RE: Why do you not believe in God?
July 14, 2012 at 12:55 am
(This post was last modified: July 14, 2012 at 1:18 am by Jeffonthenet.)
(July 12, 2012 at 12:35 am)cato123 Wrote:(July 11, 2012 at 9:20 pm)Jeffonthenet Wrote: If the God of Jesus Christ exists there is a good possibility that you will go to hell when you die… that seems enough of a reason to take the question seriously.
"If the God of Jesus Christ exists"? Are you now unsure?
I then have to move on to your quote, "there is a good possibility that you will go to hell when you die..". According to you, not only is Jesus' existence subject to an 'if' statement, you also proclaim that there is only a 'possibility' of going to hell. How kind of you.
For someone endeavoring to earn an advanced degree in theology you are woefully ignorant of Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Luther and Pascal.
I've read a lot of Luther, Anselm and Pascal and a reasonable degree of Augustine and Aquinas. The "if" statement was for you because I am not addressing a Christian. The second "if" was because I don't know for sure who goes to hell and a lot of theology has gone on after Pascal (17th century).
(July 12, 2012 at 12:16 am)Taqiyya Mockingbird Wrote:(July 11, 2012 at 12:37 am)Jeffonthenet Wrote: I have studied logic a little and I would disagree.
1. The absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absence
2. Therefore I must accept all God claims (catos "proposed postulate")
How does 2 follow from 1?
So here it is: you fail to provide evidence to support your god claim just as miserably as any other proponent of any and every other god claim, and any proponent of any other imaginary creature . All are on equal footing. If you claim one is real and expect others to honor your claim, you cannot reject the claims of any other, because they have precisely as much evidence to support their claims as you do , and you have no more than they do.
You can’t be so fucking stupid as to not understand this. Nobody with a IQ over a Chia Pet's is THAT fucking stupid.
Even if I accept that there is no more verbalizable evidence for God than unicorns, how does it follow that there are equal reasons to believe that they exist? As I have said many times on this site, we all accept beliefs based on intuition (the philosophical term is properly basic beliefs).
Your claim is,
1. We have no more evidence for unicorns than for God
2. Therefore it is irrational to believe in God
Based on this logic I could also say
1. We have no more evidence for basic logic than for unicorns (any argument for logic would be circular)
2 Therefore it is irrational to believe in basic logic
I also want to make clear that it is possible to experience God personally, and so simply because you cannot verbalize the experience perfectly doesn't make it unreal or invalid. If discount the possibility of this apriori you are attacking a straw-man.
(July 11, 2012 at 9:49 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:(July 11, 2012 at 9:20 pm)Jeffonthenet Wrote: If the God of Jesus Christ exists there is a good possibility that you will go to hell when you die… that seems enough of a reason to take the question seriously.
Honestly, I have taken it seriously. I myself did fear the Abrahamic God, feared it to an overwhelming degree....
But now I realize such a being is not worthy of worship. It's not great, it's not majestic, it's not honourable.
Even if for some reason, people were evil for not believing in Christianity, why can't God forgive them? Are they that bad? Do you feel such cold wrathful vengeance over disbelievers, that you believe they should be tortured and tortured for this disbelief?
Is that a being worthy of Worship? Is that the honourable thing to do?
Maybe the God you have rejected is one who has been misrepresented. In the bible Jesus seems more concerned with condemning hypocritical believers than with unbelievers. And I do think the eternal conscious punishment thing may be debatable. Annihilationist theologians can be quite persuasive. (they teach that people at some point at least cease to exist in hell)
(July 11, 2012 at 6:34 am)Skepsis Wrote:(July 11, 2012 at 12:37 am)Jeffonthenet Wrote: I have studied logic a little and I would disagree.
1. The absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absence
2. Therefore I must accept all God claims (catos "proposed postulate")
How does 2 follow from 1?
I haven't studied logic. I feel the same about "studying" logic as I do studying, say, the average charge of Mars's surface.
Logic, to me, is a tool and in depth studies of this tool wouldn't make it any better at destroying your God claims.
With that out of the way, I'll address your objection in the greatest detail I can.
Proposition (Made by you): "The rejection of God is an illogical leap from there being no evidence for such a being" (Paraphrase, I'm not quoting directly)
Responce: If there isn't any evidence for God yet you insist that the God hypothesis ought not be ruled out, then you must also logically affirm the same of anything that lacks evidence. Because the number of things that lack evidence is concieveably infinite, the number of unfounded beliefs you must accept is also infine- that is, if you want to hold to your claim that things that lack evidence shouldn't be ruled out as unfounded.
I would contend that ironically the burden of proof is yours if you say that we ought to rule out God. Is that not a positive claim? Because in one instance I don't rule out a hypothesis without verbalizeable evidence doesn't mean I am committed to ruling in others without verbalizable evidence.
1. There is one instance where I don't rule out a hypothesis without evidence
2. Therefore I must not rule out every hypothesis without evidence to not be a hypocrite
By this logic it would seem that police are committed to ruling out as a suspect anyone who they cannot prove did the crime. It is, I have heard, for this reason, a principle of criminology that the absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence.
Quote:You have the same problem that so many thesits I have spoken to have: You think that you either believe a given proposition or its inverse, which is simply untrue. How do I know you think this? By virtue of your responce. You thought I was making a claim myself, saying that God doesn't exist because of lack of evidence.
I wouldn't make that claim in such a way that might reflect I know this with certainty. No, instead I say I know God doesn't exist in the same way I know Santa doesn't exist.
The both of them lack evidence and perform feats beyond the wildest imagination, making them both, conservatively, very unlikely.
I don't consider God's actions as beyond my wildest imagination and one similarity doesn't mean that they are the same thing. It seems very circular to me what you are doing. God is a crazy idea therefore God is a crazy idea.
Quote:At this point, I can't see how you might make contention with this. If you try to then you are truly a theist, because only a theist can look into the agape jaw of cold, unrelenting logic only to swat it with your shoe and then ignore it.
Personal accusations don't get us anywhere.
Quote:[/quote]
(July 11, 2012 at 4:05 am)Jeffonthenet Wrote: If you are not being sarcastic, I then shouldn't believe in you because you are too specific.
I think he meant that your God has too many specified qualities that conflict with reality to be believable, not that specificity is a trait of things that are unbelievable.
I disagree.