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RE: WLC: "You can't prove the negative"
February 24, 2022 at 1:17 pm
(This post was last modified: February 24, 2022 at 1:35 pm by Fake Messiah.)
(February 24, 2022 at 12:28 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: (February 23, 2022 at 8:06 pm)Jehanne Wrote: Can God make a rock so big that he cannot lift it?
Yes, the human heart.
Oh, well, if rock can be a human heart then certainly a polygamist can be a bachelor. Or a guy who only has civil marriage which is not recognized by a Church can be a married bachelor.
(February 24, 2022 at 6:36 am)Jehanne Wrote: But, God never calls me; even a text message would be nice. I get more affection from.some of my Steam buddies than I do from God.
Can an omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles do not add up to 180 degrees?
Can God create a prison so secure that he cannot escape from it?
The answer is no. Omnipotent God is a contradiction.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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RE: WLC: "You can't prove the negative"
February 24, 2022 at 5:31 pm
(February 24, 2022 at 1:17 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: Can an omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles do not add up to 180 degrees?
Theologians used to explicitly make this claim, at least until the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry.
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RE: WLC: "You can't prove the negative"
February 24, 2022 at 5:36 pm
(This post was last modified: February 24, 2022 at 5:37 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(February 24, 2022 at 1:17 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: Can God create a prison so secure that he cannot escape from it?
Well, running with the premise, god does seem to have become a hostage of political organizations whose only use for him is in aggrandizing themselves and cramming his mouth full of their own justifications for their own intentions. Whenever I read some passage in any number of myths about god or the gods being a bit sorry for having made (or helped) humanaity..I giggle just a bit and think "I bet!".
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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RE: WLC: "You can't prove the negative"
February 24, 2022 at 6:13 pm
(February 24, 2022 at 1:17 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: (February 24, 2022 at 12:28 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Yes, the human heart.
Oh, well, if rock can be a human heart then certainly a polygamist can be a bachelor. Or a guy who only has civil marriage which is not recognized by a Church can be a married bachelor.
(February 24, 2022 at 6:36 am)Jehanne Wrote: But, God never calls me; even a text message would be nice. I get more affection from.some of my Steam buddies than I do from God.
Can an omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles do not add up to 180 degrees?
Can God create a prison so secure that he cannot escape from it?
The answer is no. Omnipotent God is a contradiction.
BTW: it is easy to make a triangle whose angles don't add up to 180 degrees. That deduction fails miserably in Labochevskian geometry (where the difference between 180 degrees and the sum of the angles is proportional to the area of the triangle). Alternatively, just have the triangle be on any curved surface.
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RE: WLC: "You can't prove the negative"
February 25, 2022 at 3:26 am
(February 24, 2022 at 6:13 pm)polymath257 Wrote: (February 24, 2022 at 1:17 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: Oh, well, if rock can be a human heart then certainly a polygamist can be a bachelor. Or a guy who only has civil marriage which is not recognized by a Church can be a married bachelor.
Can an omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles do not add up to 180 degrees?
Can God create a prison so secure that he cannot escape from it?
The answer is no. Omnipotent God is a contradiction.
BTW: it is easy to make a triangle whose angles don't add up to 180 degrees. That deduction fails miserably in Labochevskian geometry (where the difference between 180 degrees and the sum of the angles is proportional to the area of the triangle). Alternatively, just have the triangle be on any curved surface. Yup, afaik that how we try to figure out if the entire universe is flat or not.
Cetero censeo religionem delendam esse
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RE: WLC: "You can't prove the negative"
February 25, 2022 at 8:15 pm
(February 24, 2022 at 6:36 am)Jehanne Wrote: (February 24, 2022 at 12:28 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Yes, the human heart.
But, God never calls me; even a text message would be nice. I get more affection from.some of my Steam buddies than I do from God.
Yeah, i feel the same way. Intellectually I understand that God's silence, from a modern perspective, is a feature and not a bug of the system, so to speak, but that doesn't mean I do not find divine hiddenness somewhat distressing.
<insert profound quote here>
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RE: WLC: "You can't prove the negative"
February 25, 2022 at 8:38 pm
(February 24, 2022 at 5:36 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: (February 24, 2022 at 1:17 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: Can God create a prison so secure that he cannot escape from it?
Well, running with the premise, god does seem to have become a hostage of political organizations whose only use for him is in aggrandizing themselves and cramming his mouth full of their own justifications for their own intentions. Whenever I read some passage in any number of myths about god or the gods being a bit sorry for having made (or helped) humanaity..I giggle just a bit and think "I bet!".
To have become? Was he ever otherwise?
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RE: WLC: "You can't prove the negative"
February 25, 2022 at 9:57 pm
(February 25, 2022 at 8:15 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: (February 24, 2022 at 6:36 am)Jehanne Wrote: But, God never calls me; even a text message would be nice. I get more affection from.some of my Steam buddies than I do from God.
Yeah, i feel the same way. Intellectually I understand that God's silence, from a modern perspective, is a feature and not a bug of the system, so to speak, but that doesn't mean I do not find divine hiddenness somewhat distressing.
It's hard to parse a God who is hiding from "something" that does not exist.
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RE: WLC: "You can't prove the negative"
May 29, 2025 at 2:42 pm
I know I am necroposting but I couldn't stop thinking about this, which is that there is a fatal flaw in Craig's claim.
He claims that you can prove the negative and as an example he says "There are no married bachelors", but a "married bachelor" is an oxymoron, not a negative. Disproving a negative is not the same as disproving an oxymoron.
So, yet again, Craig is not just wrong, but also deceiving.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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RE: WLC: "You can't prove the negative"
May 29, 2025 at 2:51 pm
Yes, you can prove a negative. Formally and properly prove. All you have to do is disprove the opposite and let the Law of the Excluded Middle do the rest. It's called Reduction to Absurdity:
The square root of a prime number can never be rational
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