(April 23, 2014 at 9:30 pm)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: Really, the earth is only 6,000 years old? That's all your omnipotent deity has got?

This is a very weak argument against very weak theism. A god of the gaps simply isn't a viable god and can be easily dismissed. The real problem, if you want to try and address it, is that god cannot be disproven ... which is frustrating for the atheist who wants to dismiss it. In a way, that's the perfection of the consideration. If god is dismissible then it isn't god. Catch 22.

The reason this doesn't then invalidate god/s is the proceeding purpose that is realised. The whole strength of the believers faith is deep rooted in the perfection of the deities mystery.

(April 10, 2014 at 3:20 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Now that you've been duped into opening this thread, you might as well help us with our little survey to find out your opinion of what atheism is all about.

Thanks for your time.

Love,
Me

God(s) as a concept does exist and has persisted for thousands of years. That in itself is worthy of enquiry.

We know that children are predisposed to invent supernatural beings to explain the purpose of things, Olivera Petrovich of the University of Oxford has found these cognitive biases to be so strong that children spontaneously create the concept of god without adult intervention, "They rely on their everyday experience of the physical world and construct the concept of god on the basis of this experience." Because of this when children hear the claims of religion they seem to make perfect sense.

Adults who are brought up specifically to reject any notion of god, by parents who thought they were doing the right thing in raising enlightened children, often display psychological frailties and even in some cases, dysfunction. It does seem these childhood constructs help with our psychological development and we carry these processes into adulthood.

Jesse Bering of Queen's University Belfast had one of his students carry out some interviews with atheists from which it was clear that they often tacitly attribute purpose to significant or traumatic moments in their lives, as if some agency were intervening to make it happen. He says "They don't completely exorcise the ghost of god - they just muzzle it."

Scott Atran of the University of Michigan says this difficulty in jettisoning beliefs is 'the tragedy of cognition.' With our capacity to remember past events and anticipate future events it is easy to see how things can go wrong - including death. There is a need to ' ... figure out a solution, otherwise you're overwhelmed... when nature gives us a get-out-of-jail-free card we take it."

While these theories provide some insight into the myriad complex processes that are part of our systems of belief and the establishment of supernatural beings as 'cognitive parking spaces' in times of emotional crisis, there is no clear overview. The question that we should be asking is do religions and gods have a useful part to play in our psychological development and would it be detrimental to our psychological wellbeing to eliminate them entirely?

I think that makes them worthy of enquiry.

MM

Man Machine, do you have a good source to link us to? I searched for the Olivera Petrovich quote, found a blog post on it, and found that their source wasn't free content: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20...?full=true

(April 24, 2014 at 9:31 pm)Coffee Jesus Wrote: Man Machine, do you have a good source to link us to? I searched for the Olivera Petrovich quote, found a blog post on it, and found that their source wasn't free content: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20...?full=true

The only link I have is a pay link (see below). The link to the paper is just below her Bio. You might be able to search the title of the paper, there might be some extracts out there, I've not tried that.

Olivera Petrovich

MM

Which "god", why 'your' "god", why not the other guys "god"?

Is this a battle of the gods?

Allah vs God vs Zeus?

Winner take all?

how does this go down?

I guess my answer would have to be settled in the ring but honestly my money is on Thor dude is bad ass.

But in all honesty because no historical data supports jesus.

More interestingly common sense. Tell you what, if a dude walked on water or raised the dead today, I promise you that would be WORLD WIDE within hours, non-believers would believe and people be writing all this down, documentation from here to china.

But there is no documentation outside the bible that isn't fake.

(April 25, 2014 at 6:46 am)BlackSwordsman Wrote: Which "god", why 'your' "god", why not the other guys "god"?

Is this a battle of the gods?

Allah vs God vs Zeus?

Winner take all?

how does this go down?

I guess my answer would have to be settled in the ring but honestly my money is on Thor dude is bad ass.

But in all honesty because no historical data supports jesus.

More interestingly common sense. Tell you what, if a dude walked on water or raised the dead today, I promise you that would be WORLD WIDE within hours, non-believers would believe and people be writing all this down, documentation from here to china.

But there is no documentation outside the bible that isn't fake.

There are historical records of Jesus and his crucifixion outside of Biblical references.

It's very easy to find, try google or Wikipedia. Here I've done a search for you.

Historical Jesus Stuff

Don't always take what you read to be absolute truth, research a bit more. Equally do not go into anything with your mind made up and looks for ways to justify that, keep an open mind and be prepared to adjust your point of view, you will be a more balanced Buddhist for it.

MM

(April 24, 2014 at 6:05 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: The real problem, if you want to try and address it, is that god cannot be disproven ... which is frustrating for the atheist who wants to dismiss it.

I think the frustration is from the fact that god cannot be proven, and therefore the claim that he cannot be disproven is used to try to settle the matter. I think that in our day-to-day lives, for anything other than god and sports, we are willing to dismiss things that we cannot prove or disprove (I'm looking at you, "clutch hitting"). While the references to things like Santa Claus or unicorns are made semi-seriously, they do show that most of the time we easily reject such ideas on the basis that if you can't prove it, I don't need to treat it as anything but a myth.

(April 25, 2014 at 7:22 am)ManMachine Wrote:

(April 25, 2014 at 6:46 am)BlackSwordsman Wrote: Which "god", why 'your' "god", why not the other guys "god"?

Is this a battle of the gods?

Allah vs God vs Zeus?

Winner take all?

how does this go down?

I guess my answer would have to be settled in the ring but honestly my money is on Thor dude is bad ass.

But in all honesty because no historical data supports jesus.

More interestingly common sense. Tell you what, if a dude walked on water or raised the dead today, I promise you that would be WORLD WIDE within hours, non-believers would believe and people be writing all this down, documentation from here to china.

But there is no documentation outside the bible that isn't fake.

There are historical records of Jesus and his crucifixion outside of Biblical references.

It's very easy to find, try google or Wikipedia. Here I've done a search for you.

Historical Jesus Stuff

Don't always take what you read to be absolute truth, research a bit more. Equally do not go into anything with your mind made up and looks for ways to justify that, keep an open mind and be prepared to adjust your point of view, you will be a more balanced Buddhist for it.

MM

The fact that you referenced wikipedia terrifies me. In that "source" alone it referenced bible verses. Besides Anyone can make a page there and call it fact. Truth is there really isnt any historical records of a "jesus"

in fact let me show you WHO these people are referencing

1. "Amy-Jill Levine is E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studie"

2. "L. Scott Kellum, Ph. D. Associate Professor of New Testament and Greek
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary"

3. jesus Remembered by James D. G. Dunn 2003: James D. G. "Jimmy" Dunn is a leading British New Testament scholar

4. William R. Herzog II is widely respected for his Biblical scholarship

5. Craig Alan Evans is an evangelical New Testament scholar and author

6. Markus Bockmuehl is Professor of Biblical and Early Christian Studies at Keble College

7. Bart D. Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar

8. Bruce Chilton is a scholar of early Christianity and Judaism, now Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College

Seems to me like if you go through the "sources" they all seem pretty bias, I am amazed ken ham was not cited.

But I am sure if you asked Ken Ham if jesus existed he would say yes.

I tend to look outside the bible, and get my answers from non biblical sources.

I saw a few non-christians in there who had a strong leaning towards religion but did not have time to cite all 136.

But after reading them most of them are christian based, and well we know how "solid" that can be

honestly if atheist cant disprove a god that has been give traits that do not match observation like rising from the dead then said atheist needs to keep the hole under his nose shut. But, then again these types don't talk out of that hole do they.

I guess it is why most tend to attack and dehumanize this "perceived" enemy ... The theist. If you can separated the notion that you were screwed (literally in some cases) by a person then religion becomes easy to put it in its place. But with the hate approach, or fairy tale tale fighting (bad gods bible crap), it only forces the theist to clam up.

this will never end I guess ...the average IQ is 100 on both sides ...

(April 25, 2014 at 8:11 am)Tonus Wrote:

(April 24, 2014 at 6:05 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: The real problem, if you want to try and address it, is that god cannot be disproven ... which is frustrating for the atheist who wants to dismiss it.

I think the frustration is from the fact that god cannot be proven, and therefore the claim that he cannot be disproven is used to try to settle the matter. I think that in our day-to-day lives, for anything other than god and sports, we are willing to dismiss things that we cannot prove or disprove (I'm looking at you, "clutch hitting"). While the references to things like Santa Claus or unicorns are made semi-seriously, they do show that most of the time we easily reject such ideas on the basis that if you can't prove it, I don't need to treat it as anything but a myth.

As you say, he has no problem rejecting unicorns and leprechauns as myth, but doesn't seem to have any method to distinguish those mythological creatures from his mythological creature.

Frodo himself is guilty of the same dismissal of entities with no evidence, except his deity is protected by lapse in reasoning where it suddenly had to be disproven.

It's a simple reversal of burden of proof, due to cognitive dissonance, and the same magical thinking demonstrated by every superstitious belief in the supernatural worldwide.