Do You Know Why You Don't Believe? (beliefs, experience, atheist)

[Storm]

Originally Posted by methylatedghosts

I think people are able to believe the Eiffel Tower exists because

1) it actually does
2) many different people have taken pictures of it
3) many people actually see it
4) many people climb it
5) many pictures of people who have climbed it
6) there is very little evidence to suggest that it doesn't exist.

To be fair, there's no evidence to suggest God doesn't exist, and plenty of people who clim personal experience of it. There are even pictures, though no photos.

[methylatedghosts]

Originally Posted by Willamena

Jay's gonna get you for that.

Shh.. I'm trying to surprise him with it!!

*sneaky*

[methylatedghosts]

Oh, and yeah Storm I agree.

I'm just pushing buttons

But I don't think many people have counted the stairs all the way to the top of God.....

[Storm]

Originally Posted by methylatedghosts

Oh, and yeah Storm I agree.

I'm just pushing buttons

Dang. I'm bored.

But I don't think many people have counted the stairs all the way to the top of God.....

*giggling*

[methylatedghosts]

I can imagine it now

"The stairs to god have only been counted by one person"

or

"The stairs to god are figurative and many people have climbed them and counted every step of the way...."

etc
etc
etc

[Tiberius]

Originally Posted by Super Universe

How is the universe, the earth, and life evidence of intelligent design? Phenomenal complexity.

Have I eliminated every other possible explanation? It seems to me there are only two options available to you, either intelligence behind the design or not. There is no room for any other explanation for me. I will not, can not, forget what I've seen.

Actually, not having God would make it much harder to understand the universe. How exactly do atoms create and assemble themselves again? Then how do atoms create physical laws, energy, gravity, and life?

Ah. So event X will either occur or it will not occur.

Either X or Not X.

But that doesn't tell us anything about how likely each possibility is. X may be one of those once-in-a-gazillion things.

The way you've phrased it makes it seem like there's a fifty-fifty chance, but there isn't. And there is only a miniscule chance that intelligent design is correct, making it much more likely that there is no intelligence behind it all. After all, if there's an intelligence, why all the badly designed stuff? Nipples on men, the piddly little toenail on your little toe.

It seems to me that you're working from the argument from ignorance:

"I can't believe that all these things I interpret as design could have occured without a designer, there there is a designer."

This is a logical fallacy.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Originally Posted by Super Universe

It's no more tiresome than the typical athiest reply that believers have to provide proof of God while they somehow don't have to provide any disproving Him.

You've got to be kidding!

[Super Universe]

Originally Posted by Tiberius

Ah. So event X will either occur or it will not occur.

Either X or Not X.

But that doesn't tell us anything about how likely each possibility is. X may be one of those once-in-a-gazillion things.

The way you've phrased it makes it seem like there's a fifty-fifty chance, but there isn't. And there is only a miniscule chance that intelligent design is correct, making it much more likely that there is no intelligence behind it all. After all, if there's an intelligence, why all the badly designed stuff? Nipples on men, the piddly little toenail on your little toe.

It seems to me that you're working from the argument from ignorance:

"I can't believe that all these things I interpret as design could have occured without a designer, there there is a designer."

This is a logical fallacy.

Only a miniscule chance that intelligent design is correct? Uh, show me the math on that one.

Why all the badly designed stuff? Who are you to say what's bad and what is not? Can you build a universe? Nope, not even close. But you sure are critical of the one given to you.

Using the terms probability and chance are incorrect as far as creation is concerned. We have nothing to compare it to. Still, I like the terms because it asks for you to make up your own mind using the logic and experience you have learned over the years. So, which is more likely to you:

1) An intelligence created energy in an active and stable form, it also created stable physical laws that control this energy, it added the time element, and, as if this was not enough, it created life. Life that evolves.

2) Primary elements somehow formed and found stability while already abiding by physical laws, these elements then joined to form more complex compounds and somehow caused the time element and eventually became alive.

[Jayhawker Soule]

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