Atheist billboards!

[VociMike]

Except you constantly ignore proof presented to you.

You have no proof, and you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise. No honest, thinking atheist can possibly think they have proof of the non-existence of God.

 

[pnewton]

You have no proof, and you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise. No honest, thinking atheist can possibly think they have proof of the non-existence of God.

More than that, it would be the first time in history that anyone has proven a negative universal. The fact that this is a logical impossibility should give us pause.

 

[redhen]

I just read that there are 100 “Yes Virginia . . . There Is No God” bus signs are up for the month around Seattle.

How can they rationally say that?? They not know that!!

I would wager that the bus and ad companies would get more complaints if they denied the existence of Santa Claus for all the children to read.

 

[tjm190]

Just out of curiosity, do you think all possible beliefs should be entitled free expression? What if a religion is for the massacring of Jews? Would that be okay?

Are you familiar with the concept of ‘clear and present danger’?

 

[VociMike]

More than that, it would be the first time in history that anyone has proven a negative universal. The fact that this is a logical impossibility should give us pause.

I have found that there are some atheists who accept that their belief is based, at the core, on faith, an unproven sense of how the world works, how it is. And then there are other atheists who do just about anything, claim just about anything, to deny that their belief is founded on faith. That is a reality they are simply not willing to accept.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

More than that, it would be the first time in history that anyone has proven a negative universal. The fact that this is a logical impossibility should give us pause.

If you believe it’s logically impossible, what is your proof that it’s logically impossible? I think there are some universal negatives that are possible to prove. For example, by definition a married bachelor cannot exist. While I don’t think you can logically disprove all conceivable gods, it’s possible for a certain concept of God to be logically contradictory.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Except you constantly ignore proof presented to you.

Could you state more explicitly exactly what you see as proof that God does not exist? Your previous posts in this thread would at most show that there are no good reasons for believing in God. But I don’t think they even do that since it’s always possible that there’s an argument for the existence of God that you haven’t yet heard of.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

You have no proof, and you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise. No honest, thinking atheist can possibly think they have proof of the non-existence of God.

I disagree. Human reason is incredibly fallible. Even if a given argument for or against the existence of God is flawed, its flaws may not be immediately apparent to every single honest individual who reads them.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Mersenne,

You said the following in another thread:

If it’s impossible to test with the scientific method then it doesn’t exist.

With that statement, you’ve denied the existence of consciousness. How am I supposed to take your comments seriously?

 

[anEvilAtheist]

I have found that there are some atheists who accept that their belief is based, at the core, on faith, an unproven sense of how the world works, how it is. And then there are other atheists who do just about anything, claim just about anything, to deny that their belief is founded on faith. That is a reality they are simply not willing to accept.

While some atheists may have “faith” that God does not exist, I do not think that atheism itself entails faith in any meaningful sense. Of course you could define faith as belief without ironclad proof, but then every single belief would be seen as faith. If even believing that the earth is round would require faith, then I do not think that atheism requiring faith would be a bad thing. The type of faith that many atheists criticize is faith as defined in Hebrews 11:1. I do not think that atheism requires this type of faith. If you define faith very differently, than atheists may indeed have faith, but they may not find that type of faith objectionable in any way. However, they may object that your use of the word “faith” is different than how people normally use the term.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

The type of faith that many atheists criticize is faith as defined in Hebrews 11:1.

Oh, you mean the “evidence of things unseen”? Ever wonder how we figured out there was such a thing as an atom? It was, precisely, the evidence of things unseen.

 

[pnewton]

If you believe it’s logically impossible, what is your proof that it’s logically impossible?

I like it. Perhaps one day philosphy will be proven wrong in this regard and the value of pi will be complete.

I think there are some universal negatives that are possible to prove. For example, by definition a married bachelor cannot exist

This is not a universal negative, but a contradiction in terms.

While I don’t think you can logically disprove all conceivable gods, it’s possible for a certain concept of God to be logically contradictory.

Yes I agree with your last statement. That truly is a logical possibility. In fact, given the multiple, contradictory conceptions of God, it is a certainty.

FYI - It seems clear to me that the burden of proof will always remain on the theist. If one can not disprove God, then the burden simply can not be on the atheist. I think the best thing to agree on that unless (or until) God is made manifest, this will always be topic where evidence is provided, not proof.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Oh, you mean the “evidence of things unseen”? Ever wonder how we figured out there was such a thing as an atom? It was, precisely, the evidence of things unseen.

Good point, that definition is a little broad. I don’t think it makes sense to say that it takes faith to believe that someone playing peek-a-boo with you still exists. But even with that definition, atheism would not be a faith. Is there a better definition under which you think it would be?

 

[anEvilAtheist]

I like it. Perhaps one day philosphy will be proven wrong in this regard and the value of pi will be complete.
This is not a universal negative, but a contradiction in terms.

But how do you know that the very definition of your God isn’t also contradictory? Many have argued that certain attributes of God contradict each other so that a God possessing all those attributes could not possibly exist. I’m not convinced that they are contradictory, but I don’t claim certainty in that regard.

Yes I agree with your last statement. That truly is a logical possibility. In fact, given the multiple, contradictory conceptions of God, it is a certainty.

FYI - It seems clear to me that the burden of proof will always remain on the theist. If one can not disprove God, then the burden simply can not be on the atheist. I think the best thing to agree on that unless (or until) God is made manifest, this will always be topic where evidence is provided, not proof.

I agree completely. I don’t think it’s reasonable for either atheists or theists to demand an ironclad proof from the other side. If there’s good evidence that God exists and not much evidence that God does not exist, it shouldn’t matter whether or not there is absolute 100% proof.

While I agree with your statements, I’m not sure whether they’re consistent with Catholicism. According to the Catechism and the first and second Vatican Councils:

Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason.

According to the Vatican Councils, if a Catholic does not believe this, (s)he is considered anathema. This is actually one of the big reasons why, if I became convinced that there was good evidence that the Christian God exists, I still don’t think I’d believe that Catholicism was correct. I’d be interested in your thoughts on this issue.

 

[redhen]

… But even with that definition, atheism would not be a faith. Is there a better definition under which you think it would be?

You need faith to discover any truth. You can’t doubt everything, you couldn’t function.

“you can’t know a truth unless you believe it, and you can’t believe it unless you stop doubting it.” catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0132.html

So atheists have faith in the natural laws that God doesn’t exist. I don’t know, and I’m gonna claim *invincible ignorance. *

 

[Areopagite]

You are conflating different meanings of the word complex. We’re talking about complexity in terms of an idea’s coherence, not complexity in terms of how difficult it makes your life.

Define “coherence.” Different things can be coherent to different people. Telling an insane person that he’s insane might not be coherent to the insane person. In fact, he would often have a hard time realizing he’s insane.

I cannot think of any definition of magic that is not complex by the standards we have laid out. You may be able to think of definitions of magic that are simple to say, but that is not the same as actually being simple. It may seem less complex to explain the movement of the stars by saying “it’s magic” but that explanation implies a number of radical assumptions, whereas heliocentric models do not.

Here are some extremely simple definitions of magic:

1. The power to influence events mysteriously
2. A quality that is out of the ordinary and gives delight
3. Something wonderful and exciting
4. Something that effectively produces a desired result

These are all from my dictionary. Obviously one definition of “magic” is “supernatural power” or something, but that’s not the word’s sole usage. If a fairy does anything that falls under any of these four things, then you could call it magic, and I don’t see how there’s any complication.

We discover new species in terms of things like “an ant that is red with a black stripe instead of an ant that is black with a red stripe” in some remote difficult to get to jungle. A fairy appearing outside my window is a vastly different situation.

Not always … at one point Platypuses were discovered for the first time by Westerners. Those things are quite out of the ordinary. In fact, every kind of animal species were eventually discovered for the first time. There is nothing unreasonable to assume we might discover something like fairies sometime in the future. It’s needlessly narrow-minded to necessarily deny their existence.
Mersenne;6068575:

But yes, I presented scenarios dealing with this very issue in my previous post, which you edited out of your quote, if you wish you can go back and read it again, I’m not going to repeat myself.

My apologies … let’s look at it:

What is more common, people who don’t get enough sleep and see weird things for fleeting moments, or something like fairies turning out to be real? A lot of this depends on what exactly the contents of the experience were. If the fairy turned me into a newt and flew me to the moon, that diminishes the chance that it was real significantly. If they find extremely tiny human fossils with wings, and thousands of experts verify that it’s real and it becomes established fact in the science community that something that looked like fairies once existed, that’s a much less far fetched thing to believe in.

So, unless something is verified by a lot of scientists, you should not believe in something, right? We should run everything by them? We should never trust personal experience but had off everything to the laboratory? Is this what you’re saying?

 

[Areopagite]

Fairy wings could not maintain flight for something of that size and weight.

How do you know? What are fairy wings? How do you know they can’t maintain a thing of a certain size and weight? How do you know how big fairies are? Where are you getting this? It’s as if you are intimately familiar with fairies already.

But yes, it does depend on exactly what was seen, you weren’t specific, and I dealt with that problem in my previous post.

Exactly, I wasn’t specific, so why did you just dismiss the existence of fairies altogether? You yourself brought up the topic of fairies … so what were YOU thinking?

No, but that is the least complicated explanation for why it seems like things outside your mind exist. And god doesn’t seem to be real.

Maybe to you. But a lot of people claim that God seems to exist very much so. So your argument that God doesn’t exist because He doesn’t seem like He exists only applies to those who think it doesn’t seem like God exists. Not a very impressive argument. But you can’t use that argument to convince people who think it does seem like God exists.

You conclude that he is real. But there are no phenomenon that make god seem real in the same sense that Hawaii seems real. In fact, believers have to come up with numerous long complex explanations, riddled with silly assumptions, even contradicting their own bible, for why god doesn’t appear real.

We only need to come up with complex explanations for God’s existence because there are complex (but erroneous) arguments against God’s existence. And of course there may be attempted proofs for God that have silly assumptions, and those I reject of course. I’m sorry if you feel victim to them.

Because dreams behave differently then reality.

You’re assuming that reality exists to prove that reality exists. This proof will not work against a solipsist.

Dreams lack a certain degree of granularity and continuity because it is so difficult for the mind to simulate reality.

Depends how vivid the dream is. I’ve had plenty of vivid and drawn-out dreams where I was convinced that I was awake. Many other people I’ve met have experienced the same.

It is a unjustified assumption, much like the assumption that god exists, to declare that everything is a dream.

And the solipsist could say that it’s an unjustified assumption that reality exists. What you’re argument against him? This time in your argument, don’t assume reality exists.

How is that simple? Things do happen without me knowing sometimes. Claiming that they don’t is incoherent.

The solipsist would deny that and ask for proof. And he would not say that’s incoherent. The solipsist could say that the idea of reality is more complicated because reality implies the existence of more things, whereas the solipsistic worldview implies the existence of less things … hence, solipsism is simpler. No?

 

[anEvilAtheist]

You need faith to discover any truth. You can’t doubt everything, you couldn’t function.

“you can’t know a truth unless you believe it, and you can’t believe it unless you stop doubting it.” catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0132.html

So atheists have faith in the natural laws that God doesn’t exist. I don’t know, and I’m gonna claim *invincible ignorance. *

If an atheist was claiming absolute certainty that God did not exist, I agree that that could be considered a faith claim. But most of the atheists I know consider atheism as being about belief and agnosticism being about knowledge. I consider myself an atheist because I lack belief in God and believe that certain conceptions of God are not instantiated in reality and consider myself an agnostic because I don’t claim absolute knowledge of whether God exists.

I agree that you have to have some beliefs that you can’t prove in order to function. I can’t prove that the external world exists or that my senses are reliable. But at a fundamental level, you either have to accept that you have some connection to reality, or not accept it and try to live a weird life where you think everything is an illusion. I go with the former. This could be considered faith if faith is defined such that all beliefs are faith, but then I think that this type of faith is pretty reasonable. However, this doesn’t mean that all faith beliefs are equally reasonable. Someone could ignore ample historical and physical evidence and believe that they were Napoleon, but the reasonableness of one faith doesn’t mean that this faith is also reasonable. If atheists do have faith, it is not the kind of faith that they strongly object to. Many atheists have a problem with people who have faith in something when it is contradicted by ample evidence from their senses, experience, and reason. Of course some atheists also assert that it’s wrong to believe in anything without proof, but I think that’s philosophically naïve.

 

[Mersenne]

Yes, it is. Yes, I do.

If you did, you or someone else would have mentioned them by now.

 

[Mersenne]

You have no proof, and you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise. No honest, thinking atheist can possibly think they have proof of the non-existence of God.

You keep saying this, but you keep ignoring the clearly presented proof.