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johnm214


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Mr Person said: Actually agnosticism is the only rational position. It's just as impossible to prove that there is no god as it is to prove that one exists.
atheism is the lack of belief in a god- this is the definition used by pretty much every prominent atheist- they are essentially all agnostic atheists.
You seem confused and likely mislead by semantic bullshit put out by theists and mystics and those who think the existance of the word agnostic somehow renders it exclusive of the term atheist.
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Aerial Boundaries said: Well, no, atheism entirely precludes the existence of a god.
Back it up.
Why do all the prominent atheist atuhors I'm aware of call themselves atheists yet not hold this position? Who exactly are the positive atheists you claim are referred to by this term?
Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennet, Penn Jillette, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Dan Barker, et cet all believe god is possible yet call themselves atheists because they lack a belief in him. So is this just a term that refers to a nonexistant class of people?
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: cez]
#17781240 - 02/11/13 12:51 AM (10 years, 11 months ago) |
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cez said:
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clam_dude said:
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cez said: I think I've seen how this argument goes before.. And I don't think I've seen viewpoints change.
I politely bow out
Viewpoints change all the time. It's only when we stop challenging each other's beliefs that viewpoints don't change.
You seem grounded in your argument to the point were you just wanna have a big reply count. I predict no words argued against you in this post is gonna shift your perspective. Maybe in time life experiences will, but not this post.
I thought you were leaving?
Either leave or argue, but please stop making a big show of stamping your feet in the doorway- nobody cares.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Mr Person]
#17784623 - 02/11/13 05:27 PM (10 years, 11 months ago) |
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sonamdrukpa said:
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clam_dude said: If I don't believe in a god, that's not the same as saying I believe there is no god. For me to believe in something, I need evidence. I have not seen any evidence for "god," and therefore I don't believe in it. I don't positively believe that god does not exist either.
If I don't specifically believe in god, then I'm an atheist. I'm an agnostic as well. Why is this so hard to comprehend?
This is silly. Do you have any evidence of the number 3? Not the existence of, say, three basketballs or three m&m's, but of the actual platonic number. Do you then not believe in the number 3? Are you an athree-ist? Or are you actually not in the business of contemplating the existence of 3 at all? You're an atheist if you actively believe God doesn't exist. You're an agnostic if you actively believe it's not possible to come up with a coherent position on the matter. You cannot be both an atheist and an agnostic.
This is a category error. Three basketballs are physical objects, the quantity of three is a concept. To speak of existance we must be careful not to conflate the physical with the concept. Obviously we all believe the concept of god exists, its in teh dictionary and in many writings. What we are talking about is the phsyical existance of god. It is error to conflate the two.
Similarly with the quantity three, yes, I do have evidence that exists. Its a concept that refers to the integer number between two and four in order of magnitude. Having just described it, it exists ipso facto. To the extent this answer is unsatsifying you are likely commiting a cateogry error and expecting physical evidence of a concept which is to confuse what is being discussed in teh first place.
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Mr Person said:
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johnm214 said:
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Mr Person said: Actually agnosticism is the only rational position. It's just as impossible to prove that there is no god as it is to prove that one exists.
atheism is the lack of belief in a god- this is the definition used by pretty much every prominent atheist- they are essentially all agnostic atheists.
You seem confused and likely mislead by semantic bullshit put out by theists and mystics and those who think the existance of the word agnostic somehow renders it exclusive of the term athiest.
I'm not confused. "Athiests" who are really agnostic shouldn't cling to inaccurate labels. True agnostics do not form opinions about the existance of dieties either way. Anything else is just semantic hand wringing by athiests who want to have their cake and eat it too without any of the cognitive dissonance of believing unprovable faith based opinions.
You've yet to establish that atheism entails any faith based positions and I have no idea what relevance you think that article has. Dawkins has long ago stated he does not believe in god's absence but rather lacks a belief in god. He is one of the more sloppy speakers on this subject, however, so there are instances of him being misleading on this point more so than Harris, Hitchens, Dennet, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Dan Barker, et cet.
All of these preceding authors identify themselves as atheists and all of them are also agnostic (at least a weak agnostic). You have presented no evidence that this is in error except semantic infereces of exclusivity between the two terms and have failed to answer my questions posed to you. If you can't debate this matter, fine, but don't respond and ignore the rebutals I've made.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Pelidc]
#17804417 - 02/14/13 11:36 PM (10 years, 11 months ago) |
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Pelidc said:
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clam_dude said: I do think that what I stated is a fact. It's my opinion that it's a fact. Why would you think that I think that anyone who may wish to discuss it with me is wrong? I think people that disagree with me are wrong.
Well then this isn't actually an invitation to discuss reasonably and respectfully, it's you saying something and then walking away.
This reads very much like an irrelevant whine. Clam dude made an assertion and has been defending it for pages now- its really hard for me to see how this is 'saying something and then walking away'.
Further, your fact/opinion distinction seems entirely bankrupt as Diploid (I believe) touched on earlier. Much like the subjective/objective horseshit that often gets batted around here, there is no clear distinction and often no useful point in debating the line between the two. Whether Clam dude's view is justified or not is really besides the point as only argument can explore that quality for us, and you'll have to get over this fact/opinion nonsense to do that.
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clam_dude said:
Fair point, some people get offended without justification. However, your example claim that the earth is flat does not reflect poorly on anyone else. If you said that the earth being flat is the only rational perspective, then it would be offensive, because it doesn't just mean that the earth is flat or that it is rational to believe that the earth is flat, but also that anyone who thinks otherwise is necessarily an idiot.
Who gives a shit? Lets concede that clam dude is a jackass for the sake of argument- so what?
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At any rate, Christians certainly aren't going to want to be more educated on the benefits of shrooms if we don't welcome them to an open, respectful discussion, and they hold a lot of the cards in politics these days.
You are discussing tactics for convincing people of the truth while clam dude is discussing what's true. Could we stop multiplying the unneccessary tangents for second and hear why he's wrong on atheism rather than all this other stuff?
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Pelidc]
#17804739 - 02/15/13 12:40 AM (10 years, 11 months ago) |
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Pelidc said: definitions of "God is everything" very well, which is good because people should know what it is they believe and why. You also seem to admit that there is a possibility that God exists when you asked why people thought that atheism precludes the existence of God, but that you just see no evidence for it. So let's start there.
Clam, me, and every other atheist I know or read of, essentially, explicitly allows for the possibility of god existing.
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The Kalam Cosmological argument asserts that if the universe has simply always been, that it would take an eternity to reach the present, which would, in fact, never arrive.
This isn't true. Always refers to the entirety of time and/or entirety of time preceding a point. If time started at a particular point, then there would be a finite amount of time between the begining of the universe/time and the present, hence this argument is wrong and we would reach the present in a finite number of moments.
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The fact that we occupy a time and place at all demands that the universe as we know it began.
How so? If by began you mean wasn't present at one point in time and then became present at a later point, I disagree. Why would that be required?
If by began you mean always existed but time started at a finite point, I agree, but then this doesn't help you as discussed previously.
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From there it's just a quick jaunt down the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Lane to the question of how the universe could have started itself, which it couldn't have. Follow so far? Objections/questions?
If the universe always existed and time began at a finite point, then of course the universe's existance isn't inconsistant. The point of lowest entropy would be at the first moment, the highest entropy would be at the latest moment, and things would procede as they normally do in every system.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Diploid]
#17808054 - 02/15/13 03:40 PM (10 years, 11 months ago) |
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Diploid said:
For the fourth time: The available evidence suggests that the universe did not always exist AND ALSO did not have a moment when it was created.
I think we agree here, but I disagree on the semantics. The problem is that the language isn't very percise when applied to such exotic concepts, but to me, "always" is a temporal concept that refers to the entirety of time. If the universe had an earliest time (regardless of whether anything can be said to have existed at that time rather than just asymptotically approached it as you roll the clock back), then it did always exist.
I think what you mean is that it didn't always exist in the sense that there's not an infinite number of events that occured in teh universe and there isn't an infinite amount of time beetween the present and an arbitrarily early point. But since time itself came into existance at the birth of the universe, the universe did exist at every point in time and hence always existed if you use my definition of 'always'.
Similarly, the universe did have a moment of creation or at least an earliest moment (again, whether anything exists at this moment or whether it is just approached seems immaterial) if time came into existance along with the universe. I think what you mean is there wasn't a preceding moment that elapsed and then the universe existed, but I think this is cumbersome langauge to say the universe didn't begin at some point in time because of this. We can say there's a lowest temperature despite nothing ever reaching it, seems the same thing with the universe and the moment of its 'creation'.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Pelidc]
#17814960 - 02/16/13 07:06 PM (10 years, 11 months ago) |
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Pelidc said: As this thread dissolves into admittedly entertaining jokes, I abandon it.
You've abandoned my rebuttal to your Kalam argument as well. It remains unaddressed.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Pelidc]
#17821162 - 02/17/13 07:32 PM (10 years, 11 months ago) |
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Pelidc said: Any of these rules can only apply to the universe. Something can't come from nothing in this universe, including this universe. How would we be able to know of how things work or don't work outside of it?
Sounds like special pleading to me with an argument from ignorance tacked on to the end.
In any case, how is god not a part of this universe? Unless you have some novel definition that allows something to interact witht his universe but not be a part of it (which is to equivocate on what we're talking about to begin with), god has to be a part of this unierse.
But it remains that you've asserted a rule and then provided what appears to be an ad hoc exception to smuggle in your god. Why don't we just say the universe is that thing that can come from nothing rather than a god
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Pelidc said:
I was responding to the commonly-held notion of the Big-Bang-Big-Crunch theory of the universe having "always been" and just cycling through bangs and crunches through an eternal regression.
How is the cyclcal bang/crunch 'theory' a commonly held one? I've not hears anyone claim there's good evidence for the big crunch.
More to the point, what does my objection have to do with this model? You claimed the universe existing without a god required something to come from nothing, and I disagreed. I don't know what Krauss or any of this other crap has to do with it.
If the universe began at a particular point in time, then there was no preceding moment, and the universe always existed. Further, there was a finite amount of time the universe was in existance for. So both your conclusions are refutted- please address this directly.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: sonamdrukpa]
#17913343 - 03/06/13 01:24 PM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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sonamdrukpa said:
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clam_dude said:
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sonamdrukpa said: Yes, I'm confused why you seem dead-set on refusing to believe that non-physical objects exist.
What do you mean by non-physical objects?... Concepts? Well then sure, they exist. But they exist as a physical state of the brain.
I can see how you're getting confused by numbers. Let me switch tacks here: the Law of Gravity. Not a physical object. Yet it quite clearly has causal power and would exist even had no living being - and thus no brains - ever existed.
Back up these claims. The law of gravity would not exist if nobody thought of it- just like numbers and all other abstract crap. Once again you seem to be conflating the concept for the physical. That gravity is observable and the law of gravity derivable from such does not suggest the law of gravity physically exists.
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Your "atheism is simply lack of a belief in god" position seems like mental gymnastics to me. It's rich that the entirety of your rebuttal of the Ontological argument consists of asserting that "you can't define god into existence".
You can of course define god into existance but then that's just begging the question entirely. The ontological argument is shit.
The whole excercise with these esoteric argumnents seems to be to hide the flawed premises.reasoning away so you can delude yourself to whatever end you desire. Funny how nobody comes to beliewve in god through these arguments yet they are often offered up as defenses tehreof. Obviously some mental defenses are being built with thishogwash.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: sonamdrukpa] 1
#17913611 - 03/06/13 02:23 PM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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sonamdrukpa said:
There's no physical here to be confused with
Kinda like with Allah, or Jehovah, or Xenu, or...
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If you want to understand "the Law of Gravity" as humanity's description of gravity, then that's fine, but that's not what I was talking about.
Then you weren't talking about the law of gravity. Laws and other scientific descriptions of the world are models of the world, they merely concepts with predictive value.
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Gravity itself has existed since almost the beginning of time
Gravity and the law of gravity are two different things. One is a relationship between mass space and time and the other is a description of this relationship. When it was discovered newton wasn't percisely accurate in his discription of gravity that didn't change gravity at all- they are two different things.
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Again, I don't think it's valid to simply assert that numbers in particular would not exist were it not for the existence of minds that can comprehend them - burden of proof lies on your side. That numbers are Platonic objects is the traditional understanding.
Numbers are a concept, concepts require minds, therefore numbers don't exist without minds and are not physicaly extant in the way we normally talk about such. Bananas exist whether or not there are minds and hence do physically exist in this manner.
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You can of course define god into existance but then that's just begging the question entirely. The ontological argument is shit.
I think there are versions that do not beg the question - Plantinga's, Godel's, etc.
Godel's argument as shown in wikipedia doesn't seem to argue for god as that term is normally used, but rather a 'god' which 'has as essential properties those and only those properties which are positive'. That doesn't have much to do with what we refer to as god- its yet another equivocation of the 'god is love' type.
Plantinga's seems to just presume that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being could exist, which is a gigantic leap, and I honestly don't see how he gets from this being could exist to this being does exist, but the premise isn't demonstrated (and is contradictory) to begin with.
I don't really understand these arguments as they are presented in wikipedia, but they seem to have obvious problems.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Space Monkey]
#17930164 - 03/09/13 05:34 PM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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Space Monkey said: Like, two realities for the same thing? WTF!?!
When you start getting into big stuff like that, all normal logic as we understand it goes out the window. So when it comes to a question that is the ultimate big question like an ultimate being, keep in mind your limited understanding simply isn't enough to grasp the big stuff. You can have your opinion, but you are most likely wrong, whether you believe in God or not. Fuck, maybe there is and there is no creator! Logic doesn't make sense with big stuff. I mean shit, objective reality doesn't exist!? WHAT IN THE FUCK!?! It really, really humbled me to learn that, lol. Pick your belief, either way you don't know, and either way, you're probably wrong.
Right, "I don't know, therefore god". A classic argument from ignorance. Here's some crap that doesn't make intuitive sense so maybe some other crap (god_) that doesn't make sense is true.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: clam_dude]
#17933918 - 03/10/13 02:50 PM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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clam_dude said:
Why is it that theist and deists are the only ones to bring up QM?
Because the favorite fallback of the theist and especially the deist is an argument from ignorance. "Look! Here's some shit I don't understand- therefore god."
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: zzripz] 1
#17937620 - 03/11/13 08:10 AM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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zzripz said: I saw this totally fascinating vlog last night. It is from an ex-atheist who because of non-ordinary experiences--also witnessed by his girlfriend--which neither he nor 'science' (official science) can explain, these experiences have blown completely away the materialistic atheistic certainties he had before.
Right, "I don't know what happened, therefore god is watching over me and loves me and will come get me after I die.".
More flawless logic from zzripz.
Is this another propoganda bomb or are you going to actually defend this silliness this time around? I'm guessing this is another hit-and-run preaching.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: zzripz] 1
#17955448 - 03/14/13 03:06 PM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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zzripz said:
lol well it seems odd to me. Hmmm, alright, let's looky here. You admit that you do not know about a first cause. BUT choose not to think of that first cause as a mystery, which one can call god.
Here we see the classic argument from ignorance. Something happened first, its a mystery, therefore god.
No, god is not "I don't know" or "a mystery" or "Love" or any of the other ad hoc nonsense claims people try to make, it is a reference to an all (or maximally) powerful being that created the world and may or may not author books and broker real estate transactions.
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You admit you want to "assume" there isn't a god. Again, I dont know what you mean by that term. Do you mean eg something more than matter that science cannot explain?
Something more than matter that science cannot explain is.... something science can't explain. Saying you don't know something is never a bridge to saying you do know something.
I like how you cherry pick this straw man definition of god as human ignorance in a transparent attempt to try and get clam dude to take one of your pre-conceived opposition stances. NONE of the atheists here have claimed there is not something more than matter or that science can neccessarily explain every phenomena we know of to an arbitrary percision.
No we are not saying science has revealed or will reveal everything- stop with this dishonest straw manning.
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Are you telling me you have never prayed when a loved one is sick? How old are you if you don't mind me asking?
Yes, at least I don't recall praying when a loved one is sick. I do recall praying for the usual selfish things and trying to communicate with dead relatives. Obviously these attempts didn't work.
Once again we see zzripz making this a personal argument when his horseshit is called out. Unable to debate on the merits he tries to attack others personally over what they may or may not have done in their past.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Diploid] 1
#17960678 - 03/15/13 02:10 PM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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Diploid said: Placebo can work as good as the drug sometimes
Next time you go in for root canal dental surgery, I will lay a $1,000 bet with you that you will ask the dentist for an anesthetic instead of a placebo.
So how about it? Do you have the conviction to put your money where your mouth is? That's what I thought.
I imagine he's just another guy confused by the mystics and quacks who present the placebo effects as some mind-body effect that changes the pathology of the disease rather than confounds measurement of that pathology. In all the studies they like to reference there is generally no effort made to distinguish between measurement errors and actual effects of the placebo. Obviously this is because the drug/therapy promoter doesn't care about that, but they use the results anyways to suggest that because someone who was prayed over will report feeling less arthritis this means the joints were actually healed.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: zzripz] 3
#17965611 - 03/16/13 07:02 PM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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zzripz said:
I feel more that god means for me a deeper ecstatic interconnected sense of reality which is non rational--and more-than-human- in that it is beyond measure.
Then why are you lieing to yourself and others by calling this interconnectedness god? We already have a word for interconnectedness: its 'interconnectedness'.
I suspect you of playing these semantic games because you want relief from the anxieties that religions normally assuage (death, loneliness, sense of purposelessness) but have seen there is no good reason to believe they are true. As a result, you just take some mundane feeling and label it god and hope to confuse yourself enough to not realize that the very motivation that drove you to invent a god in the first place, your fear of death et al, isn't satsified by your invented 'god'.
In short, its an equivocation fallacy and your argument sucks ass.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: zzripz]
#17974003 - 03/18/13 12:47 PM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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zzripz said:
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sVs said: Your analogies only serve to further obfuscate. We've already been over the NDE bullshit ad nauseam, go re-read the first fifty responses.
stop changing the subject. Do you take time to watch THAT video I just posted?
If you can't even identify and relay the persuasive facts and reasoning in that video which convinces you, why would any of us have confidence that you have in fact discovered some evidence?
Like usual, I'm sure that video is a collection of bare assertions coupled with spooky music that forms an emotional conviction rather than a logical one. This is probably why it doesn't work to simply post your argument here but why we need to watch your horseshit to become indoctrinated: the same reason churches need to have you singing and kneeling and gesturing to swallow the nonsense they're telling you- it doesn't work so well when sober and reflective.
Anyways, like Diploid, I don't do argumentum ad youtube.
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zzripz said:
'we have no reason to believe' is not scientific evidence that the brain produces consciousness
Stop playing dumb, you know as well as all of us the scientific evidence that the brain produced consciousness. When the brain is not working we don't have consciousness, when the brain is working we may have consciousness. When the brain is damaged we may have altered or diminished consciousness. All of these repeatable experiments shows that altering the brain alters consciousness and that without the brain no consciousness exists. As with any phenomena, you can always appeal to some hidden mechanism that is utterly unobservable, but there's no evidence for that and it doesn't change the fact that we do have evidence for the brain producing consciousness.
Anyways, are you ever going to respond to arguments here? I don't know if I've ever seen you have a proper discussion rather than posting articles/videos and demanding others watch them and then complaining because they never do. Your bare assertions fit better in the mystery forum if you don't intend to defend them.
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tymoteusz3 said:
The more I learn about pharmacology and neuroscience the more amazed I am at how my brain is able to to do some of the stuff it can do. It's so much more awe inspiring than just saying "god did it".
Agreed.
As an omnipotent being, anything god does is utterly insignificant relative to what he can do. Its a disappointment for him to do anything. As very limited beings, it is quite amazing what our bodies are able to do.
We don't think it to impresive when an olympic athlete runs five miles, but when some fat guy looses weight and trains and acccomplishes it, it is quite impressive. Unlimited potential means any results are vanishingly insignificant.
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: zzripz]
#17975114 - 03/18/13 04:40 PM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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zzripz said: That has not explained it
Why aren't you replying to the several people who've rebutted your claims?
I recall that Diploid warned you about your drive-by preachings before. Kind of annoying to see this when we have a perfectly servicable forum next door for this crap.
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johnm214


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: zzripz] 1
#17983642 - 03/20/13 10:17 AM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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zzripz said: so you haven't even watched the video?
Nobody watches your silly videos- get over it.
If you can't make a proper argument with facts and logic, even after watching a convincing video, I really doubt your compotent to recognize a compelling argument in the video.
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Icelander] 1
#17985417 - 03/20/13 04:47 PM (10 years, 10 months ago) |
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Icelander said: And then the next ten minute vid and the next and the next and they an hour goes by with nothing but bullshit and you not defending or explaining a thing. I'd ban ya.
Yeah, he litterallyl never defends his position. Funny how they keep coming to this forum where they're supposed to debate when they don't want to.
I haven't seen him respond to one piece of criticism in this (or pretty much any other) thread.
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