No reason justifies disbelief.

[The Grand Nudger]

How do you know that things change, or that change is caused by something?  Both appear to be empirical claims.

[Belacqua]

To be fair, there are some people here who claim their lack of belief is not a reasoned result at all. It results from no reasons and is based on no knowledge or claims.

I wasn't programmed to believe as a child, so I never bothered with beliefs. Yes, that's not a reasoned position, but I don't have to defend it. If someone has real evidence for a god or gods, trot it out.

Do you believe in unicorns? If not, do you have reasons?

There are several good ones I can think of. 

~ I've never seen one. 
~ I've never heard a serious person claim they exist.
~ No fossil or skeletal remains. 
~ They don't appear in Medieval fact-based books like hunting manuals -- only books of legends, alongside clearly fictional creatures like the cynocephali. 

Those are good reasons, I think.

[The Grand Nudger]

[LadyForCamus]

[quote='LadyForCamus' pid='1893303' dateline='1553169893']
Logical arguments do not function as fact-gathering tools. They begin with assumptions that, if sound, will be fact-based, and yield conclusions from there.

For example, Aristotle's whole argument for a First Mover begins from two premises: 

1) things change, and 
2) change is caused by something. 

Those seemed self-evident to people for a long time. The rest of the argument pretty much goes from there, without the need for more premises. 

I understand that people now tend to think the second premise is not believable. Maybe so.

Even if I give you P2. for the sake of the argument, all it gets you to is a prime mover.  What does that tell us about a god?  Nothing.  It’s generic deism at best. It tells us something moved to create reality. It doesn’t describe what that thing is, or any of its attributes. Why does the prime mover necessarily have to be god? Where is the argument for that assertion? Further, a prime mover argument certainly doesn’t get you to the tri-omni, personal god of monotheism. I have acquired no information about any god thanks to this argument, so what good is it?

If you're talking about evidence, you're talking about science.

This is your metaphysical commitment. I guess it seems so self-evident to you that it needs no defending. I'm not going to argue with you about it.

Wrong.  I am offering you the opportunity to present a different metaphysical commitment; an alternative method to the scientific method for information and fact-gathering about a claim (“god exists.”), and defend its reliability and accuracy.

So far, you have done everything except that, lol.

[LadyForCamus]

How do you know that things change, or that change is caused by something?  Both appear to be empirical claims.

They always went to have their cake and eat it to, don’t they?

“You can’t use empiricism to discover anything about god. By the way, here are some good arguments for god that rely on premises that make assumptions about the observable universe!”

[The Grand Nudger]

IDK what's going on when Bel makes claims like that..in my experience they rely on a misunderstanding of empiricism...but aristotle, for his part, was opining and writing about a set of explicitly empirical things and attempting to explain natural phenomena when he formed that argument.  He was one of the earliest naturalists.  It's effectively certain that he'd have been (or wanted to be) a biologist or a physicist had he lived today.  That he'd use our improved tools.  Perhaps he wouldn't have thought that eels spontaneously generated out of mud...or any of the other equally hilarious things he dropped the ball on through no specific fault of his own.

He'd certainly be rolling over in his grave if he saw how poorly used his musings were by contemporary religion. The same goes for pretty much any philosopher of classical antiquity.

[Jehanne]

[Mister Agenda]

Meh, I guess not?

The boards aren't making sense using logic and sound reasoning, there's little to nothing here which interests you, and you have nothing to contribute personally beyond some comment that you have nothing to contribute.

Well yes, I rather not contribute to the rotting pile of insanity around here.

Complain, complain, complain....

[Rhondazvous]

Disbelief doesn't have to be justified.this is just another attempt to shift the burden of proof. That burden belongs to the side that claims to have positive proof of something. If you can't bear it don't shift it.

[Jehanne]

Disbelief doesn't have to be justified.this is just another attempt to shift the burden of proof. That burden belongs to the side that claims to have positive proof of something. If you can't bear it don't shift it.