(August 22, 2011 at 7:29 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Euthyphro’s dilemma- well played kind sir. I am afraid it creates a false dilemma for the Christian though. God’s nature is wholly good, so God only appeals to His own nature and character as to what is righteous.

This is a classic case of "begging the question". You've defined (declared) that your god's nature is wholly good and then used this unfounded assumption to justify your beliefs that the god you've declared to be good is necessary for a standard measurement of good to exist. Actually, this is a double-beg since you also assume that objective standards of morality exist but that's another issue for another thread.

It seems like when Christians are presented with a dilemma, their instinct is to either blame the devil or babble nonsensically and hope it becomes philosophy gold.

Quote:Well it depends on whether we are talking about an absolute morality that is commanded by God which flows from His wholly good nature or if we are talking about covenantal morality which is set up by God as an agreement between man and Himself.

With the former, we have a classic case of circular reasoning. You've declared Yahweh's commands are wholly good. The reason you "know" this is because Yahweh is wholly good. And a wholly good god couldn't issue anything other than wholly good commands so since his commands are wholly good, we know that Yahweh is wholly good. The circular logic is dizzying.

Quote:Certain laws are designed specifically for the creature, such as not passing judgment upon one another; does God have to also abide by this rule? Absolutely not. So it is inappropriate for people to accuse God of breaking laws that were designed for His creatures not for Him. It would be like a child chastising his parents for staying up past his bedtime. It just makes no sense.

So it seems from your line of thinking, no command by your god could ever be evil. Anything can be justified with the rationalization that it's for our own good in ways we can't understand. And if you can't (or won't) judge the morality of the god you serve, how can you be sure you aren't unwittingly serving the devil?

Quote:You are falsely assuming that God sets any of His children on fire for not loving Him. He justly punishes his creatures (not children) for rebelling against Him, ...

So he doesn't set his children on fire for not loving him but justly sets them on fire for not loving him. Glad we cleared that up.

Quote:Part of the problem is this liberal and relatively new view that we are all God’s children. The Bible is very clear that we are all God’s creatures (Romans 9) but only His chosen people are adopted as His children (Ephesians).

Agreed. Yahweh is a bloodthirsty sadistic tantrum throwing tyrant. Modern liberal Christianity has more to do with modernity and idealism than scripture.

Quote:Whoa, wait a minute, so it would be morally acceptable?

I didn't say that. I said the OT did. I said there are modern examples of religious societies that think so. Religion has a way of condoning inhuman behavior. Do not presume that when I point out what the OT condones that I believe it's OK (often quite to the contrary).

Quote:if there actually was rape condoned in scripture (never seen any proof of this)

Numbers 31:14-18 offers an account of Moses' admonishments to slay all the males and non-virgin females and take the virgin females as sex slaves.

Deuteronomy 20:13-16 Outlines the rules for war in which you can take a cities virgin women as sex slaves (after mercilessly killing all the males of the captured city).

Judges 12 describes the capture of virgin girls from Jabesh-Gilead for the purpose of forced marriage and sex slavery. The rest are killed. When there aren't enough virgins to go around, women from Shiloh are captured for the same purpose.

Deuteronomy 21:11-14 offers the instructions for how to properly rape your sex slaves. Certain "niceties" apply. You must give her six months to mourn her family that you slaughtered, following Yahweh's rules for war. Then you can rape her. If you don't enjoy raping her, you can't sell her. You must let her go.

Quote:Rape was outlawed in Hebrew societies

Only if the victim was married or betrothed to another man (she was his property). If the victim was an unbetrothed virgin, the attacker would be forced to pay a fine to the father (she was his property until being married off) and then he would marry her. Boy, I bet that made her feel better (sarcasm).

Quote:just like it is in the New Convenant.

Chapter and verse?

Quote: But to your question, what makes them wrong is that very sense of empathy and the social contract I mention earlier. I would not want to be raped. I trust you would not either. So how can we not understand the pain of one who is? How can we morally allow one person to endure what we would not want for ourselves?

Quote:Where do you get this notion of don’t do unto others as you would not have done to you? Seems completely arbritery to me. So if the
Marques De Sade
wanted to be sexually assaulted it was completely acceptable for him to sexually assault others? I can see this view on morality causing all sorts of problems.
Judge: “Sir would you want someone to shoot you?”
Defendant: “No sir, but this man was breaking into my house!”
Judge: “I am sorry son; if you didn’t want to be shot you should not have shot the intruder in your house.”

Your examples are so silly as to qualify as examples of "appeal to ridicule".

Quote:Besides, if we are just animals...

Rational animals, not just animals. We form communities and so morality, empathy and codes of conduct are what has enabled us to survive.

Quote:So you are using a Biblical concept, transcendental morality, to argue against the God of the Bible.

I still fail to grasp why you feel the Bible has a copyright on morality.

This is to not even touch the issue of how you feel a book that provides instructions on how to massacre cities, beat your slaves or rape your captured virgins as a book that offers any kind of morality modern society would be comfortable with.

Quote:You are also making a circular logic here, trying to using a logical statement (it works, therefore we should continue to use it) to justify logic.

What part of preference do you not understand? You are the one who has used the word "should", not me. If you wish to eschew science and rational thinking, I'm sure the Amish could use another member of their community.

Quote:If superstitions work then are we justified in using them?

In what way do you feel they are demonstrated to work?

Quote:Science would be impossible in a world not created by God because there would be no justification for the principle of induction.

Again, I fail to understand why you feel I need to justify my use of logic.

Quote:So it’s kind of ironic you would glorify science and then bash the very system that makes it possible.

Christianity has never made science possible. The Age of Enlightenment and the subsequent modern age could only happen because Christianity's power was sufficiently weakened. From heliocentrism to evolution, progress was made not because of but in spite of Christianity.

Quote:No I didn’t, it does, just not from Nature’s God (whatever that is even supposed to mean).

Prove that our conscience must come from the Christian god. I've seen only assertions so far.

Quote:I have, still does not answer my question. He still had to use his senses to tell himself his senses were not reliable. Circularity?

Nope. As the movie demonstrated, he saw and spoke with people who weren't there. It was confusing for him to know true sensory input from false. However, he was able to deduce inconsistencies in some sensory input (the girl never got older) and had a majority of other sensory inputs telling him which ones were wrong (real people in his life).

Could he be absolutely certain? No. He was deducing which realities were more likely to be true given the weight of evidence.

Solipsism is technically true and stupid to live by. I can guess that you don't live by it. When you are on the 10th floor of a building, you most likely choose to navigate the stair way or use the elevator rather than walk out the window wondering if all this reality was really real. If you are trying to argue using solipsism, you are a hypocrite and a sophist.

Quote:I just have a worldview that can give justification for believing in logic and rationality. You do not.

Your "justification" is nothing more than GodWillsIt. You don't even provide chapter and verse as I requested.

Frankly, I've never met a Christian who didn't see their god as a reflection of themselves and their own desires and prejudices. "God" always seems to want whatever they want and hate whatever they hate. Therefore, I strongly suspect that your "justification" is nothing more than your imagination giving you permission to do as you will.

I'm lost on the point of why I need to offer any further justification than "I'm going with what's proven to work" but I'm going to let that argument rest until someone can explain why this reason is insufficient.

Quote:I am sorry, but this whole post is one big red herring,

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.





A "red herring" is an irrelevant topic introduced as to divert attention from the topic being discussed. However, we are discussing your attempts to accuse atheists of "borrowing" from Christianity when it is you who are borrowing in order to attack.

Quote:I never said we should not use science and should not be rational, I simply said that you cannot give sufficient reason for them given your worldview.

Ah, so you are accusing me of using a "strawman", not a red herring. It's not true but you should get your terms straight when you use them. If you're going to bandy around terms for logical fallacies, you lose credibility if you don't use the terms properly.

Quote:This is a claim you have proven to be correct thus far. You equating rational thought with nothing more than personal preference is actually quite disturbing, but I have a Biblical obligation to be rational so maybe that Is why it rubs me the wrong way.

I have yet to see chapter and verse to justify how you fell that obligation to be rational. It's not a strawman to point out that faith is not a call to reason but a rejection of reason. Again, it is belief not only without reason but against all reason, on the basis of someone or some book's say so.

If you want to talk more about the "objective morality" part, I've created a separate thread:
http://atheistforums.org/thread-8220.html

Oh, and if you want more detailed discussion of rape and genocide in the Bible, as commanded, condoned or performed by Yahweh, here's a video I did while debating this very topic with another Christian apologist:

You are a supremely friendly looking (and sounding) kind of dude. Nice cabinets too.

Statler Waldorf Wrote:Hey FNM, did you get your username from the band Faith No More?

Yes, they've been one of my favorite bands since I was little, and I figured it was quite the relevant name for an atheist forums.

Statler Waldorf Wrote:This is a critique of worldviews; the Christian worldview can completely justify the preconditions for intelligibility using scripture. It is the only worldview ever critiqued that can do this. Since knowledge is possible, and it has been demonstrated it would not be possible when any other worldview is consistently used the Biblical worldview is proven true through the impossibility of the contrary. When you say that there may be a worldview that can provide these answers and we just have not found it yet you are fallaciously appealing to ignorance. The atheist needs to propose a worldview that is first of all not self refuting (i.e. empiricism) and that can justify the preconditions of intelligibility or just concede defeat. That is the biggest strength of presuppositionalism; it goes after the atheist’s worldview and proves just how weak it is.

Let’s take just one of the preconditions for example. Uniformity in Nature, namely the laws of nature in the future will resemble those of the past. This provides a foundation for the principle of induction which makes science possible. Can you justify this assumption given an atheistic worldview though?

Again, you are using an argument for the existence of any god to justify your specific god. Being how I am an agnostic atheist, I make no claims to the existence of a deistic god, so my 'atheistic worldview,' as you call it, needs to justify nothing as far as the existence of knowledge. Since I make no claims to a specific god, I don't have to justify the existence of anything to account for the existence or nonexistence of a deity. So pointing out that my worldview can't account for something amounts to nothing, because I make no claims that need to account for anything.

As far as the Christian god is concerned, I do not try to explain the existence of knowledge or uniformity in nature without him, so again, I don't have to account for anything to prove that something can exist without him. I only need to account for my reasons for denying he could exist, which is his contradictory and irrational nature. A personal god that punishes people for their thoughts is wholly inconsistent with the nature of an enlightened being.

In short, your argument only works if I make the claim that no god can possibly exist, and even if I did, your argument can only account for the existence of a non-specific deity. I could come up with an infinite different specific gods that could all account for what you claim is only possible with the Christian god.

(August 22, 2011 at 9:01 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Is God's character the way it is because it is good or is God's character good simply because it is God's character? You simply reorganized the question, you're bankrupt. You have no logic, no reason, no evidence, it is faith alone. Nothing wrong with admitting to faith alone Stat. Believe it's actually thought of as a virtue in your circles. As far as rape, what exactly do you think is meant by "keeping the girls who had never known a man for yourselves." It's official, I don't believe you've actually read the bible. I haven't heard anything from you that didn't fall straight from a discovery institute screed. Word for word. I think you just read their hilarious bullshit and said "Yup, sounds good enough for me" and now you're regurgitating here like it hasn't been knocked down everywhere else it's cropped up.

You are such a poser; I have known this ever since you linked Martin’s TANG, which was refuted over a decade ago. The dilemma is dealing with God’s decrees, not His character, so simply moving it to His nature and character is completely inappropriate. God’s character and nature are the ultimate standard of goodness; a person is not required to use another ultimate standard to justify an ultimate standard. However, given your worldview why would it be wrong for God to arbitrarily declare what is good? You believe that people do this, so why chastise God for doing the same? Special pleading.

You are the one asserting that “keeping the women to yourselves” means rape and not marriage like it clearly states in Deuteronomy so the onus is on your to prove this. However, given your worldview why would it be wrong to rape someone? Animals do it, and you believe humans are just animals right?

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: This is a classic case of "begging the question". You've defined (declared) that your god's nature is wholly good and then used this unfounded assumption to justify your beliefs that the god you've declared to be good is necessary for a standard measurement of good to exist. Actually, this is a double-beg since you also assume that objective standards of morality exist but that's another issue for another thread.

Actually you are engaging in special pleading, you admitted that you cannot justify the laws of logic because they are your ultimate standard for truth, and yet you are asking me to justify God’s wholly good nature even though it is my ultimate standard for good. I provided an answer the dissolved the dilemma, God appeals to something that is neither outside of Himself nor arbitrary, so now you are really just moving the goalposts.

I am still not sure why you keep appealing to logic considering you hold a worldview that cannot account for its existence, but oh well.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: With the former, we have a classic case of circular reasoning. You've declared Yahweh's commands are wholly good. The reason you "know" this is because Yahweh is wholly good. And a wholly good god couldn't issue anything other than wholly good commands so since his commands are wholly good, we know that Yahweh is wholly good. The circular logic is dizzying.

Again, special pleading. You admitted you yourself would have to use circular reasoning to justify logic, and yet you chastise others for using circular reasoning? Circular reasoning is not in itself invalid, and it is something that has to be used sooner or later in order to prevent an infinite regression of justification. I just happen to use it at the very top of my tree of reasoning, at my ultimate standards, where a person is supposed to use it. You use it further down the tree, where it becomes a problem. I guess I could take a play from your playbook and say, “Saying God is wholly good is true because it works and gets results.” Now I totally know why you did that, it’s so easy. :-P

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: So it seems from your line of thinking, no command by your god could ever be evil. Anything can be justified with the rationalization that it's for our own good in ways we can't understand. And if you can't (or won't) judge the morality of the god you serve, how can you be sure you aren't unwittingly serving the devil?

Definitions matter, evil is defined as something contrary to God’s decreed will, so you are absolutely right, by definition none of God’s decrees can be evil just like a married man by definition cannot be a bachelor.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: So he doesn't set his children on fire for not loving him but justly sets them on fire for not loving him. Glad we cleared that up.

Comprehension matters, I clearly said, God never set his children on fire for not loving Him, but will punish His creatures with fire for rebelling against Him. So your analogy about parents and their children was a false analogy because none of God’s children go to hell.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Agreed. Yahweh is a bloodthirsty sadistic tantrum throwing tyrant. Modern liberal Christianity has more to do with modernity and idealism than scripture.

Where do you get your standard of morality to call God that? You are right, liberals root their sense of truth in fallible men rather than infallible scripture; this makes a lot of sense huh?

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: I didn't say that. I said the OT did. I said there are modern examples of religious societies that think so. Religion has a way of condoning inhuman behavior. Do not presume that when I point out what the OT condones that I believe it's OK (often quite to the contrary).

You are behaving in a way that is inconsistent with your worldview which is never a good sign. You clearly stated that morals are determined by societies, so you would have to believe (according to your very own definition of morality) that if one society believed rape was morally acceptable and raped the women of another society this would be am acceptable action. Your worldview can only give you moral conventions but you steal from my worldview and appeal to universal moral laws.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Numbers 31:14-18 offers an account of Moses' admonishments to slay all the males and non-virgin females and take the virgin females as sex slaves.

Deuteronomy 20:13-16 Outlines the rules for war in which you can take a cities virgin women as sex slaves (after mercilessly killing all the males of the captured city).

Judges 12 describes the capture of virgin girls from Jabesh-Gilead for the purpose of forced marriage and sex slavery. The rest are killed. When there aren't enough virgins to go around, women from Shiloh are captured for the same purpose.

Deuteronomy 21:11-14 offers the instructions for how to properly rape your sex slaves. Certain "niceties" apply. You must give her six months to mourn her family that you slaughtered, following Yahweh's rules for war. Then you can rape her. If you don't enjoy raping her, you can't sell her. You must let her go.

Where in Numbers does it say sex slaves? Where in Deuteronomy does it say sex slaves? I see wives, and unless you believe the purpose of a wife is to serve as a sex slave I see no logical reason to believe the Bible is condoning rape here. Whew, I was worried maybe you’d actually could find a verse that said, “Rape is good, mmmk?” Rather than this worn out canard you present here.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Only if the victim was married or betrothed to another man (she was his property). If the victim was an unbetrothed virgin, the attacker would be forced to pay a fine to the father (she was his property until being married off) and then he would marry her. Boy, I bet that made her feel better (sarcasm).

Another worn out canard, consensual fornication was outlawed under Jewish law just like un-consensual fornication. You are really reaching here. Even if rape was condoned by the Hebrews you have already admitted that you could not say they had done anything wrong because morality is determined by societies, so I am not sure why you are even bothering.

“But if in the field the man finds the girl who is engaged, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die. 26"But you shall do nothing to the girl; there is no sin in the girl worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case. 27"When he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her," (Deut. 22:25-28).

Uh oh, punishing rapists with death? Looks like the Bible has even a more strict view on the issue than our “civilized” countries do today.

I found it interesting that later in the passage when talking of the unmarried and un-betrothed girl most translations do not use the word “rape”, however you used one of the few translations that does…hmmm……It’s pretty clear when you honestly exegete the passage the second example is talking about consensual sex between the unmarried man and woman.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Your examples are so silly as to qualify as examples of "appeal to ridicule".

I cannot help if your reasoning appears ridiculous when drawn out to its logical conclusion. If these examples are really that silly, then they should be easy to refute…I noticed you didn’t even try to though….hmm. Just take the De Sade example, why would it be wrong for him to torture women if he himself would have enjoyed this?

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Rational animals, not just animals. We form communities and so morality, empathy and codes of conduct are what has enabled us to survive.

You seem to be appealing to the good of the whole over the good of the individual, where do you get the authority to make such a claim?

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: I still fail to grasp why you feel the Bible has a copyright on morality.

It doesn’t, only the transcendental kind, which you keep appealing to. If morality is really just some evolutionary adaptation that allows us to coexist in societies (something you keep asserting but not proving) then why would you make a charge against God for violating it? He is not an animal that arose through Darwinian means who needs to live in a society. You are acting inconsistent with your worldview, which leads me to believe your worldview needs revision.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: What part of preference do you not understand? You are the one who has used the word "should", not me. If you wish to eschew science and rational thinking, I'm sure the Amish could use another member of their community.

You keep using this argument, as if using it more and more somehow makes it less and less of a red herring. Just because you cannot provide a sufficient reason for invariable abstract universal entities such as the laws of logic does not mean I do not use them, I can justify their use in my worldview.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: In what way do you feel they are demonstrated to work?

Well say a society believed that snakes were evil and magical creatures which should be avoided, this in turn would prevent the people in this society from ever being bitten by a venomous snake. So this superstition works, given your logic that the truth of things are justified by achieving results you have to also believe this superstition is justified. Just because something gets results does not mean it is true, so you cannot use that line of fallacious reasoning to account for the laws of logic.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Again, I fail to understand why you feel I need to justify my use of logic.

If you do not justify it then you are violating the principle of sufficient reason and thus behaving irrationally. If you wish to remain irrational that is up to you, but I prefer rationality myself.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Christianity has never made science possible. The Age of Enlightenment and the subsequent modern age could only happen because Christianity's power was sufficiently weakened. From heliocentrism to evolution, progress was made not because of but in spite of Christianity.

Well the founders of modern science, Bacon, Newton, Galileo, and Kepler all disagree with you. Their reformed views on nature and scripture directly fueled their science because it gave them a foundation for the principle of induction. You cannot justify the principle of induction given your worldview and therefore cannot even justify the use of science. So on the contrary atheists conduct science in spite of their worldviews, not because of them.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Prove that our conscience must come from the Christian god. I've seen only assertions so far.

Already did, no other worldview can account for the preconditions of knowledge as you have demonstrated several times already, so unless you want to admit we can’t know anything, then you are only left with the Christian God. It’s proof by negation.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Nope. As the movie demonstrated, he saw and spoke with people who weren't there. It was confusing for him to know true sensory input from false. However, he was able to deduce inconsistencies in some sensory input (the girl never got older) and had a majority of other sensory inputs telling him which ones were wrong (real people in his life).

So he is using sensory input, what he hears other real people tell him and the fact he does not see the girl age, to verify or falsify his other sensory input. That’s circularity, there is nothing wrong with it, but it is circularity.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Solipsism is technically true and stupid to live by. I can guess that you don't live by it. When you are on the 10th floor of a building, you most likely choose to navigate the stair way or use the elevator rather than walk out the window wondering if all this reality was really real. If you are trying to argue using solipsism, you are a hypocrite and a sophist.

Another red herring, I am not arguing for solipsism, scripture provides me with a sufficient reason as to why I should trust my senses. Unfortunately for you, your worldview cannot provide you with any sufficient reason as to why you should trust yours. You would have great difficulty refuting a solipsist, I would not.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Frankly, I've never met a Christian who didn't see their god as a reflection of themselves and their own desires and prejudices. "God" always seems to want whatever they want and hate whatever they hate. Therefore, I strongly suspect that your "justification" is nothing more than your imagination giving you permission to do as you will.

Anecdotal Fallacy.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: I'm lost on the point of why I need to offer any further justification than "I'm going with what's proven to work" but I'm going to let that argument rest until someone can explain why this reason is insufficient.

That’s because that is a statement you have yet to even prove to be true. How do you prove a law of logic ‘works’? I am still waiting for this one.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I love the Princess Bride, and I was going to post that same video when you kept using the word contradict incorrectly, that’s funny. I assure you it means what I think it means. You keep trying to argue against positions I have never taken (that I want an irrational society) and inferring I have made claims I did not make. If you knew what it meant you would stop doing it, I hope.

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: A "red herring" is an irrelevant topic introduced as to divert attention from the topic being discussed. However, we are discussing your attempts to accuse atheists of "borrowing" from Christianity when it is you who are borrowing in order to attack.

So you do know what it means! You also do know what we are discussing! Then why do you keep saying that if I want to live in an irrational society I certainly can since that is obviously not what I am arguing? Are you intentionally being dishonest or just intentionally using the red herring so you don’t have to actually address my points?

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Ah, so you are accusing me of using a "strawman", not a red herring. It's not true but you should get your terms straight when you use them. If you're going to bandy around terms for logical fallacies, you lose credibility if you don't use the terms properly.

The straw man is a subclass of the red herring fallacy there Bub, at least you recognize you are using fallacious logic though.

Quote: The Straw Man is a type of Red Herring because the arguer is attempting to refute his opponent's position, and in the context is required to do so, but instead attacks a position—the "straw man"—not held by his opponent.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html

(August 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: I have yet to see chapter and verse to justify how you fell that obligation to be rational. It's not a strawman to point out that faith is not a call to reason but a rejection of reason. Again, it is belief not only without reason but against all reason, on the basis of someone or some book's say so.

Equivocation, you are defining faith differently than scripture does but then using your definition of faith to argue against scripture’s commandment for believers to have faith. Bad bad boy. Not sure why you would redefine faith that way, we already have a word that means that very thing, credulity.

(August 23, 2011 at 4:05 pm)FaithNoMore Wrote: Again, you are using an argument for the existence of any god to justify your specific god. Being how I am an agnostic atheist, I make no claims to the existence of a deistic god, so my 'atheistic worldview,' as you call it, needs to justify nothing as far as the existence of knowledge. Since I make no claims to a specific god, I don't have to justify the existence of anything to account for the existence or nonexistence of a deity. So pointing out that my worldview can't account for something amounts to nothing, because I make no claims that need to account for anything.

Very cool, Mike Patton is a very influential figure in world of metal; he is the biggest influence on the vocalist of my favorite band actually.

Actually it is not a prove for just any god, the God who created the world the world we live and can be intelligible would necessarily have to possess the same characteristics as Yahweh, and Yahweh by a different name would still be the God of the Bible.

When you assume the existence of things you cannot account for in your worldview you violate the principle of sufficient reason which renders your actions irrational. So if you want to behave rationally you have to account for the existence of the preconditions of knowledge given the parameters of your naturalistic worldview. The fact that we are engaging in this discussion leads me to believe that you do indeed wish to behave rationally, so you should give an account for the preconditions in order to do so my friend.

Quote: As far as the Christian god is concerned, I do not try to explain the existence of knowledge or uniformity in nature without him, so again, I don't have to account for anything to prove that something can exist without him. I only need to account for my reasons for denying he could exist, which is his contradictory and irrational nature. A personal god that punishes people for their thoughts is wholly inconsistent with the nature of an enlightened being.

Well as I pointed out above, in order to preserve your rationality you are obligated to account for those things. You should at the very least account for how logic and morality can even exist in a world not created and governed by God before you try and use them to argue against God’s existence.

Quote: I could come up with an infinite different specific gods that could all account for what you claim is only possible with the Christian god.

I think you would actually find this far more difficult than you initially thought.

Hope you have a good day!

You realize that the entire point of TANG was to be refuted right? It was a giant joke on you godly types. If TANG is invalid, so is TAG, they are identical in form and function. TANG simply takes the opposite assumption.

The lesson to be learned; "Is" does not imply "ought". Going from factual claims to ethical claims is fruitless.

(This entire discussion has been facepalm example No2, for those that follow such threads)

(August 24, 2011 at 5:06 pm)Rhythm Wrote: You realize that the entire point of TANG was to be refuted right? It was a giant joke on you godly types. If TANG is invalid, so is TAG, they are identical in form and function. TANG simply takes the opposite assumption.

The lesson to be learned; "Is" does not imply "ought". Going from factual claims to ethical claims is fruitless.

(This entire discussion has been facepalm example No2, for those that follow such threads)

It was the very assertion made by Martin that if TANG is refuted TAG is refuted that was refuted decades ago there bub.

Pics or it didn't happen.

You also have a strange concept of time. Clearly arguing for your own definition of decades. Classic.

KENT HOVIND'S ARGUMENT
(1) I don't want to work for a living.
(2) I don't want to pay taxes.
(3) I can get gullible fundamentalists to send me money.
(4) I can use religious exemption claims to tie the IRS up in court.
(5) The IRS can't send me to prison.
(6) Therefore, God exists.

(August 24, 2011 at 5:26 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Pics or it didn't happen.

You also have a strange concept of time. Clearly arguing for your own definition of decades. Classic.

KENT HOVIND'S ARGUMENT
(1) I don't want to work for a living.
(2) I don't want to pay taxes.
(3) I can get gullible fundamentalists to send me money.
(4) I can use religious exemption claims to tie the IRS up in court.
(5) The IRS can't send me to prison.
(6) Therefore, God exists.

What does Kent Hovind have to do with this?

It was refuted in 1996, so we are creeping up on two decades, so I don't have a weird notion of time at all.