What would you do if it were proven...?

[Arizona_Mike]

It’s not possible to prove conclusively that God doesn’t exist (how would that be done?). If we posit that somehow it could be done, for the sake of argument:

I would continue to live as I live now, knowing the weaknesses of any means I would have to use to “prove” such a negative - my intellect, my senses, other supposed authorities.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

It’s not possible to prove conclusively that God doesn’t exist (how would that be done?). If we posit that somehow it could be done, for the sake of argument:

I would continue to live as I live now, knowing the weaknesses of any means I would have to use to “prove” such a negative - my intellect, my senses, other supposed authorities.

Yes, but I think you can assume you’re meant to be imagining the hypothetical impossibility nonetheless occurs

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Yes, but I think you can assume you’re meant to be imagining the hypothetical impossibility nonetheless occurs

Yeah, I got that. It’s like asking, “if my mother was your uncle would she be your aunt?”

As I said, I wouldn’t live any differently (that is, on the God issue, not the Uncle/Aunt thing). The Catholic way of life promotes a lifestyle and decisions that tend to protect and nurture life and promote the dignity of the individual, so I would keep living life more or less the same. If we play the mind game that it would be possible to somehow “know” there is no God this side of the hereafter, I guess I would have to do the Camus thing and try to live a moral life to exhibit whatever nobility I could, by thus scorning the absurdity of a universe without God in it.

Whether those goals would have any value or meaning in a universe that never had God in it is another question, and whether I would be the same person, and whether I would value those goals, or whether those values would exist or have any meaning in a world without God, are other questions.

 

[Candide_West]

Well, humanists may get a bid eventually if they try hard enough…*

Personally I doubt it. But if they ever did then I suspect you and I would find ourselves on the same side in rejection of the idea.*

No, but it’s more than individual comedians, and in some cases we’re talking full-on, regular assault - preaching, in fact. And it’s not just comedy, it’s endemic in everything from Midsomer murders to Doctor Who. If theists spent half the time slagging off their oppostites that atheists do, they’d be branded hatemongerers

Midsummer murders slags off theism? Really? I must admit I don’t watch it but I struggle to imagine the mild mannered Miss Marple-esq show to “slag off” anyone.*

I wonder if the difference here is one of perception. I see on the television regular and obvious support for Christianity in specific (arch bish interviews, pope coverage, songs of praise etc) these to me are obvious promotion of Christianity. This is not surprising in a society which is still largely Christian or at least Christian in a general sort of way and thus has many historical structures in place from christianity (like the lords spiritual). Thus the promotion is not so much deliberate but would require a deliberate act to change (and everyone hates change) so we still have them.

You perhaps see on the tv people who do not follow the historical trend of (at least tacit) support for christianity and in some cases do not even feel the almost ubiquitous need to “respect” it. Perhaps you are right that some tv shows do not always show Christianity in a positive light even. But at most I think this is recognition from the media that a sizeable proportion of the population of the country is not in fact Christian any more. I certainly do not believe that this is the result of an atheist conspiracy.*

To be honest I suspect we won’t make any further progress on the topic since I doubt either of our perceptions of the media are likely to change. Would you be happy to put this one to a side? Any final thoughts on the topic if so?*

Atheism at least is garnering organizations left right and centre! Humanism, Communism and Objectivism are all well established forms of atheism, in case you failed to notice, and all have organizational structure! …

No, that is the point, those organisations may be full of atheists. But to be an atheist is not to be a communist, or to be a humanist or an objectivist.The vast majority of atheists are not members of any group or organisational structure (at least not one which has anything to do with atheism. Whereas (active) Catholics are members of a church and that is an organisational structure.

To be an atheist is to not believe something exists. That is all. So no, as I said, we don’t have an organisational structure. For example the only organisation with a religious outlook I am even remotely involved with is the catholic church, and that is only through this website.*
Mystic Banana;8090817:

Odd that Priests are relentlessly demonised, then, compared to say the much more regularly abusive social worker, especially considering the horrible extent that the latter has perpertrated the same in the UK recently…

But there again is it surprising? The catholic churches policy of secrecy on such matters, the fact that priests and the church in general is (or at least historically has been) seen as a source of moral guidance, the fact that anything related to paedophilia sells papers like mad… It’s got everything from a media scare story point of view - it’s a hot topic with obvious controversy value and potential for suggestions of a global conspiracy.

I’m not saying I approve, I don’t. I find it reprehensible, but then again I find the media consistently poor at proper research and producing unbiased reports. Rather tending towards childish sensationalism whenever available.*

I also feel we’re scared out of our wits to express our religiousity in public - except of course, for Muslims, both because of the weird amalgamation of culture/race/religion that political correctness enforces… I have never found atheists so timid in expressing their beliefs in a social environment cowed by the subtly tyrannical shadow of political correctness - odd that

Really? I find atheists generally very timid in expressing their views while Christians generally are not. Often I find people I know to be atheists or agnostics nodding along to a piece of proselytising by a Christian. I do so myself. Not because I think there is much merit in what is being said, but rather because I fear it would be rude and invite an argument to disagree.*

Nonesense, straight out of Dawkin’s silly bag. In itself, it is the expression of a particular form of ideology, and a specific variety of atheism, to boot, so fails by it’s own standard to justify itself! As mentioned, in the same way as there are different theism, there are different atheisms… yours is just one, whether you recognise it or not…

As I said to be an atheist is means only that you are outside a whole load of groups. Just like to be non-political means to be outside a whole load of groups. Obviously atheists have a wide variety of different ways of looking at things and yes mine is just one of them. In the same way people who are non-political have a wide variety of different ways of looking at things and mine is just one of them too. However, my point stands that it is difficult to identify characteristics of “out-groups” to take the Micky out of, so most comedians don’t.*

I think the analogy matches very well between the two in terms of how a comedian would think about them.

 

[Candide_West]

You’re missing the point, or rather clumsily obscuring it. Natural selection and variation are simply terms fairly dishonestly obscuring the issue that they represent a theory involving a process that is rather absurdly unlikely to arrive at ourselves - at least without conscious guidance -making the idea that it does, more honestly resemble position no.3, once the metaphors are removed

I’m afraid I don’t see how I am missing or obscuring anything. From the sounds of what you have said this comes down to a misunderstanding of how the probabilities work out. To clarify…

I throw my pen in the air and it lands… there. Right now there are an infinite number of possible locations in the room in which that pen could have landed. So the odds of it landing exactly there are 1 / infinity. So that can’t be just random chance right? The odds against it are so inconcievably huge that it must have been guided to land exactly there and not one nanometer to the right or left.

This is effectively what you are saying in saying that it’s inconcievably unlikely that evolution would end up producing us. Yes, it is true that if you started the process of evolution with a specified creature (say a dog) you wanted to get to, then the odds of doing it with evolution are probably 1 / infinity. However, given that if we had evolved in a slightly different way, say we had 6 toes on each foot (or to use the pen analogy, if it had fallen a millimeter to the right) then you could make exactly the same statement about how infinitely unlikely it is that we ended up evolving like we did (the pen ended up there instead of there).

Equally if it had taken another billion years for a self aware species to evolve and they were absolutely nothing like humans (the pen had bounced and skittered along the floor), then they could and probably would still have exactly the same conversation about how incredibly unlikely it was for evolution to produce their species (for the pen to have ended up over there by the sofa instead).

If no self aware species ever arose on the planet (say life never got past single celled organisms) then obviously the conversation about how relatively unsurprising it is that life didn’t get any further would never occur since nothing would exist capable of conversation, or for that matter understanding probabilities.

So you can hopefully see that no matter what self aware species evolved (out of the probably infinite array of theoretically possible self aware beings) it would always have seemed impossibly unlikely to have happened by chance and if it hadn’t happened then nobody would have been able to appreciate or comment on the fact.

Obviously we must be careful to avoid discussing evolution since it is banned topic but I think this is primarily a mathematical question rather than one of evolution which should make it ok.

Nah - that’s just getting silly.

OK, assuming this website (bestiary.ca/index.html) is reasonably representing bestiaries, get this:

“The mouse is born from the soil (humus), hence its name (mus). It is a small animal. A mouse’s liver gets larger at the time of the full moon.”

Is the creature we call a mouse today born from the soil? No, it is not. It is not a mouse then - obviously, this mouse thing is a mythical creature!

Silly indeed although I’m not sure why you are taking this in this direction. My intention in my last post was to correct your analogy to make it more useful by making it a closer corrolary with the conversation in progress. Could you explain what the purpose of the above was please?

Many atheists - not all! The scary thing is the denial that these ideas are ideological , but rather the result of a fundamental logic, when they are anything but, that they are the most basic understanding of reality ,when they clearly have never been so. You have dogmas thrown at you all your life! Whenever someone tells you things are like so, they are teaching you to believe, according to some ideological fundament or other. Surely this is obvious to everybody? Well, as I fear, apparently not!

No, I’m afraid I disagree. Perhaps I have dogmas thrown at me but they do not stick. A dogma is defined (as far as I know) as: “A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true”. As I said aside from things like “existence exists” I don’t think I accept or sign onto any dogmas.

 

[Candide_West]

(I should say, by the way, that I thought you hadn’t replied at all, so missed this… so my diatribe was probably unjustified - sorry! )

No worries, a pleasure to hear from you as always.

Apologies for the delays in responses again by the way I fear I tend to be rather slower than you at writing back.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Personally I doubt it. But if they ever did then I suspect you and I would find ourselves on the same side in rejection of the idea.*

Midsummer murders slags off theism? Really? I must admit I don’t watch it but I struggle to imagine the mild mannered Miss Marple-esq show to “slag off” anyone.*

I wonder if the difference here is one of perception. I see on the television regular and obvious support for Christianity in specific (arch bish interviews, pope coverage, songs of praise etc) these to me are obvious promotion of Christianity. This is not surprising in a society which is still largely Christian or at least Christian in a general sort of way and thus has many historical structures in place from christianity (like the lords spiritual). Thus the promotion is not so much deliberate but would require a deliberate act to change (and everyone hates change) so we still have them.

You perhaps see on the tv people who do not follow the historical trend of (at least tacit) support for christianity and in some cases do not even feel the almost ubiquitous need to “respect” it. Perhaps you are right that some tv shows do not always show Christianity in a positive light even. But at most I think this is recognition from the media that a sizeable proportion of the population of the country is not in fact Christian any more. I certainly do not believe that this is the result of an atheist conspiracy.*

To be honest I suspect we won’t make any further progress on the topic since I doubt either of our perceptions of the media are likely to change. Would you be happy to put this one to a side? Any final thoughts on the topic if so?*

Interesting, but I notice your survey of pro-Christian ‘dominance’ is limited to the same 2 programmes and the House of Lords, whereas mine can go on and on - ‘do not always show Christianity in a positive light even’? YOU ARE SURELY HAVING A LAUGH! Everything from Merlin (a kiddies show, and one of a number to do so) to Eastenders have been repeatedly, doggedly, and increasingly demonizing Christianity for years - well ahead of any statistical justification of the same. I suspect the reason you wish to put this topic aside is because you have no justification to support your position

Atheism at least is garnering organizations left right and centre! Humanism, Communism and Objectivism are all well established forms of atheism, in case you failed to notice, and all have organizational structure! …

No, that is the point, those organisations may be full of atheists. But to be an atheist is not to be a communist, or to be a humanist or an objectivist.The vast majority of atheists are not members of any group or organisational structure (at least not one which has anything to do with atheism. Whereas (active) Catholics are members of a church and that is an organisational structure.

To be an atheist is to not believe something exists. That is all. So no, as I said, we don’t have an organisational structure. For example the only organisation with a religious outlook I am even remotely involved with is the catholic church, and that is only through this website.*

And what organisational structure *do * ‘theists’ as a whole, have, exactly? You are not comparing like for like…

But there again is it surprising? The catholic churches policy of secrecy on such matters, the fact that priests and the church in general is (or at least historically has been) seen as a source of moral guidance, the fact that anything related to paedophilia sells papers like mad… It’s got everything from a media scare story point of view - it’s a hot topic with obvious controversy value and potential for suggestions of a global conspiracy.

I’m not saying I approve, I don’t. I find it reprehensible, but then again I find the media consistently poor at proper research and producing unbiased reports. Rather tending towards childish sensationalism whenever available.*

Ah, well, Good we can agree on something…

Really? I find atheists generally very timid in expressing their views while Christians generally are not. Often I find people I know to be atheists or agnostics nodding along to a piece of proselytising by a Christian. I do so myself. Not because I think there is much merit in what is being said, but rather because I fear it would be rude and invite an argument to disagree.*

You apparently know different people than I do - do you live in Scotland? I’ve never been to Scotland. Maybe they do things differntly up there…

As I said to be an atheist is means only that you are outside a whole load of groups. Just like to be non-political means to be outside a whole load of groups. Obviously atheists have a wide variety of different ways of looking at things and yes mine is just one of them. In the same way people who are non-political have a wide variety of different ways of looking at things and mine is just one of them too. However, my point stands that it is difficult to identify characteristics of “out-groups” to take the Micky out of, so most comedians don’t.*

I think the analogy matches very well between the two in terms of how a comedian would think about them.

…except that there are clearly various trends within so called “out groups” (and if you’re right that atheism is increasngly normalised, surely you disagree with yourself there?) - I’d certainly say, for instance, that “New atheism” quite clearly revolves around a number of quite specific cultural references, for example

 

[Mystic_Banana]

I’m afraid I don’t see how I am missing or obscuring anything. From the sounds of what you have said this comes down to a misunderstanding of how the probabilities work out. To clarify…

I throw my pen in the air and it lands… there. Right now there are an infinite number of possible locations in the room in which that pen could have landed. So the odds of it landing exactly there are 1 / infinity. So that can’t be just random chance right? The odds against it are so inconcievably huge that it must have been guided to land exactly there and not one nanometer to the right or left.

This is effectively what you are saying in saying that it’s inconcievably unlikely that evolution would end up producing us. Yes, it is true that if you started the process of evolution with a specified creature (say a dog) you wanted to get to, then the odds of doing it with evolution are probably 1 / infinity. However, given that if we had evolved in a slightly different way, say we had 6 toes on each foot (or to use the pen analogy, if it had fallen a millimeter to the right) then you could make exactly the same statement about how infinitely unlikely it is that we ended up evolving like we did (the pen ended up there instead of there).

Equally if it had taken another billion years for a self aware species to evolve and they were absolutely nothing like humans (the pen had bounced and skittered along the floor), then they could and probably would still have exactly the same conversation about how incredibly unlikely it was for evolution to produce their species (for the pen to have ended up over there by the sofa instead).

If no self aware species ever arose on the planet (say life never got past single celled organisms) then obviously the conversation about how relatively unsurprising it is that life didn’t get any further would never occur since nothing would exist capable of conversation, or for that matter understanding probabilities.

So you can hopefully see that no matter what self aware species evolved (out of the probably infinite array of theoretically possible self aware beings) it would always have seemed impossibly unlikely to have happened by chance and if it hadn’t happened then nobody would have been able to appreciate or comment on the fact.

Obviously we must be careful to avoid discussing evolution since it is banned topic but I think this is primarily a mathematical question rather than one of evolution which should make it ok.

It’s usually the evolution vs. creationism argument that draws moderator tuts - evolutionary chance versus design is usually accepted, in my experience…

The chance of life occuring is absurdly low. If it occurs, the chance of it doing anything complicated is absurdly low, especially before the absurdly-unlikely-to-occur local star burns out before it has chance to exercise it’s absurdly unlikely evolution into anything. The ‘just one of many possibilities’ arguments is pretty lame, surely? Because it’s unlikely to have ever occurred at all… and for the whole caboodle to have got to anything as complicated as an earthworm at all is absurdly unlikely. Unless, of course, you reconceptualise the idea of ‘complexity’ which I can’t help but suspect has also occurred…

A pen can land any way it wants - the results are largely indistinguishable, on your average hypothetical carpet. Your example deliberately obscures issues of possibilities in terms of consequences, surely? Which strikes me as the approach of someone coming from a clearly difficult-to-justify position, in terms of consequences…

Silly indeed although I’m not sure why you are taking this in this direction. My intention in my last post was to correct your analogy to make it more useful by making it a closer corrolary with the conversation in progress. Could you explain what the purpose of the above was please?

Can’t quite remember - something to do with the suspicion that sometimes things are redefined to obscure possible correlations of experience to evidence, I think…

No, I’m afraid I disagree. Perhaps I have dogmas thrown at me but they do not stick. A dogma is defined (as far as I know) as: “A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true”. As I said aside from things like “existence exists” I don’t think I accept or sign onto any dogmas.

Your whole belief (and justifications for the same) that evolution occurred without design and resulted in unlikely us comes across as a particularly unconvincing and overwrought dogma. Just as an example

 

[Mystic_Banana]

No worries, a pleasure to hear from you as always.

Apologies for the delays in responses again by the way I fear I tend to be rather slower than you at writing back.

No problem! I enjoy our little chats. But yes, these things take ages when there are multiple threads…

 

[benedictus2]

I would do one of three things or perhaps all in a proper sequence.

1. try to commit suicide
2. If I was to scared to commit suicide, I would try to get as much pleasure from life as possible, especially sexual pleasure.
3. Faced with the dilemma of absolute nihilism, I would be too honest and philosophical to create the subjective aesthetic fantasy that my life was worth living or had any value. I would be brutally aware of the truth that my value as a person would be nothing more than the pleasure I gave others, and any time that pleasure is lacking I would receive no pleasure in return and no value. I would be an object of potential stimulus, instead of a person of infinite moral value. Not being good at believing my own lies, being bored of the fight to be worshipped by other humans, and being tied of a mere pleasure seeking life, the world would become a crazy and meaningless enigma to me, for I would be nothing more than the firing of synapses in a changing universe that might as well be nothing at all given its lack of objective significance. I would probably go insane from despair, a lack of real purpose, and the contemplation of eternal death. For me, life without God is an empty life, and I could never burden a potential son or daughter with that. I would sterilise my self, or perhaps or would create many sons and daughters with different mothers, simply because i might find it amusing and perhaps a source of drama and entertainment.

Wow!! That is brilliant! And so true.

Without God, the person is as much value as a cockroach.

Those who try to be “nice” and “moral” are actually being hypocritical since they are not living according to the conclusions of their conviction that we are no more than by products of accidental merging and mutation of cells, the origin of which is nada.

 

[benedictus2]

Wow, that’s pretty sick. Are you saying the only reason you don’t kill is because it says so in the bible?

The question is more like, why don’t you kill all those who irk you considering that from the atheistic perspective they are as worthless as you.

 

[benedictus2]

So by your logic, atheists should be more likely to commit crime, and rape, and rob, and pillage.

Ahem, have you heard of the Crusades?

Actually, if atheists are sincere in their belief and the foundations of their belief, committing a crime would be par for the course

 

[benedictus2]

In other words, here is how I am interpreting the question: (OP, am I right?)

If the truth on the existence/nonexistence of God was revealed to you in such a way that you could not refute it, what would you do?

Rereading the original question, I can see that the OP did not actually say that the
proof---->resulting interpretation was true. To address that: since my interpretation is not necessarily fact, if I came to an irrefutable conclusion that directly conflicted with what I believe, I would adjust my process of interpreting proofs to that which allowed me to be wrong. I would admit to myself that my interpretation process must be flawed if I felt satisifed by such evidence.

Can you clarify that post.

Does it mean
A) you were convinced that God exists so therefore now you believe in God and so will admit to proofs that are beyond what you accepted before.

B) You are given convincing proof that God exists so therefore the methodology used to arrive at this proof must be flawed which leaves you still believing that God does not exist.

 

[benedictus2]

Wrong. A thousand times wrong.

If it cannot be shown that Christ rose from the dead, it still does not disprove that someone called Christ walked the earth and preached a certain message. That message has had far reaching effects upon the human race. Cannot the message of Jesus Christ stand on its own merits? If it were shown that there was no God and that Jesus did not resurrect, does that invalidate Christ’s message, particularly in light of the observable results over the past two thousand years?

I would say not.

The observable results the past two thousand years are only observable results because Christ did rise from the dead.

If Christ did not rise from the dead, the Church would have been dead as a dodo from the time it began.

So yes, if Christ did not rise from the dead, our faith is in vain. Whatever good we see is not because of Christ but because a group of people probably had some really nice meals and it caused a surge or endorphins to make they “feel lovey dovey”. There would not be such a thing as a true love and Mother Theresa would be a "Mother Theresa who?

 

[benedictus2]

MindOverMatter2 - Crumbs, thanks for your views although I must admit I’m rather surprised how severe an effect you feel it would have. A few questions if I could.

Firstly, I’m surprised that your first response would be to commit suicide, given that without an afterlife your life could be argued to be the only thing you truly possess, I’m surprised you’d want to lose it. Could you elaborate on why please?

Secondly, your reply appears to imply that you feel you would lose all morality from your life. I find this view rather surprising, is this because you cannot conceive any meaningful moral system in the absence of God or that without God there is nothing particular to hold you to being moral or some other reason? My personal experience on this was that when I ceased to believe in God my morals remained more or less unchanged. The only thing that changed was that I took personal responsibility for them.

Finally, I’m curious why in your view it is that atheists don’t live in the way that you think you would live given the loss of your own faith.

Actually MindOvermatter actually has full grasp of the implications of your question and I haven’t read the rest but he simply took everything to its logical conclusion.

If there is no God, there is no Love, there is no goodness because God is the sum of all Goodness.

You are as worthless as the gnat and cockroach and nothing really has value, only the value each person attaches to a thing.

What I would suggest is to think about the foundation of your belief - you came from nothing you return to nothing. Your value is the same as the dung beetle. And the same applies to everything.

Morality is the dictate of the strong. Since the paedophile is bigger and stronger than his victim, then his actions are good. Everyone’s “truth” depend on their own perspective so the might and powerful get to impose their truth on the weak.

As I said in an earlier post, this is as moral as anything: snap your boots, raise your hand in a straight salute and declare: Heil Hitler!

 

[samiam1611]

(Originally posted by me: To address that: since my interpretation is not necessarily fact, if I came to an irrefutable conclusion that directly conflicted with what I believe, I would adjust my process of interpreting proofs to that which allowed me to be wrong. I would admit to myself that my interpretation process must be flawed if I felt satisifed by such evidence)

Can you clarify that post.

Does it mean
A) you were convinced that God exists so therefore now you believe in God and so will admit to proofs that are beyond what you accepted before.

B) You are given convincing proof that God exists so therefore the methodology used to arrive at this proof must be flawed which leaves you still believing that God does not exist.

Sort of A but I am not completely denying B. B would happen at first - I would have ridiculously high standards and be very skeptical. A is closer to what I meant by that particular sentence. But neither is quite what I meant though they are close. Let me say it another way and see if this answers your question: If I was given evidence that proved God exists, I would remain skeptical bc the God we speak of is not bound by the kind of proof I would want (scientific.) And scientific evidence, the scientific method that is, is always open to be falsified. So I too would remain open to the possibility that my conclusion was falsifiable. IOW, I don’t think I would ever be 100% convinced that God exists, bc the only way I would ever fully accept His existence is by the method that by definition is falsifiable.

I am not sure if I actually clarified that or just elaborated on it lol. Open to discussion, as always.

 

[AshJade]

Here is my reply to the original question:

I have been down both roads, of doubt and belief, at several points in my life. I was raised Mormon, and when I finally got around to reading the Mormon scriptures, (Book of Mormon, D&C, Pearl of Great Price), my earth was shattered. I lost all faith in any god and in other people, too. I realized I had been mislead my whole life.

I looked at other religions and decided on the Catholic faith. I truly believed in it, but in an innocent, childlike way. Even though I went through RCIA, my faith had no roots. When life got hard, it whithered away.

For several years I considered myself agnostic. I tried not to think about God, or the afterlife. I lived for th moment, finding pleasure when I could, because I knew life was temporary. Then I fell in love with a wonderful man and wanted to hold onto something. I started feeling a small fragment of spirituality in the darkness of my life.

After I had my twins, I went through severe postpartum depression and OCD. I started obsessing about death and whether there was anything after-words. It was so bad I had to be medicated and was almost hospitalized. After I recovered, I decided I would seek out my own spirituality.

Since then, I have decided to return to the Catholic faith. In two weeks I am getting my marriage convalidated and my children baptized. I have realized belonging to a church doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing. I have my own opinions about some certain hot-topic issues, but that is my business. I find peace and a growing connection to something bigger than myself through the church.

Basically, I think that everyone should find what works for them. It isn’t about what you believe, but what you do with those beliefs. I am a better person as a Catholic than I was as a Mormon or Agnostic.

 

[Candide_West]

Interesting, but I notice your survey of pro-Christian ‘dominance’ is limited to the same 2 programmes and the House of Lords, whereas mine can go on and on - ‘do not always show Christianity in a positive light even’? YOU ARE SURELY HAVING A LAUGH! Everything from Merlin (a kiddies show, and one of a number to do so) to Eastenders have been repeatedly, doggedly, and increasingly demonizing Christianity for years - well ahead of any statistical justification of the same. I suspect the reason you wish to put this topic aside is because you have no justification to support your position

To be honest, my primary position here is just disagreeing with your stated view that atheism is promoted in the media. I don’t think you’ve made a case that it is. The best you’ve given me is a list of tv shows which supposedly slag off christianity. A claim which I find distinctly dubious, and have questioned, but you have provided no support beyond naming more tv programmes which also supposedly slag off Christianity.*

Further, as I’m sure you are aware, “slagging off” Christianity is not promoting atheism.

The reason I think we should put the topic aside is that we have exchanged a number of posts on this topic and to date I note nil progress and I don’t think this position is likely to improve in the near future. We can keep going around the buoy if you like, but really is there any point?*

And what organisational structure *do * ‘theists’ as a whole, have, exactly? You are not comparing like for like…

I’m afraid I am, true that there isn’t an organisation for theists as a whole. But there are theist organisations. Very large ones. And they are exclusively theist in nature, ie you cannot be a catholic and and atheist. The proposition is inherently contradictory. But you can at least in theory be a christian communist. Equally you cannot be a catholic without being part of the catholic church. Whereas you can be an atheist without being even remotely involved with any organisation.*

If you really think that atheists are in an organisation then please tell me what the organisation I am part of is called and who runs it for that matter. I know of none. I think in truth you are well aware that atheists don’t have any organisational structure the way religions do. So I’m unsure why you are pursuing this point?

You apparently know different people than I do - do you live in Scotland? I’ve never been to Scotland. Maybe they do things differntly up there…

Nope, I’m English I’m afraid. Although I lived in Edinburgh for a while and had a couple rather awkward pub sessions with a born again Christian from my work up there proselytising to a bunch of atheists and agnostics. It a was very… One way conversation. Similar to experiences I get here in England.*

…except that there are clearly various trends within so called “out groups” (and if you’re right that atheism is increasngly normalised, surely you disagree with yourself there?) - I’d certainly say, for instance, that “New atheism” quite clearly revolves around a number of quite specific cultural references, for example

Right, now if “New Atheism” ever gains enough popularity that the majority of tv watching audience would be expected to have heard of it and actually care what they do. Then I’d expect to start seeing comedians joking about it. Because that would presumably be an “in group” and thus an easy target.*

Will it ever become that popular? I doubt it.

 

[benedictus2]

I throw my pen in the air and it lands… there. Right now there are an** infinite number of possible locations in the room in which that pen could have landed. So the odds of it landing exactly there are 1 / infinity.**

Suppose you’re in an empty 6ft x 6ft room

The area in which the pen could land is 36ft.

How does that classify as an infinite possibility.

So that can’t be just random chance right? The odds against it are so inconcievably huge that it must have been guided to land exactly there and not one nanometer to the right or left.

No, the odds are not inconceivably huge because it is a tiny room.

If your pen is a certain size, you can calculate the probability and it would be rather small I think. Definitely not infinite.

This is effectively what you are saying in saying that it’s inconcievably unlikely that evolution would end up producing us.

If not guided highly unlikely at least based on the age of the the universe.

At the age we put the universe in, I think it has been calculated that we are unlikely to have passed the bacteria stage.

 

[benedictus2]

(Originally posted by me: To address that: since my interpretation is not necessarily fact, if I came to an irrefutable conclusion that directly conflicted with what I believe, I would adjust my process of interpreting proofs to that which allowed me to be wrong. I would admit to myself that my interpretation process must be flawed if I felt satisifed by such evidence)

Sort of A but I am not completely denying B. B would happen at first - I would have ridiculously high standards and be very skeptical. A is closer to what I meant by that particular sentence. But neither is quite what I meant though they are close. Let me say it another way and see if this answers your question: If I was given evidence that proved God exists, I would remain skeptical bc the God we speak of is not bound by the kind of proof I would want (scientific.) And scientific evidence, the scientific method that is, is always open to be falsified. So I too would remain open to the possibility that my conclusion was falsifiable. IOW, I don’t think I would ever be 100% convinced that God exists, bc the only way I would ever fully accept His existence is by the method that by definition is falsifiable.

I am not sure if I actually clarified that or just elaborated on it lol. Open to discussion, as always.

So basically, what you are saying is that you will doubt it because you have decided that you will doubt it.

Suppose though that you are convinced not through a scientific method. We cannot use the scientific method to prove God because being supernatural He is obviously beyond the purview of science. The most that science can do is give hints.

Suppose that you are convinced that God exists in the same manner that you are convinced that the sun exists, except that you know that not empirically but with a clear conviction within you, an experience that you just know?

What will you do?