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RE: Convince me
December 3, 2015 at 11:04 am
(December 3, 2015 at 9:50 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: (December 2, 2015 at 6:37 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: No amount of bad evidence, for sure. And that is all that has been presented by you, and every other Christian I've ever heard present their case.
Ancient texts, flawed philosophical arguments, anecdotal personal experiences are not convincing because they are bad evidence.
Atheism is not a choice. It is the result of correctly applied skepticism.
I think he is referring to the type of people who say they would not believe in God even if He appeared before them and performed miracles, etc. He is correct. I have seen people here say that.
I think the general position is that we would believe in such a thing - we would have no choice - but that we'd likely still not be convinced it was a god. We most certainly wouldn't worship it.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Convince me
December 3, 2015 at 11:11 am
(This post was last modified: December 3, 2015 at 11:29 am by robvalue.)
(This is a very general statement, not aimed at anyone in particular.)
It's really presumptuous to tell a sceptic why God refuses to give proper evidence. This is assuming to have intimate knowledge of the motivations of a being whose merest existence, or even a decent definition of which, hasn't been demonstrated. To have to make excuses for a being of immense power, for a task as simple as demonstrating it exists at all, is frankly laughable.
It's just the same as a child saying that adults can't see Santa because they don't believe in him anymore.
If you have to believe in something already before you can "have evidence" of it, then whether or not the thing is actually real becomes irrelevant. Being a sceptic means caring about what is true, and a big part of that is independent confirmation and repeatability. Without either of these things, you are running a big risk of being wildly in error. I'd rather reserve judgement than believe loads of things on weak evidence in the hope that some of them are true.
I respect people's decisions to make whatever they want of their personal experiences. I think non-sceptics should give sceptics the same respect, and not tell them what they should and shouldn't accept as evidence. If God can't or won't provide proper evidence, then it's just too bad. He's feeble, or he's playing dumb games. If he shows up, cool, we can chat. If he wants to hide in a closet and send me garbled messages through unreliable channels of communication, then he can grow up or sod off.
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RE: Convince me
December 3, 2015 at 10:05 pm
(December 2, 2015 at 11:43 am)dyresand Wrote: (December 2, 2015 at 11:17 am)Kingpin Wrote: Why?
I'm more interested in your propensity to continue to ask and demand evidence, when no one here is demanding your belief.
^Atheism isn't a belief.
But it is an opinion about the proposition "God(s) exist", which in its own way actually is a belief.
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RE: Convince me
December 3, 2015 at 10:07 pm
(December 2, 2015 at 12:20 pm)dyresand Wrote: All i need is evidence to believe. That is a lie.
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RE: Convince me
December 3, 2015 at 10:10 pm
(December 2, 2015 at 6:37 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: Atheism is not a choice. It is the result of correctly applied skepticism. positivist fundamentalism.
Fixed that for you.
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RE: Convince me
December 3, 2015 at 10:14 pm
(December 3, 2015 at 10:05 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: (December 2, 2015 at 11:43 am)dyresand Wrote: ^Atheism isn't a belief.
But it is an opinion about the proposition "God(s) exist", which in its own way actually is a belief.
It actually isn't. "God(s) exist" is the theist position; atheism is the rejection of that position. Neither theism nor atheism is a belief.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Convince me
December 3, 2015 at 10:26 pm
(This post was last modified: December 3, 2015 at 10:26 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
That's a new one! So in order to justify the claim that atheism isn't a belief you must assert that theism isn't a belief either. Maybe you should tell the other atheists.
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RE: Convince me
December 3, 2015 at 10:41 pm
It's hardly new, but thanks for the compliment. Both theism and atheism are positions on the single question "does a god exist?" Neither position constitutes a belief, though they are positions regarding belief. I can see how you might be confused.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Convince me
December 3, 2015 at 11:52 pm
(December 3, 2015 at 10:07 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: (December 2, 2015 at 12:20 pm)dyresand Wrote: All i need is evidence to believe. That is a lie.
Yeah i do and atheists do need evidence to believe in your god(s) claim.
You take the position with the least amount of evidence and say there is a god
with no evidence to be certain that there is a god. You need testable evidence
to prove that there is a god.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization join today.
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