Tooth Fairy Bullshit

[Thumpalumpacus]

Here's a little better analogy than the crap you just spewed...

Let's say some guys wife is getting boned on the side. He can rule out huge numbers of people his wife might be fucking without ever figuring out who it really is. After all, King Henry the 8th isn't available for any afternoon delight. Neither is Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan swinging by to poke her pussy. He can scratch Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and President Obama from the list since they've never had the opportunity to dance the horizontal mambo with her. In fact, he can rule out quite literally billions of people with absolute certainty (or something so close as to make no difference) without even trying...

It is possible to know what the answer isn't even if you don't know what the answer is.

Besides, you give me four of something and I can certainly tell you I don't have ten of them (or 20, or 100, or 2048, or 243,985,243) without ever figuring 2+2=4.

Cold logic wrapped in funny prose ... fuckin' priceless.

[Crossless2.0]

Seeing how time is relative it's totally doable.

You do realize that from our perspective it may take a photon years to reach it's destination, but from the point of view of a photon, it takes no time at all, it's instantaneous.

Aww, you mentioned relativity.  That's adorable.  Like watching a four-year old try to ride a bike.

Relativity is about how matter flows through time relative to its velocity.  It doesn't mean that talking about a point in time when time did not exist suddenly isn't nonsensical.

Seeing how every living thing has a spirit (including you), I don't see how you figure it is, especially when there are cases that suggest consciousness can exist without a functioning brain.

Ah, yes, this magical "spirit" that no one can find, no one can describe, no one knows where it's at, no one knows what it does, no scientific study has ever found the tiniest scrap of evidence for but religious people really, really insist is there.  They point at things we don't understand about the most complex organ in the human body and say, "See!  I promise you it's hiding in those ever-shrinking gaps!"

Tell you what, Huggy.  You let someone fillet your brain with a butcher knife then come and tell me how you can float around without a brain, and I promise you I will convert on the spot.

I've made the same challenge many, many times. For some reason, the people who are absolutely sure they have this indestructible, immaterial spirit/soul that is "them" and that somehow survives their physical death aren't eager to prove it by undergoing radically invasive brain surgery. Hell, I'm not even talking about killing them -- just altering their brain so they can demonstrate how unaffected their immaterial self is by material change. But no takers.

It's almost like they don't really believe their own bullshit.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Except you guys never lead with "I don't know"...Not knowing means you can't say one way or the other.

...in the case of naturalists answering the question, it's often implied that what they don't know is a plausible naturalistic explanation.

Not sure about your meaning given the phrasing. If you mean that "I don't know" is not a naturalistic answer, then I agree and it is accurate to say that naturalism supplies no answers to some philosophical questions; but rather, a promissory note that it cannot make good. Someday, maybe we'll have an answer, isn't an answer.

Not knowing doesn't preclude one from ruling out specific answers. Supernatural explanations are unbounded.  Unless you've got something better than magic as an explanation, you've got nothing.

I agree. At the same time, magic is only magic until it isn't. It is a common belief on AF that once the proper mechanism or agent of something is identified an explanation moves from supernatural to natural. For example, electricity displaces Thor. If the explanations were simply "God did it" then you would have a point. Which god? How would we know? Etc. Here that is not the case. If the rule of sufficient reason universally applies, i.e. there are no brute facts, then it is reasonable to ponder metaphysical questions such as how beings can both persist and endure change. Since experience confirms that there are degrees of actuality and potential, then Aquina's logical demonstration (1st Way) proves, without special pleading BTW, that there must be something with complete actuality, i.e. a prime mover, on the far end of that scale. If the premises are sound, the conclusion follows. Believers (of various stripes from Muslims to Buddhists) and naturalists could both acknowledge a prime mover without agreeing on what exactly that means. It is an entirely separate question.

[Asmodee]

Finally, that I don't know the cause for something IN NO WAY says that I cannot know what was NOT the cause.  Do you claim to not know the universe was not caused by sentient marshmallows?  Do you feel the need to evaluate this ludicrous claim?  Are you not thinking seriously about it, knowing full well you will never know for sure that sentient marshmallows didn't create the universe?  No.  You dismiss it immediately.  Did you do that because you DO know what caused the universe?  No.  You may think you know, but you have no proof and therefore it is a belief, not knowledge.  So YOU "don't know" what caused the universe, but you are reasonable in your assumption that you can rule out sentient marshmallows.  And if you did not immediately rule out sentient marshmallows then you're just stupid.  Why would something utterly stupid that I just made up be deserving of serious consideration instead of simple cursory dismissal?  It would not.  There are a million things you "know" didn't cause the universe, and not one of those things is something you know because you have any real knowledge of what did cause the universe.  You CAN both not know what IS the cause AND know what is not the cause.

*emphasis mine*

I love when you guys come up with silly analogies proving that you missed the point...

We are talking about a point in time where as Simon put it "no space at all, and no time, no particles, no fields, no laws of nature" existed. In order for a sentient marshmallow to exist, the former has to also exist, so I can safely rule out sentient marshmallow on that basis.

However God is a spirit. A spirit does not exist within the laws of nature, it is a supernatural being, and therefore not affected by natural law, particles, fields, or time...

Was I talking about that?  Did I quote that?  You were responding to my response to what he said, but that's not what he said that I was responding to.  So yeah, I missed your point because you had some context in your head that you never articulated in words so that I could figure out what you were talking about and, given what I had quoted, that context was not a given.

You sure have a strange notion about how imaginary things work.  A sentient marshmallow is, in fact, a "primary being" (that's a new term and it's MINE!) which requires no other existence to, itself, exist.  All regular marshmallows are made in its image.  All sentient marshmallows can go invisible at will, too, but they can't go visible at will.  Because they existed before time and space, being the cause for it all, most of them are now permanently invisible.  Unfortunately sentient marshmallows are not perfect beings.  That's why the universe is so fucked up, as evidenced by the fact that Pauly Shore once had a career.

As for that last statement, PROVE IT.  You BELIEVE God is a spirit which is real.  You BELIEVE a spirit does not exist within the laws of nature.  You BELIEVE it is not affected by natural laws, particles, fields, time.  However, so called "ghost hunters" disagree with you on much of that.  They believe that either a spirit IS affected by its environment or, at least, has a discernible effect on its environment.  They believe that large quartz deposits (crystals are shiny, thus, magic) effect the formation of certain spirit types.  They believe that a magnetic field feeds a spirit energy.  They believe spirits are actually made of energy and, in fact, many believe God is made of some form of energy because it just sounds really cool and mysterious, so pretend it's not stupid.

What you have are beliefs.  Stating those beliefs as if you know what you're talking about, that only makes you sound smart to stupid people.  And believing that imaginary beings have to follow some rules of the universe, that isn't the smartest thing anyone has ever said to me either.  God is an imaginary being who doesn't have to follow the rules of the universe, so what's different about sentient marshmallows?  You're applying the rules which govern REGULAR marshmallows.  Just as the rules which govern man don't effect God, the rules which govern regular marshmallows don't effect sentient marshmallows.

But you were right about one thing.  The analogy was, in fact, "silly".  THAT WAS THE POINT!  Your God is equally as silly.  Describe him.  "He's the bestest best that was ever bestest at anything!  He's the most good!  He's the most loving!  He's the most fair!  He's the strongest!  Nobody is even close to him!"  That's a child on the playground describing his super powers.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...the people who are absolutely sure they have this indestructible, immaterial spirit/soul that is "them" and that somehow survives their physical death aren't eager to prove it by undergoing radically invasive brain surgery. Hell, I'm not even talking about killing them -- just altering their brain so they can demonstrate how unaffected their immaterial self is by material change.

Personally, I would love to experience DMT. Oddly enough that particular radical material change in brain chemistry seems to convince people of a spiritual reality rather the reverse.

---

If the laws of nature did not exist, there was nothing for the supernatural to be beyond. By definition.

The laws of nature do exist. Why?

[Asmodee]

...the people who are absolutely sure they have this indestructible, immaterial spirit/soul that is "them" and that somehow survives their physical death aren't eager to prove it by undergoing radically invasive brain surgery. Hell, I'm not even talking about killing them -- just altering their brain so they can demonstrate how unaffected their immaterial self is by material change.

Personally, I would love to experience DMT. Oddly enough that particular radical material change in brain chemistry seems to convince people of a spiritual reality rather the reverse.

---

If the laws of nature did not exist, there was nothing for the supernatural to be beyond. By definition.

The laws of nature do exist. Why?

Because the Tooth Fairy deemed it so.

[Huggy Bear]

I'll quote the definition of supernatural again.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/defini...pernatural

If "the laws of nature" did not exist, then whatever state existed, existed apart from nature, making it supernatural by definition... got it?

If the laws of nature did not exist, there was nothing for the supernatural to be beyond. By definition. The one you chose.

You just disproved the supernatural as a cause of the Universe. Well done.

This is why I can't take you seriously, I'm speaking in relation DBP stating that the universe started by some unknown natural process.

The difference is that saying "the universe created itself" is not what he said. His implication is that the universe started by some as yet unknown natural process whereas theists not only believe that it was not a natural process but some magical figure that somehow poofed the universe into existence by some undetermined way and for some reason hates the gays.

How we as humans choose to to define things has no bearing on what existed before the universe...

---

Seeing how time is relative it's totally doable.

You do realize that from our perspective it may take a photon years to reach it's destination, but from the point of view of a photon, it takes no time at all, it's instantaneous.

Aww, you mentioned relativity.  That's adorable.  Like watching a four-year old try to ride a bike.

Relativity is about how matter flows through time relative to its velocity.  It doesn't mean that talking about a point in time when time did not exist suddenly isn't nonsensical.

No I used the word RELATIVE dummy not RELATIVITY, which simply means 'in relation to something else', I'm not talking about the damn theory.  

Seeing how every living thing has a spirit (including you), I don't see how you figure it is, especially when there are cases that suggest consciousness can exist without a functioning brain.

Ah, yes, this magical "spirit" that no one can find, no one can describe, no one knows where it's at, no one knows what it does, no scientific study has ever found the tiniest scrap of evidence for but religious people really, really insist is there.  They point at things we don't understand about the most complex organ in the human body and say, "See!  I promise you it's hiding in those ever-shrinking gaps!"

Tell you what, Huggy.  You let someone fillet your brain with a butcher knife then come and tell me how you can float around without a brain, and I promise you I will convert on the spot.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...en-we-die/

a 2008 paper published in Mind and Matter by University of California, Irvine, cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman: Conscious Realism and the Mind-Body Problem. Conscious realism asserts that the objective world, i.e., the world whose existence does not depend on the perceptions of a particular observer, consists entirely of conscious agents. Consciousness is fundamental to the cosmos and gives rise to particles and fields. It is not a latecomer in the evolutionary history of the universe, arising from complex interactions of unconscious matter and fields, Hoffman writes. Consciousness is first; matter and fields depend on it for their very existence.

This particular scientist posits that Consciousness existed before matter, and not only did it exist before matter, it gave rise to it...

---

Here's a little better analogy than the crap you just spewed...

Let's say some guys wife is getting boned on the side. He can rule out huge numbers of people his wife might be fucking without ever figuring out who it really is. After all, King Henry the 8th isn't available for any afternoon delight. Neither is Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan swinging by to poke her pussy. He can scratch Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and President Obama from the list since they've never had the opportunity to dance the horizontal mambo with her. In fact, he can rule out quite literally billions of people with absolute certainty (or something so close as to make no difference) without even trying...

It is possible to know what the answer isn't even if you don't know what the answer is.

Besides, you give me four of something and I can certainly tell you I don't have ten of them (or 20, or 100, or 2048, or 243,985,243) without ever figuring 2+2=4.

That's the most convoluted drivel I've ever seen.

Let's cut that crap and put it bluntly.

Is it your position that you know with 100 percent certainty that a creator doesn't exist?

[Rhondazvous]

Those who compare God to the tooth fairy are douchebags. I’m sorry but that is truly how I feel. Without even an ounce of shame they ridicule some of the best and brightest thinkers who take up a problem serious and came to serious conclusion. Kierkegaard, Hegel, Kant, Buber, Kripke, Plantinga, Newton, Leibnitz, Putman, and Godel are/were theists. That list doesn’t even include theologians, like David Bentley Hart, or physicists, like, Francis Collins or Max Planck. All brilliant.

Maybe you don’t realize this but it is possible to be an atheist without acting like an infantile little snark. It’s astonishing to me how such ass-wipes will disrespect the legacies of truly great men and women like Dr. King, Bonhoeffer, and Catherine Booth (founder of the Salvation Army) by pretending that their religious convictions did nothing to motivate and inspire them to change the world.

How can anyone seriously believe that the motivating force to build the very first hospitals is in any way comparable to believing in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus? Here in Chicago we have Mount Siani, Rush Presbyterian, Illinois Masonic, Loyola, Mercy, Saints Mary and Elizabeth, Saint Anthony...that’s just a start. They came to be because of religious convictions for which you have no respect.

Thanks for giving us an example of the kind of language you think we should use. I'm humbled.

[Mister Agenda]

You can't refer to it as a 'natural' process if the process is unknown, you assume the process to be natural, yet there are absolutely no examples of nature producing anything from nothing.

This would be in violation of the law of Conservation of Energy/ mass

What you describe falls in the realm of supernatural... in other words, magic.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/supernatural

Face it, your belief requires just as much faith as mine.

We're agreed then that faith is frivolous and has no bearing on the truth of something.

I'm often amused by how quickly some Christians resort to tu quoque with remarks like 'atheism is a religion' or 'your belief that the answers science finds will always be natural is just faith' when those arguments rely on devaluing religion and faith; that is, they acknowledge that religion and faith aren't good reasons to believe something. A tu quoque argument used in this way fails doubly: it's fallacious, and it's self-defeating. Small price to pay for a zinger to atheists, I suppose.

---

The laws of nature do exist. Why?

Because a universe with no regularity at all is so absurd as to require something beyond that universe to explain it. Even chaos has order within it, if there were no order at all, that would be a kind of order in itself, and the one law of nature would be that there is no order...and what keeps it from having any order would be a Very Important Question. All conceivable universes have at least one law of nature.

[Rhondazvous]

Ever see the nuttiness of Swedenborgism?

http://www.swedenborg.org/Beliefs.aspx

• God is infinitely loving and at the center of every life.
  
• Truth is love in action. Actions performed out of love are genuine expressions in a physical form of what love means.
  
• There is one God whose essence is Divine Love and Wisdom. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all aspects of God just as body, mind, and soul are all aspects of one person.
  
• The Bible is the inspired Word of God that provides inspiration and help to lead better and more fulfilling lives. The literal sense of Scripture tells the story of the people of God, and contains a deeper meaning that illumines the journey of the human soul.
  
• People are essentially spirits clothed with material bodies. At death, the material body is laid aside and the person continues to live on in the world of spirit choosing a heavenly life or a hellish one, based on the quality of life choices made here.
  
• God gives everyone the freedom to choose their beliefs and live their lives accordingly. Salvation is available for people of all religions.
  
• The Second Coming has taken place—and in fact still is taking place. It is not an actual physical appearance of the Lord, but rather his return in spirit and truth that is being effected as a present reality.
  
• God is infinitely loving and at the center of every life.
  

What a bunch of schmucks.

and it says absolutely nothing. Divine love won't guarantee you won't be shot dead in the house of your god. Hey Christian, you can make up an excuse for why it's okay god let that happen. Just remember one day somebody might be making an excuse for why god let it happen to you.

There is no action that christians haven't managed to shoehorn into the word love.