PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
as pathetic as an atheist who claims he knows scripture but believes it MUST be inerrant before he's willing to read it......
U.S. Supreme Court Ruling: ATHEISM IS RELIGION
- Thread starter Alter2Ego
- Start date
Your quote:
“When I use the word "GOD or gods" here, I mean "The entity (or entities) responsible for the creation of what we humans call 'the physical universe'...”
I never claimed made up stories were inerrant. You once said “if it’s in the Bible, it happened”.
So, bitch, which of the two Jesus birth stories happened? Or, are you not familiar with your own scripture?
A logical person would ask why you restricted the question to a very small subset of stars. Because if the question becomes “is there senti ent life elsewhere in the universe,” the likelihood increases trillions fold or more. That small a sample size, I would say number five. But I have far more scientific evidence to support an answer to that question. And science can and will likely answer the question There is no scientific evidence that suggests the possibility of God and science cannot ever answer whether God exists. EVER. Those two questions are materially different.
If you picked a sample of 25 people and asked if one of them had won a million or more dollars in a lottery, I would say that it is more likely than not that the answer is no. Increase that to 25 million I would say that it is more likely than not that the answer is yes. We can answer because we can calculate the probability. If we understand what are the building blocks of life, the likelihood that life will develop over a given period of time , etc, we can get away from number five because WE HAVE EVIDENCE on which to make a determination. That can NEVER be the case with God.
Last edited:
Can't you fucking read.
There may well be a difference between "the physical universe" and what we humans call "the physical universe."
I am only talking about what WE HUMANS CALL "the physical universe."
A logical person would easily understand why I restricted the question to a very small set of stars.
Try to find a logical person to explain it to you.
Okay, go ahead. Why did you? And while you’re at it, maybe respond to my assertion that the two questions are completely different. You seem to want to avoid that.
BTW please don’t tell me logic has anything to do with belief in God. It doesn’t. It is entirely a leap of faith and that will never change.
This post is fundamentally illogical. There is no difference between God, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, The Easter Bunny, or any number of mythical creatures, some of which I’m not even aware of. My defense is simple. There is no evidence of any of those beings and they do absolutely nothing to add to the understanding of the universe. If you think that’s laughable then you would fail a basic logic class. My defense is absolutely logical, and it is the reason that your belief in one but not the others is not in any way logical.
Your statement that we may find out whether God exists is completely false. It is not something that can ever be discovered. If something claiming to be God revealed itself, it would not be God nor could it offer proof that it was. I am not dazzled by magic. What appears to be magic is not supernatural. It obeys the immutable rules of the physical world. We may not yet understand those rules but they exist and they are immutable.
You are getting more and more illogical.
You even started your post with, "This post is fundamentally illogical." Not sure why you wanted to post an illogical post, but I agree...it is illogical.
You are like a theist, Concart. You have made a blind guess that there are no gods...and you are going to defend that guess no matter how illogical you have to be about it.
Thanks for helping prove my point.
Nope. You are simply flat out wrong. I am not making a blind guess. My lack of belief is firmly rooted in science. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF OR NEED FOR A CREATOR. Period. Full stop. Gods have existed throughout history for one reason, and one reason only. To fill in gaps in our understanding. A person who believes in science has no need to do that. That is logic. Belief in God is not, because you have absolutely no argument on which your belief stands, and I do. They are not the same, and the reason I push on this is because the belief that they ARE the same is incredibly dangerous. If your statement is true, then we should be teaching kids in school that Intelligent Design as a competing theory to the Big Bang Theory. I hope you an I can at least agree that is not the case.
Throughout history, we have seen this movie over and over again. The ancients believed that lightning was the result of Zeus throwing lightning bolts from Mount Olympus. I would imagine there were very few voices willing to take a heretical position that maybe there was a natural explanation for lightning. Same with the earth centric view of religion. How did that work out for Galileo? The church reacts aggressively if something that they explained with 'God' turns out to have a scientific explanation. That has held back science and advanced superstitious nonsense. You are no different than the Greeks or the Chinese who thought a dragon was eating the sun when an eclipse occurred.
My 'atheism' is a scientific position that says Gods are not needed to understand anything in the natural world. That is logical. Suggesting that maybe God might have done it is illogical. It is faith with nothing to back it. Those two things are in no way, shape or form that those two things are the same, or similar, or even related.
You are doing exactly what theists do...MAKING A BLIND GUESS ABOUT THE REALITY OF EXISTENCE...
...and then asserting that you cannot be wrong.
That is why I say that atheists and theists are both believers. You just believe different things.
Nothing wrong with making blind guesses on this issue. One side is correct.
I wonder which side that is.
I prefer not to make a blind guess about that.
What you will find with discussing this topic with @Ross Dolan is that words like "belief" don't have the usual meaning they do for most people. In their world it is merely a BELIEF that an unevidenced claim is true. By this reasoning, indeed, the disbelief in Santa is nothing more than a "belief" that Santa doesn't exist.
It is a strange topsy-turvy world in which proving the negative is an everyday occurrence. If you can't PROVE that God DOESN'T exist then you are stuck merely with the BELIEF that God doesn't exist.
It's really not worth debating too long with them. If you push back enough Ross will simply start telling you to "fuck yourself" rather than trying to formulate a coherent argument.
I disagree with this idea. I understand that this is a form of agnosticism (that the truth of God's existence is technically unknowable), but my atheism is, in part, founded on the concept that IF God is real and IF God has anything whatsoever to do with reality then that God WILL leave evidence sufficient to reject the null hypothesis and leave open the possibility of there actually being a God.
The thing that is kind of interesting about @Ross Dolan's position in re "God" is that he seems to be creating a nearly unfalsifiable conception of God. THAT, of course, could easily be impossible to prove or disprove. But by the same token an unfalsifiable hypothesis is of zero explanatory value and really pretty meaningless.
At that point it really becomes a word game and sophistry at its highest form.
This is definitely a fair critique of things like "Miracles". Is a miracle really a violation of physical laws or just an event that hadn't been experienced before but still comports with reality and its rules?
I can think of no clear way to resolve that dilemma. But it is very interesting to think about.
No. No. A thousand times no. That statement is 100% false. I am making an EDUCATED guess based on history. Every time one side 'guesses' God and one side 'guesses' science, SCIENCE IS THE CORRECT ANSWER. My belief is that science will also be the answer to how the universe was created. If you cannot see the difference, you are being intentionally obtuse.
I don't think that's a good analogy
Santa, leprechauns, the tooth fairy would have to have physicality, spatial dimension, mass.
Anything that caused the creation of the universe as we observe it, has to exist outside of space and time. Matter, energy, and time seem to have been created at the Big Bang.
You can't compare non-being with dimensional being.
Santa and leprechauns aren't needed to explain anything. Their existence is utterly superfluous to the universe.
Something is needed to explain the creation and rational mathmatical organization of the universe.
Agnostics would say they don't have a bloody clue.
But I don't think it's irrational to imagine a rational organizing principle underlying the universe. It doesn't matter if we call it God, the Tao, or the flying spaghetti monster. Doesn't matter, those are just words. The basic concept of a rational creater doesn't seem irrational and batshit crazy to me. Whereas pink polka dotted leprechauns do seem batshit crazy.
You are making a blind guess...calling it an educated guess...suggesting it is scientific...suggesting further that it is the result of logic...
...and insisting it must be correct.
That is the same kind of nonsense theists do. They claim that "this and that" support their blind guess that a GOD exists...support their blind guesses about the nature of the GOD...and insist that their blind guesses about what leases or offends their GOD has to be the case.
Continue to insist that you are correct...just as they will continue to insist that they are correct.
One of you is correct that either there are no gods...or that there is at least one.
I continue to wonder which of you are correct.
blind guess blind guess
It is a good analogy for what I was trying to demonstrate. Which is, there is no evidence of any of these things, and they do not advance in any way our understanding of the physical world. In that sense, the analogy is spot on. Would it be easy to prove the existence of Santa Claus? Of course. But that's not where I was going.
And I disagree that the idea of a rational creator is not irrational. It very much is. Because there is no rational explanation for where that creator came from, or who created IT. A rational creator is simply an unnecessary addition, and one whose existence cannot ever be proven. If it is natural, it is not God. Why do we need one in the first place. Answer: We don't. For anything. The theory of infinite monkeys. Given enough time, this order will be established, because nothing that does not follow the order can exist. The organizing principles as you call them are immutable laws of science that act on the natural world. That is, by definition, not supernatural. A creator is. There is a fundamental difference between those two things.
I'm not suggesting it. It is fact. Indisputable. No phenomenon attributed to God has ever failed to be explained by science. You logic says that I have a 50/50 chance of winning the lottery, because I either will or I won't. That's ridiculous.
A rational creater that exists outside of time doesn't have to be created. It is eternal by definition since it exists outside of space and time.
We can choose to believe that the precise mathmatical and rational organization and balance of the universe is a random accident.
We can choose to believe the precise mathmatical and rational organization and balance of the universe wasn't a random accident, but the result of rational agency.
Or, we can say we just don't know either way.
I don't think any of those beliefs or positions are batshit crazy
Well, that's convenient. And unnecessary. And it speaks to the adage that if you start with a false premise you can prove anything. Your creator does not have to be created, but the universe does. Why, exactly? The organization and balance of the universe IS a random accident. There is nothing to suggest it was anything but. And no reason to think that's impossible. The balance of the universe exists because if it didn't the universe wouldn't exist. If there are other universes, they may have completely different rules that provide balance, and we would not recognize that universe in any manner, but if we had the ability and the technology to measure it, we would be able to determine how that balance works. A creator creates unanswerable questions without adding anything. A creator is superfluous.