(December 30, 2018 at 7:55 am)Gwaithmir Wrote: @ T0 Th3 M4X :

Which tells me that you don't actually have any legitimate evidence for the existence of God and you're just messing with us. I'm not wasting my time with you. Case closed.

Nope.  It tells me you don't have any evidence on the contrary.  Don't waste your time with me.  I didn't invite you.  You invited yourself.  Case closed.

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(December 30, 2018 at 6:25 am)downbeatplumb Wrote:

(December 30, 2018 at 3:23 am)T0 Th3 M4X Wrote: Where did I say I would "show you a supernatural stick?"

I said I would consider the request if it was objective, and I will if it sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure what a "supernatural stick" is even.

At least you are heading in the right direction with it though.   If I come across a "supernatural stick", I'll make sure to let you know so you can consider it.

Please define the supernatural. 
At the moment it seems to me like it is the excuse to why you don't have evidence, and that's all.

You're working off assumptions.  Not interested.

I don't have to give evidence, but I offered to consider it based on what would be considered objective evidence.  Do we really have to go through this again?

(December 30, 2018 at 12:34 am)ResoluteBaptist Wrote: I have all the evidence you ever need.

Come on down to the mountains of East Tennessee. Hike up there early in the morning stand on the edge of the cliff and listen to the birds chirping, watch the foxes darting through the grass and watch the sun rise, poking his bright little head out from behind the clouds.

You look at that and tell me the lord God doesn't exist. Go on and do it!

I love being in the mountains and find them beautiful and awe-inspiring but not being able to explain how something came to be is not license to claim that it had to be a god. That is an argument from incredulity and ignorance and it is truly sad to see people settle for that. When I look at nature it inspires me to try to learn more about geology and evolution and all that the sciences can tell me about what is demonstrably true about how things formed. That understanding gives me a much deeper appreciation for what I'm seeing because I can begin to understand it a little. Deep time is much more impressive than superstition.

(December 30, 2018 at 8:41 am)unfogged Wrote:

(December 30, 2018 at 12:34 am)ResoluteBaptist Wrote: I have all the evidence you ever need.

Come on down to the mountains of East Tennessee. Hike up there early in the morning stand on the edge of the cliff and listen to the birds chirping, watch the foxes darting through the grass and watch the sun rise, poking his bright little head out from behind the clouds.

You look at that and tell me the lord God doesn't exist. Go on and do it!

I love being in the mountains and find them beautiful and awe-inspiring but not being able to explain how something came to be is not license to claim that it had to be a god.  That is an argument from incredulity and ignorance and it is truly sad to see people settle for that.  When I look at nature it inspires me to try to learn more about geology and evolution and all that the sciences can tell me about what is demonstrably true about how things formed.  That understanding gives me a much deeper appreciation for what I'm seeing because I can begin to understand it a little.  Deep time is much more impressive than superstition.

This is evidence for plate tectonics.

(December 30, 2018 at 12:34 am)ResoluteBaptist Wrote: I have all the evidence you ever need.

Come on down to the mountains of East Tennessee. Hike up there early in the morning stand on the edge of the cliff and listen to the birds chirping, watch the foxes darting through the grass and watch the sun rise, poking his bright little head out from behind the clouds.

You look at that and tell me the lord God doesn't exist. Go on and do it!

Come down to our local hospital. Visit the children's cancer care ward, look at the parents anguish, turn on the news see all the starving children.

Do it, and tell me that God exists.

(December 30, 2018 at 9:00 am)IWNKYAAIMI Wrote:

(December 30, 2018 at 12:34 am)ResoluteBaptist Wrote: I have all the evidence you ever need.

Come on down to the mountains of East Tennessee. Hike up there early in the morning stand on the edge of the cliff and listen to the birds chirping, watch the foxes darting through the grass and watch the sun rise, poking his bright little head out from behind the clouds.

You look at that and tell me the lord God doesn't exist. Go on and do it!

Come down to our local hospital. Visit the children's cancer care ward, look at the parents anguish, turn on the news see all the starving children.

Do it, and tell me that God exists.

Missionaries and church groups helping the sick and needy.  What are the atheists doing?  Mostly complaining, whining, and protesting.  The sad part is that you think you have to use the sick and needy to push your agenda, yet many of those patients believe in God.

(December 30, 2018 at 12:34 am)ResoluteBaptist Wrote: I have all the evidence you ever need.

Come on down to the mountains of East Tennessee. Hike up there early in the morning stand on the edge of the cliff and listen to the birds chirping, watch the foxes darting through the grass and watch the sun rise, poking his bright little head out from behind the clouds.

You look at that and tell me the lord God doesn't exist. Go on and do it!

Yes, there are many beautiful places in the world. Some are quite overwhelmingly beautiful.

How does that prove the existence of a deity?

(December 27, 2018 at 1:12 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: A2 is wrong.  The correction is 'vodka and orange juice'.

Boru

And Phillips' milk of magnesia.

(December 30, 2018 at 5:49 am)T0 Th3 M4X Wrote:

(December 30, 2018 at 4:41 am)Rahn127 Wrote: Providing me with a natural stick is evidence of something natural.

Please provide me with a supernatural stick to show evidence of the supernatural.

What is a supernatural stick? How would a supernatural stick prove God?

I'm really not sure what you are talking about here. Maybe define what you mean more clearly.

What is a god ?
I'm really not sure what you are talking about here. Maybe define what you mean more clearly.

(December 30, 2018 at 9:09 am)T0 Th3 M4X Wrote:

(December 30, 2018 at 9:00 am)IWNKYAAIMI Wrote: Come down to our local hospital. Visit the children's cancer care ward, look at the parents anguish, turn on the news see all the starving children.

Do it, and tell me that God exists.

Missionaries and church groups helping the sick and needy.  What are the atheists doing?  Mostly complaining, whining, and protesting.  The sad part is that you think you have to use the sick and needy to push your agenda, yet many of those patients believe in God.

I have an answer for you, Max, unfortunately you will never see it as you have me on ignore because you are afraid of me. Maybe some generous atheist will repost it for you.

Atheists are generous, they just don’t give to charity

Quote:Over at NCRegister, one Father Thomas Willams is busy telling us how selfish and greedy atheists are. In support, he’s dug up the analyses that Arthur Brooks (Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University) did using data from the US Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey. Brooks showed that, after controlling for other factors, people in the US who profess a religion tend to give more to charity than those who don’t.

On the face of it, these results are a slam dunk. Father Williams certainly thinks they are, and Christian commentators don’t bother to dig further (the data were published in the house journal of the US Association of Christian Economists, after all!).

If you look at different countries around the world you’ll find that there is, in fact, quite a strong correlation between religiosity and how wealth is shared out. But here’s the interesting thing: the direction of the correlation is the opposite of what you would expect if religion did actually lead to more giving. Charity is a form of wealth redistribution from the rich to the poor. But if religion leads to greater charity, it does not appear to have any meaningful effect. So what’s going on?

Well, one possibility is that atheists are just as altruistic as the religious – altruism is, after all, an inherently human attribute. Maybe they just don’t do charity to the same extent.

A major demotivator for giving to charity is the presence of free riders. These are people who don’t contribute, but who benefit anyway. If you give to a heart research charity, then everyone benefits whether they contribute or not. If you give to a charity for the homeless, then unless you give an enormous sum your donation will be a vanishingly small portion of the total. So there is a temptation to be a free-rider yourself. The free-rider effect occurs because the utility of charitable giving (i.e. the benefit that accrues to the donor from giving, compared with the benefit that would accrue from keeping the money) is low.

One way to get round this problem is to make giving non-anonymous. If you do this then the donor benefits because their social standing is increased. Two of the most substantial private donors in recent times, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, both benefited in this way from their donations. Both Buffet and Gates are non-religious. And it’s interesting that non-religious doctors are just as likely to work with the needy as religious doctors. This is an environment in which the the donor and the recipient are directly connected – one human to another. And here religion (or lack of it) makes no difference.

Religion can help to counterbalance the free-rider effect. Those religions that include a reward in the afterlife increase the utility of charitable giving to believers, because it provides them with a personal benefit. So religious believers with an incentive to give, even when there are free-riders around.

For altruistic atheists, however,the free-rider effect is much more pertinent. One secular way to get around the free-rider effect is to make giving from rich to poor compulsory, rather than voluntary. In other words, they might prefer that wealth is redistributed via taxation and the welfare state, rather than by voluntary donations. For the religious, this would actually decrease utility because taxation would reduce their surplus cash and so reduce the potential for them to give to charity and reap supernatural rewards.

But is there any evidence that this is true? Well, if it was then you might expect that countries with a high proportion of atheists would have a larger welfare state. And indeed that is exactly what you see. Gill and Lundsgaarde have analysed a cross-section of countries, and found that those countries with more atheists also have higher state welfare spending.

So you see, it is not true to say that more atheists will lead to a selfish, dog-eat-dog society where the weak go to the wall. Atheists are every bit as caring as the religious. They just go about it in different ways.

OMG did someone actually do the “look at the trees” shtick? Ha!

Look, first you need to provide a coherent definition for your god. You need to define properties that would be verifiable and falsifiable. You would then need to point to things in the real world that are exclusively indicative of this thing. So far religion has done this. None.