A good case against God

[CliveStaples]

Yes you have; you claim it with every post you make (your title). Let's not try and ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to your own beliefs. You believe god is true, and I have to assume that you have your reasons for beleiving. Unless you can bracket out your faith depending on the thread...

There is a difference between believing something and claiming that it is true in a debate. If you are honestly taking this approach, then any post--be it about abortion, mathematics, politics, etc.--made by me is also asserting the existence of God.

So if I were to, say, create a thread where I argued that capitalism is superior to communism, you could reply by claiming that God didn't exist and that I need to support my claim that He does. And under your theory, you would be on-topic.

Doesn't that seem ridiculous? Disclosing my belief and advancing an argument aren't the same thing. If someone asks me, "Hey, are you Christian?" and I say, "Yeah, I'm Protestant," that's not the same as me going up to that person and saying, "Protestantism is true."

Honestly, if that's how the religious disclosure is being interpreted, then I'll just change it. Because you guys are just using it as a distraction so that Taq can get away with an unsupported claim. Which is totally dishonest bullshit, coming from people so goddamn pious about their commitment to reason and logic.

But that's the point; you can already means test the claim by simply providing evidence. Like I posited in my previous post; if we reduce the whole debate to its logical origin, it's the old "god exists" - "prove it" debate. The reason Taq has posited the above is because we've been asking for evidence for as long as there has been a god to (dis)prove.

Sure, just like atheists can 'means-test' theist claims by providing evidence that God doesn't exist. But that's the fallacy of an argument from ignorance; I don't have the burden of disproving your assertions, or Taq's. If you claim something, support it or retract the claim.

This is precisely the same bullshit that supposedly irritates you guys about theists, and you're doing exactly the same thing. It's pretty hilarious--and shows exactly how committed you guys are to reason and logic.

I, for one, am not 'shouting at you' about anything at all; im merely pointing out that, regardless of the virtue/vice of taq's statement, there is still the little problem of the premise (ie god) still being unproved, unevidenced, undefined, and hence unbelievable (at least from my/our perspective).

Sure, it's unproved, whatever. I'm not disputing that. I was never disputing that. Anyone who read my argument would know that. Anyone who pretends my argument was about that is either fucking illiterate or playing dumb to cover Taq's ass.

Indeed. But, again and again and again, the base claim of the entire debate at hand is still god(s). The OP was demonstrably wrong in its assertion as it is shifting the burden of proof. That's the real root of the debate.

And you're shifting the burden now; you guys get to claim that something is impossible, and (according to your argument) the burden is on me to disprove it.

In fact, let me come at this from an altnernatively angle. Without any judgement on the possible answer; can you provide evidence for your god or gods? I mean, do you think it's possible for you to provide evidence?

Can I provide it? I don't think I have any now, other than perhaps an argument from morality. But that's not really evidence as such; more like an intuitive argument.

Is it possible to provide evidence that God exists? That is, evidence that demonstrates that God exists? Perhaps evidence that demonstrates to some degree of certainty that God exists? I don't know. Perhaps it's possible, perhaps it's impossible. I'm not convinced one way or the other. And without knowing really rigorously what is considered 'evidence', it's hard to even know what would count.