I explained it in my post above.
You’re either trolling, or you can’t read a dictionary. I went with what I considered the more likely explanation, especially given your penchant for ignoring responses and questions in particular, just to repeat your spiel.
That’s because it is a lie, since I am an atheist, and I don’t believe the supernatural is possible, but since it is unfalsifiable don’t go so far as to hold a belief only natural processes are possible, since I could not satisfy the burden of proof for that claim.
Why would lacking a belief in a deity require me to be a naturalist, it makes no sense.
Do you not understand the difference between disbelieving a claim, and holding a contrary belief?
Nope, I don’t believe the supernatural is possible, unless it can be demonstrated to be with sufficient objective evidence, but please do explain your rationale.
I disbelieve all unfalsifiable beliefs, as I already explained, and I remain agnostic, as this is the only rational open minded position. Sine claims for the supernatural seem unfalsifiable, then the contrary claim (naturalism) must also be unfalsifiable, thus i withhold belief from both.
Atheism
noun
- disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
Naturalism
noun
- the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted.
Note I answered your question promptly and honestly. Can I know expect you to reciprocate? Go back and find each question of mine you’ve ignored please.
It has been pointed out to you by several others here that this is factually wrong, for several reasons. But you keep repeating your miscomprehension as if it was never opposed. Whether it is because you fail to grasp the differences and nuances, if it is above your comprehension level, or because you’re simply dishonest in your argumentation is not for me to say. Outwards it looks the same.
In any case, here it comes in tea spoon mode:
“I do not believe in gods/a god” and “I lack the belief in gods/a god” are just two slightly different phrasings of the same thing. There can be several reasons that one lacks belief in a god. For example: a) That one was brought up in an environment where gods and religion never was an issue, so there was nothing to believe in in the first place. Religion never entered the subject’s brain or conciousness in the first place, and has never been taken up as an active belief. b) A rejection of the belief in a god because the concept of a particular god - and by extension also several other gods - in itself is perceived as meaningless, incomprehensible, incoherent, unintelligent, contradicory, unproven, implausible, or any combination of these and other reasons. This may also extend to religious practices, rituals and way of life as well.
Neither a) nor b) imply the active belief that gods do not exist, or the rejection of the possibility that they may exist. This is covered by this option: c) “I believe god/gods do not exist”, which is an active rejection or denial of their existence, which is quite distinct from the two options above. This option actively takes the stance of supporting an unfalsifiable unprovable statement. Which is again quite distinct from options a) and b) above.
There are of course nuances that I haven’t covered here, and it is quite possible to be in between these options, in much the same way as characterised by Dawkin’s spectrum of theistic probability, which ranges from 100% belief in god/positive knowledge that there is a god to outright rejection of the existence of a god (“I know there is no god”). But note that the Dawkins scale is distinct from/is not the same as what I have presented above.
Analogously, we can compare this to sports. Some people (the “sportitious”) are active followers of sports of different kinds, and will in an almost all-consuming or fanatical manner be a supporter of a sporting club or a fan of particular athlete, and sports are their biggest and most time-consuming interest. They can idolise certain athletes, plastering their walls with images of their chosen athlete or team, or they can publically display their affection by e.g. wearing their team’s sportswear, often with the name of certain athletes printed on the back. On the other hand, you also have some people (the “asportitious”) that are just not interested in sports, it disinterests them. They don’t watch any sports on TV, they don’t go to games or competitions, they are uninterested in teams, rankings, individual athletes, etc. Sports is just not something they deal with, and it just doesn’t take any part in their lives. Sports is simply speaking something that has no place in their lives - they just say “meh”, and go on with their lives as if sports does not exist. This is a far cry from actively denying the existence of sports and athletes.
Edit: Changed “unfalsifiable” to “unprovable”. Which is what I meant to write, but that’s what I get for trying to say two things at the same time.
Good post, nails it for me. I’d also say one could go even further, and assert that no deity is possible.
As you say his (@scrappykoala’s) reasoning seems hopelessly facile, as if he won’t or can’t avoid closed minded absolutes, that ignores or is incapable of nuanced thinking entirely.
I asked him if he knew what an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy is, unsurprisingly I’ve received no answer. His reasoning will remain poor until understand and avoids known logical fallacies like that, he has of course used several, they have been explained to him, he has of course ignored them only to repeat the same irratiinal spiel.
Perhaps he imagines repetition alone, represents an efficacious debating tactic? One more thing he’s wrong about in that case.
Bullshit.
NOT treating someone else’s unsupported assertions uncritically as fact, is the very ANTITHESIS of “belief”. That you keep lying about this despite the repeated schooling on the matter you’re receiving speaks volumes.
Meanwhile, let’s deal with your other predictable lies …
Again, bullshit and lies. Atheism concerns itself only with suspicion of unsupported mythology fanboy assertions. Going to learn this elementary concept at some point?
Now for the list of lies you posted …
Your specious attempt to misrepresent acceptance of testable natural processes as a “religious dogma” in the same vein as your creationist fantasies, is just that - specious. Several million peer reviewed scientific papers document in exquisite detail, the evidence that testable natural processes are SUFFICIENT to explain the vast body of observational data obtained over the past centuries. That this happens to render cartoon magic men from pre-scientific mythologies superfluous to requirements and irrelevant, is merely collateral damage, arising from the absurd falsity of mythological assertions.
As for YOUR assumption that there IS a “mind” or an “intelligent designer”, this is an assertion that YOU are required to support with proper evidence, and by proper evidence, I don’t mean “my favourite mythology says so” or duplicitous ex recto apologetic fabrications that an astute child would point and laugh at. Indeed, I’m aware of the fact that most, if not all, of the mouths on sticks who come here yapping about “design” have NO idea what constitutes a proper, rigorous test for “design”. Until you or another of your ilk actually delivers substance on this matter, unsupported assertions about “design” can be tossed onto the bin with the same lack of effort that was exerted in presenting them.
Except that scientists do NOT postulate this egregiously dishonest caricature of evolution, that in predictable lying creationist fashion, was your first port of call here. Instead, scientists postulate that simpler antecedents emerged first, and the descendants thereof acquired extra features incrementally over subsequent generations. A process for which scientists have evidence.
Organic chemists routinely achieve this in the laboratory. It’s the process by which every synthetic drug manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry achieves that objective.
Plus, over 100,000 peer reviewed scientific papers from the prebiotic chemistry literature, document in exquisite detail the laboratory experiments establishing that every chemical reaction implicated in the origin of life WORKS. The research in question has now moved on to successful experiments with synthetic model protocells, and indeed I’ve provided a detailed overview of the process, which includes references to 96 peer reviewed scientific papers.
Grow up. We leave magic to fetishists for cartoon magic men like you.
Plus, we have evidence for the antiquity of the universe.
Which palaeontology provides evidence for.
Oh, and some evolutionary processes can occur much more quickly. Such as those speciation events replicated in the laboratory.
Another infantile caricature. Is this the best you can do?
Since we have evidence in abundance for testable natural processes, and ZERO evidence for magic poofing by a cartoon magic man, you have three guesses which is more likely on that basis.
Oh look, the mythology fanboy wants to be “special”. How childish.
There’s NO evidence that we’re some sort of “anointed” entity decreed to be so by a cartoon magic man in the sky. Grow up.
Guess what, Looby Loo? I’ve already devoted column inches here, to the fact that there exists an abundant scientific literature, documenting in exquisite detail the evidence for the evolutionary and biological basis of [1] our capacity for ethical thought, and [2] the motivation to act thereupon.
Topics covered in said literature include:
[1] The evolution of brain development genes expressed in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain known to be implicated in ethical decision making for over a century;
[2] Observed and experimentally verified instances of ethical behaviour in non-human species, none of which know anything about the mythologies or cartoon magic men humans have invented.
Indeed, I was introduced some time ago, to two scientific papers documenting experimentally tested and verified instances of ethical behaviour in RATS. It was demonstrated in the requisite experiments, that a rat would avoid performing an action resulting in harm or suffering being inflicted upon another rat, even if a large and tempting reward was offered as an inducement to perform said action.
Indeed, the rats in those laboratory experiments behaved in an ethically superior manner, to the mythology fanboys who spent 1,500 years in Europe enforcing conformity to doctrine via torture and sadistic murder.
Moving on …
We have evidence for testable natural processes by the supertanker load. We have ZERO evidence for magic poofing by a cartoon magic man in the sky.
Just because mythology fanboys suffer terminal butthurt and intellectual penis envy over this, doesn’t validate any of their whingeing, you screed here being a particularly low grade example thereof.
As for your resort to the favourite creationist tactic of spurious “quotes”, in many cases deliberately and dishonestly taken out of context, no one here familiar with this brand of creationist mendacity is fooled. Likewise, your erection (feeble though it is) of the “scientism” bullshit, is merely another envious whinge at the manner in which scientists have provided evidence for their postulates by the supertanker load, while mythology fanboys have nothing to offer but made up shit and lies. That intellectual penis envy must really be boiling your piss.
Your performance is decreasing in adequacy with each new post.
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True. That can be formulated as “No god can possibly exist”, which is an unprovable statement.
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I just tried reading your latest wall of words, but after a while they all blurred together and became “blah, blah, blah”.
You can keep telling us that YOU know what we believe, and WHY we believe it, but saying the same bullshit over and over doesn’t/won’t ever make you right.
Atheism is not a belief system, we all have different reasons for not believing in the fairy tales that are collected in the bible. What makes you so fucking sure that you’re even praising the correct god? Do you believe in the god of Islam? What about the millions of Sikhs in the world, are they all wrong?
You don’t know any of us from Adam(get it?), and you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about when it pertains to Atheism.
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And in turn, I understand why he chose to use the word assert at this juncture. Because all that has ever been presented, with respect to the question of whether or not gods of one sort or another, has been assertions.
While it may not be discoursively rigorous to counter one blind assertion with another, alerting the pedlar of the original blind assertion that this is what you’re doing, makes a salient point. Namely, that playing “assertion ping-pong” in this manner leaves us all in the same state of ignorance we possessed before said ping-pong began.
Unfortunately, many mythology fanboys routinely demonstrate, that they don’t even understand this elementary concept, let alone the concepts that loom large, the moment you start treating the existence of a god type entity seriously. A task that of course, the mythology fanboys fail dismally at, because they simply regurgitate the tiresome prepared scripts they’ve been spoon fed with, to the effect that their favourite choice of mythology and their favourite choice of cartoon magic entities are purportedly the only viable ones. This declaration by fiat being based upon uncritical acceptance of various unsupported assertions including those populating the mythologies in question.
Indeed, it’s blind assertions all the way down with mythology fanboys, and educating them away from this dismal ersatz for genuine discourse is a frequently thankless task. One doubly thankless when naked ideological mendacity is brought to the table by the mythology fanboys in question, along with the all too often observed wilful obstinacy in the face of inconvenient or lethal fact.
A couple of thoughts:
There are people in this world who think in binary - that is, everything is an either/or situation. I think Scrappy might be one of those - or at least from time to time exhibits those characteristics.
The problem with thinking in binary is missing other possibilities, especially the more subtle ones. In this case, it’s the difference between disbelieving something exists and believing something doesn’t exist.
Worse the binary thinker can not understand the idea that someone can suspend belief or disbelief and hold a neutral position.
This leads me to think that Scrappy wasn’t really an atheist. I know, I know - No True Scotsman - but nevertheless.
The fact that he just does not understand atheism is enough to convince me. The fact that he does not understand logic is just additional fodder for the fire.
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This…
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I’m willing to bet everything I own v.s. 1 penny that you can’t.
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