Is the Existence of God really worth debating?

Sunstone said:

Your proposal is a subtle variation on a straw man fallacy. I'm not buying into your fantasy that all atheists assert there is well grounded evidence for concluding no deity exists.

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How is that my fantasy? Is that not what atheists are saying? If they're just saying that they don't think there's a god, but not that there's definitely no god, then they are just poser agnostics. That's like the emo of religion - wow homo.

I've always been a little confused, when discussing God, as to whether or not "God does not exist" is a positive statement.

I'm talking about who has the burden of proof, in the God vs. no(t)-God argument.
Now, "God exists" I can deal with - that has the burden of proof as the positive statement, no?

"God does not exist" - to me that sounds a lot like a positive statement. It comes, at least to me it seems, in two parts; "God does" and "Not exist" (Just like "God does" and "exist"). Does that not also come with the burden of proof? This is something that I've seen crop up countless times in God vs. no(t)-God threads, and I see people who's opinions I respect argue both ways, or against each other (though perhaps not directly).

zemelo.franky said:

How is that my fantasy? Is that not what atheists are saying? If they're just saying that they don't think there's a god, but not that there's definitely no god, then they are just poser agnostics. That's like the emo of religion - wow homo.

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"Wow homo"? Can you explain your term there?

zemelo.franky said:

How is that my fantasy? Is that not what atheists are saying? If they're just saying that they don't think there's a god, but not that there's definitely no god, then they are just poser agnostics. That's like the emo of religion - wow homo.

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I think rather "I don't believe in god, because there is no evidence to show it exists". That's not so much an agnosticism as it is simply a lack of belief.

Theism is a belief in God(s)
the A- prefix simply makes the word a negative
so Atheism is a non-belief in God(s). Whether it's "God doesn't exist, so I do not believe in it" or "There's no proof God exists, so I do not believe in it", they are arriving at the same conclusion; "I do not believe in a God or Gods"

Or something like that...

methylatedghosts said:

I've always been a little confused, when discussing God, as to whether or not "God does not exist" is a positive statement.

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Look at it this way: a positive statement is one that makes a claim about "what is." If you say, "This is a world with no God," (i.e. God does not exist) you're making a positive statement.

methylatedghosts said:

I'm talking about who has the burden of proof, in the God vs. no(t)-God argument.
Now, "God exists" I can deal with - that has the burden of proof as the positive statement, no?

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The burden of proof lies with the one who makes a positive statement, be it "God exists," or "No God exists." The positive statement stands in contrast to other types of statements, like a normative statement that says something like, "The world should have God." The normative statement has no burden of proof.

methylatedghosts said:

"God does not exist" - to me that sounds a lot like a positive statement. It comes, at least to me it seems, in two parts; "God does" and "Not exist" (Just like "God does" and "exist"). Does that not also come with the burden of proof? This is something that I've seen crop up countless times in God vs. no(t)-God threads, and I see people who's opinions I respect argue both ways, or against each other (though perhaps not directly).

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"Trust your feelings, Luke."

Willamena said:

Look at it this way: a positive statement is one that makes a claim about "what is." If you say, "This is a world with no God," (i.e. God does not exist) you're making a positive statement.


The burden of proof lies with the one who makes a positive statement, be it "God exists," or "No God exists." The positive statement stands in contrast to other types of statements, like a normative statement that says something like, "The would should have God." The normative statement has no burden of proof.


"Trust your feelings, Luke."

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Many thankings ^_^

So those who argue that "God does not exist" is a negative statement are simply trying to avoid having to come up with the proof and laying it back on to the other positive statement "God does exist".

Ah, typos again. Shoot me now.

(That's not a positive suggestion, but a rhetorical one.)

Sunstone said:

Are you trying to pull a Red Herring fallacy then?

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No, I'm not trying to divert the attention away from your claim... yeah, I guess that is what I'm doing. Good show.

I realize, mostly with a dull apathy at this point, that one can not speak sensibly to the nonsensical - so, I humbly and sincerely implore you:

Chartreuse unicorns are invading the duodenum of Light. You and nine tigers of Asstown must philanthropize the demons of Tom Cruise in order to restore testicles to the Viceroy of Levi Strauss.

You must then abuse seven naked children; one will have a tattoo that will read, "ouch, that abuse hurts!" The "b" in abuse is a flesh-key that must be surgically removed with a colony of ants. Apply Jamba Juice to the Viceroy's ankles until homeostasis is attained; remove the grain from the rocket cylinder and reform it to exponentially increase star power.

Once level-9 double-secret probation is lifted, turn in forty-eight counter-fourwise elliptical squares, then toywise to the storefront of Bacon Bits in the Gobi. You'll see a pair of Eagle Scouts dry-humping a sack of flour while a score of queer U2 albums ******** Sarah Palin in the face.

But that's just the first circle; for then, the great Archdouche Felipe Calderon de Culo invokes the great incantation of El Rapist:

"Fee, fi, fo, fum,
Give me your ******* money. Seriously. Gracias, now, you die."

Behold, the Golden Impetus of the five-sided circle of Atheism, where logic prevails, except when it's at all possible to avoid it.

zemelo.franky said:

I realize, mostly with a dull apathy at this point, that one can not speak sensibly to the nonsensical - so, I humbly and sincerely implore you:

Chartreuse unicorns are invading the duodenum of Light. You and nine tigers of Asstown must philanthropize the demons of Tom Cruise in order to restore testicles to the Viceroy of Levi Strauss.

You must then abuse seven naked children; one will have a tattoo that will read, "ouch, that abuse hurts!" The "b" in abuse is a flesh-key that must be surgically removed with a colony of ants. Apply Jamba Juice to the Viceroy's ankles until homeostasis is attained; remove the grain from the rocket cylinder and reform it to exponentially increase star power.

Once level-9 double-secret probation is lifted, turn in forty-eight counter-fourwise elliptical squares, then toywise to the storefront of Bacon Bits in the Gobi. You'll see a pair of Eagle Scouts dry-humping a sack of flour while a score of queer U2 albums ******** Sarah Palin in the face.

But that's just the first circle; for then, the great Archdouche Felipe Calderon de Culo invokes the great incantation of El Rapist:

"Fee, fi, fo, fum,
Give me your ******* money. Seriously. Gracias, now, you die."

Behold, the Golden Impetus of the five-sided circle of Atheism, where logic prevails, except when it's at all possible to avoid it.

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lolwut?

zemelo.franky said:

Okay, let's just settle it this way. I will pose that none of you can propose one legitimate shred of evidence for Atheism that I can not defunct. Not one.

I'm all ears.

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"Shred of evidence" for what about atheism?

zemelo.franky said:

Is the Existence of God really worth debating?

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Anything worth believing is probably worth debating.

zemelo.franky said:

Okay, let's just settle it this way. I will pose that none of you can propose one legitimate shred of evidence for Atheism that I can not defunct. Not one.

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Is there proof god exists? If not then that is a great reason to reject belief.

Willamena said:

"Shred of evidence" for what about atheism?

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Don't reply to the challenge. When you do so by stating a simple, common problem that he didn't read in "Defending the Faith," he'll lash out like a 14 year old, illustrating to you that he can't meet your challenge.

I admire that you see this, and agree with you that people should reather then force there beliefes upon others, be content in themselves and and enjoy there living in the tranquillity of there own acceptance to there beleifes. However, i dissagree with what you said about debate. I prefer not to think of religous debate as a way of forcing ones ideas onto another, but as a way of exchanging ideas and presenting unexplored paths of lives, and giving a choice to look down them. Personally if i meet a person a who beleives in a god i will tell them the reasons they should not, if i meet a person who does not beleive in god, i will present the reasons why they should. At heart i am a skeptic and pride myself in being one of the small percetage of people who can truly see religion from all points of veiw and all vantage points.

well said

Have read every post on this thread, and decided to come back to OP.

zemelo.franky said:

I'm frustrated by the apparent need for people of different faiths (I consider atheism a faith as well) to engage in discussions in which the know, prior to even beginning, that they don't intend to exchange ideas. They want to convince, proselytize.

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A - I agree atheism is faith based as well. Have seen at most 1% of all atheist I've encountered agree with that. It is fun / honest to acknowledge but less fun to debate this with a self identified atheist. Precisely because of 2nd point you raise.

B) Was thinking just the other day about what you are getting at in this opening paragraph. Like it would be cool if we (all) had the capacity (er...courage) to state whether opinions have been even a little swayed from reading of opening post in a thread to later on. Even if this were just a game we played to allow that side of us out. Instead, it often shows up like, "my mind is made up going into this thread. What you are saying is wrong. Here's how wrong you are. First I will consult my trusty logical fallacy guide. Next, I will insist the burden of proof is on you. Cause you know it is. Somewhere near the end, I'll conclude, righteously so, that I'm absolutely right. Now what?"

As far as I can tell, the existence (or non-existence) of god is not only obviously unprovable given modern technology and intelligence, but is probably never going to be provable because of mathematical principles (Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Uncertainty Principle, etc.).

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In my understanding, a universal doctrine will never occur. Some religious types either want to argue or are seemingly content to believe that a universal doctrine has already occurred. And for those 'not in the know,' that is 'your' problem, for some day (pretty soon, end is near) you'll be judged for not accepting that universal doctrine.

I'm a believer but admittedly, I can show up borderline atheistic when such claims are being put forth, cause there is simply overwhelming evidence to suggest there is no universally accepted doctrine, and never will be. I don't know for sure there never will be, but my understanding, based more on reason than faith, is it just can't happen that way.

What I do think is going on with (some) believers in relation to agnostics / atheists is desire for universal experience. This strikes me as entirely plausible, though come description time of 'what does that really look like,' it then comes back to 'here let me convince you of the doctrine thingy' so that you can be prepared, and 'in the know' as I am (pretending to be).

I do believe it is universal experience that believers are after. I also think, though it becomes much tougher for me to argue this (given my bias) that this is ultimately what agnostics and atheists are after. Thus we all are moving in this direction, and I think we instinctively know it, though our descriptors of it are somewhere between confusing and underwhelming, borderline cynical. The kicker for me, within experience / understanding I have (had), is it is not a matter of time, in sense of it isn't in some far off future that the experience will happen. I'd like to argue it has already happened, but even that is 'matter of time.' It is more like matter of perception, and even more like waking up. I like to live (sometimes) under assumption that 'you all' have all woken up, and it's just me that is left. Very interesting to see through that prism, than the other one that assumes we are umpteen thousand years away from "it."

But that last part doesn't really matter;

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Yeah it does.

doesn't really matter

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It does.

doesn't

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Does too. But anyway, you were saying...

doesn't really matter; whether or not god can or can not be proven is moot, because we can't do it right now. What I'm praying for is the day when we realize this and hang up the gloves, turn our spirituality inward instead of outward, and learn to enjoy the process of living.

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Amen.

Perhaps the greatest idea conceived by the American forefathers was the Separation of Church and State. Over time "church" somehow came to denote only Christianity. I think we now can admit to ourselves that the Church of Liberalism and the Church of Conservatism have far eclipsed any other American religion, and have essentially become the Inquisitions of our day.

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Hear hear.

zemelo.franky said:

How is that my fantasy? Is that not what atheists are saying? If they're just saying that they don't think there's a god, but not that there's definitely no god, then they are just poser agnostics. That's like the emo of religion - wow homo.

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The first post in this tread explains it: http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/resources/102356-agnostic-vs-atheist.html

Granted, many who call themselves atheists or agnostics seem unaware of this distinction, but it is there nonetheless.

Jayhawker Soule said:

Pay attention. To assert:

"A God that cannot be substantiated by science, even in principle, by definition does not exist."​

suggests the claim:

Everything that exists can be, at least in principle, substantiated by science.​

So, what of the period before 1 Planck time. Did it exist? What about it can be, at least in principle, substantiated by science? And then, of course, there's Gödel.

PolyHedral over-reaches. You accomplish considerably less.

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There was no period before 1/0 (not sure which, not a quantum physicist) Planck time.

Lahunken said:

Do you believe in light? You couldn't read this without light. In 1John1:5 it says, "God is light". Science knows that light is energy. God is energy. There are two things in the universe: energy and "information". and information is the conformation of energy.

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OK, I'm ready to accept your arbitrary labeling of energy as God. Watch out though, because we know how energy works.

We got consciousness in finite time. In our brains, consciousness was caused by the capacitance and ectropy of the arising reticular formation of the medulla oblongata, which is simply the interference of information by virtue of the inevitability of orthogonality.

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The bold is not meaningful. It literally does not convey any understandable information.

The First Law of Thermodynamics is, "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed". Energy is eternal. Certainly, in eternity it is inevitable that information would cause energy (God) to be conscious. Would you think that God doens't want boredom. That is why He doesn't interfere with free will. If we were energy, God, we would never sleep. We are only information.

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Abstract energy can't be conscious, any more than a rock can be conscious. Though IMO, more importantly, energy has nothing to be conscious of. There is no avatar to attach the "I" to.

To answer another question, information can be created and destroyed. That is what the Second Law of Thermodynamics says when it says, "In the universe, entropy always increases". The entropy of the universe, at any one time, is the proportion of photons to nucleons, that is, entropy is the extent of polarity cancellation.

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Entropy is, AFAIK, the information necessary to describe the universe. If less information is needed, the universe is said to be more entropic.

Information, the conformation of energy? Take a cloth sheet. It represents energy. Wrinkle the sheet. The wrinkles represent information. Pull the sheet out straight, and, "fump", the wrinkles become nonexistent. They "perish". Look in "Roget's Thesaurus", perishing is synonymous with becoming nonexistent.

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(Though it should be noted that the minimum information content of the universe is non-zero, AFAIK.)

Such a universal sheet exists on the eighth, ninth, and tenth dimensions; and, it is called the Ricci Curvature. Where there is no Ricci Curvature there is no matter. It says in the Bible, "Only He (God) is immortal"; and, "The soul that sinneth shall die". Crooks have profited on the fear of Plato's immortality of the soul.

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God isn't immortal either, because the universe will die. Everything will stop, and eventually expand into a soup of negligible energy density.

There is the "aioniu amartematos", the "aeon of failure", mistranslated into English, "eternal damnation". A Greek professor told me that an "aeon" is only a hundred years. Spirit is matter in bent timespace, and, matter is spirit in flat timespace. Our soul is that portion of our being in the fifth dimensional spheres of bent timespace. Theoretically, -n+n=0, the soul is still perishable information.

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Spacetime is curved, as per General Relativity. It cannot be flattened without losing some of its properties.

Otherright said:

That's the thing about belief, it doesn't require proof.

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Faith without evidence is not correct or valid. You might as well believe in the dragon in my garage.

Lahunken said:

Do you believe in light? You couldn't read this without light. In 1John1:5 it says, "God is light".......

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Can you come up with something original?
You've re-posted the same thing in at least four different threads, and in other forums.

At least say something relevant to thread.