Texas Sailor,

I am still waiting for your reply.

Ask me instead. I am in the mood for a game of twenty questions.

(August 26, 2013 at 6:05 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: It's better to not be determined to do anything beyond have a determination to know what is actually true. It is thoroughly possible to come to a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence and philosophical argument to conclude that atheism/naturalism while it can't be 100% discounted like any metaphysical belief is very unlikely to be true.

So... it is better to not be determined to do anything but be determined?

The atheist/naturalist view seemed far less likely when we had a more limited understanding of our universe. The farther back you go and the more limited the understanding, the less likely it seemed. The more we learn and understand about our universe, the more likely it seems. The reverse seems true for religious claims and belief systems. It may not be long before your latter statement is amended to remove the "very." And perhaps not much longer before we remove the "un" from "unlikely" as well.

(August 26, 2013 at 6:13 am)Tonus Wrote: The atheist/naturalist view seemed far less likely when we had a more limited understanding of our universe.

A little bit of science will take you away from God but a lot of science will bring you closer to him. Once you understand everything that was involved in a creation of the universe such as this and ultimately humanity is becomes very difficult to see it in terms of a blind natural force.

(August 26, 2013 at 6:13 am)Tonus Wrote: The farther back you go and the more limited the understanding, the less likely it seemed.

The Bible if you read what it says about the universe and Gods relationship to it, though it gets a number scientific details of the universes construction wrong (they thought the Earth was flat and stood on pillars), still stands up to scrutiny today. You will it powerfully moving to read.

(August 26, 2013 at 6:13 am)Tonus Wrote: The more we learn and understand about our universe, the more likely it seems. The reverse seems true for religious claims and belief systems. It may not be long before your latter statement is amended to remove the "very." And perhaps not much longer before we remove the "un" from "unlikely" as well.

I already went through the atheist stage in my mid teens to mid 20s so I've given it a decent go. If you want to get properly serious about your atheism have a read of Lucretius On the Nature of Things, it sums up your view of the universe very nicely. The Satanic Bible by Anton Lavey while it may be some kind of deism is also good satire of religion from the naturalists perspective and The Grand Design by Stephen Hawkings will give you a few pointers of what a purely material/natural universe would in practice involve.

You can read On the Nature of Things online, it's as close as a thing as you can get to an atheist religion text, though he would have seen it as a religion in itself not a lack of one.

http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.1.i.html

(August 26, 2013 at 6:32 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: A little bit of science will take you away from God but a lot of science will bring you closer to him.

So now you are making an affirmation that science proves the existence of god? If that is the case, then why are science books not devoted to creationism and god? Rather than overload your simple mind, I will simply give you the truth you are unwilling to accept.

Science does not prove god any more than religion proves morality.

(August 26, 2013 at 6:32 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: I already went through the atheist stage in my mid teens to mid 20s so I've given it a decent go.

So you went from being smart to being stupid. Not something of which to be proud.

(August 26, 2013 at 6:32 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: A little bit of science will take you away from God but a lot of science will bring you closer to him.

This may be what you believe, but the guys and gals who are familiar with 'a lot of science' overwhelmingly disagree.

Quote:The Bible if you read what it says about the universe and Gods relationship to it, though it gets a number scientific details of the universes construction wrong (they thought the Earth was flat and stood on pillars), still stands up to scrutiny today. You will it powerfully moving to read.

I have a headache.

(August 26, 2013 at 6:39 am)Maelstrom Wrote: So now you are making an affirmation that science proves the existence of god? If that is the case, then why are science books not devoted to creationism and god? Rather than overload your simple mind, I will simply give you the truth you are unwilling to accept.

It doesn't prove the existence of God one way or the other. It can influence your own opinion one way or the other depending on how you see it. You either see it as either the explanation itself or the thing that needs the explanation.

Quote:So you went from being smart to being stupid. Not something of which to be proud.

I didn't go from being anything to anything, I just had a change of mind it's allowed if you're a freethinker and not locked into a dogmatic/rigid frame of mind. Atheists like yourself are really just like the religious fundamentalists only on the other side, we're talking about the exact same people. I think you're deserving of being exposed to the wisdom of the Space Gnome after making a comment like that.





This is aimed specifically at yourself not necessarily the more moderate reasonably minded atheists on here.

(August 26, 2013 at 6:54 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: This is aimed specifically at yourself not necessarily the more moderate reasonably minded atheists on here.

Thank you for your misguided consideration. I decided to not watch the video the same way you ignore intelligent discourse on these forums.

(August 26, 2013 at 7:04 am)Maelstrom Wrote: Thank you for your misguided consideration. I decided to not watch the video the same way you ignore intelligent discourse on these forums.

You were entirely right to skip the inane discourse of the space gnome; it's basically one long self satisfied troll screed, the kind that sword of christ must like, being that it's entirely self congratulatory projection without a hint of evidence or logic to be found.

(August 26, 2013 at 6:12 am)Maelstrom Wrote: Ask me instead. I am in the mood for a game of twenty questions.

I asked you one on page 42.

But I will ask it again:

Are you convinced that your views about reality are true?