What questions do non-believers hate being asked?

[kimon]

I believe a quote from Carl Sagan is appropriate here: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”

 

[AntiTheist]

This is because you are insufficiently skeptical, my friend. I am saying I do not believe the previous president was, in fact, the president. There is absolutely no credible evidence for it, as I showed you.

Is that where you were going with that argument? Wow, you really didn’t make that clear in your last post.

The simple answer is that there is a ton of good evidence that George Bush was our last president. You appear to have missed what I said in my last post about extraordinary claims.

I have no problem accepting testimony of individuals for ordinary claims. If you are claiming that a man was elected president, and you have television reports and tabulated results of the elections, and good evidence that everyone agrees with those things, then you have way more than sufficient evidence.

But if your claim was that George Bush has magical powers, and your only evidence was the anecdotes of a few people, I would say that this is insufficient evidence for establishing your claim.

You’ve completely ignored the rest of my post. Do you agree that testimony is not sufficient to make you believe extraordinary claims? Do you, for example, believe that people on the earth have been abducted by aliens on the evidence of their personal stories (sometimes stories of groups of people who claim to have been abducted)?

 

[MarcoPolo]

Just as in the analogy, we come up with criteria for good and bad shots and impose those on “just a bunch of balls moving around,” so too in real life have we come up with criteria for good and bad actions and imposed them on “just a bunch of molecules moving around.”

I follow you. You assign moral values to “just a bunch of molecules” even though there is objectively no moral difference between one set of natural reactions over another.

 

[AntiTheist]

I believe a quote from Carl Sagan is appropriate here: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”

Of course it’s not. I can’t “prove” that there’s no gods any more than I can’t prove that there’s no leprechauns anywhere in the universe.

But the fact that I can’t prove it wrong is stunningly irrelevant to the fact that there’s no compelling reason to believe that gods or leprechauns exist.

The default position on any claim of existence is to not accept it until there is sufficient evidence for it. And, to quote Sagan again, “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.”

 

[AntiTheist]

I follow you. You assign moral values to “just a bunch of molecules” even though there is objectively no moral difference between one set of natural reactions over another.

Yes, that’s right. Objectively, to the universe – outside of human consciousness – it doesn’t matter what we do. But to us, it matters a great deal, so we have slowly, over time, developed criteria for what we consider moral.

What we consider moral has changed pretty substantially over time. For example, if you read the Old Testament, the ancient Hebrews considered slavery to be moral, as there are rules for owning slaves that were supposedly given to them by their god. Nowadays, our moral understanding has evolved, and we correctly look upon societies that value slavery as savages.

 

[MarcoPolo]

Yes, that’s right. Objectively, to the universe – outside of human consciousness – it doesn’t matter what we do. But to us, it matters a great deal, so we have slowly, over time, developed criteria for what we consider moral.

It’s self-evident that you think that there’s something more to it than just physical reactions if you are going to call one set of natural actions moral and one immoral. You therefore don’t adhere to materialism.

 

[kimon]

Of course it’s not. I can’t “prove” that there’s no gods any more than I can’t prove that there’s no leprechauns anywhere in the universe.

But the fact that I can’t prove it wrong is stunningly irrelevant to the fact that there’s no compelling reason to believe that gods or leprechauns exist.

The default position on any claim of existence is to not accept it until there is sufficient evidence for it. And, to quote Sagan again, “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.”

Precisely. This is where faith kicks in.

 

[JeffersonD]

AntiTheist, you never answered my question about contingency. Does the universe need to exist?

 

[Warrenton]

Is thatThe simple answer is that there is a ton of good evidence that George Bush was our last president. You appear to have missed what I said in my last post about extraordinary claims.

I have no problem accepting testimony of individuals for ordinary claims. If you are claiming that a man was elected president, and you have television reports and tabulated results of the elections, and good evidence that everyone agrees with those things, then you have way more than sufficient evidence.

You’ve completely ignored the rest of my post. Do you agree that testimony is not sufficient to make you believe extraordinary claims? Do you, for example, believe that people on the earth have been abducted by aliens on the evidence of their personal stories (sometimes stories of groups of people who claim to have been abducted)?

There is no good evidence that GW was our last president. All of the evidence is bad evidence, by definition.

The claim that such a person could possibly have been the president of the greatest nation is preposterous. It is not an ordinary claim. If you told me Bozo the Clown was president, I would be incredulous. Almost as incredulous as I am reading your insistence that GW was the president. The “decider?” Really?

I have already proved that TV is a huge pack of liars. I would not believe a thing they said in light of the non-stop stream of falsehoods they vend. Have you seen reality TV? It is blatantly non-real. More non real than Ultraman. At least they were Japanese, as claimed. And you want me to take TV’s word? You take me for a fool?

The election results, in case you missed them, were in Mr Gore’s favor. And we all know how easy it is to fabricate results. The international experts at the time said our election returns were unreliable.

Everyone in the government who said GW was the president was, moreover, grossly self interested. They all needed people to believe him president. They made money. Like Dick Cheney, his biggest fan. Heard of Haliburton? The apostles, who may have been self interested, at least died for their self interest. Cheney not only didn’t die when he was supposed to, he even shot a man. A martyr for GW? No one even stands up for him now, not two years since his hoax was finally concluded.

Of course I agree that testimony is insufficient to justify outrageous claims. But I go farther. I do not believe anybody’s testimony on anything (except for one irrational exception that I cannot explain). Testimony may be fine for foolish judges, who, I gather, are so niave that they will actually sentence men to death solely on the word of other men. They might as well just flip a coin. Testimony may be fine for foolish scientists, who accept the findings of other scientists without duplicating the experiment personally. That would explain the disastrous results of modern science, from Toyotas to the poop-infested hamburger and salad. Some blasted idiot trusted another idiot’s word. Imagine!

Like the Missourian, I say “Show me.”

I rather hoped you would understand. Now I see that like the GW impostuers, you simply have some axe to grind, and pick and chose your witnesses like the corrupt, murdering judges, the corrupt, grafting politicos, and the slacking, mumbo-jumbo spouting scientists.

I wish Diogenes were here. It’s so lonely.

 

[AntiTheist]

It’s self-evident that you think that there’s something more to it than just physical reactions if you are going to call one set of natural actions moral and one immoral. You therefore don’t adhere to materialism.

No. To you, morality apparently means “obeying rules that (I’m just believing for no good reason) come from the Great Beyond.” To me, morality means “a system of values that we have developed slowly over time to evaluate natural things.”

Just as we can develop a system to judge whether a pool shot is good or bad by those standards, so too can we develop a system to judge whether an action is good or bad by those standards.

I realize that you don’t agree with me about what morality is, but your disagreement isn’t relevant to the point I’m making: there’s no contradiction between being a non-supernaturalist and labeling actions good or bad.

 

[Warrenton]

AntiTheist, you never answered my question about contingency. Does the universe need to exist?

What universe are you talking about? The only thing that exists is my keyboard. Your nothing but daft figment, at best. I bet Anti is passing you off under his name. Not that I’d ever take your word for it.

Bah. Humbug.

 

[AntiTheist]

AntiTheist, you never answered my question about contingency.

Oh, so I didn’t – sorry, I thought I had. Very well then:

Does the universe need to exist?

The only honest answer I can give to this question is “I don’t know.”

I don’t think we’ve learned enough about cosmic origins to sensibly say whether the universe is a necessary outcome of whatever processes were going on “before” the Big Bang (if “before the Big Bang” even makes sense, since it seems that time as we understand it did not exist before the Big Bang). It could be, for example, that there is some “law of the universe” (or, er, “law of the…pre-universe,” shall we say?) that makes it so that the expansion known as the Big Bang was a necessary outcome.

It could be that the laws of the pre-universe were such that the emergence of the universe was a possibility.

It could be that the multiverse hypothesis is correct and that there billions of alternate universes, and we happen to live in the one of them that has at least one planet (and probably more) that can support some kind of life (in which case, the number of possibilities for life to arise are so vast that the odds are very good that life – even if the conditions for life are relatively rare – would indeed arise in one of those univereses).

I really don’t know.

 

[AntiTheist]

There is no good evidence that GW was our last president. All of the evidence is bad evidence, by definition.

We’ve been through this already. If the best argument you have left is a childish strawman of actual skepticism, you’ve made my point for me.

 

[AntiTheist]

Precisely. This [when there is no compelling evidence to believe] is where faith kicks in.

I agree with you. I define faith – as you do – as belief in a claim when there is insufficient evidence to accept the claim.

I, however, think that it is a bad thing to believe claims for which there is insufficient evidence because it leads us to hold beliefs that are not necessarily in alignment with reality. Since our actions are derived from our beliefs, it is most beneficial for an individual to hold beliefs that are as close to accurate as possible.

The way we discern this is through evidence. Extraordinary claims – particularly claims about magic and the supernatural, which violate the way that we understand reality to work – require some very substantial evidence indeed.

 

[JeffersonD]

Oh, so I didn’t – sorry, I thought I had. Very well then: The only honest answer I can give to this question is “I don’t know.”

I don’t think we’ve learned enough about cosmic origins to sensibly say whether the universe is a necessary outcome of whatever processes were going on “before” the Big Bang (if “before the Big Bang” even makes sense, since it seems that time as we understand it did not exist before the Big Bang). It could be, for example, that there is some “law of the universe” (or, er, “law of the…pre-universe,” shall we say?) that makes it so that the expansion known as the Big Bang was a necessary outcome.

It could be that the laws of the pre-universe were such that the emergence of the universe was a possibility.

It could be that the multiverse hypothesis is correct and that there billions of alternate universes, and we happen to live in the one of them that has at least one planet (and probably more) that can support some kind of life (in which case, the number of possibilities for life to arise are so vast that the odds are very good that life – even if the conditions for life are relatively rare – would indeed arise in one of those univereses).

I really don’t know.

I believe that’s a cop out of an answer. It’s either yes or no.

1,2. If there was a pre-universe then isn’t our universe contingent on the existence of a pre-universe?

1. Even if there are multiverses it would not make sense for them to just appear.

For a universe to exist it must be contingent on something else. I’m looking at my remote control right now so I’ll use it as an example. If I pick up the remote and drop it, what happens? It falls. It falls because of gravity. It depends on a force to push it down. Now if I the remote control is on my bed and I drop it what happens? It stays in the same spot. The remote falling is contingent. If I didn’t pick up the remote control and drop it then it would not have fallen on it’s own. If a universe has no need to exist then therefore it won’t exist. We say that the universe is contingent on a being that has no necessity, by that I mean what we call God does not need to exist so therefore God is able to create.

God bless

 

[JeffersonD]

What universe are you talking about? The only thing that exists is my keyboard. Your nothing but daft figment, at best. I bet Anti is passing you off under his name. Not that I’d ever take your word for it.

Bah. Humbug.

Wattenton, you must have missed my first post. I am definitely Catholic, I’m in the process of applying to seminary right now.

 

[AntiTheist]

I believe that’s a cop out of an answer. It’s either yes or no.

Well, the truth of the matter is either a yes or a no, but my beliefs about the matter aren’t limited to yes or no. “I don’t know” is an acceptable belief to hold about the matter.

In the same exact way, if you flip a coin and conceal it from me, it really is either heads or tails, but my belief about the matter is not limited to believing the coin is heads and believing the coin is tails. I’m perfectly justified in saying that I honestly don’t know whether it’s heads or tails.

1,2. If there was a pre-universe

When I say “pre-universe,” I’m coining a term for whatever was around before the Big Bang. You see, we have a pretty good understanding of what happened a few seconds after the Big Bang, but before that, it’s a total mystery.

then isn’t our universe contingent on the existence of a pre-universe?

I can’t say whether or not that’s the case. As I said above, “before the Big Bang” might not actually make any sense because it’s possible that there was no time (and hence no “before”). That means that all the rules of the universe – including causality and contingency – could very well go right out the window.

I really don’t know. That’s the honest answer to your question.

Even if there are multiverses it would not make sense for them to just appear.

I didn’t claim that they “just appeared.” Either these mutliple universes have always existed or they generate naturally because of some cosmic law we haven’t discovered yet, or…possibly other reasons that we don’t know because we haven’t discovered yet. The point is that we don’t know enough about cosmic origins to make definite statements about it.

We say that the universe is contingent on a being that has no necessity, by that I mean what we call God does not need to exist so therefore God is able to create.

As I said, I can’t say that your claim about contingency applies to the universe as a whole – but even if you could demonstrate that the universe is contingent upon something, I see no compelling reason why that something has to be intelligent. The universe could be contingent upon blind laws that have just always existed.

But at any rate, we don’t know enough about cosmic origins to say any of this for sure. It sounds to me like you’ve thought up a pleasant-sounding consistent story, and you’re just declaring it to be true without bothering to acquire evidence to support it. That’s not how knowledge works – you can’t solve questions like this by thinking about it from your arm-chair.

 

[Miriam1947]

And just to put you at ease, I like you am skeptical. For example, I never believed anyone like the previous president could actually be the president. I know he was not elected by a majority. And I know he was not much of a speaker. And I know he was not usually correct. In short, he had none of the attributes of a president. Plus I never met him, or anyone who had. I concluded, therefore, that his entire presidency was just some sort of a hoax. I hope he enjoyed it at least, because it was painful to watch.

That was just plain rude and why does it even belong here? I thought this was not a political site.

 

[Warrenton]

We’ve been through this already. If the best argument you have left is a childish strawman of actual skepticism, you’ve made my point for me.

Childish? Made your point? What impertinence!

You replied that you would not accept a miracle unless it was performed in your personal presence under controlled environment such that you could test it to see if was or was not a miracle.

You and I both know that if it could be performed upon a schedule and tested then it would not be a miracle, for it would be an every day occurrence. You and I both know that under your criteria, Christ could only convince you if He appeared in your lifetime, in your town.

When I tested you on something childish, as you say, you immediately appeal to witnesses to support what you believe. This, not two threads after telling me you won’t accept any witness for Christ. But you know that your witnesses are totally biased, or self interested, or liars. Yet you believe them anyway. Total hypocrisy.

You are not arguing in good faith. You do not want to believe in Christ, because if you do you have to change your life. What hypocrite ever wants to do that? If you believed half of what you say, you would be out there protesting for all the condemned men put to death or languishing in prison on the basis of “testimony.” But you’re not. Why? Because thou liest. You believe witnesses. But only the ones you want to.

Since you don’t want to have a playful discussion, I’ll proceed to tell you one of the most convincing proofs for Christ’s divinity. He foresaw exactly the bogus arguments intellectuals hucksters would make, long before you ever made them.

It’s in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, then even if a man return from the dead, they will not believe.”

Prophecy. It is a kind of miracle. There’s your proof.

 

[Warrenton]

That was just plain rude and why does it even belong here? I thought this was not a political site.

Miriam: We are talking about proof here, not politics. The thread is about someone who won’t accept any testimony about Christ. I’m sure Mr. Bush can withstand the analogy, and being a Christian, he would probably enjoy the joke.

Read my other posts, and I think you’ll see my point. Sorry if you were wounded - I simply must watch that friendly fire.