Faith?

[Eilonnwy]

When you see atheists making statements like this, solarwave, call them on it. It's really faulty reasoning, like nails down a blackboard to the critical thinker. To conclude that something is false ("there really isn't a dragon") because it has not been proven true is a case of the argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. A lack of evidence for P does not establish ¬P.

You completely twist my words. This is basic principle of burden of proof. If someone does not meet the burden of proof, then you are justified in not accepting their claims until they do. The Dragon in the Garage story is an example to show how people avoid burden of proof by making claims that protect them from scientific inquiry.

This is basic logic. I find it laughable you disagree with this since you're such a self proclaimed philosopher.

Argument ad ignorantiam deals with when you disbelieve something because you can't imagine it's possibly true. For instance when people refuse to believe the Big Bang because they can't imagine the universe came into being from an explosion. (In fact Big Bang was a term invented to mock the concept) When you refuse to consider evidence because of ignorance then you are making that fallacy.

However, as in the Dragon example, which was proposed by the brilliant, and sadly late Carl Sagan in The Demon Haunted World, when you propose methods to prove this dragon is really there and every effort is shot down by excuses or evasions, you are then justified in not believing it because the person making the claim has not met the burden of proof.

The argumentum ad ignorantiam [fallacy] is committed whenever it is argued that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proven false, or that it is false because it has not been proven true.
A qualification should be made at this point. In some circumstances it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence despite searching, as positive evidence towards its non-occurrence. (Copi 1953)

Source= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

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How does that prove there isn't a God. For me I dont think it is so clear cut as if your a christian or not.

It's just one aspect in the house of cards, so to speak. People claim the know and understand God and yet no one can get agree with each other. If God is revealing himself to people, why can't they agree? What is so inconsistent about his message? It also seems ridiculous to me, that a God who cares so much about faith would let the issues get so muddied by it's followers. I know what apologists would say, "well humans are imperfect and make mistakes." Bullshit. Humans witnessing an event might get details wrong and differences in the story, but if they are being truthful, you can parse out what's true. Really, if God is as powerful as people claim, I see no reason why he can't do something to fix the contradictions but instead he'd rather let people doubt, not believe, get it wrong, and go to hell. Loving god my ass.

Is that not just the nature of man and the physical world? Suffering comes as part of living in a physical world and if God stopped every bad thing happening wouldn't it bring the world into chaos? If we didn't know if whether God would stop us everytime we act because it could have a bad consequence. The problem of evil is quite a big one and not one I can answer at the moment. So are you saying that there is no possible reason that a loving God could have from holding back, that you KNOW there is no reason, or are you saying it is just unlikely. Something being unlikely has never stopped it being true.

The Problem of Evil is a complicated subject, and unlike Arcanus, I've never seen it satisfactorily explained by a Theist. Maybe I'll take up Arcanus's challenge, to be perfectly honest I have too much on my plant right now to add another writing project to my schedule.

In short, Christianity asserts an all-loving and all-powerful god. For such evil to exist as it currently does, he cannot be both.

I havn't seen any unexplainable ones.

Then you haven't looked hard enough.

In my thread the Disunity of the Bible there is a link to a podcast that details many of these inconsistencies and there's another podcast a few months back that details how the Gospels are soo contradictory.

Free will versus "everything happens for a reason". This idea that you're in control, but not. All the good things in life are God, all the bad things are your own failings or God is "testing" you.

Can you expand upon this? Im not sure exactly what your saying. Thanks.

People get around the problem of evil by claiming Free will, but in the same breath claim all the good things in life are a direct result of God answering prayers, blessing you, etc... Or sometimes they will say if something bad happens, that "it happens for a reason" or "god has a plan", essentially saying there's a greater good this bad thing serves. It's in direct contradiction with the concept of Free Will.

What possible evidence could there be for a world beyond our own? Near Death Experiences: I dont mean the ones with fuzzy feelings, I mean the ones where someone is brain dead yet when they wake up know things that happened in the room when dead, or other things unknowable while dead.

The soul could be a mirror of the brain. A copy in spiritual form. Or the soul could be the soul be the explaination of consciousness or free will, but this depends upon whetherits possible for science to explain consciousness in the future. The soul isn't even necessary for life after death. God could recreate the body in spiritual form after death, which i acctuallly think makes sense with the christian idea of resurrection.

Near Death Experiences have been shot down. It's completely explainable as a phenomena of the brain dying and shooting off signals which cause these realistic feeling hallucinations. Funny how NDE's always have the experience relevant to their culteral/religious beliefs. Hmmm

Science is doing an excellent job of explaining everything we do as a phenomena of the brain. You know there's a specific part in the brain, and I wish I could remember what it's called, that gives you the experience that you are in your body. They can use a drug to affect this aspect of the brain to make you feel "out of body"

There have also been tests down where they place a note on top of a cabinet face up, and people should be able to read them if they are having out of body experiences, they can never accurately been able to read it.

As far as any hypothesis behind spirits, I don't know why people think they can begin to explain something they admittedly don't know anything about. A hypothesis is nothing more than that until evidence and data can be gathered to prop it up as a workable theory. Science shows no need for a soul. And if someone could come up with a workable hypothesis and support it with evidence, I'd happily change my mind.

I don't like the idea that when I'm dead I'm done. Who doesn't want to live forever? But reason tells me it's just not so.