The Case for Atheism

[Esquilax]

So I'm not sure whether we'll gain any further clarity if we can't really agree on a pretty foundational assumption. You've argued I have the burden of proof - I disagree. Its difficult to proceed from there.

Simply asserting your claim to be true without providing any evidence makes it pretty difficult to have a discussion. I can't understand the logic of you wanting me to present evidence for my claim whilst not being willing to do that for your claim.

Its been great fun discussing these issues but I think we've ended up just arguing in circles.

I'm not making a claim, and your dogged insistence that I am making a claim, that you know what I believe better than I do myself, is immensely, and I hope unintentionally, arrogant.

You don't have to assume anything in order to come to conclusions about the world. You just have to critically examine all the claims that come in, which I can tell just from the arguments you gave, you aren't doing for your god beliefs. That's the problem here; not any presumption of naturalism from us, just that you're willing to accept your god claims based on bad arguments.

Honestly, looking back over what you presented, it's the same old tripe we see wheeled out over and over; Kalam is so flawed it's barely an argument at all, the argument from fine tuning only becomes an argument if you're already assuming the conclusion, Plantinga doesn't know what he's talking about and your 500 witnesses claim is laughable in so many ways it's not even funny. Worse still, with the exception of the last claim none of your arguments even address your particular god, making them poor justification for your christianity to begin with. And as for the last one... would you be convinced if some other religion had written down in their holy book that five hundred people witnessed their prophet performing a miracle? If not, why would you be convinced of yours? It seems like special pleading, from here. The fact that you didn't even bother to respond to my (admittedly quick, but I can expand if you like) refutations of your other arguments also says a lot.

In short, your position is poorly justified, and I think reflects the fact that you just want to believe in your religion and so went looking for confirmatory arguments regardless of their efficacy. They're easy to tear to shreds, so I guess it's much easier to just demand that everyone who disagrees with you has a bias against your argument, than to critically examine what you're using. But you don't know us, and you don't get to tell us what we believe.

The writer who made this claim wasn't annonymous it was the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 15). He's writing between 10-20 years after Jesus death and saying to the Corinthian church if you have doubts about the resurrection ask them as most are still alive.

Paul never met Jesus, so going to Paul about a claim of what happened to Jesus is pretty insane. And nobody from that time is still alive, that's madness. So we can't really ask anyone, at all. This whole argument is just... just terrible.

You are seriously asking us to believe a miracle claim based on the fact that it was written by a guy who never met the man who performed the miracle, and thus was not there when it supposedly happened, who claimed that a lot of people saw it, despite not actually having done that himself so he wouldn't know, and then claims a further impossible thing. That is the only argument you've made so far that actually points to your god in particular.

We all "presume naturalism," because we won't accept that claim as true.