Why Richard Dawkins should debate Christians

[Statler Waldorf]

Hold on a second...did I actually say it disproves anything? I think I usually say that nothing has been brought forward that gives repeatable evidence for god's existence.

Well you used the term “refuted”, but I am glad it looks like you’ve realized that the scientific method cannot be used to refute a deductive argument.

On the other hand, if you want to test certain claims, I think it's quite right that many things in the Bible have been falsified by science - the process of which and the outcomes you don't trust.

I think you are completely oversimplifying this issue Queen.

1. A miracle, in the Biblical sense is by definition a violation of natural law, it’s a supernatural event; so when you say that science (which deals only with natural laws) has demonstrated that virgins don’t give birth, men don’t turn water into whine, men don’t walk on water, donkeys don’t talk, and axe heads don’t float you’re really only proving the Bible’s point. Those events were evidence of God’s power because they violated natural law. It appears that it is actually you who is trying to compare apples and oranges, or namely the natural and the supernatural.
2. If scripture is the word of God, it would therefore be infallible. This means that you cannot use a fallible source such as science to refute scriptures claim to infallibility. If a person claimed that they could not tell a lie, you could not use a person you knew to be capable of lying to demonstrate the first person could in fact lie. Rather you’d have to find some internal contradiction. Science can never prove the Bible is not what it claims to be for that very reason, we know science is fallible so when our current understanding of science contradicts something in the Bible it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that our scientific understanding is the one in error. This is precisely why I find it so troubling that many atheists today exalt science to the point of being straight up scientism.

Actually, the reason I missed you, infuriating as you sometimes are, is that at least you're polite and coherent, which many of your brethren cannot claim, and thus watching you spit out your bullshit is more like watching useful piles of bullshit being laid (that can later be turned into compost) as opposed to watching a hopeless tide of diarrhea leave a septic tank.

As a gardener, that's actually more flattering than it might sound.

That rather clever analogy could equally apply to you, and in fact it does to a certain extent from my perspective. Except I do not find you infuriating, but only because I do not take things on here that seriously.

I think I told you once that you could logic the sun away and it would still rise tomorrow. Come back when you have tangible, quantifiable evidence for your BS, Stat.

Logic the sun away (that would make a fairly clever lyric in a song)? I am not even sure what you mean by that, are you saying that logic does not in fact discern truth?
Why do you believe that all truth claims are tested by tangible and quantifiable evidence? Even you believe an entire host of claims that are not supported by evidence, but you require evidence in order to believe in God? That seems to be special pleading. What if science itself requires that God exists? Would that prove He existed?

Experience wouldn't even necessarily do it. Experiences can, and often are, delussions. I have no doubt that many of these charasmatic Christians experience the supernatural all the time, just like acid droppers do.

1. In order for someone to believe in the supernatural they must experience it firsthand.
2. In the cases where people experience the supernatural firsthand they are not actually experiencing the supernatural.

It looks like you’ve created a nice little vicious circle there.

No, the supernatural must be verifiable to be held with any regard.

Since you have already stated that you do not believe firsthand supernatural encounters are acceptable as verification, but since you have also asserted that you were open-minded on this subject before you arrived at your current conclusion, what form of verification would you accept (if you were indeed open-minded you must accept the possibility of some form of verification rather than ruling out the possibility of the supernatural ahead of time and then asserting that the supernatural doesn’t exist)?

Even if that were true, it wouldn't merit wild speculation about the supernatural, which brings us back to verification.

Scripture doesn’t practice wild speculation about the supernatural; rather it gives accounts and details of specific supernatural events that have occurred throughout our redemptive history.

You are right. Both are inventions, but the creator invention is much more far fetched.

They are not both inventions; that’s merely one reason why the analogy fails. Why is the existence of God farfetched? Simply because you say it is?

I believe in what I can verify. So should you.

That’s quite the position to hold…

So you do not believe that your senses are generally reliable? You do not believe that your memory is generally reliable? You do not believe the laws of logic exist? You do not believe that the laws of nature we observe in the present will resemble the natural laws we will observe in the future? You do not believe you will wake up as yourself tomorrow? You do not believe that other people have minds? You do not believe you were ever born? You do not believe that you existed yesterday? You do not believe that you can reason from particular experiences to general predications?

How do you verify the statement, “I only believe in what I can verify”? Or do you not actually believe that statement is true since you cannot verify it?

Since none of these beliefs are verifiable it looks like you do not believe in a lot of things that everyone else does. In fact, if you do not believe that there will be regularity in natural law you’ve just rendered all of science impossible.

Not at all. I quoted him, but the merit is in the material itself, not the man.

Yes, and it’s not a logical statement.

With that, allow me to further educate you.

Please do.

When you quote someone, it's common courtesy to properly credit the quote instead of passsing it off as your own, which is plagiarism.

Then why didn’t you quote Carl Sagan since Christopher Hitchens stole that quote from him? Is it really appropriate to quote the plagiarist rather than the original source?

Sorry the name prevented the point from penetrating your skull.

No matter how hard you try, that condescending side of you always finds a way to creep to the surface doesn’t it? Or are you merely trying to perpetuate the stereotype of the condescending atheist?

1. Splendid in appearance; grand:
2. Grand or noble in thought or deed; exalted.
3. Outstanding of its kind; superlative:

You did the very thing I told you not to do, that’s just the definition. What I want to know is how do you determine whether a claim is “splendid in appearance; grand”? Who makes this determination so we know which claims require magnificent proof (which is something you still haven’t defined) and which ones require merely regular proof?

Hey, I got an idea, let's talk about Christopher Hitchens some more!

You brought the hack up, not me.

understood perfectly what you were doing. You were faced with the harsh reality of a valid point, and you used a petty method of deflection to avoid actually addressing it.

Asking for a proper methodology for determining what a magnificent claim is and what the term magnificent proof even means is in your view “deflecting”? If you cannot back your claim up or even elaborate how a person can put it into practice, then I hardly think it qualifies as valid.

Here lies the dead carcass of Big Foot. Study it, preserve it, put it in a musseum, do what you will. But this nearly century old legend is now a documentable part of history.

A dead animal carcass qualifies as a “magnificent proof”? How is that not merely a scientific discovery based on induction? I am beginning to believe that your little quote is exactly what I thought it was- a meaningless platitude. Not to mention it’s not even based in logic, there’s no logical requirement for a type of claim to have the same type of proof. You don’t hear people saying, “Emotional claims require emotional proofs!”, “Erroneous claims require erroneous proofs!”, or even “Material claims require material proofs (proofs are immaterial)!” I am sure it sounded great when Hitchens asserted it, but unfortunately like many things Hitchens asserted upon closer examination it was nothing more than flowery rhetoric.

Inductive reasoning has it's place, as does deductive reasoning. Unfortunately for you, that kind of reasoning whiped your god out a long time ago.

You have a deductive or inductive argument(s) that proves my God doesn’t exist? To say I am intrigued would be an understatement, please present me with it!

Can't wait to dive a little more into this one.

Neither can I!

Well, I've carefully considered both sides of the argument, so I consider my conclusions to have a much greater degree of merit. I can tell by your rather naive perspective that you've given no consideration to the possibility that you may be wrong about this.

If there is one thing this discussion has brought to light, it is that I am certainly not the naïve one in this conversation.

Case and point, you just asserted that you have carefully considered both sides of the argument; this seems to imply that there is neutral ground on which a person can stand in order to do this consideration from. Since you claim you are not naïve on such matters; then are you not fully aware that neutral ground on such matters is logically impossible? Why would you assert you carefully considered both sides of the argument when you were sophisticated enough to know that a person cannot possibly do this without assuming one of the two sides is correct ahead of time? Bewildering.

With that, allow me to warn you: when (or if) you do, your faith will progressively diminish until you eventually have none left. But that's a good thing. Reality is a good thing. The world needs more realists.

Now are you really going to claim you do not have any faith either?

I can't wait for you to join us.

I can’t wait for you to join us.

I'd like to think this discussion is more than just a debate. I'd like to think that we are actually trying to accomplish something here. If that is the case, then obviously a closed mind is useless to the discussion.

An open mind is logically impossible because it assumes neutrality is possible. What are we trying to accomplish? I was never made purvey to our goal here!