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Thanks, glad to be here.
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Freshwater is what I have the most experience with, and while I have tried flycasting, I prefer spincasting or trolling.
How about you?
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If that is the case, then whoever created me did a sloppy job in the thinking department.
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Semper_Fi_1
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What kind of software? I own a hardware corporation. We specialize in rackmount servers and AMD Opteron (x86) Unix workstations.
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awfulthings9
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Hey A,
Can you substantiate the point that there is “NO EVIDENCE” which the Church would accept? Pardon the appearance of being cute here, but has this been tested by falsification? And are you making a general statement about all believers in the Catholic faith without qualification?
I started at atheism. Self-proclaimed atheist for a number of years. I studied, however, and exposed myself to the arguments for and against God (not necessarily a Christian God). The end result was that, not one of these arguments and proofs in and of themselves necessitated God, but the sum total of them indicated his existance much more strongly than it indicated his absence. Many of these arguments are scientific, but some are historical, some logical or philosophical, some through experience and personal testimony.
You ask how someone would prove me wrong? That would be very easy. I came into belief reluctantly. It was an intellectual journey and I resisted it. I did not want to believe because a belief in God as the Catholic Church presented it required major adjustments to my personal life, and I wasn’t pleased with the idea of any of them. Were these arguments to start to fall apart and alternative explanations given, I would consider myself proven wrong about the conclusions I had drawn.
You seem to be under the impression that all believers have a blind faith, but this isn’t the case. For me, I found compelling proof for the existance of God. I then found compelling proof for the identity of that God as the triune Christian God, encompassing Christ as God-made-flesh. I then found Catholicism to be the truest expression of that. For some a simple faith is fine. Perhaps this is the experience of most Catholics you’ve known, but not for myself. I do, in fact, waver a great deal in my faith from time to time, and when I’ve been tempted into some form of agnosticism, there have always been compelling arguments against this for which unbelief had no answer.
If you are looking for arguments and proofs such as I have found, I would be happy to direct you toward them and discuss them, but this isn’t the point of your OP (I would suggest we make a new thread for that). You were introducing yourself, and so my thread is an attempt to find out more about you. I suppose I could have asked you about your interests, as others have done, but your thread title was not “I am a fisherman” or “I am a video gamer.” It was “I am an athiest”, so I would assume that is intended to be the focus of our discussion.
In particular, I am interested in finding out why you are insisting on using falsification as a sole criteria for truth when science never intended it as such. It is intended as a criteria for testing whether a theory can be subjected to the scientific method, but a great number within the scientific community recognize that truth, itself, can be manifested in forms outside of the laboratory.
You are right that the theory of gravity and the theory of relativity can be disproved, but you are forgetting that those theories are the logical conclusions of many observations. Gravity, for instance, comes from the observation that things seem to be attracted to large bodies. We do not understand the mechanism for gravity, nor all of the rules governing it. We can simply observe its effects and make a conclusion. That conclusion, however, is not falsifiable. It is simply a logical assertion. So is the assertion of the existance of God. However, the proofs for his existance are concrete. Many are falsifiable, but they do not have to be.
Again, please explain to me how you know there are no proofs which the Church would accept as proof against its claims. This seems a strong and unfair statement and one I would never be so presumptious to make about athiests.
I will also ask you, a third time to explain why you have limited yourself to only falsifiable evidence or to explain what other evidence you are open to. I think it is a bit unfair to throw the question back at me without first answering it yourself.
By the way, I saw that you like fishing for Northern Pike. The last one I caught (in the boundary waters) was about three or so yards from shore when an even bigger one came along and took a bite out of its side. I was much more careful about the baths we took in that water from then on.
Peace brother
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awfulthings9
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Actually, this theory has almost universally been rejected by the scientific community. Study of red shift observations and universe mass indicate that, not only is the expansion of the universe increasing, but that it will most likely do so into eternity, resulting in a heat death, a big freeze, or a big rip, etc… Hawking, among others, testify to this.
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awfulthings9
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Actually, I would have to retract my offer of discussing evidences for God in another thread. This statement indicates that you’ve probably closed your mind to anything we could present, no matter how compelling.
It also seems like a much different post than the open-minded posts earlier in this thread.
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What is that “telling”? Not much that I can see. That statement would be meaningful if you had some credible proof to present to us that God didn’t exist. As far as I can see you haven’t got any. The fact that the existence of God cannot be disproved is hardly a valid objection to bring against theism.
But there is a catch. The catch is that God, by definition and nature, is something that can neither be “proved,” nor “disproved,” by any kind of “scientific” or “empirical” evidence. God is not an inanimate object that can be put in a test tube, and then “proved” by some kind of scientific experimentation. God is an intelligent, all powerful being Who has the ability to decide whether He wants to be “discovered” or “proved” by that means or not. It is beneath the dignity of God to allow Himself to be subjected to that kind of “discovery”. God can only be discovered or known on His own terms; and His terms are that He reveals Himself, or He remains unknown. One can only know God by personal revelation—i.e. if He chooses to reveal Himself to you. There is no other way. The ancient prophet Job realized the significance of that when he asked: “Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?” (Job 11:7.) The answer to that is clearly No, you can’t. The only way to know God is to approach Him in faith, until He chooses to reveal Himself to you.
By the same token, no one can “disprove” the existence of God either; but that is immaterial to someone to whom God has been revealed; because he then knows. To him it is not a “hypothesis” or a “theory,” but a fact. That is like objecting that you cannot “disprove” to someone who has been to China that there is a China! Well, he is not going to worry about that, is he? He is not going to stop traveling to China, or trading with China (and making lots of money), just because you disbelieve in, or cannot disprove to him that there is a China. Now if you are silly enough to want to try and disprove to him that there is a China, you can go ahead. He is not going to try and stop you. He will just laugh at you when he sees his bank balance getting bigger and bigger!
No way; because I am not guessing; I know—in the same way that no one can prove to you that you are not who you say are, live where you say you live, and participate in the kind of hobbies and sports you say you do. But that is hardly a negative attribute either of me, or of my God.
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The god of the catholics is a construct of men. If someone wanted me to look at it otherwise, they would need extraordinary proof, for this is an extraordinary claim. The church has in the past had proof that the bible is loaded with errors. They still cling to that document as if it were something important. Why would they do that? Why not abandon it when it was first realized that the earth was MUCH older than the genesis story indicated? Instead, there are ‘interpretations’ of the genesis story which force it to fit in to observed facts
Everyone starts life an atheist - by definition. Somewhere along the way, they choose to believe, then they are no longer atheist.
I would guess that they are only available to those who have faith, or they would be presented here for all to see.
You say that you could be proven wrong easily, what would you accept as disproof?
I hear your story, but don’t see any of this evidence. If it is there, it should be available for all to peruse. Before you cite sources and such, though, why not tell us in plain language about this evidence?
I don’t mind anyone asking me anything.
It is not my sole criteria, it is a red flag to me when someone is so convinced that no evidence will sway them. When that is the case, the mind is shut .
‘Truth’ is a slippery word. You can ask 10 observers to describe an accident, and get 10 different ‘truths’. Collected evidence, however, is not subject to such slipperiness. Independent observers can all agree on the measured length of skid marks, for example, while witnesses may disagree about skidding.
My understanding is that mass attracts mass according to a simple calculation. This calculation, and experiment have been open to anyone who cares to test it. As some here have pointed out, I am not ‘ready’ to understand the evidence they have.
That ‘conclusion’ is actually a theory. A solid one, but still one open to being disproved.
Offer these proofs here, why don’t you. I would like to have a shot at disproving them. Who knows, my simple efforts may add a smidge to the sum of human knowledge. (OK, so I am a bit of an idealist…
)You couldn’t, because being an atheist is not making any claims. Being a theist is, because you are claiming the existence of a god. An atheist has a lack of assertion. You have an (as yet) unsupported assertion.
Simply because I see it as the biggest hurdle for theists to get over. Allowing that some future evidence may prove them wrong. If you are open to disproof, I would be happy to direct you to some.
I don’t know what ‘boundary waters’ means, but I have been more than a little scared when pulling monsters like that out of the water. The one in the photo was lifted out of the water by my sweetheart, who got slashed a bit on the fingers doing it…slight mistake - 2 badly cut fingers…no stitches, but if you have ever looked closely at their mouth, they can really mess you up.
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I don’t like fishing. 
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awfulthings, I had to cut your comments out of that last post more than I would have liked, could you break your questions/comments into smaller posts so that I don’t run up against the 5000 char. limit?
Thanks…it is sometimes tough to keep up with all of you, but don’t be discouraged - if I have missed something, just ask again please.
Thanks…it is sometimes tough to keep up with all of you, but don’t be discouraged - if I have missed something, just ask again please.
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It may well be true, I was simply pointing out that we didn’t know this…I certainly don’t.
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Why should I ‘believe’? I don’t believe in the theory of gravity, or the theory of relativity. If they are the best theory to use for me, I use them.
If I am missing something here, let me know, but why would anyone value ‘belief’?
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So does this mean that you also noticed that your Yahweh made a mistake?
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The burden of proof is not on me to prove that gods don’t exist, any more than you are required to prove that fairies don’t exist. If someone asserts that fairies exist, the burden of proof is on them. If someone asserts that Yahweh exists, again the burden of proof is on them. I have seen no such proof. Indeed, if such proof were available, it would be such big news that no credible scientist could oppose it.
I tried to clarify, but if I have missed it, please remember that I am answering many questions, and just ask again.
By the way, everyone here seems to use the word god as if it were a name instead of ‘Yahweh’ when describing the catholic deity. Why is that? Is it now out of fashion to use Yahweh’s’ right name? The word ‘god’ includes such famous characters as Zeus, Apollo, Thor and dozens of others. Why be so vague about your gods’ identity?
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Hello -R.A.H.
A few months back, I was thinking about the human body and the overall patterns of the body. The nose is in the middle of the face. The eyes are symmetrical to the nose; the ears are symmetrical to the eyes and the nose and so on and on including legs, arms, etc. Not only that, but different continents and races that have also developed with this symmetry. The same is true the animal kingdom. Is it even possible that something could develop like this without some sort of intelligent design? I would think that the odds of this happening (my mere chance) would be astronomical, “off the charts”.
What’s your thoughts on questions of this nature?
Thanks, Bruce
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