(August 27, 2012 at 8:52 am)greneknight Wrote: Religion has a lot to do with upbringing and your childhood. It's really very much a cultural thing. These are things that make people in Christian Forums hate me and accuse me of being a troll and an atheist in disguise. Haha.

Atheist in disguise pretty much sums up my thoughts.

(August 27, 2012 at 7:07 pm)Norfolk And Chance Wrote:

(August 27, 2012 at 8:52 am)greneknight Wrote: Religion has a lot to do with upbringing and your childhood. It's really very much a cultural thing. These are things that make people in Christian Forums hate me and accuse me of being a troll and an atheist in disguise. Haha.

Atheist in disguise pretty much sums up my thoughts.

Belief and knowledge are different things. An atheist is not someone who knows there is no evidence for God and no rational argument either. But people in Christian Forums are uncomfortable about this because they know deep down that I am right.

(August 27, 2012 at 8:47 pm)greneknight Wrote: An atheist is not someone who knows there is no evidence for God and no rational argument either.

Bullshit. An atheist is precisely someone who knows there is no evidence for god. There are also no rational arguments for the existence of god in the absence of evidence.

(August 27, 2012 at 11:28 pm)cato123 Wrote:

(August 27, 2012 at 8:47 pm)greneknight Wrote: An atheist is not someone who knows there is no evidence for God and no rational argument either.

Bullshit. An atheist is precisely someone who knows there is no evidence for god. There are also no rational arguments for the existence of god in the absence of evidence.

By your definition, I should be an atheist but I'm an altar boy and a devout communicant of the Church of England.

All Christians who are NOT ignorant MUST know there is no evidence for God and there is no rational argument for him. Why do you think the people in Christian Forums are furious with me and why do you think they reported on my posts and why do you think the moderators slapped a 3-day ban on me while they review all my posts. They KNOW I was telling the truth. They know there is no evidence for God. When I challenged them to give me one small shred of evidence, they hit the roof. If there were evidence galore for God, surely mentioning just one small fragment of evidence would not be so difficult?

I think all knowledgeable Christians know we have no evidence for God. Some, like me, are honest and we admit it. Others refuse to.

Quote:All Christians who are NOT ignorant MUST know there is no evidence for God

Hang out here for a while and you'll meet plenty of them.

Hello and welcome.

May I ask just how old you are? You strike me as older somehow.

Regardless I'd be interested in your ideas about the bible. How important is it to your faith? As someone who is primarily agnostic but a de facto atheist, I'm always perplexed by the way Christians here in the US profess total faith in every word of it.

I have no problem with your decision to honor your belief in God in the absence of evidence. I can imagine doing the same if my beliefs/intuitions/feelings were different. But I don't understand the fixation on the bible. Your thoughts?

(August 28, 2012 at 1:27 am)whateverist Wrote: Hello and welcome.

May I ask just how old you are? You strike me as older somehow.

Regardless I'd be interested in your ideas about the bible. How important is it to your faith? As someone who is primarily agnostic but a de facto atheist, I'm always perplexed by the way Christians here in the US profess total faith in every word of it.

I have no problem with your decision to honor your belief in God in the absence of evidence. I can imagine doing the same if my beliefs/intuitions/feelings were different. But I don't understand the fixation on the bible. Your thoughts?

Hello and thanks!

I strike lots of people online as being older. I'd like to think I don't write like a teenager and I am more mature and coherent in my arguments. In Christian Forums, I was accused of being a liar and a troll which prompted me to take a holy vow that I was telling the truth and that led a lot of people to hate me because they say you can't take vows without sinning or some such fundamentalist rubbish. But I'm closer to 14 since I was born on 17 December and it's already end of August.

I can understand their fixation on the Bible. The Reader always says "This is the word of the Lord" after each reading and we say "Thanks be to God". So they think the "word of the Lord" must be perfect or he can't be God. So they don't read contextually and take into account the time it was written when folks knew less about everything.

Quote:Belief and knowledge are different things.

Not to most of the dropkick believers we get here. They actually say things like "I KNOW there is a God", then get their knickers all out of focus when anyone demands they prove that claim.

Quote: An atheist is not someone who knows there is no evidence for God and no rational argument either.

Not quite;this atheist asserts only "there is no credible evidence for the existence of god. [ of which I am aware] I make no claims. To assert "I know" is to make a positive claim,which attracts the burden of proof.


That believers and their religions are in principe irrational,crazy or stupid is a common atheist conceit and ad hominem unsupported by the evidence.

Any competent apologist or theologian can present rational,logically valid arguments for their beliefs . However,logic does not guarantee truth. A valid logical inference is true if and only if the premise is true. What no theologian or apologist has yet presented is credible evidence or proof of any of their religious claims.

Hi there, I'm the social pariah of this website. Would you like some negatory with your beliefs? And maybe a side dish of nothingness?

Why of course.

(August 29, 2012 at 12:13 am)padraic Wrote:

Quote:Belief and knowledge are different things.

Not to most of the dropkick believers we get here. They actually say things like "I KNOW there is a God", then get their knickers all out of focus when anyone demands they prove that claim.

Well, 'knowledge' is traditionally defined (going back to Plato) as "justified true belief". This in turn requires a theory of justification that details what it means for a belief to be "justified".

So when you demand that someone prove a claim, there is an implicit assumption of what exactly constitutes a "proof".

But if A and B disagree regarding theories of justification, then what constitutes proof for A might be different than what constitutes proof for B.

Quote:Not quite;this atheist asserts only "there is no credible evidence for the existence of god. [ of which I am aware] I make no claims. To assert "I know" is to make a positive claim,which attracts the burden of proof.

I disagree; I think that anyone who makes a claim has the burden of supporting it. If I'm going to say, "There isn't any evidence that the world is round," I need to support my characterization of the available evidence.

Quote:Any competent apologist or theologian can present rational,logically valid arguments for their beliefs . However,logic does not guarantee truth. A valid logical inference is true if and only if the premise is true. What no theologian or apologist has yet presented is credible evidence or proof of any of their religious claims.

That is demonstrably false. Consider the following:

i. P (premise)
ii. P -> Q (premise)
iii. Therefore, Q (conclusion)

This is a valid logical argument; if P and (P -> Q) are both true, then Q must also be true. However, it is not necessarily true that the conclusion holds only if the premises do:

i. Barack Obama is in Washington, D.C. (Premise)
ii. If Barack Obama is in Washington, D.C., then Barack Obama is in the United States. (Premise)
iii. Barack Obama is in the United States. (Conclusion)

This, again, is a valid logical argument; if (i) and (ii) hold, (iii) must necessarily follow. However, (iii) could be true even if (i) and (ii) didn't hold; hence "(iii) only if [(i) and (ii)]" is false.