Why doesn't everyone just be honest

[Ben Dhyan]

You didn't state that you were a Christian or Muslim, so I don't know exactly what evil it is you won't compromise with, but yours was a comment that either might make. Each would also have many adherents that would be expected to say that abortion and homosexuality, for example, are evil, and that therefore there should be no compromise in the crusade to eliminate these evils.

But I understand the sentiment. I just don't agree with you where the "evil" lies. I'd look more to the systems and institutions that teach intolerance like that. I'm just as intolerant as the church, but not of what it considers evil. I'm intolerant of irrational intolerance.

I'm not coming from any one sectarian viewpoint, but my own present understanding of the purpose of religion. I understand evil to represent a state of hatred of good, and good, a love of good.

 

[sun rise]

So I must conclude that portion from murder and robbery are low on your list.

The right to life, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and property are all low on your list.

The health and well being of your fellow man also given the massive homelessness and drug problems.

so what are your priorities that put California up so high on freedom?

You should look at real statistics. CA is lower than the south in murder rates Stats of the States - Homicide Mortality

Freedom of speech - CA does just fine when it comes to freedom of speech in the sense of not pulling scads of books from libraries, harassing LGBTQ people, freedom of religion (but not the freedom of some religious people to dictate to other religious people and atheists). We have an excess of property rights with NIMBYs stopping needed housing from being built. We and other places have property rights problems caused by HOAs refusing to allow people to do what they want with their houses but that's not a government problem.

CA does have a homeless problem partly because NIMBYs stop affordable housing from being built. The state just passed a law to allow more building of homes.

 

[Brian2]

Why is this still an issue? I've never understood what motivates this discussion for the theist. Yes, atheists have beliefs, and I suppose one could say that they believe that an idea ought to enjoy sufficient evidentiary support before believing it, making them empiricists epistemologically. And they value critical thinking over faith. These are all the same belief restated.

But there is no belief derived from unbelief in gods. I am an atheist because I hold these beliefs, but I have no other beliefs that depend on that atheism apart from trivial ones that result from having no god belief, such as that if man doesn't do it, it won't get done, or that the Genesis creation story is mythology.

My guess why this meme keeps reappearing in apologetics is that when the creationists were trying to get creationism back into the public schools, the argument against them was that their theology wasn't equal to science and didn't deserve an equal place in the public school curriculum as science. There was then a two-pronged push to try to put the two on equal footing to weaken that argument - one to imply that religion is scientific, and one to imply that science is religion.

Hence, we had the ID program, which famously culminated in the Kitzmiller trial, in which Behe was cornered arguing that creationism can be considered a scientific theory by such a deformed understanding of what that a scientific theory is that Behe was forced to agree that his definition of scientific theory would also include astrology. Of course, this prong failed. Creationism was declared pseudoscience, not science as its creators and funders had hoped.

And the other half was the memes like, "science is your religion," "science is based in faith," and the beloved "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist." Your comment fits into that conception. Theism is just a belief, and so is atheism, a kind of false equivalence. Why else would anybody want to say that atheism is a belief enough to argue the point repeatedly? Perhaps it is the believers that these tropes are meant to appease, not school boards, believers who hear that science is fit for an academic curriculum, but religion is not. Maybe this effort is make them feel like their beliefs are just as well-founded as the science that contradicts their preachers.

It is too general to say that all atheists believe God does not exist, and it is hard to see a purpose for the argument about it. However there is semantics in the idea that atheism is no more than a lack of belief and many atheists fight tooth and nail against the idea that they believe anything, as if what is called religious belief (as opposed to scientific belief) is a dirty word even if many theists have come to their belief using reason and evidence.
With many atheists it seems to be a matter of not wanting to explain their position and wanting to put a burden of proof onto the theists to show what they call suitable and enough evidence to convince them.
But of course there is no burden of proof on a theist to do anything of the sort.
The truth is that the evidence is there for all to see if they want to and that some believe the evidence points to the existence of God and others believe the evidence does not point that way.
That is explaining the position more from the perspective that both atheism and theism are beliefs (and your way of describing atheism as epistemological empiricists also does this) and shows imo that the position of most atheists on the matter is just semantics.
I would say that there are beliefs that do come from this sort of atheism. One would be a belief that life is no more than chemistry and physics. This of course comes from the naturalistic methodology of science and denying the, possibly non empirical, evidence that all life that we know comes from pre-existing life. (that was pretty much an axiom in science when I went to school).
Of course all you will say is that we don't know where life comes from but that does not stop atheists from saying that there is no need for a God to get to this stage in evolution and imo your "we don't know" is probably no more than rhetoric for the argument's sake and not what you end up believing when science that has overshot the borders of science (because of the naturalistic methodology and empiricism) come to conclusions which push the need for God out of the picture.
So really much of science when it comes to deciding these things, has turned into pseudo science imo based on faith in the naturalistic methodology as being philosophically true.
But of course most of what I hear from science comes atheists and sceptics and hard line empiricists and so I might be misrepresenting science and what it says that it has found out.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

It is too general to say that all atheists believe God does not exist

Agreed, but I would modify that to most atheists do not claim that gods (what you've called God) cannot or do not exist.

However there is semantics in the idea that atheism is no more than a lack of belief and many atheists fight tooth and nail against the idea that they believe anything, as if what is called religious belief (as opposed to scientific belief) is a dirty word even if many theists have come to their belief using reason and evidence.

I'm an atheist, and I make no such claim. I have countless beliefs. It's just that none derive from unbelief in gods. If this is hard to see, imagine somebody who does not believe in vampires. Which of his other beliefs derive from that one?

I still don't understand why this is an issue for the Christian apologist. What point is he trying to make? What's your purpose for making the point that atheism is a belief? I disagree, but even if I agreed, why would that matter to any apologist?

With many atheists it seems to be a matter of not wanting to explain their position and wanting to put a burden of proof onto the theists to show what they call suitable and enough evidence to convince them.

In my experience, every atheist on these threads is happy to explain his beliefs to any theist. And yes, if you want to convince an empiricist of anything, you'll need compelling evidence.

But of course there is no burden of proof on a theist to do anything of the sort.

There is no burden of proof ever unless two conditions arise: he wants to be believed and he is dealing with somebody who is willing and able to evaluate an argument for soundness and be convinced by a compelling argument. I make declarative statements at times that I decline to support, such as a recent one that Trump was very vulnerable to criminal indictment. I was asked why I believed that. I told him that he has had access to all of the same evidence that the rest of us have had, and if he doesn't see criminality there yet, he never will, and that therefore it was futile for me to present it again. One has no burden of proof with a person who cannot evaluate evidence properly, nor when one isn't interested in changing minds that perhaps could be changed. Not only do I believe that I could not change your mind about gods, but I would also not make you an atheist if I had the power to do so. I have neither the ability nor the desire to do that, so neither condition obtains in that case, so there is no burden of proof here for me.

The truth is that the evidence is there for all to see if they want to and that some believe the evidence points to the existence of God and others believe the evidence does not point that way.

Evaluating evidence isn't as subjective an enterprise as you suggest. The evidence believers offer for God is not evidence for any god over naturalistic alternatives according to rules of interpreting evidence in critical analysis. To say it is is to misunderstand what that evidence implies about reality. Reality is evidence that reality exists, not that a god was required. That is merely one of two logical possibilities, the one that violates Occam's principle of parsimony.

I would say that there are beliefs that do come from this sort of atheism. One would be a belief that life is no more than chemistry and physics.

The agnostic atheist says that life may have originated naturalistically. One shouldn't need to be an atheist to believe that. One can believe that that is not how it happened, but that there is no evidence to rule it out, either. And one need not be a theist to believe that life might have been intelligently designed. This is pure reason - two logical possibilities exist, neither of which can be ruled in or out at this time.

Incidentally, life is also biology and ecology, higher order emergent sciences. They are powered by chemistry just as chemistry is powered by physics, but contain emergent phenomena like biological evolution not found in nonliving matter. One wouldn't say that Shakespeare is no more than typographical characters (letters, punctuation, spaces, capitalization). When we combine these, words emerge, which carry more meaning than letters. When we combine words, sentences emerge, which carry more meaning than words. And when we combine sentences, poetry and stories emerge. That's emergence - phenomena observed at some scales but not others. No water molecule is wet. Wetness emerges from collections of liquid water.

all life that we know comes from pre-existing life.

You don't believe that, and neither do I. Wasn't it you and I that just went through this? Maybe it was another poster. Whether you call a disembodied mind like a deity living or not, there exists a first life form not derived from other life. Is God alive to you? Then that is life that didn't come from preexisting life. Is God not a living thing to you, because you use a scientific definition of life that includes growth, repair, cells, reproduction, metabolism, etc. as criteria for life? OK. Then the life it created is life coming from nonlife.

 

[Brian2]

Evaluating evidence isn't as subjective an enterprise as you suggest. The evidence believers offer for God is not evidence for any god over naturalistic alternatives according to rules of interpreting evidence in critical analysis. To say it is is to misunderstand what that evidence implies about reality. Reality is evidence that reality exists, not that a god was required. That is merely one of two logical possibilities, the one that violates Occam's principle of parsimony.

The question is not "what is reality evidence for?" the question is about the beginnings of this reality. Occam's Razor does not cut away the God answer imo.

The agnostic atheist says that life may have originated naturalistically. One shouldn't need to be an atheist to believe that. One can believe that that is not how it happened, but that there is no evidence to rule it out, either. And one need not be a theist to believe that life might have been intelligently designed. This is pure reason - two logical possibilities exist, neither of which can be ruled in or out at this time.

The reality imo is that the only evidence there is for the origin of life is that we know that all life we see comes from other life.
Anything else is a hypothesis without evidence.

Incidentally, life is also biology and ecology, higher order emergent sciences. They are powered by chemistry just as chemistry is powered by physics, but contain emergent phenomena like biological evolution not found in nonliving matter. One wouldn't say that Shakespeare is no more than typographical characters (letters, punctuation, spaces, capitalization). When we combine these, words emerge, which carry more meaning than letters. When we combine words, sentences emerge, which carry more meaning than words. And when we combine sentences, poetry and stories emerge. That's emergence - phenomena observed at some scales but not others. No water molecule is wet. Wetness emerges from collections of liquid water.

That does not mean that the only life we know does not comes only from other life. What you said is just the justification for research into the hypothesis that originally life came from non living things.
The research cannot conclude with chemists and physicists saying that atoms are capable of combining to form bodies without external input, therefore life came from non life. That would be begging the question.

You don't believe that, and neither do I. Wasn't it you and I that just went through this? Maybe it was another poster. Whether you call a disembodied mind like a deity living or not, there exists a first life form not derived from other life. Is God alive to you? Then that is life that didn't come from preexisting life. Is God not a living thing to you, because you use a scientific definition of life that includes growth, repair, cells, reproduction, metabolism, etc. as criteria for life? OK. Then the life it created is life coming from nonlife.

Just how life should be defined is an interesting topic. The Biblical God is said to be spirit, non physical and conscious and intelligent and knowing, so I would not be able to define this God, the source of physical life, as not alive even if I might be able to see God as not wearing out, like a physical body, and so never having begun.

 

[Truth in love]

You should look at real statistics. CA is lower than the south in murder rates Stats of the States - Homicide Mortality

Freedom of speech - CA does just fine when it comes to freedom of speech in the sense of not pulling scads of books from libraries, harassing LGBTQ people, freedom of religion (but not the freedom of some religious people to dictate to other religious people and atheists). We have an excess of property rights with NIMBYs stopping needed housing from being built. We and other places have property rights problems caused by HOAs refusing to allow people to do what they want with their houses but that's not a government problem.

CA does have a homeless problem partly because NIMBYs stop affordable housing from being built. The state just passed a law to allow more building of homes.

So the massive lock downs, opening strip clubs while banning churches was all fine?
The assaults on the ability to work if you are not in the right industry or dare share an unofficial view on a medical issue that’s great.

I don’t think your definition of freedom is the same one others use.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The question is not "what is reality evidence for?" the question is about the beginnings of this reality. Occam's Razor does not cut away the God answer imo.

Agreed. Nor does it rule out the naturalistic alternative. You seem to have ruled it out anyway.

Just how life should be defined is an interesting topic. The Biblical God is said to be spirit, non physical and conscious and intelligent and knowing, so I would not be able to define this God, the source of physical life, as not alive even if I might be able to see God as not wearing out, like a physical body, and so never having begun.

Yes, the definition of life is an interesting topic. Notice, however, that the counterargument (rebuttal) to the claim that all life comes from preexisting life does not depend on whether one calls a god alive or not.

The reality imo is that the only evidence there is for the origin of life is that we know that all life we see comes from other life.

I just rebutted that, and successfully in my opinion. I showed that to be incorrect. Unless you can find a flaw in the rebuttal, the matter is settled as it always is with the last plausible, unrebutted statement. The difference between a correct statement and an incorrect one is that only the incorrect can be successfully rebutted.