Please present positive arguments why you think atheism is true

[popeyespappy]

Anyone want my pointy stick?

This guy would probably lend you his too....

[Cyberman]

Gah, I hate that picture. It's not my best side.

[Minimalist]

Anyone want my pointy stick?

This guy would probably lend you his too....

Great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great,great, grandpappy!

He was good with a pointy stick.

[Jireh]

Thus we will often question our own actions: how would others react if I did this, what would people think of me for doing that?

The Nazis said, it was a good thing to kill jews. Germans thought, that if they would not obey the command to kill jews, homosexuals, etc. society would not like it. Does that mean, at Hitlers time, it was morally objectively justifiable and good, to kill these people?

[Voltair]

Ace answered your question Jireh and instead of addressing that you ask him to prove naturalism. Ace said he did not believe because has not seen evidence.

Your response to this was to ask him to show how naturalism is more valid. Before we can talk about validity you need to show why we should even consider theism a valid option. This isn't a contest of let's see how many questions we can ask each other.

::
Let's say you walk into a room and claim to have a medication that can regenerate the human brain. All of us in the room ask you why we should believe your claim about the medication. You then instruct your assistant to shoot himself in the head thus destroying his brain. You administer the medication to him and over the course of two weeks his brain heals. We then ask to see repeated trials of this etc and over time we become convinced that your medication does in fact heal brains.
::

Ace said, once again, he did not believe because he HAS NOT SEEN ANY EVIDENCE. That is his reason. Now by you jumping from that and saying "Well what about your evidence for naturalism" you seem to be dodging the implication that there was no evidence for theism. In fact you didn't defend theism at all. I think we will all be willing to discuss the "evidence" for naturalism as soon as you say that there is NO EVIDENCE FOR THEISM. If you believe there is evidence for theism than state it.

The atheists here believe that THERE IS NO evidence for theism. Without theism you naturally fall into the naturalism (see what I did there? ). So it really isn't an issue of providing evidence for naturalism because without evidence for a higher power it is simply the default choice. So from Ace's point of view and many of ours - There is no evidence for the gods therefore we take a worldview that does not include deity I.E. naturalism. Please address this, if you do not address it I assure you I can be just as repetitive and just as grating as anyone else. If you don't answer this issue you will thankfully demonstrate to the lurkers that you are not willing/cannot support the theistic position.

Naturalism requires no defense if there is no deity. No deity = no theism = naturalism.

[Jireh]

William Craig is one of the biggest idiots to walk the earth, he's not worth listening to. No basis in science at all.

the comment was however from John Barrow and Frank Tipler. They were just mentioned by Craig.

http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od172/cosmos172.htm

"As Barrow and Tipler comment, "It is, of course, somewhat inappropriate to call the origin of a bubble Universe in a fluctuation of the vacuum 'creation ex nihilo,' for the quantum mechanical vacuum state has a rich structure which resides in a previously existing substratum of space-time, either Minkowski or de Sitter space-time. Clearly, a true 'creation ex nihilo' would be the spontaneous generation of everything--space-time, the quantum mechanical vacuum, matter--at some time in the past."([1986], p. 441)."

Give it a good watch. I've got to turn in, it's getting kinda late.

i have seen this video ad nausea being posted by non thinking atheists......
they believe it, because it fits their world view. But thinking it trough, its utmost nonsense.

So any credible evidence on hand for naturalism ?
It's all in science. All one has to do is study it.
I'm not a teacher or professor. If you're really interested in debating this sort of thing, you'd listen to both sides.

---

so you hold a standpoint without having any credible evidence to it up ??!!
Have i understood this right ? So you hold a atheistic world view based on no evidence ?
thanks for admitting that.....

Yeah I'm done with this one.

Of course you are. You just gave up your cause.

[Minimalist]

We then ask to see repeated trials of this etc and over time we become convinced that your medication does in fact heal brains.

It won't work on jesus freaks. The damage is far more severe than a simple gunshot wound.

[Voltair]

We then ask to see repeated trials of this etc and over time we become convinced that your medication does in fact heal brains.

It won't work on jesus freaks. The damage is far more severe than a simple gunshot wound.

It may not work on them but.... that would be one badass medication... you could have real gunfights with people and not die!

[libalchris]

Virtual particles, quantum mechanics. Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss go deep and going deeper into explaining it. A god isn't required for a universe to exist it seems.

oh sure.....

old debunked argument.....

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig...smith.html

John Barrow and Frank Tipler comment, ". . . the modern picture of the quantum vacuum differs radically from the classical and everyday meaning of a vacuum-- nothing. . . . The quantum vacuum (or vacuua, as there can exist many) states . . . are defined simply as local, or global, energy minima (V'(O)= O, V"(O)>O)" ([1986], p. 440). The microstructure of the quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. A quantum vacuum is thus far from nothing, and vacuum fluctuations do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause.

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I've rejected the claim due to a lack of evidence to support it.

So any credible evidence on hand for naturalism ?

If you don't feel like reading the wall of text, jump down to below the line

What causes lightning? not Thor, electrons flowing from a higher potential to a lower potential. How did modern species come about? They evolved from other organisms. How did matter come about? It formed from energy in the early universe as it cooled. How did stars come about? Gravity. How did all the elements form? From fusion in stars.
Those are just a few of the questions naturalism has answered. Name one question that super-naturalism has answered correctly.

naturalism works, it has worked numerous times.

Super-naturalism has never worked. Super-naturalism has not answered one question correctly yet (that has been proven anyways)

An explanation is not correct by default simply because there are no alternative explanations. Even if the only current explanation for the existence of the universe, or the first life form is supernatural, that explanation cannot be considered correct until it has been proven so.

That is why I'm an atheist, and a naturalist. No supernatural explanations have ever been proven correct, and no evidence for a god exists.

I'm a naturalist because it works.

[Minimalist]

Does that mean, at Hitlers time, it was morally objectively justifiable and good, to kill these people?

This is a good point. What do you suppose the answer would have been had Hitler won.

Mull that over for a while.