What questions do non-believers hate being asked?

[AntiTheist]

You know this is about the level of high school chemistry, right?

Well, ok.

YOU NEED:

Harry Potter’s spell book and wand, a pointy wizardy hat, a “fire stick” and a handful of brimstone.

Use the fire stick and the spell IGNITUM and touch it to the brimstone. It will burn. Let it. It will reek. That’s ok. You get:

S + O2 → SO2

And you have a created molecule of sulfur dioxide.

LOL. I enjoyed this.

In fairness to ignatius777, he probably meant to type “Create a molecule from nothing!!!111!!”

And, of course, there’s no evidence that anything ever did come from nothing. There’s no reason to think that the universe didn’t always exist in some form or another – even if that form was the “stuff” that was around prior to the Big Bang (assuming that “prior to the Big Bang” is a concept that even makes any sense).

Of course, in any event, our inability to produce “something from nothing” tells us absolutely nothing about the truth of any supernatural claims, so I’m a little curious as to how ignatius777 thinks we can logically get from “no one can produce a molecule out of nothing” to “Therefore, God exists.”

 

[Cat_Herder]

LOL. I enjoyed this.

In fairness to ignatius777, he probably meant to type “Create a molecule from nothing!!!111!!”

And, of course, there’s no evidence that anything ever did come from nothing. There’s no reason to think that the universe didn’t always exist in some form or another – even if that form was the “stuff” that was around prior to the Big Bang (assuming that “prior to the Big Bang” is a concept that even makes any sense).

Of course, in any event, our inability to produce “something from nothing” tells us absolutely nothing about the truth of any supernatural claims, so I’m a little curious as to how ignatius777 thinks we can logically get from “no one can produce a molecule out of nothing” to “Therefore, God exists.”

Time did not exist before the Big Bang, so maybe he should have asked you to create time instead.

 

[Reservoir_Dog]

LOL. I enjoyed this.

In fairness to ignatius777, he probably meant to type “Create a molecule from nothing!!!111!!”

And, of course, there’s no evidence that anything ever did come from nothing. There’s no reason to think that the universe didn’t always exist in some form or another – even if that form was the “stuff” that was around prior to the Big Bang (assuming that “prior to the Big Bang” is a concept that even makes any sense).

Of course, in any event, our inability to produce “something from nothing” tells us absolutely nothing about the truth of any supernatural claims, so I’m a little curious as to how ignatius777 thinks we can logically get from “no one can produce a molecule out of nothing” to “Therefore, God exists.”

The other problem here is that the world of quantum mechanics or high energy physics or the nature of the universe in the first milliseconds after the big bang is completely outside the common sense experience that shape the way people think about reality, and the language that we describe it with. “Something from nothing” means [something different](Creation ex nihilo - Without God (1997)) to a physicist than it does to someone wed to biblical creation.

 

[kenofken]

I’m sure they’ll fund chaos theory. Same thing.

Chaos theory may be weird, but it’s still a branch of science and can be explained and tested by “nothing” more than hideously complex mathematics. I could not explain it without appeal to the supernatural, but plenty of other people can. Intelligent design on the other hand will never be a science because it relies on supernatural causes for natural events. That’s simply not what science is about. ID can make a perfectly good topic for philosophy or theology, but it’s a bogus science and it would be a bogus science regardless of any liberal/conservative agendas at play.

I think it is a reference to the correlation between abortion and cancer.

As to this, it sounds like people ARE doing research in this area, and presumably getting funding of some sort. It’s a fairly common practice in epidemiology to comb through the health records of thousands of people and see what factors correlate to what disease. It may or may not be the case that women who have had abortions go on to have higher rates of cancer. Demonstrating that abortion is a CAUSE of cancer or an independent risk factor, is, of course another matter. Nevertheless, there’s no reason it couldn’t get funded and published if the proposal and science is sound.

 

[kenofken]

I ask non -believers, actually unbelievers, two questions, after stating to them that it takes much more faith to be a unbeliever than it does to be a believer.

1. How can anything come into existence on its own. Name one thing that ever did.
2. What FORCE KEEPS it in existence day by day? There is a force behind everything. Tell me the force that keeps everything going day by day.

Okay, no answer to the two questions? Then you, my friend, have just confessed that you have no idea how the universe came into being, and have no idea what keeps it going.
That is great faith, such as the world has not yet seen!!!

I’ll name one thing that came into existence on its own. The universe.
What force keeps it in existence? LOVE baby!! (said in Isaac Hayes’ voice with appropriate funk base line!)

 

[Warrenton]

…If I were you, I would give up now before I make your arguments look even more foolish.

Anti, you need not think me shallow because I am frivolous any more that I think you profound because you are severe. Besides, we are having such fun.

I was impressed by your research into how elections are “verified.” It embarrasses me to to admit it was really a joke on my part. You supplied the “punchline” when you admitted that you rely on sources that you have not bothered to verify personally for yourself. You “weigh the evidence.” Fair enough. We agree.

You never did explain how to separate the wheat from the chaff (hope you don’t mind the analogy) from historical testimony, and I remain confused by how you say we can believe that the Roman army beat the Gauls outside of Lyon but not that the auguries that predicted that they would.

We can’t just have a rule that says, believe everything that deals with geography, but nothing that deals with auguries. Or, believe that the prophet fled to Medina, but not that he prophesied. That is even more subjective than believing everything, or nothing.

I suggest we go with “Believe nothing.” It’s safer.

Then we don’t need to get into who wrote Plutarch’s Lives, or whether the stories are fictional, or whether the thing is an early medieval fantasy cobbled together by overly creative, or bored, monks. Think what would happen if someone 2000 years hence stumbled on a copy of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and took it for a chronicle.

I was startled by the polemical tone of your last post. You should, to be consistent, love GW because he played a tremendous joke on very many people.

It is apparent that you want your beliefs, or alleged lack of them, taken seriously. This is challenging because the way you reason is unscientific. You preconceive a notion of what is reasonable based on your own limited observations and experience, and proceed to apply it willy nilly to things quite evidently out of your experience.

Then, you get angry it suggested however mildly that your methods are inconsistent. You claim to loathe GW. Why? You should love him. He played a fantastic joke.

Could it be that your emotion is really jealousy? Perhaps GW is just a better atheist than you. If the universe is morally neutral, does this not suggest certain “opportunities” to the creative mind? For example, pulling one over on all the credulous fools who reason “rationally” about elections, like…I won’t name names.

This is an odd coincidence about atheists, they seldom come across as funny.

The question non-believers seem really to hate being asked is whether they love GW.

As my favorite petulant child said, “Curiouser and curiouser!”