How to select which supernatural to believe?

[Angrboda]

Oh no! I shouldn't have said anything! The movie on at the plasma center today is a sparkly vampire one.

Curses!

[The Grand Nudger]

You don't know much about our history, or even the present reality. 

Have fun gaslighting people. I don't need to read anything about your exciting history of exterminating native americans, to know that the U.S. is a religious country that endorses freedom of speech. Many famous atheists spent their entire careers in the U.S. and were never persecuted once..?

Yes, I know there are many forms of discrimination against atheists in the U.S., like not being eligible to hold office, but this is not state-level persecution.

You're aware that we sometimes burned or hung people to death for religious wrong thought?  I mean..I'll grant you that we've gotten a whole lot better about it and much more quickly than...say...muslim countries......? We're eligible (and do), btw, it's just a risk.

Yeah, sure, we have differences, I get that. That's why it's good to support your claims with objective arguments, with uncontroversial premises.

I doubt it would be productive.  The simple fact that I've never believed in gods was immediately apprehended by you as a controversial premise, and you tried to double down on that.  

Then it's time for you to open any introductory book on the philosophy of religion, to understand why this conditional statement is true.

Pass.  It doesn't follow.  I don't need to open any book to know that.  Fix the argument so that it follows or stuff it.

You're an atheist that has a penis, what an informative presentation of your beliefs and convictions. So, as a theist that has a penis, I kindly ask you to explain why you believe in this afterlife. You can see that I am really trying to find a common ground so that we can finally start a real conversation.

The afterlife won't be that common ground.  I think that we persist beyond our deaths in our children, in memory, and in our physical bodies returning back to their constituent elements and becoming parts of other things. No sex park in the sky full of androgenous fuck drones and rivers of alcohol forbidden to us in life for being good little bootlickers of the islamic trashgod and his pedo prophet.

Still, I find this as comforting and as meaningful as any fairy tale onlyfans party in the clouds seems to people like you.

[arewethereyet]

Oh no!  I shouldn't have said anything!  The movie on at the plasma center today is a sparkly vampire one.

Curses!

[R00tKiT]

I doubt it would be productive.  The simple fact that I've never believed in gods was immediately apprehended by you as a controversial premise, and you tried to double down on that.  

I have no problem accepting that you personally never believed. But you asserting that there are no gods, no afterlife, is a different issue. In other words, the two assertions:

"I believe there is no god/no afterlife"

"There is no god/no afterlife"

are very different. One of them is a mundane statement abour personal belief (obviously unjustified here), the other one is a sweeping statement that nobody managed to prove in the history of philosophy.

Pass.  It doesn't follow.  I don't need to open any book to know that.  Fix the argument so that it follows or stuff it.

I doubt you're taking this seriously, maybe you're confusing this argument with something else. It clearly follows from God being benevolent that he will redress injustice, hence the afterlife. This is probably the simplest argument in theism that I know of, if we can't agree even on that, I doubt we will ever make progress in this kind of discussions.

The afterlife won't be that common ground.  I think that we persist beyond our deaths in our children, in memory, and in our physical bodies returning back to their constituent elements and becoming parts of other things.  

That's more like an afterdeath, not an afterlife. But thank you for reminding us that our bodies will decompose after death, captain obvious.

 No sex park in the sky 

This gratuitous slur we often read about the orthodox conception of the afterlife, shows that atheists have a very distorted view of sex and bodily pleasures. I guess religious people are no longer the ones who view them as filthy.

[The Grand Nudger]

I doubt it would be productive.  The simple fact that I've never believed in gods was immediately apprehended by you as a controversial premise, and you tried to double down on that.  

I have no problem accepting that you personally never believed.

There you go, and it only took a few posts to realize that arguing that point with me made you look like an idiot.  Progress.

But you asserting that there are no gods, no afterlife, is a different issue.

Well..sure.  Once upon a time I didn't know shit.  I was an atheist before I even knew what my own name was, after all.

In other words, the two assertions:

"I believe there is no god/no afterlife"

"There is no god/no afterlife"

are very different. One of them is a mundane statement abour personal belief (obviously unjustified here), the other one is a sweeping statement that nobody managed to prove in the history of philosophy.

Yeah, there's a difference between belief and knowledge...that seems to have been made pretty clear throughout this thread. You think that I can't make a claim to knowledge about your gods. But me..I'm perfectly comfortable doing exactly that.

I doubt you're taking this seriously, maybe you're confusing this argument with something else. It clearly follows from God being benevolent that he will redress injustice, hence the afterlife. This is probably the simplest argument in theism that I know of, if we can't agree even on that, I doubt we will ever make progress in this kind of discussions.

Doesn't follow.  There are any number of ways that a god, if it did exist, and if it did want to redress injustice, could redress injustice...and...to put a superfine point on it...your silly afterlife seems to be an injustice machine, to me.  

That's more like an afterdeath, not an afterlife. But thank you for reminding us that our bodies will decompose after death, captain obvious.

Sure, I don't mind if you call it an afterdeath..though, with respect to living on in memory..it's not really clear that there's a significant difference between that and how we actually exist in life.  I'm a collection of my own memories before I die.  Decomposition is beautiful, and amazing.  You know, if I believed in benovelent gods, decomposition would be a go-to example for me - but I like to grow things..so it may not do for you what it does for me.  

This gratuitous slur we often read about the orthodox conception of the afterlife, shows that atheists have a very distorted view of sex and bodily pleasures. I guess religious people are no longer the ones who view them as filthy.

Yep, that's it.  It's clear, particularly compared to islamists, that atheists have a distorted view of sex and bodily pleasure.  I think we see that all over the globe, obviously.  Why can't we prudish westerners be more like the lovable not at all concerning horndogs you think you are?

[WinterHold]

To believe in ANYTHING supernatural one may as well believe in EVERYTHING supernatural; like witches, goblins demons, gods, talking trees, vampires and dragons to name a few. Why be selective? When no evidence exists for any of them, why dismiss any and not all?

It depends on the source of the info.
If the source is full of nonsense, you dismiss it and vise-versa if the source is full of spot-on stuff.

For example: see how many verses in the Christian bible point to nonsense.
See how many Islamic Hadiths point to nonsense.

Compare it with the Quran which is spot on in every verse; you'll get your answer.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Then both sides will make excuses for why the nonsense isn't nonsense built purely on their own religious  biases because no religious person would ever honestly admit fault in their holy book. Because religion is simply another form of tribalism.

[Fake Messiah]

To believe in ANYTHING supernatural one may as well believe in EVERYTHING supernatural; like witches, goblins demons, gods, talking trees, vampires and dragons to name a few. Why be selective? When no evidence exists for any of them, why dismiss any and not all?

It depends on the source of the info.
If the source is full of nonsense, you dismiss it and vise-versa if the source is full of spot-on stuff.

For example: see how many verses in the Christian bible point to nonsense.
See how many Islamic Hadiths point to nonsense.

Compare it with the Quran which is spot on in every verse; you'll get your answer.

Many people depend heavily on a book to justify their belief in a particular god or gods. Where would Judaism be without the written Torah or Christianity without the Bible? The Bhagavad Gita is precious to Hindus. It is unlikely that Islam could have been so successful without the Koran. The Book of Mormon was the catalyst of a new religion in North America in the nineteenth century.

But there is not one book that contains any good evidence for the existence of a god.

No holy book contains anything so special that it cannot be explained as the work of mere mortals. Believers have tried very hard for centuries but no one has ever found anything in any book that is clear evidence of a god.

Furthermore, the impact of holy books seems to have a limited effect on people. No single collection of sacred words has ever managed to win over most people. This is odd. If one of these books really is a direct message from a god, then why has it failed so miserably to convince so many people? The Bible and Koran, for example, are by far the two most successful holy books ever, but neither one of them is impressive enough to silence the other or to convince even half of the world's people that it is the truth.

They make important claims that are contradictory and cannot be reconciled. For example, one says Jesus is a god; the other says Jesus is not a god. This means that, at the very least, more than a billion believers have been hoodwinked by a book that is not a message from a real god.

The fact that one of these books must necessarily be false, yet still manages to convince so many people that it is true, shows how people can be entranced by a book that is just a book. And if that can be the case for one book, then it could be the case for all of them. So it seems that all holy books, no matter how old or popular, are the work of people and not gods.

[Pat Mustard]

To believe in ANYTHING supernatural one may as well believe in EVERYTHING supernatural; like witches, goblins demons, gods, talking trees, vampires and dragons to name a few. Why be selective? When no evidence exists for any of them, why dismiss any and not all?

It depends on the source of the info.
If the source is full of nonsense, you dismiss it and vise-versa if the source is full of spot-on stuff.

For example: see how many verses in the Christian bible point to nonsense.
See how many Islamic Hadiths point to nonsense.

Compare it with the Quran which is spot on in every verse; you'll get your answer.

You heard it from the hosre's mouth lads, we should just ignore islam. Thanks for finally admitting it winterhold after years of posting nonsense quotes from the qu'ran.

[Jehanne]

I think that Winterhold is proof that human beings can be brainwashed.