(December 31, 2012 at 4:59 pm)apophenia Wrote: Italics on your text removed for readability.
(December 31, 2012 at 4:12 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: easy to state hard to proveYes, and since you are the one implying that they may be equivalent, you bear the burden of demonstrating your claim. You haven't discharged this burden yet, and reliance on vague assertions, using ambiguous and ill-defined terms like 'faith' is not working in your favor.
(December 31, 2012 at 4:12 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: I was not saying that one religion's treatment of it has any validity but rather that the debate between Athiests and Theists has remained very similar in essence for a very very long time and the concept of God is just to go away and become a myth for a large proportion of humanity just because Athiests want it to is going against the evidence of history.This is a distortion of the historical facts, likely due to ignorance of the great variety and history of both religious and non-religious thought. This hasn't even been true during the tenure of Christianity. (I'll simply point to the Eleusinian mystery cults [~2,000 years], Confucianism, Pyhrronic Skepticism, Buddhism, Shintoism, The Heaven's Gate cult, Panspermianism, Taoism, and the Stoics, by way of counter-example.)
It's a common error, in both atheists and Abrahamanic theists, but regardless, it is an error, and invalidates your entire point. I'm sure that believers in Zeus and Oden expressed similar sentiments, and few see the end of empire on the horizon, though history warns us of its inevitability. (for political empires)
(December 31, 2012 at 4:12 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: though I would suggest that what may happen is instead of the God-man society will substitute the Man-god because whatever we think is the truth is its clear that humanity is hardwired to look beyond the physical and try to reach to the spiritual.This appears to be an oblique call to the appeal that if something is natural it is therefore likely right. Even if something is an inevitable product of thought (and I would agree that this may be largely true for theism), this does not in any sense indicate that the contents of those thoughts are either true or justifiably believable. It doesn't. (Another counter-example; people for a long time believed that people were "natural statisticians," able to judge probabilities reliably via intuitions. Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory showed this to be untrue, and that human judgement about probability in situations of risk departs in a consistent and systematic manner from what would be expected if they were truly rational about the probabilities. What is 'natural' turned out to be reliably and predictably wrong.)
1) I continue to refuse the premise that I carry the burden of proof just because i express a belief and repeating the point wont change this. If however I make the claim that I am correct and can prove it or you are wrong and I can prove it then I would accept said burden but I challenge you to show where I made any statements like the two I have just written.
2) regarding ignorance of historical facts; my fault for not being clear I was not talking purely about The Judeo-Christian idea about God but on all the attempts by all societies in history to define God as best they could.
3) the last point was not a call to call something correct because it is natural but a statement of what I believe is a growing trend in the body of humanity that won't accept the removal of spirituality from their existence it is not something I endorse but rather predict based on the flurry of books and videos that endorse the idea of the Man-god as opposed to the Christian Jesus God-man. Of course as a gentle tilt to the old spagetti western the Athiests will still be saying " We don't need no stinking gods".