I believe this is the point everyone on here was trying to make.
Took me into 100s of posts, and I was being very irrational to claim without any evidence that there’s no god for sure.
It is just as irrational as theists claiming a god exists for sure, even though there’s insufficient evidence to prove a god of any kind.
I sent everyone into circles and I am sorry about that.
Interesting question if any deity would exist, what might that god(s) be like?
Initially gods were like party balloons filled with hydrogen. They were all different colors and sizes, and they belonged to particular places. If you made a god angry (set a match to the balloon) they’d blow up in your face (or at least their priests would).
Then people started talking about gods being immortal, omnipresent, outside of time and space. It was as if they’d popped the balloons and allowed the hydrogen to spread out. As it spread out it became diffuse, invisible, undetectable, absent, meaningless. Being everywhere is the same as being nowhere.
So a god is what’s left behind when you take the skin off a toy balloon. You get a pop, some hot air, and a little bit of spit from the fraud who blew up the balloon.
Okay that’s at least one idea. lol.
Was just a curious question.
Yair. I have thought about it over the years. If a god is the monster YHWH of the old testament., I’m pretty well screwed… If he’s the Jesus in which my mother believed,of infinite compassion, then I’ll be fine…
Of course humans worship MILLIONS of gods. The Hindus alone have 15 million.
Have a look at the Hindu pantheon.
Don’t forget the blood thirsty gods of the Inca, Maya and Aztec.
Perhaps to go back to Zoroaster.
I’ve been interested in comparative religions for about 50 years. So far I’ve barely scratched the surface.
Studying the attributes of probably non existent beings is fascinating if you happen to be a Social Anthropologist.(my discipline) This is because of what it reveals about the society which invented them.
Monkey’s doing back-flips in the branches. FUCK~ About time! You even managed “No good evidence!” instead of the narrow minded bullshit “Proof.” Like they say Down Under - Goodonya.
Yes there’s many religions in this world, and I think Family Guy got it pretty well when their version of Jesus said most religions are bull-crap. The Muslims will kill anyone suspected of being gay.
They don’t look at pedophiles the way we do, as if a guy of 21 has sex with say an eight year old boy, they kill them both for homosexuality.
And Christianity has killed many thousands in the name of their religion.
I am very interested in Morgan Freeman’s series but never have seen it. (The Story Of God, with Morgan Freeman.)
He travels around the world talking to different cultures versions of God and of creation. Basically all religions are about the same thing, not dying. That if you behave yourself and are righteous you get to pass away to a heaven. It is a nice thought that if you are good you get to see all loved ones in a heaven. And if you are not, you go to eternal damnation. There’s many separate stories of what happens to you after death, of course it isn’t a sure thing there’s nothing there. There’s just not enough evidence either way.
I must admit I don’t mind the idea that there could be nothing after death, that one ceases to exist. I can’t miss something like consciousness if it plain never comes back.
Of course we just do not know that for sure as lack of evidence doesn’t mean there’s nothing after death. But if there is a deity I doubt it has a gender or even a solid form.
I guess the only way we will know for sure is to die first, and I am not in a hurry for that. They say life is short, but I feel like life is long enough for what we do have… whatever that means.
I doubt life has a meaning.
Beyond the meaning we attach to it, and the people we care about, I am inclined to agree. I mean why would the lives of one species of evolved apes have any more meaning than any other species?
Life has the meaning you bring to it. “Life is real, only then, when I am.” G.I. Gurdjieiff
Methods of Logic by Willard Van Ormand Quine is your friend here. In particular, Chapter 6, Consistency and Validity. In that chapter, Quine considers simple propositions consisting of atoms (i.e., statements that can be either true or false, represented by simple letters) and combinatorial operators (logical and, logical or, etc). From that chapter:
The above appears (with somewhat different symbolism) on page 28 of my PDF copy of the book in question.
Quine considers the implications of validity and inconsistency further in the chapter, viz:
He then continues with:
Quine continues to note that certain rules apply when substituting a valid (or inconsistent) schemata in place of one of the predicate letters of another schema, a facility that is of particular utility once one moves on to complex quantificational schemata. Expansion of the relevant concepts begins in Chapter 7, Implication.
Though the text is terse and dense, it is informative if one persists reading it with patience. 
Yes I guess life’s meaning is whatever you make of life.
Yes I agree. Life is what you make it out to be.
I take a little different tact then several of the other active posters on these boards.
Yes, most of the various god ideas I have heard cannot be proven or disproven.
That said, it does not mean that both negation and positivity of any particular god idea is on equal footing.
An old favorite example of mine, that I have stated on these boards a lot is:
You owe me 1 million dollars. Prove that you do not. Most folks here, (especially atheist!) quickly realize, they can not prove that they do not owe me 1 million dollars. And they point out correctly, no, the burden of proof lies on me, I need to prove that you owe me 1 million dollars. Not the other way around.
Naturally, I am unable to prove that you owe me 1 million dollars. So we have a scenario much like “god” where one side is not able to conclusively “prove” their point of view. Does that mean we enter a sort of halfway point? Do we compromise and say well, neither side can prove it, so we will say we are both half right and you pay me 500,000 dollars?
NO! Of course not! Who would agree to that?? Are you prepared to pay me 500,000 dollars? Is anyone? Why not?
We can wholesale reject any unproven idea. Not only that, but we should. No one has to prove there is no god, or prove they do not owe me 1 million dollars, they can reject it, and they do not even have to say why or defend their position.
Not only that, other people should help to make sure that I am not going around demanding 1 million dollars from people, and brow beat people into my way of thinking by saying “you can’t prove that you do not owe me money,” (or that my particular god idea flavor does not exist.)
Instead, we should simply place an unproven idea exactly where it belongs. Just another random (crazy!) idea that is so unsupported it can be dismissed out of hand, no argument needed. As so many of us say here, come back when you have actual testable real world evidence, or it just another random human generated idea that has no bearing on reality.
I also want to add in here: the extremely vague notion of a general “god” idea has gotten so incredibly vague that the blanket statement of: “is there a god or not” is actually nearly meaningless, a waste of words it is so vague, nearly any definition could fill in that word, making it so ambiguous it is barely a word to be used in communication.
de·i·ty
/ˈdēədē,ˈdāədē/
noun
“a deity of ancient Greece”
divine status, quality, or nature.
the creator and supreme being
Naturally a loop back to the word god. And as I said another very vague word.
So we are forced to take my own opinion of what the word deity means.
I will say: our sun is a deity. Does it care about humans? Nope. Does it “care” about anything? nope. But it certainly is powerful and absolutely necessary for life and us being here, being able to type on these boards etc.
Good post, though in your scenario of an unevidenced debt claim, I’d have gone a little further, and pointed out that at least we know that your unevidenced claim for a debt is objectively possible. We cannot say the same for any god claims, or anything supernatural, since no one can demonstrate any evidence they are possible.
Most theists and religious apologists often seem to confuse possibility and probability.
I think I kind of get it. Your notation system is different from the one I remember, I think; it WAS in1976!
I took only one unit of logic. We used E E J Lemmon’s “Beginning Logic”. To be frank, I found it very difficult. I was able to get free tutoring from my fantastic lecturer. Passed an open book exam at the end of the course, which was only one term.
.Dropped Philosophy after finishing the year with Metaphysics…It was the only topic in the degree course where I got lower than an A
Think about it.
If there is no after life, you won’t even know. Just like the thousands of times you go to sleep, you just don’t wake up.
But what if there is an after-life and a god? IMO that is a shitstorm. Will you be able to have fun, get stoned, enjoy good music, or just sit around in a blank and boring place forever? And this god, expecting you to continually praise it?
Do you understand how boring it will eventually become?
Indeed
True story.
Cranky is five and in grade one .Religious indoctrination class. (Never too young to learn about mortal sin and hell )
Nun: “Hands up all those who want to go to heaven” Cranky doe not raise his hand.
Nun (quite sharply): “Don’t you want to go to heaven Cranky?”
Cranky: " Not if that mob are going"
((((((((((((((((((((((((((9))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
An irony: IF as an atheist I’m wrong and the theists are right ,I may be in deep doo doo.
If on the other hand my suspicions are right, I won’t know and neither will the billions of believers. That annoys me because I will not be able to revel in schadenfreude as so many of those pricks seem to be anticipating with glee.
I’m incapable of grasping the idea of nothingness. Possibly because there’s nothing to grasp.
Is claimed that if you die in a dream you will actually die. Although I suppose a person might get a fright, have a stroke and die,I didn’t
I did die in a dream once.I was aware of only unending darkness and a feeling of falling.The feeling was one of complete, abject terror. I was thrilled to wake up I can tell you!
According to some Catholic believers I’ve known, god created time and space before he created anything else. After the end of days, time and space will again cease to exist. Consequently, heaven and hell, by definition, will be a constant ‘now’ , with no passage of time.
I hope I never find out.
Hey guys, take the time to refer me to a good basic manual for beginning logic. Definitions and examples without too much math. PDF format.
Beyond the basic laws of logic and umpteen fallacies, I really don’t know much else. I can probably construct a basic syllogism and recognize general ones that are fallacious. It seems to me that there is so much more to learn. I know little to nothing about the formulas you are using and would really like to learn more. Any ideas?
Ditto! I just wing it - I can spot (most of the time) fallacies… and I try to avoid them when I post (mostly a cover-your-ass attitude) -
Mind you - I’d hate to lose my flair for my fucking style!
And Cog - you have style! I think when I post something stupid, most theists can relate (ohhhh, that was mean 
)
Well if you want something flashy, there is all kinds of philosophy sources. That is not how I learned it. I learned it the boring (but rigorous) way:
Yes I do understand how boring it would become. That’s one of those reasons it is hard for me to believe a god is possible. Life seems short, but at the same time it is as long as it needs to be.
