Atheist billboards!

[AntiTheist]

Well, let’s look at two people:

Person A: Doesn’t think much about philosophy or religion, lacks a belief in God, doesn’t think about it much.

Person B: Vehemently protests against belief in God, as if his life depended on it. Makes a point is telling people, whenever they bring up faith or even going to church, that the idea that God exists is absurd.

Both A and B are atheists. The only difference between them is that B is more vocal about it. He doesn’t have any more “faith” in the non-existence of god than A does.

“Faith” doesn’t mean “thinking about something more.” Faith is the decision to believe in something without evidence – obviously, if you have evidence for a belief, it makes no sense to say that you have “faith.”

Atheists do not have faith; i.e. they refuse to believe in claims without evidence. That’s precisely the thing that makes them atheists.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Well, I certainly agree that we should avoid lumping all members of a group into simplistic categories! Now if we could only agree on the idea that faith in things unseen is not only a good, but also a necessary, thing…

I certainly think it’s necessary to believe some things that cannot be proven by our senses. For example, we can’t prove with our senses that the future will be somewhat like the past. However, I also think that it’s good to make as few unnecessary assumptions as possible and to always be willing to revise your assumptions in the light of evidence. I could believe that I am Napoleon, Australia does not exist, and that if I kill 20 people I will win a million dollars, but these are unnecessary assumptions. Faith in those things would be bad.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I certainly think it’s necessary to believe some things that cannot be proven by our senses. For example, we can’t prove with our senses that the future will be somewhat like the past. However, I also think that it’s good to make as few unnecessary assumptions as possible and to always be willing to revise your assumptions in the light of evidence. I could believe that I am Napoleon, Australia does not exist, and that if I kill 20 people I will win a million dollars, but these are unnecessary assumptions. Faith in those things would be bad.

Agreed. There are certainly an abundance of bad things to put your faith in. God is not one of them.

 

[Mersenne]

I will not argue them with you. I prefer not to argue with atheist. However, the three arguments I find most compelling are arguements from design,

destroyed by Darwin, order is explained without the need for a creator

from first cause

special pleading

and the ontological arguement.

circular. And absurd. A child could disprove it. “It exists” cannot be part of something’s definition, as used as proof of it’s existence. This isn’t changed by indirectly defining part of “perfection” as existing, and defining god as perfect. This should be obvious enough, because if the ontological argument worked, you could use it to prove anything. “I can conceive of a perfect Mersenne. A perfect Mersenne would never be wrong, and would exist, therefore Mersenne is never wrong.”

These are by far not the limit to why I believe in the existence of God, but these are three that come to mind as significant.

Yes, that is the best out there, and any kid in grammar school with a book on logic could destroy them.

 

[Mersenne]

Consciousness is impossible to test for with the scientific method. Imagine a researcher trying to do such a test. Their hypothesis would be “This human being experiences consciousness.” But how would they test for that?

Researcher: Are you thinking right now?
Subject: Yes.
Researcher (takes notes): Subject exhibits behavior consistent with consciousness.
Subject: Do you see and hear things?
Subject: Yes.
Researcher (takes notes): Subject exhibits behavior consistent with consciousness.
Etc…

The only scientific conclusion is that human behavior is consistent with consciousness. But this is not acceptable. The inference is to consciousness is an inference to an unobservable, and inferences to unobservables elude analysis by deductive methods.

It is not directly observable, but then, nothing is. Photons simply hit your eyes and your brain puts together assumptions about 3 dimensional objects, movement, depth, etc. Atoms can’t be directly observed, we notice that the behavior of reality is consistent with the idea that atoms exist, that’s all you can ever do. This is all besides the fact that quite a lot of work is currently being done to study consciousness. There are currently no well established theories surrounding consciousness, but that is because it is perhaps the hardest thing anyone could ever try to study. But hard is not the same as impossible.

Your credo, that “If it’s impossible to test with the scientific method then it doesn’t exist”, is an extreme form of rationalism. You assume, among other things, that anything that exists must be knowable. Have you considered that the very principle you’re espousing is impossible to test for?

Have you considered that I’m not trying to prove it’s existence? That proving it’s existence doesn’t even make sense?

 

[anEvilAtheist]

We weren’t talking about establishing innocence, we were talking about establishing guilt.
And if they want to prove guilt they need more then lack of evidence of innocence as well, even more so. That doesn’t provide any sort of counterargument to the point I made at all.

My point was that you seem to be claiming to have proof that God does not exist. Showing that the other side hasn’t proved God doesn’t show that he does not exist.

Yes, I know you didn’t mean to imply it, you stated it outright. You said my example of proof wasn’t proof because they could be wrong.

I was earlier talking about logical proof. There is also proof in the colloquial sense of having overwhelming evidence in favor of a proposition, such as “The earth is round.” Your example could not be a logical proof because it did not establish certainty. But I also do not think it is a proof in the colloquial sense because an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence unless the evidence should be there but is not. While evidence that should be there is missing for some conceptions of God, it is not missing for all conceptions of God. Some conceptions of God do not have the kind of bold claims that could potentially be falsified.

That’s certainly not true. I presented a number of explanations why god can be rejected outright, none of them consisted simply of “no evidence”

I provided reasons why god can be considered not to exist, and justifications for my criteria. All of your claims that my criteria are invalid have so far fallen short.

You said that there are a lot more needless and unnecessary assumptions in the fairy hypothesis than in the no fairy hypothesis. I agree. But the simplest explanation isn’t always correct. Many of our scientific models of the world are far from simple, but they have a great deal of evidence supporting them. Thousands of years ago, someone putting them forward would be making a lot of needless and unnecessary assumptions, but would have been right. While Ockham’s razor can point you to the explanation that is most likely given the present evidence, it cannot disprove other explanations.

Are there any other arguments against the existence of God that you gave in this thread that I missed?

What I stated is there was no popular opinion in regards to theism, they are all different. But it is certainly interesting to study, anyway, in the same way it’s interesting to study why people overeat, or why people self-mutilate.

Right, it’s not like the majority of people are Christian, let alone Catholic. But there are still quite a lot of people that are.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Both A and B are atheists. The only difference between them is that B is more vocal about it. He doesn’t have any more “faith” in the non-existence of god than A does.

“Faith” doesn’t mean “thinking about something more.” Faith is the decision to believe in something without evidence – obviously, if you have evidence for a belief, it makes no sense to say that you have “faith.”

Atheists do not have faith; i.e. they refuse to believe in claims without evidence. That’s precisely the thing that makes them atheists.

I agree with you that person B doesn’t necessarily have any more faith than person A. While atheists may have faith in things, it is not a component of atheism itself.

I strongly disagree with your last sentence though. Just because you lack belief in God doesn’t make you rational. There are some atheists who have faith in some pretty crazy conspiracy theories (ever seen Zeitgeist?).

 

[Prodigal_Son]

It is not directly observable, but then, nothing is. Photons simply hit your eyes and your brain puts together assumptions about 3 dimensional objects, movement, depth, etc.

But of course, consciousness is directly observable; perhaps, it is the only thing that is directly observable, if we go by your very extreme standards. But my point is that the scientific method cannot test for consciousness. If you say that the scientific method cannot test for anything, without first making other assumptions about ontology, then you are proving my point.

There are currently no well established theories surrounding consciousness, but that is because it is perhaps the hardest thing anyone could ever try to study.

I’ll agree with you there.

Have you considered that I’m not trying to prove it’s existence? That proving it’s existence doesn’t even make sense?

You are trying to prove that it is the case. Since you cannot use the scientific method to prove that your principle about the scientific method’s comprehensiveness is true, you must be simply asserting it as an a priori, rationalist principle. But how can you defend this rationalist principle? Why should we believe that ontology is a slave to scientific inference?

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Agreed. There are certainly an abundance of bad things to put your faith in. God is not one of them.

Are you saying that it’s good to put your faith in God because he exists, or do you think it would be good even if God did not exist?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Faith is the decision to believe in something without evidence …

No, that’s stupidity. Believing things without any evidence is just dumb.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Are you saying that it’s good to put your faith in God because he exists, or do you think it would be good even if God did not exist?

Because He exists.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

destroyed by Darwin, order is explained without the need for a creator

special pleading

circular. And absurd. A child could disprove it. “It exists” cannot be part of something’s definition, as used as proof of it’s existence. This isn’t changed by indirectly defining part of “perfection” as existing, and defining god as perfect. This should be obvious enough, because if the ontological argument worked, you could use it to prove anything. “I can conceive of a perfect Mersenne. A perfect Mersenne would never be wrong, and would exist, therefore Mersenne is never wrong.”

Yes, that is the best out there, and any kid in grammar school with a book on logic could destroy them.

I agree with you that those arguments fail, but just because the most simplistic versions of those arguments have obvious counterexamples doesn’t mean that no one has thought of ways around those counterarguments or versions of those arguments that do not fall victim to those objections.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Because He exists.

Of course a man who believed that he was Napoleon could also say that it makes sense for him to have faith that he is Napoleon if he actually is Napoleon. So it’s all about whether there was a good reason for believing it in the first place. Faith in God is reasonable if you have good reason to think he exists, but seems unreasonable without it.

 

[Areopagite]

Non-contradictory.

You say what “coherent” is … is anything that is non-contradictory. Well, I don’t see how the belief in God is contradictory. You haven’t pointed that out at all.

That is certainly simple, but not a definition that comes close to what people understand to be magic.

Please define what you think magic is according to what people understand magic to be. I’ve been trying to figure out that answer and haven’t found the answer. Please enlighten me. Do you even know what you mean by magic? Do tell.

Again, simple yes, magic no. By that definition weird fetishes would be “magic”

They could. Why not?

Why not cut to the chase and just define magic as “a peanut”

Yep. Perhaps so. Depends what you define magic as. It’s a wildly loose term. So once again, I ask you, how do you define magic?

Peanuts exist, therefore magic is real! And fairies are made out of peanut butter! Yummy!

Let’s put this into a syllogism:

All peanuts are magical.
All fairies are magical.
All fairies are peanuts.

That is a AAA-2 syllogistic form, and such a form is invalid. So your reasoning is flawed. I may have been suggesting that peanuts were magical, and that fairies were magical too, but I wasn’t implying that fairies were peanuts. That was your invalid inference. Time to go back to logic class.

Do you actually think you’re making some sort of point here? Yes, if I define fairy as “a spare tire” then I’ve got a fairy in my trunk. But that definition is stupid, and really doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re talking about

My question is: what are you defining a fairy as? You were the one who brought it up, and have continued to deny its existence … so what are you talking about?! What do you define a fairy as!?

Usage is dependent on context. Those definitions are for things like “this icecream tastes magical” not “this fairy cast a magic spell on me” You know what else is in the dictionary for the definition of magic “the U.S. code name for information from decrypting machine-enciphered Japanese wireless messages before and during World War II.” But that has absolutely nothing to do with what we’re talking about, and neither does any of your definitions. I’m aghast that I even have to bother to point this out, I’m starting to think you’re making bad arguments on purpose.

If you think my arguments are bad, please show me why. You haven’t done so yet. Your main problem is that you haven’t defined your terms … I’m offering some definitions, but you reject them but replace them with nothing. Please help me out.

And I don’t know what dictionary you’re using, they’re not in any of the 3 I checked.

It’s the one that came with my MacBook. If you feel strongly, write a letter to Apple.

Back when there were vast tracks of the earth unexplored by westerners, that made sense. And yes, there is nothing unreasonable about the possibility that we might find something similar to fairies. I said as much, multiples times. Do you even remember what we are talking about? Are you reading my posts at all? Is there a point you’re driving at or do you just like to post random responses to people?

If you can’t remember why YOU brought up the topic of fairies, I’ll remind you by quoting you:

Rationality dictates that one must reject the existence of god. God represents a needless complication to our explanation of how the world works, unless a good reason is presented for believing in him, the rational thing to do is to disbelieve. It’s the same reason why you would reject the notion of santa clause, fairies, geocentricism, and the like.

So, you say that the reason why one would reject the existence of God would be the same reason one would reject the existence of fairies. I’ve been trying to understand what that elusive “reason” is that you are talking about, by examining why you would reject the existence of fairies. But you refuse to answer. You have just admitted that we might discover things that are “fairy-like” … but we will never discover actual fairies? Why? What do you mean by fairy? I have asked this many times, and you refuse to answer. What are you talking about?

No, I never said anything like that. What I said was that it’s a question of which explanation is more complex. I don’t know why you keep trying to put words in my mouth I obviously never said, when the words I did say work just as well.

I’m just trying to figure out what you mean by “more complex” and I haven’t had any new breakthrough on what you mean. You still haven’t proved why realism is less complex than solipsism. Can you please define your terms? Otherwise, how am I suppose to understand what you’re talking about?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

So it’s all about whether there was a good reason for believing it in the first place. Faith in God is reasonable if you have good reason to think he exists, but seems unreasonable without it.

Sure, I’ll agree to that. It’s worth remembering, however, that you never learn to trust anyone by risking nothing. So faith involves stepping out into the unknown. It is a hypothesis, as it were, that the experience of life tests.

 

[pnewton]

destroyed by Darwin, order is explained without the need for a creator
Yes, that is the best out there, and any kid in grammar school with a book on logic could destroy them.

I have heard these counters and claims and I know why they are false. I was only addressing your question, not inviting debate or arguement. I do not debate with atheism about the existence of God. It is an exercise in futility. I have yet to meet one that is not extremely bias in their atheism. The fact that you are here at a Catholic website posting says it all.

I posted here to address the topic. Namely, that if an atheist desires to prosylitize and evangelize others to their religion, they have the right to take out billboards on public transportation.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Sure, I’ll agree to that. It’s worth remembering, however, that you never learn to trust anyone by risking nothing. So faith involves stepping out into the unknown. It is a hypothesis, as it were, that the experience of life tests.

Sounds reasonable.