Ah let the trolling commence, that sweetheart is an ad hominem fallacy.
Thank you.
Yes facts can present headaches for unevidenced superstition, why not pray to god to give you the answers to defeat the nasty heathens? Or you could go debate people who share your unevidenced superstition, in a soothing circle jerk of like (closed) minded people?
Woe is me.
When the rephrasing is a dishonest misrepresentation of the original statement? If you read my post slowly and carefully you will see I actually pointed that out for you.
It’s not a lie, it’s a rather hilarious straw man fallacy, and of course since you’re comparing it to your earlier lie it’s also a false equivalence fallacy, So well done sweetheart you managed to use 2 different logical fallacies in one claim.
Now, can you demonstrate any objective evidence for any deity, and if you can’t why not just present the most compelling reason you think you have to believe a deity exists outside of your imagination.
The first one would be a sweeping generic claim about all deities, whereas the second one deals with a claim about a specific deity or deities. It takes a woeful grasp of English not to understand the difference as well, though this would explain a lot. You wouldn’t be a teenager by any chance would you?
Wow, irony overload right there. As concisely and accurately as possible explain why you believe a deity exists outside your imagination, I will be pointing out any unevidenced assumptions that violate Occam’s razor, and any arguments that violate the principles of logic, like the common logical fallacies you have used relentlessly so far.
No need, I imagine they all have a grasp of English sufficient to understand what Cognatic said, the error is yours, hilariously.
I already told you to make simple, consistent and succint argument without irrelevant balderdash. I’m no longer impressed with long, inconsistent crap having little or no substance.
Now that you made everything clear, that’s fine but it still didn’t change the fact it was contradictory in Cognotic original post.
When making a lot of statement, it might be impossible to fully spell out your mind.
You guys could have simply admitted though that it seemed contradictory but this or that was the point you wanted to make. That’s honest, mature and fixes everything right away, instead of trying to play smart with irrelevant texts like you all are immune to errors.
It’s not a a contradiction, some concepts are unfalsifiable, and this includes some concepts of deities. Unfalsifiable means that even were a claim assertion or belief false, we cannot conceive of a way to falsify, in science these are sometimes facetiously referred to as “not even wrong”, since a knowing a claim is wrong teaches us something, and unfalsifiable claims teach us nothing. The word agnosticism describes such a concept of deity, and is defined as the belief that nothing in known or can be known about the nature or existence of a deity. NB Some claims and conceits of deity are falsifiable. Now I disbelieve all unfalsifiable claims, as to believe them all would involve violating the law of non-contradiction, and thus be irrational, to believe some would must involve bias and thus be closed minded. So I withhold belief from all unfalsifiable claims, and remain agnostic, as I must do.
Cognostic’s point was that he didn’t think an atheist (worth his salt as he put it) would make a claim to knowledge they knew they could not support or properly evidence.
It did not seem contradictory, you misunderstood it, and then misrepresented it. In my experience most pf the regular posters here are more than happy to acknowledge an error. I do note though that despite you using several logical fallacies in your arguments, you never acknowledge any of them? How do you imagine that is perceived?
Talking of obfuscation, you seem to have missed my question yet again. Can you demonstrate any objective evidence for any deity or deities, and if not what is the most compelling reason or argument you have for believing a deity exists outside of the human imagination.
The @Candylopez account was banned for being a third account by a single user. This user’s two other accounts, previously only put in temporary time out, have also been permanently blocked.
I will continue to ban this user if new accounts are created. Multiple accounts / sock puppetry is not allowed.
Oh, no! I am sooo shocked! I did notice the writing styles were starting to look similar. As time goes on, it becomes more and more difficult to “stay in character”. God love 'em.
Oh good gravy, how painfully sad is that. Considering how desperate this idiot was to share his/her views on here, he/she sure took up a painful amount of bandwidth to say f*** all of any value or significance.
Then again I suppose our expectations have to be low, for someone who doesn’t understand that their IP address doesn’t change when they create a new account.
Well, there are methods for circumventing the IP check, for example by using a decent VPN. I just tested with the VPN I use, and the IP address changes significantly, even when setting it up again with the same exit node. Yes, you will need to have some discipline and change VPN exit node whenever you switch between your sock puppets, but you can at least keep it going for quite some time this way.
Ah thanks for that, I didn’t know. It does make you wonder why he/she was so desperate to post here, given all that was offered were disjointed rants against atheists and atheism.
I suspect it’s the same reason that anti-vaxers seek out discussion fora that are pro evidence-based medicine and pro vaccine, and angle trisectors and science crackpots seek out science discussion fora. And perhaps the same reason some atheists seek out religious discussion fora to troll/argue?
The following is a long read. Exercise the diligence to persevere with all of it, and you will understand much.
Time for me to wade in on this …
Let me introduce you to proper discourse 101.
Step 1. Whenever a statement is first presented, that purports to inform us of a fact, that statement is an assertion.
Step 2. When an assertion is first presented, it possesses the status “truth value unknown”. As a corollary, an assertion does not equal fact.
Step 3. The only way to remedy that deficit, is to test the assertion. Either by finding real world observational data that will inform us about the truth-value of the assertion, or deriving a formal proof/disproof thereof in an appropriate formal system. Both of these quantities constitute evidence for the truth-value of the assertion.
Step 4. In the absence of any of the aforementioned evidence, the assertion is safely dicardable, because it provides no useful knowledge.
Only after we have implemented Step 3 above, are we in a position to know whether or not an assertion tells us something true or false. The assertions found to be false are discarded, except for pedagogical reasons. The assertions found to be true become our evidentially supported postulates, that form the basis of our body of knowledge.
Now, we have a wide assortment of people coming here, presenting two assertions in one: one, the assertion that a god of some sort exists, and two, that their favourite candidate for the “god role” is the only possible choice.
To engage in discourse properly, we need to treat these assertions separately.
First of all, we have the assertion that a god type entity of some sort exists. This is an unanswered question. We know this, because if a genuine answer to that question had ever been presented, it would be part of our mainstream body of knowledge, and no one would be arguing about it (except, of course, wilful contrarians and the tinfoil hat brigade).
So, since even the question in general is unanswered. As a corollary, assertions about specific candidates for the role are null and void from the start.
Noting the distinction I’ve just presented above, is a useful exercise in rigour for you to study and learn from. Namely, make sure you know what you are talking about, before you speak (or type).
Now we come to some additional issues. Which again, require careful explanation.
The first of these issues is this - no one here ridicules the concept of a god, though one of the problems we have here, is that enthusiasts for this concept tend to skimp on the hard work of defining that concept properly. Without a proper definition, we are going nowhere, as both scientists and pure mathematicians will tell you. Indeed, one of the fine arts of any properly constructed intellectual endeavour, is the art of developing properly constructed definitions.
The second issue is that all too often, enthusiasts for a particular choice of god have an annoying habit of jumping straight to their favourite choice, without bothering with any of the preparatory groundwork above.
The third issue is that the particular choices for the “god role” presented by said enthusiasts, are [1] merely asserted to exist, [2] are asserted to exist within the pages of pre-scientific mythologies that contain other assertions known not merely to be wrong, but absurd, and [3] are all too frequently constructed to possess absurd and contradictory properties. [3] alone consitutes sufficient grounds to dismiss those candidates, even before we turn to the many related issues and data points.
The fourth issue is that the enthusiasts for particular choices of “god candidate” manifestly do not know how the rules of proper discourse operate, do not know what consitutes genuine evidence supporting an assertion, and present as a substitute for genuine rigorous discourse, a tiresome litany of ex recto apologetic fabrications that are deserving of ridicule. Worse still, those litianies of ex recto apologetic fabrications are presented over and over again, by various individuals, who never bothered to check if what they mistake as “ineffable wisdom” has been presented here before and found to be nothing of the sort.
Indeed, one of the points I have made repeatedly here, is this: even if there does genuinely exist a god type entity of some sort, in the absence of proper evidence for said entity, we may safely operate as if said entity does not exist. The difference between us and the enthusiasts for various cartoon magic men from pre-scientific mythologies (I refer to these individuals as “mythology fanboys”, and will continue to do so from here for the sake of brevity), is that we are willing to revise our view if incoming data tells us this is required. On the other hand, the mythology fanboys routinely demonstrate that no amount of evidence refuting their claims will change their minds.
At this point, you should be armed with at least the basic knowledge required to understand my next points. Point one: finding genuine evidence for a god type entity is likely to be so difficult, that whoever succeeds in this endeavour, will be guaranteed a Nobel Prize. That evidence won’t come from pedlars of apologetics.
Point two: the moment said evidence arrives, it will almost certainly falsify all of our pre-scientific mythologies at a stroke.
Point three: said evidence will almsot certainly inform us, that any genuinely existing god type entity will be so far removed from all previous human experience, that the people best placed to understand it will be people such as particle physicists, who deal with counter-intuitive phenomena in their everyday work. Such an entity will almost certainly be way beyond the understanding of so-called “holy men”.
You should now be in a position to realise, why we treat the output of the mythology fanboys with scorn and derision - because none of them have exerted any of the intellectual effort outlined above.
And now, I can move on …
Once again, read my above distinction between a god type entity in the general sense, and particular choices of candidate, along with the whole exposition on the proper rules of discourse. I’m reminded of a useful aphorism here - “it is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it”. Though I’m reminded in addition that this is frequently mis-attributed to Aristotle, usually as a result of trying (and failing) to simplfy a key passage in the Nicomachean Ethics (see more on this here). That tangential diversion aside, one person who did teach this concept was the 20th century logician and analytical philosopher Willard Van Ormand Quine, whose clarity of thought on such matters is an example to aspire to on the part of anyone who wishes to call himself a thinker.
Indeed, the proper pursuit of logic demands that we treat propositions in this manner. Quine reminds us of this in numerous places in his seminal textbook “Methods of Logic”.
None of us here assert that a god type entity in the most general sense does not exist - see my above remarks about this being an unanswered question. But we can safely dismiss candidates that are asserted to possess absurd and contradictory properties, which is an entirely different matter, as I’ve expounded in detail above. Continued treatment of those particular candidates as real is clearly delusional, as much so as thinking that a square circle exists.
Because we don’t conform to this strawman caricature of our thought. Once again, see all of the above, and in detail.
Except that once again, we come to another rule of proper discourse. that rule being that he who presents an assertion, is required to support it. Failure on the part of said person renders the assertion safely discardable. One annoying fallacy we see here too often, is the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. Which usually takes the form:
“I assert X”
“I see no evidence for X”
“Prove that X is false”
In order to be able to discard X, we don’t have to prove its negation. We simply have to see whoever asserts X fail to support it. Learn this important concept, and quickly.
Note I said “discard”, not “reject”, and for good reason. Namely, that our discarding of X is something we can change, if someone finally succeeds in establishing X. But, we’re still waiting.
Yawn. Blasphemy is an imagined offence, erected to stifle debate and shield so-called “sacred” assertions from proper scrutiny.
And once again, we see someone mistaking exasperation for anger. Not least because we keep being led down the same path all over again by every new mythology fanboy that comes here. None of them bother to find out if their so-called “ineffable wisdom” has been presented here and addressed before. You too would be exasperated after the 3,795th instance of this.
Apparently despite creating three different accounts, he/she couldn’t manage that much, and I while I dislike leaping to assumptions, the obvious inference is hard to ignore.
You would think that these folks would pray and ask their god for guidance prior to entering the site. Why do we only get the ignorant Christians from the bottom of the Holy water dish? These guys never know how to argue for the existence of their god. I’t all those lurking Christians out there who can cut through the bullshit and defend their god the right way. But why should they log into the site and help us out. We made our choice. We chose not to believe. We will burn in hell and it is not their problem. Damn… I feel so abandoned.
We would, they wouldn’t apparently, or imaginary deities are toothless of course.
The smart ones know their bag is empty?
Well when you have an absolute closed minded belief, they don’t need logic, or objective evidence, they tell us often enough, though it seems the irony is wasted on them.
For a moment just imagine how to accurately describe a belief in the supernatural that they claim does not need to adhere to the principles of logic, and for which no objective evidence can be demonstrated. It’s the very definition of unevidenced and irrational superstition.
Biding their time, no doubt. Once we die they’ll pounce…
Aren’t Christians doctrinally obliged to do this?
Yes, yes, and I am dubious.
Cheer up, imaginary posthumous torture chambers are unlikely to hurt.
“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:” 1 Peter 3:15 KJV
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Edit (and he said the word, and they ate it)
I didn’t say anything at all about that … name. Nope… not me… I have no problem with the name at all. None. My mouth is sealed forever. What parents name their kids is their own business. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.,
Yes. Over and over and over. Good evidence is that which comports with reality.
Atheists have no authority. That is why they generally rely on a little thing called the scientific method and logical absolutes. Now, if you have a better epistemology, we would love to hear about it. What do you have that works better than the scientific method?
Some gods are and some gods arent. Why don’t you define your god and then we can talk about it. Or are you just planning to troll the site?
