(October 8, 2018 at 10:12 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: 2. If we have the burden proof, you have the burden to accept the proof if proven to you or show that the burden has not been met.
Yes, I think this is a reasonable request.
I know that some people like to call on formal rules of debate, and declare who exactly has the burden of proof and who doesn't. But I don't think that genuine good-faith conversation, in which the goal is to head toward mutual understanding of the truth, needs to adhere to rules as if it's a chess match.
If you make a claim, and I want to discuss it with you, it is just friendliness -- to you and to our mutual desire for the truth -- to explain why I don't accept it. And why should we have a conversation if we're enemies? We are friends because we ultimately want the same thing. It doesn't help to be unnecessarily fighty in our approach.
And I agree that honest debate demands that if you really have proven your point, I have to accept it.
Quote:3. God by definition is the most important being, if an approach to this is made by jest and his scriptures approached with no seriousness, then whether he exists or not, forgive Theists for seeing it irrational and evil to belittle what by definition most revered being in existence.
4. It won't ever make sense that hating goodness for what is: is irrelevant to morality and hence, if goodness is God's light that hating that mystic link, would be hating for what it is at it's heart.
5. When we value beings, we value the value in them, if you hate value being linked to God, and value is linked to God, do you hate or love true value of things or do you just make up what value is and attribute to them...try to understand not only the issue of God existence is of vital importance then to love and appreciating and empathy, but that truly to act for the face of God in all things requires to recognize the face of God and his word of light brought to life.
This is also good to keep in mind. I have sympathy for these positions. (Which I see as different aspects of one claim.)
We non-believers may have things sorted into different categories from believers. To many atheists, discussion about God is about some impersonal creative power, or some king-like supreme being. But Christians and Muslims have never seen it so simply. For them, God is always inherently that which is best, most valuable, and that which we should most sincerely respect. So atheists' disrespect for (what they see as) an unproven ontological claim, to believers comes across as a thumb in the eye of all that is good and valuable.
I'm not taking sides here -- just describing how I think the debate may come across. But again, if we want a sincere dialectic toward understanding, these differences of approach are good to keep in mind.
