Q about arguments for God's existence.

[Cato]

No that's not how observations work in science. You don't have to physically observe something for its effects to be tested and measured, and not all observations have to be made visually; in fact hardly any scientific observation is visual.

But that's what you require of God, seems you are setting a double standard.

GC

No, that's not what is required; however, you must be able to demonstrate the existence of God, seen or unseen.

You claim there was a global flood, we can demonstrate why this never happened.

You claim creation in accordance with Genesis, this can be shown to be demonstrably false.

You claim the existence of heaven and hell, no evidence exists for such places.
(I am using 'You' here loosely as in Christians in general, not necessarily 'You' in particular)

We can't see electrons, but we can demonstrate their existence. The associated theories provide great explanatory power for observed phenomena. The theories give us a predictive power that allows our manipulation of electrons to do our bidding.

The idea of God cannot be demonstrated, creates more questions than it is supposed to answer, and has zero predictive capability. It explains absolutely nothing. To borrow from Laplace, but applied more generally: the idea of God serves no useful purpose.

Believe what you will, but none of us have to take it seriously.

[Cyberman]

But that's what you require of God, seems you are setting a double standard.

GC

Seems like you've erected a strawman, or have a reading comprehension problem.

Indeed, because I don't actually require anything of “God“; whereas its followers make all manner of claims about it and what it's capable of. Those are what I and others require evidence for. You understand this, GC, because you actually hit the nail on the head yourself:

There is no proof it's there, so the effects they see are still unanswered.

Now, I and most others are more lenient in that we don't ask for proof necessarily; just evidence. Something which can be tested and which points to your god and your god alone as the cause of whatever effect is being claimed.

And the really silly part is that it ought to be trivial to demonstrate this stuff, if it really is as obvious as all that.

[MindForgedManacle]

Why are they all so fucking illogical and idiotic? Moreover, why are so many people dumb enough to be "persuaded" by them?

I don't think almost anyone is persuaded by them, although perhaps cosmological arguments are the most persuasive since they play well with our intuitions about the world.

I think it's probably part of life in the echo chamber. If everybody is telling you how good you are you tend to believe them. The same with arguments. If all you're exposed to are the good points, and don't grapple with the criticisms, you'll have a tendency to think the arguments are strong.

Very true. But once a person is old enough to experience the world on their own, say by about the age of 17, wtf is their excuse then? Laziness?

Well, no. We all have beliefs inculcated in us from the moment we're capable of grasping our surroundings and learn language. It's just not in human nature - in ANY humans nature - to go around rockin the boat of their web of beliefs. I don't care who they are or what ideology they hold to, they will demonstrably have beliefs they don't challenge and protect with some degree of irrationality (this is especially visible with political beliefs). And the reason for this doesn't seem to be terribly hard to recognize and appreciate: constantly considering your beliefs about the world (especially deeply held ones) doesn't tend to lead to a productive organism, but often a paralysis of thought. This is where the true tradegy of what Betrand Russell noticed can be seen: The idiots are all cocksure and the smarter ones full of doubt, arrogant though that comes across as.

[Ravenshire]

Oh, you're another one of those christians willing to strawman the atheist position by boiling it down to "what can be detected by the senses"?

So, did you lie when you intimated that, or did you just not bother to know what you were talking about before you opened your mouth?

I'm guessing, this part:
"not bother to know what you were talking about before you opened your mouth?"

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There is no proof it's there, so the effects they see are still unanswered.

GC

There's still more evidence for dark matter than there is for gawd.

[Minimalist]

Poor G-C - science keeps fucking up his fairy tales.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v48...11224.html

Here we report the detection of a dark-matter filament connecting the two main components of the Abell 222/223 supercluster system from its weak gravitational lensing signal, both in a non-parametric mass reconstruction and in parametric model fits.

Don't bother reading G-C. It has a lot of hard words that bible-thumping assholes like you could never understand.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

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Thanks for the daily joke. It's hilarious.

We get an uptick of dark matter in the summer and a decrease in the winter? LMAO!! Don't you know that the seasons are reversed in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres? Are we supposed to believe that dark matter is sensitive to a few degrees change on Earth that it flees from one hemisphere to the other when it gets chilly? So if you want to be free of dark matter hang out at the North and South Poles. Space is a whole lot colder than any place on Earth.

What are some of the other silly things you believe in?

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You made a claim, I posted scientific articles about your claim.

Not my fault if you refuse to read the articles.

A number of various books contain information about assorted gods that billions of people accept as fact. I don't believe those either.

As a fully mature American living in the 21st Century you should have the ability of recognize B.S. when you see it. The comment you posted about dark matter is pure B.S. and whoever wrote it is a world class bull shitter. It's comparable to the idiots who yap about the universe being 13.4 billion years old. If you think about that and what they base their claim on you will see that it's another example of their world-class B.S. And the same is true for the Big Bang.

Use your mind and stop believing B.S. Otherwise you might as well believe in gods, devils, demons, angels, spirits, ghosts, and zombies.

[max-greece]

No that's not how observations work in science. You don't have to physically observe something for its effects to be tested and measured, and not all observations have to be made visually; in fact hardly any scientific observation is visual.

But that's what you require of God, seems you are setting a double standard.

GC

No-one's asking me to worship Dark Matter.

Ultimately - it doesn't make much difference to me whether Dark Matter exists or not. DM is merely the current scientific explanation for the effects we observe in the universe. It might be right - it might not be. Science will discover it either way and we will all move on.

This is the difference between any scientific observation and explanation and a religious one. Science is provable one way or another and, once it is decided, science moves on to more complex issues.

In other words - the 2 things are not comparable.

[Chas]

Why are they all so fucking illogical and idiotic? Moreover, why are so many people dumb enough to be "persuaded" by them?

Why are some so stupid to believe there's such a thing as dark matter, it can't be seen, touched, smelled, heard or tasted, yet you insist it's there, matter that does not conform to what matter is, and you call Christians idiotic.

GC

Because there is actual evidence. Try learning facts before you post; you'd appear less of a fool.

---

Sorry to have to do this to you, but...

Tenets, not tenants. Unless there's rent involved.

Fair enough. As long as I keep they're, there and their sorted, I'm only moderately embarrassed.

You're not taking this at all seriously.

You need to scourge yourself and retire to a cave to meditate on your errors before you're allowed back in literate company.

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Why are they all so fucking illogical and idiotic? Moreover, why are so many people dumb enough to be "persuaded" by them?

may because you a fucking dope. They "all" are not bad. its is only the thought that you have the clearity logic and reason that is ass a nine. maybe try growing up.


I think you crying about "them" using observation" kind of shows exactly how limited you are. Kids these days.

*asinine

[Tonus]

Why are they all so fucking illogical and idiotic? Moreover, why are so many people dumb enough to be "persuaded" by them?

We tend to be pretty illogical in general, in that our subconscious controls a lot of our decision-making, and our subconscious can be very illogical. An example I've used before is phobias: the fear of something that we know in our rational mind is not a threat, but which our subconscious mind forces us to react to in irrational ways.

If our subconscious mind is convinced that god exists, no proof or evidence will be necessary; we will fashion it for ourselves however we can, using biases and other mental processes that screw up our perception of the world in many different ways (and not confined to religion, either). With that belief entrenched in our minds, the mental gymnastics appear far more convincing than they would if we were skeptical.

We cling very tightly to the things we think are true and to the things we wish were true, which is reflected in all kinds of behavior during our day-to-day lives. If people were logical and rational by default, there would be no lotteries, for example.

[Rampant.A.I.]

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You made a claim, I posted scientific articles about your claim.

Not my fault if you refuse to read the articles.

A number of various books contain information about assorted gods that billions of people accept as fact. I don't believe those either.

As a fully mature American living in the 21st Century you should have the ability of recognize B.S. when you see it. The comment you posted about dark matter is pure B.S. and whoever wrote it is a world class bull shitter. It's comparable to the idiots who yap about the universe being 13.4 billion years old. If you think about that and what they base their claim on you will see that it's another example of their world-class B.S. And the same is true for the Big Bang.

Use your mind and stop believing B.S. Otherwise you might as well believe in gods, devils, demons, angels, spirits, ghosts, and zombies.

I'm sorry you haven't bothered to research anything to do with astrophysics, and are throwing a defensive tantrum to make yourself feel better about it.

Speaking of bullshit claims, didn't you claim the Big Bang is a Catholic origin myth, when it predates Catholicism by thousands of years in Vedic beliefs?

Might as well start insulting me for not believing 9-11 was an "inside job," or believing the moon landing happened.