RE: Theism is literally childish
November 12, 2017 at 9:10 pm
(This post was last modified: November 12, 2017 at 9:41 pm by John V.)
(November 12, 2017 at 10:13 am)Mathilda Wrote: Citation required. Also a definition of what you mean by inanimate matter vs animate matter. And define life while you're at it.
I see you ignored my example of a car being made up of inanimate matter, yet no one would argue that a car can't be animated. What you are doing is performing a fallacy of composition. It is energy that animates the car. The only difference between inanimate and animated matter is whether there is a flow of energy through it that can perform work. I could have instead used the example of an ice crystal growing, or snow recrystalising over time while the temperature (energy) changes but stays below freezing.
@emjay: I get that some theists appear to be playing word games in order to cling to their belief.
Can you understand that I see the same thing in some atheists?
(November 12, 2017 at 11:09 am)emjay Wrote: I'm glad you're not hurt by it... this is already one of those threads I wish I hadn't partaken in for all the division it's creating. My point about delusion was not that belief in God itself was delusional, but that to the extent that I see (any) belief as emotionally/irrationally driven I find it less credible. But I daresay you're the same;
Yep. See above. The difference is that I see emotionally/irrationally driven beliefs among atheists as well as theists.
Dawkins said that evolution allowed the atheist to be intellectually fulfilled. That's a powerful emotional driver.
Quote:I don't know what came before the big bang, and it may be impossible to know. But I'm comfortable with that.
Copout. When you need to appeal to personal credulity/incredulity and then ignorance and apathy in order to maintain your position, don't you get that I see that the same way you see certain theist arguments?
Quote:Maybe not, but at least it's trying to find them and looking to this universe, rather than speculating about the unknown and unknowable, to do so.
Only materialist bias has you congratulating them for sticking to this universe (which they really don't).
Quote:Fair enough, but it remains the case that magic is not the simplest explanation for... anything.
Do you even know what Occam's razor says? It says that you shouldn't multiply entities needlessly. In the case of a universe with a beginning, as science says ours has, it's not needless to infer an additional entity, i.e. a creator.
Quote:What I'm saying is whether you see me as biased... and clearly you do... any even if you're right... doesn't make any practical difference to how I perceive others; I'm still no more likely see what I personally consider irrational/emotionally driven belief as credible.
You find irrational/emotionally driven arguments that agree with your existing biases as credible. It's only those that go against your biases that you have a problem with.
(November 12, 2017 at 12:13 pm)emjay Wrote:(November 12, 2017 at 11:20 am)Mathilda Wrote: What makes you say that millions of abiogenesis experiments are performed a day?
Again this is a typical theist tactic of just stating something that they wish to be true without any evidence to back it up.
Yeah, I wondered what that was about but at the same time, tbh I'm not hugely interested; the idea still remains perfectly plausible to me in principle based on the nature of chemistry and physics, so if that's referring to human experiments, no amount of them can compare to the billions of years worth of 'trials' nature itself had the chance to perform.
Bingo - billions of years worth of opportunity for abiogenesis, but it supposedly only happened once.
I'd find abiogenesis and evolution more believable if there were multiple instances and trees rather than just one.
(November 12, 2017 at 1:49 pm)Brian37 Wrote: NO, just like a Hurricane doesn't need the ocean God Poseidon as a starting point. Just like Thor isn't a magical gap answer to explain the existence of lightening.
If you are going to say everything comes from something, then where did your God come from?
Problem with your sky wizard as a starting point is that begs the question. YOU claim that everything comes from something else, then that means your God had to be started by something even more complex, and that more complex thing had to be created by something even more complex, and so on and so on and so on. It's called infinite regress.
But, if you claim your God didn't have a cause, then it seems to me the universe wouldn't need something prior either.
Your last statement is philosophically correct. Existence implies either an eternal creator, or an eternal universe. When science hadn't settled on the big bang and alternatives like the steady state universe were possibilities, neither side had an advantage with this issue. The problem for atheism is that science has said for some time now that the universe had a beginning, i.e. it hasn't existed eternally.
(November 12, 2017 at 8:38 pm)possibletarian Wrote: Now here is the problem we have Neo, Christians love to quote scripture, but when it's quoted back at them use this typical type of vague excuse, that the early church thought Jesus would return in their lifetime is not in question to most scholars .
God is under no compulsion to act according to the beliefs of humans, even his followers or chosen apostles. Jesus said no one knows the time of his return except the Father.
