(March 7, 2015 at 11:36 am)Sionnach Wrote:

(March 7, 2015 at 11:22 am)Huggy74 Wrote: Are you saying God doesn't exist?

I cannot and will not speak for every atheist, but I have no qualms making the positive statement that god does not exist, especially considering the underwhelming evidence for his existence. I am confident in making the statement in reference to god's non-existence as one would in also do in relation to the Santa myth.

The difference being, Santa can be proven not to exist, since he supposed to reside at the north pole. In the case of there being a God, you choosing not to BELIEVE isn't based upon fact.
I on the other hand, choose to believe in God. Have I seen evidence? yes, but the evidence is personal to me, and that's what it boils down to, having an experience.
Your entitled to your belief as much as I'm entitled to mine. I haven't started one thread trying to convince anyone of what I believe, in fact I haven't started any threads, I just comment on the ones YOU guys make.

(March 7, 2015 at 12:05 pm)abaris Wrote: Pretty few atheists make a positive claim. I can only say, god is on the same level as fairies for me. Haven't seen one, haven't seen any evidence for their existence, but if a fairy presented itself to me, I would believe in fairies. Same with god.

The difference between you and me is this.
Say we were both homicide detectives and we were investigating a stabbing.
You would need to see the suspect on top of the victim in the act of stabbing in order to consider the evidence, while all I require is a fingerprint at the scene.

(March 7, 2015 at 4:06 pm)Huggy74 Wrote: Say we were both homicide detectives and we were investigating a stabbing.
You would need to see the suspect on top of the victim in the act of stabbing in order to consider the evidence, while all I require is a fingerprint at the scene.

That is the single worst analogy I have ever heard. Beats even the stealing kid one.

A much better one would be: we're rational people and you're just going "aliens!!" at everything you can't explain.

Oh wait.

(March 7, 2015 at 4:22 pm)Norman Humann Wrote: A much better one would be: we're rational people and you're just going "aliens!!" at everything you can't explain.

Yet you miss the point of the video.

I wasn't claiming aliens existed, I was providing evidence that the unexplained Does exist.
Big difference.
You guys were the ones trying to explain what you saw, even though you had no clue what is was.
That is irrational.

(March 7, 2015 at 4:06 pm)Huggy74 Wrote: The difference being, Santa can be proven not to exist, since he supposed to reside at the north pole.

It's a metaphysical north pole, residing outside of time and space. What now?

Quote: In the case of there being a God, you choosing not to BELIEVE isn't based upon fact.

There is no evidence for god, and that is a fact. You cannot choose to believe or disbelieve anything, and if you're tempted to argue that, I invite you to seriously choose to believe you can fly. You'll find it rather impossible.

Quote:I on the other hand, choose to believe in God. Have I seen evidence? yes, but the evidence is personal to me, and that's what it boils down to, having an experience.
Your entitled to your belief as much as I'm entitled to mine. I haven't started one thread trying to convince anyone of what I believe, in fact I haven't started any threads, I just comment on the ones YOU guys make.

So, because you're uninterested in defending or promulgating your beliefs, that's somehow our problem?

Quote:The difference between you and me is this.
Say we were both homicide detectives and we were investigating a stabbing.
You would need to see the suspect on top of the victim in the act of stabbing in order to consider the evidence, while all I require is a fingerprint at the scene.

That's a bad analogy, as you don't have any fingerprints. You're just pointing at blank spaces and asserting that you see fingerprints, and then trying to redefine what a fingerprint is to better suit the argument you'd decided was true before you even looked.

(March 7, 2015 at 4:47 pm)Esquilax Wrote: That's a bad analogy, as you don't have any fingerprints. You're just pointing at blank spaces and asserting that you see fingerprints, and then trying to redefine what a fingerprint is to better suit the argument you'd decided was true before you even looked.

I'm sorry, do you know me?

(March 7, 2015 at 4:47 pm)Huggy74 Wrote:

(March 7, 2015 at 4:22 pm)Norman Humann Wrote: A much better one would be: we're rational people and you're just going "aliens!!" at everything you can't explain.

Yet you miss the point of the video.

I wasn't claiming aliens existed, I was providing evidence that the unexplained Does exist.
Big difference.
You guys were the ones trying to explain what you saw, even though you had no clue what is was.
That is irrational.

You don't get how science works, do you? First, you create a hypothesis (e.g., it's really a balloon), then you test it. Unfortunately, since the guy died and I couldn't afford a trip to Vegas anyway, I can't test it. But, offering up reasonable hypotheses is the first step to making the unexplained explained. If the reasonable hypotheses are proven false, then you can go into more fanciful directions.

An actual interesting example that's happening now - the Dawn probe has seen two unknown, unexpected shiny dots on the surface of Ceres. Astronomers aren't sure what it is. What they're not doing is jumping to conclusions that it's something new or alien. When the probe gets into the right position, they'll run through and check against the usual suspects (namely ice). ONLY IF they exhaust the catalog of likely explanations which we've gathered through our ~50 or so years of space exploration will they then start looking in other directions.

In a larger sense, we as a species may never learn everything about the universe. I'm okay with that. But unexplained things aren't evidence of a deity or anything else. They're merely unexplained. Us not knowing the explanation of it doesn't mean there isn't an explanation, and it doesn't logically follow that the explanation must be divine.

(March 7, 2015 at 4:47 pm)Huggy74 Wrote: Yet you miss the point of the video.

I wasn't claiming aliens existed, I was providing evidence that the unexplained Does exist.
Big difference.
You guys were the ones trying to explain what you saw, even though you had no clue what is was.
That is irrational.

I'm sorry, did you not read the responses? No one said that they knew for sure what that was.

It's not that the "unexplained does exist" it's "some of the things that exist we can't YET explain".

And how is trying to find a rational explanation irrational, exactly?

Because bullshit explanations are so much more entertaining.

Wait until we know more? BORING.

He still doesn't get it - you can't explain that!

Therefore, aliens.

Aliens are cool. No doubt.