Two babies discussion.

[Tonus]

The rest of that post was you admitting that you couldn't prove the stuff you believed in, but you had a feeling and you were going with that. There's really nothing to attack there, it's the same old empty rhetoric we get from enrico all the time.

[Esquilax]

My only argument you attacked directly so far is my "told you so" argument, as if I didn't say anything else. I just gave you that one so that you'd have something to respond to and wouldn't feel so bad.

Oh, is that what you think? See, that's odd, because I could have sworn I...

Oh wait, yeah. I did:

MysticKnight's little presentation did a good job of demonstrating the close-mindedness of the the atheist mentality.

So we're close minded for not accepting a bunch of random assertions ("Maybe after this X!" is all the arguments in that example- and your own argumentation- are) instantly?

Well, Lek: Maybe atheism is true, and after death nothing will happen! What's that? You're not going to immediately accept an identical argument to the one in the parable? Oh, you're close minded! hock:

Or is it only close minded when people don't immediately agree with you?

All this even though they know that matter cannot be created from nothing,

So god is right out, then: creating things from nothing is kinda his thing, according to you.

Oh right, arguments only exist when they're being applied to positions you don't already agree with.

and if something was never created and always existed, it has qualities attributed to God.

My mother's name has an O in it, so she also has a quality in common with god. You wanna equivocate again and claim that my mother is god? Or are we just going to acknowledge that singular qualities of things are not sufficient to be that thing?

How can someone examine the origin of the universe or contemplate what exists beyond the edge of the universe and not reason out the existence of something beyond the natural world?

No evidence that the supernatural exists, beyond sophistic con games like the one you're playing here?

The only thing we responded to was the "I told you so" thing, eh?

[Faith No More]

My only argument you attacked directly so far is my "told you so" argument, as if I didn't say anything else. I just gave you that one so that you'd have something to respond to and wouldn't feel so bad.

If that's you all you got from the responses, I would go back and re-read.

Maybe what you meant was that the "told you so" argument was the only one you want to acknowledge?

[KevinM1]

My only argument you attacked directly so far is my "told you so" argument, as if I didn't say anything else. I just gave you that one so that you'd have something to respond to and wouldn't feel so bad.

Apparently you didn't read page 7.

The baby story is ridiculous for several reasons, the biggest being that it's "correct" because the author has knowledge their characters lack, and the hero baby is written to express those things despite there being no in-story evidence for them.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't come to the defense of the story if it was written honestly, and the second baby said that the post-birth universe was really a substrate of Spam and Tang, where Underpants Gnomes wage a vicious conflict against the Nose Goblins. Because, for the womb-universe presented in the story, that's just as likely an outcome.

Even more, the story's womb-universe is flawed. Sound can travel from outside a mother's womb to the inside. So neither baby would be without clear, verified evidence of a life outside the womb. I understand the flowery "sit still and listen and you can find god" statement, but it's worthless. It's conflating a false premise (that a womb is, apparently, a vacuum where no outside stimuli can be detected) for a true one (there isn't any verifiable evidence for a god, any god).

It's an intellectually dishonest story at its core, propped up by flowery language that doesn't actually mean anything. Sounds like religion to me.

[Mister Agenda]

How does the second baby know all that stuff?

[Norman Humann]

How does the second baby know all that stuff?

It's a magic baby. With superpowers and X-ray vision.

...'Duh'.

[Esquilax]

How does the second baby know all that stuff?

Faith, presumably. Because faith makes things true, somehow?

[KevinM1]

How does the second baby know all that stuff?

Faith, presumably. Because faith makes things true, somehow?

Which is really the funniest thing about Lek's comments.

"Tut tut, you wait for evidence and reason before coming to conclusions, and those conclusions can change in the face of new evidence. Poor, deluded fools. I base my world view on morally reprehensible Iron Age myths that present an internally inconsistent, incoherent depiction of a god that's both one thing and three things when the story demands it! Take that!"

I mean, really?

[Jenny A]

MysticKnight's little presentation did a good job of demonstrating the close-mindedness of the the atheist mentality. They exist every day in their little scientific boxes, hoping that scientists will discover for them the cause and reason for life. If that cause and reason doesn't fit in their little world view, they reject it and wait for their scientists to hopefully, someday discover that for them. All this even though they know that matter cannot be created from nothing, and if something was never created and always existed, it has qualities attributed to God. How can someone examine the origin of the universe or contemplate what exists beyond the edge of the universe and not reason out the existence of something beyond the natural world?

Nonsense. You can make up a story in which someone pulls the right answer out of their ass, but that doesn't make pulling answers out of your ass a clever way to find the truth. Remember, Mystic Knight made it up about the first baby being right. The problem with the baby story is figuring out HOW the first baby guessed right, because the chances that it would are astronomical.

[h4ym4n]

How does the second baby know all that stuff?

It had a NLE?

Near life experience.