite a brutal price when expressing 'free' will in opposition to dogma.

In the span of a few short months I found myself solitary ~ and, on occasion, still very much disappointed in humanity.

Those were just the highlights, doodad ~ you would not have liked me that much had you known me over the past year.

I hope that this has brought you some understanding.

Next time, in order to maintain thread consistency ~ please address any other personal questions you may have to my email or via PM.

flatland

I think I have to come down between "only agnosticism is rational" and "theistic/atheistic discussion is uselss". Basically, any discussion of proving a creator god of any type is meaningless. This is so because a creator god necessarily exists outside and independently of our universe, including its natural laws. Thus, any god that theoretically created our universe is not necessarily subject to laws that we cannot conceive of being otherwise, such as basic logic- non-contradiciton, excluded middle, etc.

To illustrate, imagine you programming a computer so that whenever it was asked the query (p and -p)=?, it would respond 'true' This is completely against our most basic logical tenet: that something cannot both be and not be at the same time, in the same respect. However, within the 'universe' of the computer, this is truth. Now, expand the computer to space, and you as the programmer to some hyper-intelligent, very good programmer. You program a universe with laws such as the law of non-contradiction. Any being existing within this universe is caught up in these laws to such an extent that it cannot even conceive of them being otherwise.

Thus, any proof we have based on deductive logic, induction, modal logic, or anything must be questioned as potentially false. You wouldn't try to use differential calculus to run, would you?

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: flatland ]</p>

Philosoft

</strong>

Your logic is already falling apart because you now have separated God and everything. If 'God' is not part of 'everything,' 'God' cannot 'exist' in the same way 'everything' exists. Thus, the concept 'God' becomes literally inconceivable.

Since those "laws" describe and delineate existence itself, any 'thing' you posit that does not obey those "laws" does not, by definition, exist.

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: Philosoft ]</p>

flatland

Not quite. The concept becomes un-graspable, but still available for thought. Infinity is not within the scope of a human mind to fully grasp, but it can still be usefully discussed. I think this leads us to an admission of inability; we just cannot know.

As for your second point, you are looking at it from the wrong angle. I posited us as existing with a set of laws within a larger set, which are inaccessible to us. I think what we can get from this is that once again, we cannot talk intelligently about a creature so far removed from our own experience.

Please do not think I am trying to defend the theist thesis; I am only trying to show how it has been developed in such a way as to prevent it's useful duscussion through logic.

Wackyboy

Flatland was far more eloquent than I, and sort of summed up far better than I could what I was trying to say.

And yes I am a Christian, I'm not trying to hide that by my posts (nor was I trying to be sneaky as so many people seem to think). Furthermore, I'm not trying to proselytize anyone on this discussion board, I'm just here to get different opinions and some interesting conversation.

I guess I have been trying to figure out why people are atheists. By atheist I mean strong atheists. The reason I wondered was because I am fully willing to admit that it takes a leap of faith to believe in God. But I also think that it takes a leap of faith to believe that there is no God.

Now before everyone jumps all over me again, I am only speaking on what I observe as an "outsider" to the atheist camp.

First of all, it seems that most weak atheists are more agnostic, they look at the world around them and it seems to make enough sense to them and no one has ever convinced them that there might be a God or gods or invisible purple dragons so they refuse to believe much of anything about the "supernatural" or transcendent. I really don't have much of an intellectual problem with someone taking that position, if they are at least open to the possibility that there might be a God or gods or invisible purple dragons (which is often not the case as I've noticed several "weak" atheists making sweeping statements like, "there is no compelling reason to believe in God" which is obviously not true or there wouldn't be any Christians or Hindus or Jews, or Muslims, or Mormons -- some people have found the 'evidence' to be compelling).

Secondly, I was wondering why anyone would be a strong atheist and I seemed to notice three reasons as I looked around this message board.

The first was what I guess I would call the, "Christians did me wrong so I won't believe in their God" argument. A close relative to that is the "There has been so much killing in the name of God" argument. This one really doesn't make much sense to me as those people who claimed to be Christian but did horrid things probably either were not Christian in the first place or were just plain stupid and insensitive. I've often heard the corruption of the Church in the middle ages or the crusades as reasons to not believe in God. Those people were not modeling Christianity. You can put salt in a jar and label it sugar, but it's still salt. The interesting thing I've noted about those who seems to fall into this category is that some of them don't even see that this is the only reason they don't believe in God. Furthermore whether or not God exists has nothing at all to do with the behavior of those who claim to follow him.

The second is the, "God's characteristics are incoherent or incompatible" argument. Sometimes I like to call it the "How can a loving God send an nice person to Hell" argument. This seems to fall apart to me because God by definition, and this holds true for any god, transcends natural law -- what flatland said. If God is the creator of natural law then God is not necessarily bound by that law. Furthermore, this is not enough reason to assert God's non-existence since the God that is posited is all powerful and all knowing -- which means that unless the one asserting God's positive non-existence is also all knowing they can't know if God's characteristics are incoherent or not.

The third reason I seem to see is the "You can't prove it you theist so it's not true" argument otherwise known at the "I need empirical evidence" argument. But it can not be proven nor disproved so any positive assertions about God are statements of belief and statements of belief are statements of faith. The standard argument I seem to see against my, "you can't prove that God doesn't exist" argument which I sometimes call the "any positive statement about God's existence requires a leap of faith" argument is the, "invisible pink dragon" argument. Any statement about invisible pink dragons when made seriously takes a leap of faith as well.

Well, I don't know if I've clarified my position or muddied the waters all that much more.

-Kevin

PS. for those who want to take jabs at me personally, grow up, I'm a nice guy.

Dr. Retard

First, have you never heard of the problem of evil? Evil poses probably the most historically influential evidence for the nonexistence of God ever. Now, you can claim that arguments from evil are no good -- if you want to claim this, use another thread. The important thing is that you've overlooked a big reason why people are strong atheists (which is what you wanted explained in the first place).

There are many other reasons that motivate people to deny God's existence. Most of these reasons have philosophical arguments to go with them: See (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/atheism/arguments.html). I'd guess that another big one is that God is supposed to be an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly moral spirit being who freely willed the universe into existence. And that's just plain weird.

First, there are many more seemingly incompatible properties than those involving the doctrine of eternal damnation. After all, many theists and even some Christians (universalists) deny this doctrine. The classic ones are the omni- properties; I'm sure you can find discussion of these problems in Aquinas, Anselm, Augustine, Boethius, Scotus, Luis de Molina, Clarke, or any other important Christian philosopher. Or see Richard Swinburne's The Coherence of Theism. You can also find some discussion here: (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/incompatible.html)

None of these problems involve natural law. They instead involve laws of morality and logic. Natural laws are, of course, under God's control. But not so with laws of morality and logic, presumably. God can't make rape praiseworthy, and he can't make 2+2=5. So if sending people to Hell is wrong, then God can't snap his fingers and change the fact; if (per impossible) he liked something morally abhorrent, then it would still be morally abhorrent, and God would have a morally blameable attitude. So this is no response to the problem posed by the apparent immorality of eternal damnation.

Moreover, you don't have to be all-knowing to spot a contradiction. You only have to be moderately attentive. Here: That is a female fox, but it's not a vixen. Any schmuck can see the contradiction, so long as he is competent with the language. So, if the divine attributes contradict one another, then you don't have to be all-knowing to recognize the fact. You just have to see where the contradiction lies. You might claim that what looks like a contradiction really isn't one, and then explain the consistency of the concepts and the seeming contradiction; this is what most Christian thinkers try to do. But to say that omniscience is a prerequisite for recognizing a contradiction...well, that's just nuts.

[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: Dr. Retard ]</p>