(October 4, 2014 at 10:35 am)Deidre32 Wrote: I suppose the rebuttal could be that faith doesn't require reason. At least that is a rebuttal I heard when I left Christianity.

And belief in the tenets of most (all?) religions denies reason.

(October 4, 2014 at 10:41 am)Chas Wrote:

(October 4, 2014 at 10:35 am)Deidre32 Wrote: I suppose the rebuttal could be that faith doesn't require reason. At least that is a rebuttal I heard when I left Christianity.

And belief in the tenets of most (all?) religions denies reason.

A faith which denies reason, requires ignorance.

satsujin Wrote: And what evidence do you have that God doesn't exist. I realize that you can't present any for this negative proof but that doesn't change the fact that you dont have any evidence. So, in a way, you ARE taking something on faith.

I'm sorry but what you're saying makes no sense at all. I surmise you heard it at church, and thought "Ahaaah checkmate, atheists!"

Cute.

You really think that if I don't have proof FOR something, and therefore dont believe in it, I am using faith for my non belief?

How bout fairies? There's absolutely NO proof that they exist, and yet you're saying it takes faith on my part, for me not to believe in fairies? Do you believe in fairies? Do you need faith to not believe in Tinker Bell? Or are you a fucking grown up and know fairy tales are just fairy tales ?

Conversely I could say to you:
If you dont believe in Snifflepots, its based on faith that they don't exist so they could very well exist and if you dont believe that one of them died for all your sniffles, then you're going to honeypot hell forever. That's what you're saying here. You believe in Sniffelpots but you're rebellious and dont want to believe they exist because you want to eat allllll the honey you want, without being held accountable to the Almighty Snifflepots.

Yeah I think it takes faith not to believe in fairies. Not much admittedly since I don't think there are many people my age who DO believe in them. With our herd mentality our beliefs are affected by whether others believe the same or not. A huge number of people do believe in god. But I don't KNOW about fairies. My lack of belief is just that ---a belief without any evidence other than the fact that they are always presented as fantasy not reality. Pretty good evidence so my lack of belief is strong. The future is an open sea of endless possibilities and for all I know fairies may be proved in the future. Belief is not a yes/no matter....it is a gradient of probability.
There is a much stronger case for God than fairies but then we come to all the myriad definitions of which God etc. I just believe in a spiritual consciousness that requires nothing of man and does not interfere in the material world.

One of the main reasons, if not THE main reason for belief in a god is the idea that he CAN and WILL interfere in the material world to aid the believer in the time of need. If you believe otherwise, then your belief is pretty unique...

satsujin Wrote: And what evidence do you have that God doesn't exist. I realize that you can't present any for this negative proof but that doesn't change the fact that you dont have any evidence. So, in a way, you ARE taking something on faith.

Holy fucking shit, did you actually say this?

So, first of all, I need to stress the bizarre nature of your phrasing here: "Can you prove god doesn't exist? I know you can't prove it, but can you prove it? Since you can't prove it, you're as bad as theists!" All in one statement you ask a stupid question, acknowledge that you know why it's a stupid question, and then bring it on home to its stupid conclusion regardless. Where is the disconnect in your brain, that the second sentence didn't just make you stop and delete the first?

Second of all, Luckie has it right: this is a derpy gotcha question that flies in the face of logic, because you don't believe in every claim until it's proven false, and it doesn't take faith to reject a claim for which there is no evidence. A claim does not gain inherent respectability just by virtue of being made. If we believed every claim until it was proved false, we'd be in the position of believing contradictory claims. In fact, I'll make sure of it for you: I have a pet giraffe. I don't have a pet giraffe. If you're truly in the business of accepting claims as true until proven otherwise, you now believe both of those claims, right? That position seem rational to you?

Additionally, faith is believing in something without evidence. I have no evidence for the existence of god, and therefore believing in it would take faith. Not believing in the claim is not the same thing as believing the opposite claim- you can reject that it's hot outside without automatically believing that it's cold, you know- adding yet another layer of incorrectness to your question, so...

Oh, and since I've just made the claim that your question was stupid, and you have to believe every claim until it's proven false, happily that means you now agree with me, right? I guess your question is retracted, then, on the grounds of being stupid.

I love it when theists present self refuting arguments.

I think that God should appear to us like the Cylon model 6 did to Gaius Baltar in Battlestar Galactica. She always appeared when he needed help or advice.

"Can you prove god doesn't exist? I know you can't prove it, but can you prove it?
This is not how I phrased it Esquilax. You are the most hostile on this board so far so it's no fun talking to you. I simply stated that since you are taking a stance on a claim because there is no disproving element to that stance, even though there is no disproving element to the other stance, you are also believing something. Belief is not the same as knowledge. You don't know there is no God. And the question of God is not some random claim like dinosaur creating shoes.
Neither did I say you have to believe every claim until it's proven false. You seem to enjoy putting words in my mouth to support your arguments. All is say is that without presentable knowledge to back you up every stance you take on a claim is based on belief.
However, I think one can safely assume that the God of the entire Bible does not exist since the OT God and NT God are polar opposites. Then again, maybe he just had a change of heart.

(October 4, 2014 at 12:38 pm)satsujin Wrote: "Can you prove god doesn't exist? I know you can't prove it, but can you prove it?
This is not how I phrased it Esquilax.

I know that's not how you phrased it. In fact, I quoted how you did phrase it, so it's not as though I was representing my own spin as though it was yours. However, I reworked it to more blatantly show the problem with the content: you asked a question, acknowledged a sentence later that you knew it was unanswerable, and then proceeded to the conclusion anyway. How is that fair?

Quote: You are the most hostile on this board so far so it's no fun talking to you.

Don't mistake bluntness for hostility: I shall give a bad argument no quarter, especially when it's been answered so many times one could literally write a book collecting those refutations. Outside of this very specific context I'm sure we'd get along fine, but so long as I keep hearing eminently incorrect arguments, I'll keep batting them down.

Quote: I simply stated that since you are taking a stance on a claim because there is no disproving element to that stance, even though there is no disproving element to the other stance, you are also believing something.

You've made an unjustified assumption about atheism here, and that's that atheism necessarily entails belief in the claim that there is no god. It doesn't. Like, it super, super doesn't; in fact, if you actually asked us, you'd find that the majority of us, myself included, will answer that we don't know whether or not there's a god. Nested within that statement is a pretty obvious corollary: we evidently do not believe either way. Like I said, not believing in one thing doesn't automatically mean you're bound to believe the exact opposite.

One could just suspend judgment until evidence comes to light.

Quote: Belief is not the same as knowledge. You don't know there is no God. And the question of God is not some random claim like dinosaur creating shoes.

How is god any different from a random claim like the shoe-making dinosaur, other than that a lot of people believe in it?

(October 4, 2014 at 12:38 pm)satsujin Wrote: "Can you prove god doesn't exist? I know you can't prove it, but can you prove it?
This is not how I phrased it Esquilax. You are the most hostile on this board so far so it's no fun talking to you. I simply stated that since you are taking a stance on a claim because there is no disproving element to that stance, even though there is no disproving element to the other stance, you are also believing something. Belief is not the same as knowledge. You don't know there is no God.

What? Are you really pulling an emotion to justify your disagreement? I have read esquilax's replies to you and they are passionate, yes, but full of reasoning. If you have come here to have people nodding and mindlessly agreeing with you, you should try christianforums. Gods are just a random claim as claiming to shit diamonds. Other methods of thinking, more close to reality have proven beneficial to all of us and you should thank that or relinquish your computer to people that can appreciate that value.

The claims for a god are not even precisely defined, and just because alot of people believe it, doesn't make it true. Almost all people in the world believed the earth was flat at one time, they were wrong.

Quote:And the question of God is not some random claim like dinosaur creating shoes.

Please show us the difference between a god and all the imaginary shit people have invented over the years. They had the excuse of living in more primitive times, no teaching of critical thinking. You, in the 21st century, do not,