Can You Disprove The Existance of God Then?

Debate Room
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The most important thing (in my mind) about being an atheist is to think for yourself, and not how other people tell you what you should think.

Also, don’t feel guilty about disagreeing with your culture and upbringing.

I have the idea (a hypothesis, not a theory) that early religious indoctrination creates a form of Stockholm Syndrome . . . which is what can happen when hostages start to bond with their captors. Strict religious schools that are repressive and use liberal amounts of corporal punishment seem consistant with the idea that a student in such a school is in a situation similar to being held as a hostage.

So, deprogram yourself by allowing yourself to disagree with what has been fed into you for your whole life. This is a difficult and frightening process, but most of us find that it is worth it.

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There is no 'being" you either admit that god is knowable or you admit that it is not knowable. Ask yourself what you truly know about the god thing. As long as you think you know something, you will be a theist who believes something about the god thing. Now, if you admit that you don’t actually know anything, you have two choices.

  1. You could be a “Doubting Thomas.” John 20:29 - Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Or you could buy into “Pascal’s Wager.” In both cases, you would have no knowledge of God but believe anyway. This would make you an Agnostic Theist.

  2. Coming to the realization that your lack of support and evidence for your belief in god, makes it silly to hold such a belief, would be the first step towards atheism. You don’t become an atheist. You just let go of religion. There is no such thing as an atheist. There is just a human being who stopped believing the Iron Age mythology of the Biblical indoctrination they grew up with. You don’t become an atheist. There are no rituals, no prayers, and no transformative rites. You just let go of religion and walk away.
    Atheism literally means - “Without Theism.” That’s it, and nothing more.

Don’t confuse Atheism with skepticism. Most of the people on the site are well developed skeptics. This has nothing to do with atheism (Belief in God) Skepticism is how one goes about searching for what is real or true. Slepticism is a method and a philosophy. Other people on the site may be scientists and they know how to use the scientific method. They understand the null hypothesis and how to use it. It is not their atheism that succeeds in debates but their rationality and willingness to examine fact and evidence with a system of inquiry that has put men on the moon, cured diseases, and performed miracles far greater than any god.

You are presented with a unique problem being Hindu. The unfolding of Shiva and seeing god in all things is different than the god of the Western world. As an atheist, you may continue to call yourself Hindu. ‘Hinduism’ is, in fact, largely atheistic. Five out of the six major schools of orthodox Indian philosophy, which ‘Hinduism’ calls its own, are atheistic.

I think the quickest way for you to drop Hinduism is to actually examine it. What is it actually teaching? How is what Hinduism teaches real? Do you care about what is real and true? Or do you care about the ancient stories being told in the Vedas? Do you really want to see the world beyond the confines of your religious indoctrination?

Is there anything wrong with the idea of Karma, and a whole cast system based on the idea? Is your worth actually determined by which family you were born into? Do people deserve the tortures they go through because of some past life misdeed? How insane is that?

The way you get to be an atheist is to take a hard look at the shit you believe, the utter and complete nonsense you were raised with. Then you set it down and walk away.

EDIT: What happens after that depends on the choices you make.

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That doesn’t remotely sum up any argument I have ever made, it is in fact a straw man fallacy.

Why would you assume gravity can be directly observed beyond its effect?

Gibberish again, and wtf is with the random capital letters?

Lay off the shrooms, is all I can advise here.

Great, and in this hypothesis can you demonstrate any objective evidence to support that claim?

That’s a circular reasoning fallacy, and for the love of whichever deity you imagine to be real, start running a spell checker, and desist from these random capital letters.

Rightyho then…just a thought but I immediately checked every major global news network, and nary one word about this is to be found? It’s a puzzler alright… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Tbh I think this one is either a very elaborate windup, or he’s sneaked into the nurse’s station, and is typing with his nose.

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You’ve just reminded me of the time Derek Lowe was posting yet another of the utterly glorious pieces in the Things I Won’t Work With section of his medicinal chemistry blog.

On this occasion, he was describing the, let’s call them lively events, that are likely to occur if you move from peroxides (substances with an -O-O- group contained in the molecule) to trioxidanes (substances with an -O-O-O- group contained in the molecule).

Now, anyone familiar with, say, the Messerschmitt Me163 Komet rocket propelled fighter, or the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk by a faulty peroxide powered torpedo going rogue in the torpedo room, knows only too well what mayhem peroxides are capable of.

There are many more examples to track down by the diligent, all exhibiting varying degrees of bowel-watering terror, and concentrated hydrogen peroxide is a sort of one stop shop for ravenous flames, loud bangs, high speed shrapnel, and spectacles that are only entertaining if you’re watching them on TV, while you’re occupying a different continental land mass to the unfolding pyrotechnics.

So, Lowe discusses the aforementioned peroxidanes - three single bonded oxygen atoms in a line instead of two. Which he assures us are a LOT more frisky than standard peroxides.

During this dissertation, which includes mention of the peroxone process, when you really want to oxidise something to death (high test hydrogen peroxide AND ozone together!), he mentions that chemists have theorised that one of the reaction intermediates is the HOOOOO- anion, and upon mentioning this, retorts “No, I didn’t type that with my elbows”.

There are chemists who make a living from exploring the outer reaches of such chemical calamity, who doubtless earn every penny of their salaries, especially if they’ve managed to reach the present with all appendages intact.

Usually, military funding is involved in this sort of research, and the salary cheques are substantial, probably including a fair chunk of explicitly labelled danger money. Finding skilled chemists willing to take on lab work that involves not just the possibility, but the significant likelihood of having to dodge shrapnel and wear running shoes to expedite evacuations, isn’t easy.

Of course, teenage pyromaniacs are weeded out long before actual shortlisting begins, because for this business, you need cool heads and a sanguine temperament, not to mention an excellent command of a large body of technical knowledge.

But the examples I mentioned tell us that even if you have expertise on your hands, peroxides and their analogues need very little temptation to make things go tits up, in ways that you only want to observe from a suitably long distance.

Oh, and for similar mayhem involving molecules with silly numbers of nitrogen atoms crowded together in silly bond arrangements, look up a certain Dr Thomas Klapötke, whom I’ve mentioned before as being involved in getting bigger bangs for the buck, so to speak. His party pieces with polyazides and other limb removers make for reading that is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying to the chemically knowledgeable reader.

Of course, that I and several others here can launch into topics of this nature from a background of actual learning, is yet another elementary part of the environment here that smug, self-satisfied, self-righteous, complacent and frequently wilfully ignorant mythology fanboys, discover as a piece of culture shock.

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At least with peroxides and trioxidanes, if something goes wrong, you’ll know about it pretty quickly. When working with some things, like organomercury compounds, you can spill as little as a drop or two on your gloved hand, and die a horrible death months later. Look up the tragic case of Karen Wetterhahn and dimethylmercury.

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Lowe covers that one too, and the horrors that arise from the related dimethylcadmium.

Though at least you don’t have to worry about being poisoned by dimethylzinc. Which bursts into ravenous flames on contact with either atmospheric oxygen or water. Plus, the resulting zinc oxide is safe enough to use in nappy rash cream. Whereas both cadmium and mercury oxides are still hideously toxic.

The really insidious long term toxins, however, are alkylating agents. Anything that will attach, for example, extra methyl groups to key biomolecules is pretty much guaranteed to be both a carcinogen and a teratogen,

Though some of these agents are more rapidly troublesome than others. While some alkylating agents will quietly methylate key DNA stretches while you remain blissfully unaware, only to discover the joys of rare but aggressive cancers 30 to 40 years down the line, an agent such as methyl fluorosulphonate will hit you with lung oedema in about 48 hours. Which places this beast (known colloquially as “magic methyl”) in the same category of health hazard as phosgene, a gas used as a chemical weapon in World War I.

Interesting that evolution donated methylation to living organisms as a means not only of modifying certain critical proteins to enable their use, but to mark other proteins (and DNA strands damaged beyond repair) as targets for destruction by relevant enzymes. Mess with in vitro methylation at your peril.

Another insidious source of long term illness, is ingestion of alpha-emitting heavy radionuclides (uranium, plutonium etc). Possibly the worst sort of ticking time bomb you could have lurking inside you.

Worse still if the method of ingestion is inhalation - the toxicity of many substances was determined through weird lung conditions in miners in various industries - everything from asbestos through beryllium to uranium has its litany of mine related industrial disease.

It’s not just dust particles that are an issue here either - nickel carbonyl is a liquid at room temperature, becoming a gas at just 43°C (that one catches many people by surprise). If you manage to survive the carbon monoxide poisoning, those freed up nickel atoms soon get to work disrupting a host of enzymes, including at least one or two important mitochondrial ones. Not a pretty way to go.

Mind you, you don’t have to venture into a poisons laboratory to encounter substances that will ruin your day. Some cyanobacteria produce such goodies as anatoxins and saxitoxin, several dinoflagellates bring their own suite of exotic poisons to the party, and there’s the palytoxins produced by certain corals. Before we consider of course the vast array of weaponised proteins generated by bacteria. Salmonella, cholera, typhoid and Clostridium botulinum are merely the better known culprits here.

Given how many unpleasant and painful death journeys exist, my advice to anyone staring a certain Mr G. Reaper hard in the face is to choose a method of exit that leaves no opportunity for you to sense the transition. Be this through anaesthesia or speed.

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OH FICK! The FBI, INTERPOL, the CIA, SIS, MI6, and Kim Johng-un, just logged into the site using aliases.

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